Indigenous perspectives to read this January 26th

Whether you're looking to better understand local Indigenous culture and history, wanting to learn more about Indigenous politics and justice or just want a great read, here are a few books to help you and your family engage with Indigenous authors this January 26th, and all year round.

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Picture Books & Baby Books

Boodja Barna: Land Creatures

By Jayden Boundry & Tyrown Waigana

A board book featuring Noongar words for common creatures like the yongka (kangaroo), the weitj (emu) and the nyingarn (echnida). With a free, comprehensive pronunciation guide available online, families can learn to appreciate and connect with the Noongar language.

Kala (Colour)

By Birdiya Waangkiny Elders Group Bunbury

Learn all of the colours of the rainbow, and where they appear in nature around you, in both Noongar and English. Includes an online resource to listen to the story and pronunciation, this beautifully illustrated book is the perfect resource to begin explore Noongar language.

Welcome to Country

By Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy

Aboriginal communities across Australia have boundaries that are defined by mountain ranges and waterways. Traditionally, to cross these boundaries or enter community country you needed permission from the neighbouring community. When this permission was granted the ceremony now called Welcome to Country took place. Each community had its own way of welcoming to country, and they still do today. This is an expansive and generous Welcome to Country from a most respected Wurundjeri elder of the Kulin alliance, Aunty Joy Murphy, beautifully given form by Indigenous artist Lisa Kennedy.

Earth Speak: Boodjar Wangkiny

By Sean McCann and Jade Goodwin

A joyful story celebrating the natural world, the sharing of culture through Noongar language and the awe that comes from seeing, hearing and feeling how elemental forces shape the earth.

Papa says we're going to a special place today. 'If we djinang (look), ni (listen), goordoo (feel), we might hear boodjar wangkiny (earth speak). We might even feel her heartbeat.' I wonder what that will sound like? Will the earth's heart beat just like ours?

A bush walk in a stunning landscape becomes a heartfelt invitation to engage with the senses, care for the environment, and learn some Noongar language words along the way.

Always Was Always Will Be

By Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson

From the very first protest of January 26th as a Day of Mourning in 1938, to the Pilbara Strike of 1946, to the struggle for the right to vote and be counted; the fight for justice for First Nations people takes many forms.Always Was, Always Will Be takes a closer look at some of the iconic First Peoples protest movements of the last 200 years, celebrating the strength, wisdom, and bravery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people defending their land and asserting their right to self-determination through history.

Ninni Yabini

By Cheryl Kickett-Tucker and Tyrown Waigana

In this delightful picture book, Mother and Father swan are busy rebuilding their nest after a storm when their baby, Ninni Yabini, wanders off. Luckily, the evening star, his namesake, comes out to guide him home. Written in Noongar and English, and illustrated with striking contemporary artwork, Ninni Yabini is a memorable celebration of family and belonging

Djinang Bonar: Seeing Seasons

By Ebony Froome and Leanne Zilm

Djinang Bonar takes readers through the seasons of the Noongar calendar, exploring different seasonal indicators to increase readers' awareness of the environment around them and their knowledge of Noongar language. Noongar country is portrayed in spectacular detail with gorgeous illustrations of the plants and animals typically seen in each season of the year.

Middle Grade & Young Adult Fiction

Catching Teller Crow

By Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina

Nothing's been the same for Beth Teller since she died. Her dad, a detective, is the only one who can see and hear her - and he's drowning in grief. But now they have a mystery to solve together. Who is Isobel Catching, and what's her connection to the fire that killed a man? What happened to the people who haven't been seen since the fire? As Beth unravels the mystery, she finds a shocking story lurking beneath the surface of a small town, and a friendship that lasts beyond one life and into another. (Recommended for 14+)

Weaving Us Together

By Lay Maloney

I'm Jean O'Ryan and this is my story. I didn't know who I was or where I belonged when I moved with my dad to a little town surrounded by hills. In that valley where the rivers meet the sea, Seraphina Landry found me fallen over on a road. With a hand from Seraphina and the rest of The Crew, we weave our lives together using threads of hope, grief, joy and love. Never alone, I find my mob, face the worst of days, search for answers, and figure out what kind of person I wanna be. (Recommended for 12+)

Wylah The Koorie Warrior

By Jordan Gould & Richard Pritchard

Meet Wylah: warrior, hero and friend. Her adventures have been 40,000 years in the making! Wylah is brave, clever and strong-willed, and all her best friends are giant megafauna animals. But she isn't a warrior. Not yet, anyway. Then comes the day when her family is stolen by the dragon army, and her life is forever changed. She must find the courage to set out on a journey to save them. What will it take for Wylah to become a warrior, like her Grandmother before her? Introducing an unforgettable cast of characters, Wylah The Koorie Warrior is a heart-stopping and imaginative adventure, inspired by First Nations history and grounded in culture. (Recommended for 8+)

