Introduction
Bala-dhu Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi. I am Mother Earth, home to girawuu and biladurang dreaming
I am founded on granite and sculpted by melting ice and volcanic lava that created the Wambool Bila that runs through me like blood through the veins of my Wiradyuri mayiny. Over time the landscape has changed, but my people have continued to live, love, thrive with me, as one… (p.1)
And even though the white ghosts will arrive with firesticks they will point and shoot, poison they will lace food with, disease they will spread, and a hatred born from nothing other than greed and ignorance, they will learn that the mayiny of Wiradyuri ngurambang are resilient and strong, and though they may be displaced and disempowered, they will never give up their ngurambang, ever.
The journey of the white ghosts to conquer me for their own purposes will be devastating, but when the warrior Windradyne commands, ‘Dirrayawadha!,’ his people will rise up. (p. 5)
Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, Prologue. Anita HeissFootnote 1 (Reference Heiss2024a)
In this paper, we discuss the novel Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, by Anita Heiss (Reference Heiss2024 a), a literary novel that narratises historical truths. This novel has three major themes of love, resistance and resilience (Heiss, Reference Heiss2024 b). The themes work together to unsettle the imaginary of early moments of invasion while simultaneously revealing the links between colonial violence and environmental crisis.
Through examining four excerpts from the novel, we illustrate how the narratisation of historical truths and usage of literary devices and language work. Heiss has skilfully woven WiradyuriFootnote 2 language throughout the novel. This translanguaging, where some sections shift between English and Wiradyuri, enables the text to transcend some of the limitations of English. We have deliberately avoided focusing on the plot and giving “spoilers.” Instead, we focus on moments of the text to highlight the educational opportunities of studying climate fiction narratives that reveal the extractive nature of industrialisation in relationship to the historical truths of colonisation.
Climate fiction or cli-fi was coined by Bloom in 2007 (Johns-Putra, Reference Johns-Putra2017) is typically set in an imagined future in which the impacts of contemporary policies and actions are rendered visible. Goodbody and Johns-Putra (Reference Goodbody, Johns-Putra and Johns-Putra2019) suggest that ‘climate fiction has become a significant literary phenomenon, addressing profound, complex issues, in a range of realist and non-realist forms, and going far beyond the genres of popular reading with which it started’ (p.245). However, often cli-fi is presented as an erasure of Indigenous narratives (Anson, Reference Anson2020). Whyte (Reference Whyte2018) argues that there is a tendency among allies to deny they are living in times their ancestors would likely have fantasised about, which leaves an opening for ‘supposedly innocent people to help Indigenous friends whose lives remain sufficiently—but not entirely—unaffected by colonial and other forms of domination’ (p.237).
Positionality statement
The two authors are settler/invaders who benefit from the limited justice on stolen Land in so-called Australia. We are writing this in early 2025 on unceded Wurundjeri Country. We acknowledge that, as Whyte (Reference Whyte2018) noted, that we are living in times our ancestors would have fantasised about, our lives being significantly easier than those of even our parents and grandparents. Our analysis of the text comes from a position of respectful speculation rather than authoritative interpretation. In doing this we are using Rosenblatt’s transactional theory to reading (1988). While we attempt to keep our middle-class footprint small through reduction and reuse, our responsibility for ecological damage due to our extraction and consumption is still out of proportion to what we repair and return.
Truth-telling and truth-listening
‘Truth-telling is crucial to the ongoing process of healing and reconciliation in Australia’ (Gainsford, Reference Gainsford2018, p.159). Truth-telling reveals the lies that underpinned the invasion of Australia, aligns with the moral and political purposes of education and disrupts Indigenous erasure in the curriculum (Auld et al., Reference Auld and Fricker2025). Anita Heiss is committed to truth-telling and describes this as a major driver for her work. In 2023 Australian held an unsuccessful Referendum to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of so-called Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. Heiss describes:
I choose to look at the fact that 6.2 million people voted “Yes” to truth-telling, and they’re still waiting for, ‘what do we do next?’ They are still on the journey. Some of them have never been on the journey before that moment in time…I think one of the ways that we best do that is through providing our truths in literature. And that’s why I do that, and why I write to get those stories into the literary landscape (Heiss, Reference Heiss2025).
Heiss maintains this commitment to truth-telling through all her work, and the themes of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up — love, resilience and resistance — resonate through it.
Ambelin Kwaymullina discusses the importance of what she terms as “truth-listening” (Kwaymullina, Reference Kwaymullina2020). She argues that there is a lot of truth-telling, but that there should be greater emphasis on truth-listening and shares ways that non-Indigenous people can really listen to Indigenous voices. The importance of truth-listening by settlers was reinforced by Melissa Lucashenko (Reference Lucashenko2023 a), who noted that First Nations people do the truth-telling, and everyone else needs to truth-listen.
