Reading Sovereignty in the Fiction of Tara June Winch

• Main Author: Compton, Sophia
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: UNSW, Sydney 2023
• Subjects: First Nations Literature; Tara June Winch; First Nations Sovereignty; Aboriginal Literature; Aboriginal Women's Fiction; Aboriginal Sovereignty; Settler Readings; anzsrc-for: 450109 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature; journalism and professional writing; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/101335; https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/ffd25fe5-678e-4b27-87ca-901ebf8cd8c5/download; https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/25042

The Australian Government’s recent commitment to the 2017 Uluru Statement from The Heart suggests that relations between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian nation state may be at a turning point. However, missing from these burgeoning discussions in mainstream (settler-colonial) discourse is any developed or nuanced understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignties. In this thesis, I propose that literary portrayals of First Nations sovereignties can be read within a range of Aboriginal authored contemporary fiction. I suggest that these texts create a unique space wherein settler Australians can gain an understanding of the complexities around this concept, particularly related to First Nations spiritualities and relationships to Country. To do this I focus on Wiradjuri woman Tara June Winch’s two novels, Swallow the Air (2006) and The Yield (2019) – work that has not yet received the scholarly attention it deserves. I explore the novels’ portrayals of First Nations characters and their engagement with the human and non-human world. Analysing literary devices such as narrative voice, structural form, narrative spatiality, genre, and theme, I draw on a range to First Nations scholars’ writings to propose a number of ways through which the settler reader may gain insights into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignties and the multiplicity of First Nations ways of being in and beyond Winch’s novels. Underpinning this thesis is the question: How might I conceive of a different relation to the land from my own? Throughout this work, I acknowledge that I interpret the world through my own understandings of place, time and knowledge which are drawn from my white settler-colonial culture and upbringing, and the privilege these endow me with. Such positioning of self is vital to this project, which attempts to find a mode of relational reading that enables settler readers to learn of and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignties and ways of ...