Writing to perform the region: making ‘somewhereness’ visible in post-colonisation Australia

• Published in: TEXT
• Main Author: Palmer, Jane
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Australasian Association of Writing Programs 2019
• Subjects: colonisation; Aboriginal land rights; regionalism; Indigenous Australians; writing from the regions; First Nations
• Online Access: https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q551w/writing-to-perform-the-region-making-somewhereness-visible-in-post-colonisation-australia; https://research.usq.edu.au/download/6fdaf8374dd55704773cab954d68ed5357d2024fb663513c2b69bec2ec34305d/250692/Palmer.pdf; https://doi.org/10.52086/001c.25449

The regions that colonisers know are not generally those of most importance to First Nations people, although the territorial divisions of government administration have had a huge impact on First Nations people in terms of the kinds of policies directed at them and the implementation of those policies. In this paper, I look first at the ways in which Aboriginal experience in Australia has been written out of the landscape, then at some non-territorial ways of looking at such landscapes. I then discuss how a non-Indigenous writer, in working with First Nations people, might help to make visible a different kind of ‘region’.