Australia Day

• Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie, takes the reader on a journey through magnificent and heartbreaking dual narratives set five generations apart.
• Review: Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko (UQP) Lucashenko gifts us with characters impossible to not to invest in.
• Read more:
  With wit and tenderness, Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko writes back to the 'whiteman's world'

It’s Granny Eddie’s world

• The first character we meet is Granny Eddie, who has been hospitalised after a fall.
• Winona laments not seeing her Granny Eddie enough, while also trying to find a job, disrupt the colony and make sure her granny is safe and cared for.
• Respectful, kind and considerate, he is trying his best to care for Granny Eddie – and finds himself pushing professional boundaries as he falls head over heels for fiery Winona.
• She and Dr Johnny have much to learn from each other as they bond over their care for Granny Eddie.

Shifting time

• Lucashenko transports you, shifting through time.
• In 1844, we meet Mulanyin, saltwater man, whose inner complexities are explored in depth as he learns the Law and lessons from Country and Ancestors.
• With that thought, the boy had the electric realisation that all his life he had been eating the decisions of his Ancestors.
• With that thought, the boy had the electric realisation that all his life he had been eating the decisions of his Ancestors.
• I am reminded of the poem, The Past, by the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal:
  Let no one say the past is dead.
• Haunted by tribal memories, I know
  This little now, this accidental present
  Is not the all of me, whose long making
  Is so much of the past.

‘Your body is not your own’

• In the present, Winona and Granny Eddie interact and relate with Māori mob, through shared understandings of birthing practices and opposition to white cultural appropriation.
• I found myself laughing, crying and fighting off goosebumps as I read.
• There were moments when I had to put the book down, to sit with what I was reading.
• It is clear Lucashenko has done extensive research to position this historical fiction through past and present Magandjin localities.
• This is further evidenced by Lucashenko’s extensive acknowledgments and thanks to contributors and knowledge holders in the book’s author notes.

• But where the nostalgically minded group might have selected a name that, like its progressive counterpart, sounded a call to action – WakeUP!
• “Advance Australia” – now simply called Advance after the word Australia was mysteriously dropped – is a title that hints at progress and modernisation.
• If that’s not confusing enough, Advance, and FA, are fronted by Peter Dutton’s hand-picked shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Waging war on ‘woke’

• This “army” of democratic defenders, however, may be less of a “grassroots” movement than it claims.
• A glance at the Australian Electoral Commission’s transparency register of Significant Third Parties shows Advance has received substantial repeat donations above the $14,500 declaration threshold.
• Former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe is also leading a charge against the Voice on behalf of the “Blak Sovereign Movement”.
• “The hypocrisy of elites railing at elites, however, rarely registers with the target audience,” noted Crikey’s Bernard Keane recently.

Borrowed from the US

• The “freedom of mainstream values” may seem like a contradiction in terms, but it only needs to make sense as political messaging.
• This imported “freedom” agenda is ably buttressed by two other headings, security and prosperity.
• But you wouldn’t know it from the way woke politicians and the inner city elites carry on.
• From attacks on Australia Day and the Anzacs by the ABC to the brutal pandemic lockdowns […]
  We believe Australia is a free country.
• But you wouldn’t know it from the way woke politicians and the inner city elites carry on.
• Signatures on its longest-running public petitions reveal its “fightback” is a more of a boutique rebellion than a popular uprising.

• This week at Parliament House during Barunga Festival, four NT Land Council representatives presented Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the Barunga Declaration.
• Signed by the four NT Land Council representatives, the declaration calls on Australians to vote “yes” in the upcoming referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
• NT Land Council representatives Dr Samuel Bush-Blanasi (Northern Land Council), Matthew Palmer (Central Land Council), Gibson Farmer Illortaminni (Tiwi Land Council) and Thomas Amagula (Anindilyakwa Land Council) brought the Barunga Declaration to Parliament House.

Treaty ’88 and the Barunga Statement

• The Barunga Statement was the outcome of years of careful deliberation and discussion.
• It was delivered from “the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia”, requesting the Australian government legislate for national land rights and begin treaty negotiations.
• It also called for laws for a national elected Aboriginal body, and recognition of customary law by police and justice systems.
• The Barunga Statement was presented during a time where there were increasing calls for a treaty.
• The Treaty ’88 campaign declared that Australia was invaded by a foreign power with no treaty.

‘Treaty by 1990’

• However, others have highlighted the reconciliation movement’s departure from treaty.
• Playwright Wesley Enoch and actress Deborah Mailman’s play 7 Stages of Grieving includes a poem emphasising instead the “wreck”, “con” and “silly” in reconciliation.
• This would symbolise the burial of hopes for a treaty, saying
  Sovereignty became treaty, treaty became reconciliation and reconciliation turned into nothing.

To properly consider the Voice, we need to look to how we got here

• However, the Voice aims to address a key problem that recreates disadvantage: First Nations’ political power.
• First Nations peoples have long sought representation to seek particular rights to land, culture and heritage, language, self-determination and self-governance.
• The referendum for a Voice is the first of a three-part sequence of reforms, outlined in the 2017 Uluru Statement, followed by treaty and truth-telling.

• Melbourne’s major river, the Maribyrnong, was full of waste from abattoirs, tanneries and factories.
• I live near Darebin Creek in Melbourne’s north, which was next to a tip and often polluted until cleanup efforts began in the 70s.
• Here’s what the restoration of Darebin Creek shows us about the successes and challenges of bringing life back to our urban waterways.

Rivers or rubbish dumps?

• European settlement had a big effect on creeks and rivers, we’ve often used them as convenient waste dumps.
• Treating rivers as dumps can (unsurprisingly) damage or even wipe out the life in it.
• Read more:
  A tale of 2 rivers: is it safer to swim in the Yarra in Victoria, or the Nepean in NSW?
• The group spent decades removing weeds and rubbish and planting trees.
• Rivers such as the Ovens and the Murray, and even the Yarra in places, are in poorer condition with low flows and high sediment and salt levels major issues.

How do we fully restore our city waterways?

Native species reliant on our city waterways still face threats. These include:

How can we help bring life back?

• If there’s a lesson in the restoration work done so far, it’s that we can’t expect life just to bounce back.
• Join a local Waterwatch program to monitor river health, or join the national waterbug blitz to learn more about invertebrate life.