Responsive Topographies: Reading the Ontopoetics in Mullumbimby and The Swan Book

• Published in: Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ)
• Main Author: Dickie, Stephen
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Sydney Library 2020
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/Swamphen/article/view/14368; https://doi.org/10.60162/swamphen.7.14368

The ways in which European settlers have disrupted Australian lands, and disrupted the relationship that First Nations people have to Indigenous Country, are massive and manifold. This despoliation has deep and lasting implications because Country relies on a dialogue between people and place, and this dialogue is based on millennia of accumulated knowledges. Mitigating the despoliation requires the acknowledgement of this dialogue’s importance, and one mode of making it legible, particularly to European settlers, is through works of Indigenous literature.