Ngurra Home

By Carl Merrison & Hakea Hustler

Mia finds herself at boarding school navigating the challenges of living thousands of kilometres away from home and family and maintaining her sense of identity and belonging. Now studying Conservation and Wildlife Science at university whilst working part-time for a wildlife sanctuary, Mia is suddenly called upon to return home to her family. She is faced with the responsibility to protect the country, which her Jiwalji has given her. It is time for Mia to fight for country, and her education, knowledge and experience in wildlife science will guide her. (Recommended for 10+)

Washpool

By Lisa Fuller

Sisters Bella and Cienna are different in lots of ways. Bella is quiet and shy, and Cienna is always surrounded by friends. One thing they have in common is their love for the local swimming spot, Washpool. One weekend, while they are at Washpool with their family, the girls are transported to a different world. They then encounter enigmatic Esura, who encourages them to venture further into Muse, where the Summer Feast - a time when many peoples gather for a week of fun and games - is due to start. But when they find out Lady Dragon's egg is missing, Bella and Cienna must use their smarts to help with the search and bringing the egg back to safety before they figure out how to get back home. (Recommended for 9+)

I'm Not Really Here

By Gary Lonesborough

When 17-year-old Jonah arrives in a new town - Patience - with his dad and younger brothers, it feels like a foreign place. A new town means he needs to make new friends - which isn't always easy. Especially when he's wrestling with his body image, and his memories of his mother. When he joins the local footy team so he can spend more time with his new crush, Harley, he feels like he's moving closer to something good. But even though he knows what he wants, it doesn't mean he's ready.  Emotionally compelling, honest and featuring warm and authentically vulnerable characters, I'm Not Really Here is a beautiful novel from an internationally acclaimed bestselling Indigenous author about navigating family and friendships, and finding a way through grief towards love. (Recommended for 14+)

The Skin I'm In

By Steph Tisdell

Layla is in her final year of school. It's the last year to make sure that the next major phase of her life begins correctly because she's got big plans. She just wants to be a normal teenager and to fit in but when her troubled cousin Marley comes to stay, he challenges everything she thought she was. (Recommended for 15+)

Adult Fiction

Secrets

By Judi Morison

Ruth, the widowed matriarch of a grown family, has only months to live, and a secret she’s kept for sixty years. Now she must put things right before she dies. But as she has learned, the longer something is kept hidden, the harder it is to bring out of the shadows. A sweeping saga spanning more than half a century, Secrets has a cast of indelible characters whose lives have been devastated by racism, trauma, addiction, incarceration, loss and shame. Yet for all that their secrets break your heart, Ruth and her family ultimately leave it stronger. This spirited, compassionate novel is a testament to the power of truth-telling and the possibility of healing.

Rivers Flow

By Various Authors

Curated and introduced by two-time Miles Franklin winner, Noongar man Kim Scott, this special volume brings together 23 First Nations writers to share stories and poems that resonate with the legacy of two beloved singer-songwriters. With a foreword by Amos Roach, Rivers Flow honours the profound musical and cultural legacy of Archie Roach AC AM - a Gunditjmara, Kirrae Whurrong / Djab Wurrung and Bundjalung man - and Ruby Hunter - a Ngarrindjeri, Kokatha and Pitjantjatjara woman. Edited by Casey Mulder and with the support and blessing of Amos and Eban Roach, sons of Archie and Ruby, this anthology stands as a tribute to the strength, artistry and enduring spirit of two of Australia's most cherished musicians and cultural leaders.

Yilkari

By Nicolas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson

A Siberian composer named Valentin comes to a remote roadhouse in the Western Desert to find the narrator of Yilkari, whom he first met the night the Berlin Wall fell. They travel on together, leading us deeper into the desert in this mesmerising, unclassifiable book, co-written by the prize-winning author Nicolas Rothwell and his wife, the acclaimed artist Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson. Later, he takes us driving on hidden tracks in search of other characters and other stories that transport the mind. He visits the magic mountain, even though it is not on any maps, whose peak seems to draw the light into itself, the heart of life.

Yilkari reveals its secrets, such secrets as it can reveal, through the conversations of its characters and their journeys into landscapes in which space and time are aspects of each other. Their exchanges touch on ways of knowing and speaking and imagining that are only within reach in the desert.. The authors are both characters and guides. This is a book of strange coincidences, of intricate, interlinked dreamings, of chance encounters in living landscapes where the thread of sound is almost too faint to hear when the evening sun is low, the best time for telling stories.

I Am Nannertgarrook

By Tasma Walton

Based on the true story of Tasma Walton’s ancestor, a powerful, heart-wrenching novel about maternal love that endures against pitiless odds.