In considering the importance of truth-listening to First Nations authors such as Heiss, we deepen our understanding of what is termed “the environment” in English (a concept rendered known but elsewhere through the use of the definite article “the”). In the novel, Gunhi (mother) Bangalbuwurayi (the country all over the earth, the whole earth in Wiradyuri language) directly addresses the reader at the beginning and end of the novel. She also speaks of love, nurturing and care from the Wiradyuri Nation, the reciprocity of care they share, and the fact that the land was never ceded by the Wiradyuri. As seen in the extract above, she clearly describes that the British invasion is about extraction, and nothing to do with relationality and reciprocity, and supports the Wiradyuri to fight for their land:
The journey of the white ghosts to conquer me for their own purposes will be devastating, but when the warrior Windradyne commands, ‘Dirrayawadha!,’ his people will rise up. (p. 5)
Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi speaks to us through, across and into time, her omnipresence voicing truths everywhere all at once, as the impacts of colonial invasion and accompanying murders and violence resonate destruction. Past actions of settlers with ongoing consequences for the environment are often small moments that have a huge impact beyond what was intended or noticed at the time, and some of these are detailed and lay bare in the novel.
While many novels that fall into the cli-fi category are located in a post-apocalyptic future, this historical fiction focuses on the Wiradyuri ontologies of love, nurturing and care to highlight the settler extractive practices in so-called Australia that contribute to the global climate crisis. Importantly the First Nations characters show resistance in pointing out these disruptions as they note them, and the settler characters do not listen to these truths. Dirrayawadha: Rise Up speaks to settlers who are ready for truth-listening. It exposes both designed and unintended consequences of invasion and colonisation in Australia, the impact on the Wiradyuri people and Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi herself. Environmental educators can engage in this text to highlight the link between colonisation and ecocide.
Cli-Fi in the Australian Literary Context
The unceded lands of so-called Australia have a trajectory of storytelling in more than 260 languages, spanning deep time and the continent. Colonisation of lands, waters, peoples and languages has meant that now what is valued in terms of fiction is generally in English and follows the literary forms of the colonisers.
Reading speculative fiction invites the reader to imagine a world beyond the present reality, to reconsider the present through the lens of the speculative future. This gives cli-fi a place in environmental education, as readers think through the acts that lead to climate crisis and the consequences of these changes. Saunders (Reference Saunders2025) argues that ‘at this point we can confidently say that any Aboriginal story that focuses on Country deals with climate too— whether ancestral, life-making climate change or colonial-capitalism’s destructive changes’ (p.6). Reading this literature can help the work of environmental educators to present ‘difficult knowledge’ (Britzman, Reference Britzman1998) on climate change or the climate crisis in ways that can be imagined by the students.
There is a plethora of high-quality fiction by First Nations writers that builds on the millennia of storytelling on these lands. The Miles Franklin Award is the most prestigious literary award in colonial Australia, and this has been won many times this century by First Nations authors: Kim Scott in 2000 for Benang: From the Heart and again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance, Alexis Wright in 2007 for Carpentaria and then again in 2024 for Praiseworthy, Melissa Lucashenko for Too Much Lip in 2019 and Tara Jane Winch for The Yield in 2020. In addition to these literary works that have won the most prestigious prize in Australia, are a plethora of outstanding literary works of many genres and forms by highly esteemed and widely published First Nations Australian authors. The author of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, Anita Heiss, is a Professor of Communications, award-winning author and editor of 23 books published in a range of genres. While only some of the novels published by these authors would be classified as belonging to the category of speculative fiction and cli-fi, the reality is that all of these novels touch on climate themes.
In the opening essay to This All Come Back Now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction (2022), the editor, Mykaela Saunders, writes of what she terms the “stone-cold reality” of speculative fiction themes for First Nations Australians:
Right now, right across this continent, we are post-apocalyptic and not yet post-colonial, so all those violent histories of invasion and colonisation must be read as apocalyptic by any standard. Related, Mad Max is probably the best-known Australian cli-fi story, but for our people, who have seen unfathomable ecocide enacted hand in glove with our own attempted genocide, all stories that take place in unceded lands post-1788 are climate fictions. Finally, and perhaps more universally, some say that spec fic deals in the ‘not real,’ but what of the absolute fantasy of continuous consumption on a finite planet? (p. 6-7).
Saunders (Reference Saunders, Taylor, Iiii, Dillon and Chattopadhyay2023) has coined the term “Blackfella futurism” to define speculative fiction written by First Nations Australians. She defines the genre as, ‘in addition to being authored by a Blackfella and set in the future, stories must feature at least one identifiably Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander protagonist who is not the last of their race’ (p. 103). Dirrayawadha: Rise Up is authored by a Wiradyuri writer and contains more than one identifiably Aboriginal protagonist; however, it is deliberately located in the past. While the inclusion of the voice of the omniscient, ever-present Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi provides the future, past and present in co-existence, we are not claiming that the text falls into Blackfella futurism. However, we make the claim that this is nonetheless climate fiction, following Saunders (Reference Saunders2022) that ‘all stories that take place in unceded lands post-1788 are climate fictions’ (p. 7). Saunders (Reference Saunders2025) positions speculative fiction as a subgenre of climate fiction. We adopt this positioning in the paper.
