Cirrus@Austlit

'As a part time local to Bundjalung Country and someone who grew up in the flood prone Clarence Valley, I am no stranger to flood stories. As I reflect on recent and historical flood events, it is apparent that First Nations knowledges about the land have been undervalued at best. At worst, they have been flatly ignored. The failure to truly listen and observe has led to the establishment of permanent settlements in areas well-known to us to flood frequently in significant and devastating ways. Humans and livelihoods have drowned and been washed away, literally and figuratively. In the muddy depths of grief that is left behind, there are lessons to be had, opportunities to reimagine and reconfigure settler relations with the land. In fact, the emerging climate crisis, the inevitability of future disasters and the threat of another year of La Niña demands this of us all. And for each flood story, there is an Aboriginal Hero in whom our future navigational path resides.' (Introduction)

'ONE OF THE central tenets of the colonial project is the way control is used to maintain a narrative of dominance, white superiority and so-called truth. This control over narrative manifests in various ways, each of them as violent as the other, but it is purposeful in its effect and reach. The misrepresentation of Aboriginal people within colonial narratives enabled the justification of the myth that Australia was terra nullius – unoccupied land – and the subsequent violent dispossession of the continent’s First Nations. Within this colonial mythscape (a term coined by author Jeanine Leane) resides the fallacy of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ and the characterisation of Aboriginal people as ‘savages’ and ‘uncivilised’. As one example, this colonial mythology propagated (and continues to propagate) the notion of the Aboriginal parent as unfit – the consequence of which is the widespread and inter­generational removal of Aboriginal children from Aboriginal families, an act of genocide ­co-ordinated under the guise of protection and benevolence. The uncanny settler presumption is that settlers know the Aborigine more than the Aborigine knows themselves.' (Introduction)

'In the public imagining, many equate Tasmania (Lutruwita) with Truganini – the ‘last Tasmanian Aboriginal’. This narrative of the last Tasmanian is a deliberate one, engineered by the colonial project, to lay claim to the truth. The undeniable and true history of genocide in Lutruwita is not to be conflated with the total extinction of its first peoples. To do so erases First Nations existence and survival in Lutruwita – literally.' (Introduction)