Kidnapped by sealers and enslaved far from her homeland, Nannertgarrook has a spirit that refuses to bow … From her idyllic life in sea country in Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), Nannertgarrook is abducted and taken to a slave market, leaving behind a husband, daughter and son. Pregnant when seized, she soon gives birth to another son, whom she raises with the children of her fellow captives. Nannertgarrook is separated not only from her Boonwurrung family, but from her birthright – the ceremonies she once was so joyously part of, the majestic whales who are her totem, the land and sky and sea country and its creatures. All these things she loves as deeply as she does her blood kin. But now, as her reality becomes profoundly different, she must keep that family and her old life alive in her mind. Their rich, pulsating elements sing to us through her beautiful voice, even while Nannertgarrook herself is subjected to the worst of humanity. This sweeping novel asks us to consider who, in colonial history, were the real savages, and what it truly means to be civilised.

Pictures Of You

By Tony Birch

Pictures of You: Collected Stories brings together the best of acclaimed writer Tony Birch’s short fiction from the past two decades. Cherrypicking from across his oeuvre, this anthology showcases his skills at finding the extraordinary in ordinary lives, and the often-unexpected connections and kindnesses between strangers. His work is by turns poignant, sad, profound and funny – and always powerful. Throughout this stellar collection, Birch’s preoccupation with the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked, and the search for justice for people and the natural environment shines bright

Swallow The Air

By Tara June Winch

When May's mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by Aunty. However, their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn't seem to want them. While Billy takes his own destructive path, May sets out to find her father and her Aboriginal identity. Her journey leads her from the Australian east coast to the far north, but it is the people she meets, not the destinations, that teach her what it is to belong. Swallow the Air is an unforgettable story of living in a torn world and finding the thread to help sew it back together.

Adult Non-Fiction

Terraglossia

By Debra Dank

You won't find 'terraglossia' on Google, or in a dictionary. It's a word coined by acclaimed academic and award-winning author Dr Debra Dank in response to the first Europeans' description of Australia as 'terra nullius' - no one's land. These new arrivals, with their language born far away, silenced and made invisible the more-than-ancient civilisations that have lived in and with this place for many thousands of years. The First Peoples became 'other', spoken for and about in another language, through another culture, not permitted to articulate their essential being and their complex relationships with Country and its entities, unable to participate in the development of a truly Australian dialogue. It is time for the depth of this linguistic colonisation to be recognised, for the deep intellectual traditions of First Nations Australians to be acknowledged and included, for their multiple living communicative practices and expressions to be heard.

Terraglossia is a powerful and moving reply to a false claiming, to the need for understanding that only through responsible living with the earth, not just what can be articulated in a language that arrived 250 years ago, will all the voices of Australia truly be heard.

Not Quite White In The Head

By Melissa Lucashenko

This timely collection of essays and journalism – published together for the first time – spans two turbulent decades. With her trademark wit and wisdom, Lucashenko reflects on being caught in a siege, on the marginalised lives of prisoners and the urban poor, on Blak identity, Australian literature and on meeting her writing idol. Her non-fiction, like her novels, is deeply engaged with politics, activism, culture and social (in)justice.

Not Quite White in the Head offers unprecedented access to one of the nation’s greatest writers as she invites us into the conversations that truly matter.

Fight For Liberty And Freedom

By John Maynard

In this exploration of the life and times of his grandfather, John Maynard uncovers the AAPA’s invaluable legacy.

Opposition to the British colonisation of Australia did not spring from the Mabo decision or the Native Title Act, nor was it born in the vibrant 1960s which culminated in the famous Aboriginal tent embassy in 1972. Rather, the first politically organised and united all-Aboriginal activist group was the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), begun in 1924 under the leadership of Frederick Maynard. For the first time Aboriginal people voiced their disapproval in public in a well-organised way. They opened offices in Sydney, held street rallies, conducted public meetings, gained newspaper coverage, wrote letters and petitions to Government at all levels, and collaborated with the international black labour movement. The AAPA’s demands still resonate today. They centred on Aboriginal rights to land, stopping Aboriginal children being taken from their families, the acquisition of citizenship rights, and defending a distinct Aboriginal cultural identity. This form of resistance and organised action has now endured for more than 100 years.

Sand Talk

By Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? Sand Talk provides a template for living. It's about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everybody and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things.Most of all it's about Indigenous thinking, and how it can save the world.

Songspirals

By Gay'wu Group of Women

Aboriginal Australian cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape.

First Nations Writing

By Dan Bourchier and Jeanine Leane

‘This is writing about us, by us’, as selected by Jeanine Leane and Dan Bourchier. First Nations Writing: Meanjin 1977 to today captures powerful Aboriginal and Torres Strait writers who have shaped the national conversation across peoples, place and time. It showcases a richness of First Nations writing and ideas that reflect on the past and imagines a future built on respect, fairness and truth.

It includes work by poets, public intellectuals, writers, philosophers, critics and social commentators that altogether show what it is to be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in Australia then, and now.