Text selection
There are many high quality literary First Nations texts released in the past few years that expose the nexus between environmental vandalism and the violence of colonisation. As highlighted above, these high-quality literary texts exist in their own right as literary artworks. Some of these are outlined in the discussion section of this paper. Given the plethora of suitable texts for this paper, readers might ask, ‘Why Dirrayawadha: Rise Up?’
Dirrayawadha: Rise Up was selected for its accessible truth-telling, compelling narrative and language usage. The narrative enables readers to encounter the violent arrangements of colonisation for the Wiradyuri Nation in ways that are accessible to the reader. It is important to acknowledge that there is no universal experience of colonisation but shared parallel stories and lived experiences. Heiss exposes this violence but makes deft choices in the detailing of each incident. This enables the reader to understand what occurred and see the aftermath, and for the text itself to focus on the relationships and ongoing lives of the protagonists, focusing on their resilience. The novel is set around 1824, at the time of Bathurst Wars. The novel was released in 2024, coinciding with the 200-year anniversary of the Bathurst Wars. Stanner (Reference Stanner1972) wrote of the Great Australian Silence that perpetuated the legal fiction of Terra Nullius. Most Australian people have grown up the history of colonisation erased (Reynolds, Reference Reynolds2000) and have little knowledge of the realities of early invasion and its ongoing consequences. Therefore, many settler readers will have no/limited knowledge of these events. The text also was chosen for its use of compelling language. Heiss uses Wiradyuri language in the text and her truth-telling comes at a time when language control is Orwellian and scientific language describing the climate crisis is reframed/reduced/denied by many governments.
Readers and texts
In this paper we use Rosenblatt’s transactional theory to reading to consider the relationship between reader and text. Rosenblatt (Reference Rosenblatt1938) describes literary texts as existing in a ‘live circuit set up between reader and text’ (p. 24). Her transactional theory of reading positions the responses readers make along an efferent/aesthetic continuum. She argues that ‘essential to any reading is the reader’s adoption, conscious or unconscious, of a stance’ (1988, p. 5). The reader adopts what she terms “the predominately aesthetic” stance or the “predominantly efferent stance.” When adopting the efferent stance, the reader attends to the ‘abstracting-out and analytic structuring of the ideas, information, directions, conclusions to be retained, used, or acted on after the reading event’ (p. 5). A predominantly aesthetic stance focuses ‘attention on what is being lived through during the reading event’ (1988, p. 5). The stance taken reflects the reader’s purpose in reading. The difference in stance ‘determines the proportion or mix of public and private elements of sense that fall within the scope of attention’ (p. 5). The text itself is important in the transaction, as it can be constructed to shift the reader’s attention to adopting one stance or the other.
Dirrayawadha: Rise Up shifts the reader’s stance between efferent and aesthetic, as the truth-telling shifts the reader to notice historic facts as they are having an aesthetic response to what they are reading. Rosenblatt also discuss that, as there is no “correct” meaning of any text, this creates ‘the problem of the relation between the reader’s interpretation and the author’s probable intention’ (1978, p. 6). In our analysis we have interacted primarily with the text of the novel itself as well as drawing upon intertextual references from Heiss through her scholarship in the field of literature and communication and her discussion and positioning of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up itself. As uninvited settlers, our reading of the text is positioned by this.
The act of reading fiction enables the reader to have an empathic response (Bal & Veltkamp, Reference Bal and Veltkamp2013), with the reader putting themselves in the place of the characters in the text and reimaging the world through their experiences (Mar et al., Reference Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, de la Paz and Peterson2006). The act of reimagining through literature creates “new possibilities for communities” (McLean Davies & Buzacott, Reference McLean Davies and Buzacott2022, p. 377). Shipp (Reference Shipp2023) in her work to ‘help teachers to actively and intentionally teach students to open their hearts and listen to First Nations perspectives’ writes:
What do we challenge teachers to do in regards to First Nations perspectives? Like all of us on this journey, we want to create cultures where we venture out of our comfort zone, try harder, listen harder. Listen to the wisdom within our country, and the wisdom of Country. (p. 3)
The live circuit of the reader and text can work towards change as readers of First Nations fiction experience the truths the text both efferently and aesthetically as they read. Heiss clearly states, ‘I wrote this book because I want Australians to know their history’ and in order to move forward as a nation, we need to understand what happened in the past (Johnson & Maxwell, Reference Johnson and Maxwell2024).
Language Usage in Dirrayawadha: Rise Up
Environmental educators are well aware of the importance of language in truth-telling. The language of describing and analysing environmental crises has shifted over time from “the greenhouse effect,” “global warming,” “climate change” to “climate crisis.” Scientific evidence shows causal effects on climate crises while some community members and governments deny these truths and manipulate language to recast the scientific facts. Martin (Reference Martin, Barrett and Bolt2013), in his critique of ideology and memory, argues that colonisers often suffer from perpetual amnesia, where the forgetting of historical truths enable them to construct an ideology that is ‘still bound by the material in a limited sense’ (p.192). Heiss enables the reader to reimagine moments of early invasion using language as reference points to describe the truth.
Heiss is very active in the Wiradyuri language reclamation movement and the text uses both English and Wiradyuri words. Heiss has studies Wiradyuri and expresses her gratitude to Dr. Stan Grant Senior and Dr. John Rudder who created a Wiradjuri dictionary and recorded and shared Wiradyuri language for what you have given us Wiradyuri people on the journey to reclaim and maintain what should’ve been our first language’ (2024b, p. 333). She discusses the empowerment she feels in learning and speaking Wiradyuri:
For me, learning and speaking language, even though I know very little, is incredibly empowering. Speaking language for me, particularly in a public space, is an act of sovereignty. It says that I have the power, and I have the right to my culture, and I will demonstrate it when I want to, because I’m proud. I hope that lots of other people around Australia have the opportunity for such empowerment through learning language (Heiss, Reference Heiss2019).
In the novel Heiss deftly incorporates Wiradyuri words so that they become familiar to the reader. Shifting between two languages in this way is called “translanguaging,” and Heiss uses this translanguaging pedagogy to increase the reach of Wiradyuri language and concepts. Translanguaging impacts upon the reader experience of the text.
Translanguaging is a horizontal continuum that expands the linguistic repertoire of the reader rather than compartmentalising languages in a hierarchical relationship (Vogel and García, Reference Vogel, García, Noblit and Moll2017). As you read through the sections in the text you can see the Wiradyuri words integrated into sentences. There is a word list at the beginning of the novel, however the novel is designed so that many of these words are remembered. This use of Wiradyuri words in the text enables the reader to engage in Wiradyuri ontology. As we saw earlier, Gunhi Bangalbuwarayi addresses the reader at the beginning and end of the novel. Using the same translanguaging structural technique in this paper of repeating language several times, non-Wiradyuri speakers probably already recognise her name. When we look at the naming, we can see a different ontological understanding of the relationships between humans and earth embedded in this Wiradyuri concept to that which is translated in English. While “Gunhi” translates directly to “mother” carrying equivalence of the most fundamental of human relationships, “Bangalbuwurayi” has deeper relational aspect than the noun “earth” and includes ideas that translate to “country all over the earth, the whole earth.” Additionally, the use of tense in Wiradyuri has conceptions of the everywhen, of time as ever present, which are not available in English but changes ontological understandings of “the environment” from being a distant entity to an ever present, relational and living presence.
In the novel, the complexity of this relationship for the Wiradyuri is made clear, and contrasts with the lack of complexity and responsibility that the white settlers/invaders/prisoners have towards understanding the symbiotic relationships between human and more than human agents. The ways in which Wiradyuri words and grammars position people with each other, the earth and time re/situate the reader. As Rosenblatt (Reference Rosenblatt1978) described, when a reader experiences language shifts this can shift the reader into taking an aesthetic stance in the text as they experience the feeling of new or differently used language. This novel is also an example of the vital role that literary fiction has to play in environmental education, through enabling an empathic affective response as we readers shift between efferent and aesthetic responses to the text and experience how language choice and use shape our understanding.
Colonial Violence: Roads, Convicts and Distant Governance
Heiss uses numerous literary devices in innovative ways to re-present historical truths, enabling the reader to imagine early and immediate colonial violence. Gunhi Bangalbuwarayi (Mother Earth) is an omnipresent narrator of the text, and the novel begins and ends with her directly addressing the reader, shaping the narrative within her view of the events. As White et al. (Reference White, Ardoin, Eames and Monroe2024) explain, planetary and human health are entangled — environmental problems are socio-ecological — and education has an important role to play in developing agency and hope.
Heiss makes the colonial violence towards Gunhi Bangalbuwarayi herself explicit and with this the novel also serves to increase the reader’s understanding of the socio-ecological entanglements. This provides insights into the historical truths of the resistance and strength of the Wiradyuri Nation, their love for each other and Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi. We also detail how the translanguaging in the novel, where some sections shift between English and Wiradyuri, enable the text to transcend some of the limitations of English. We examine themes that resonate with environmental education in this dialogic encounter with history.
The extract below recounts a moment when Windradyne, a young Wiradyuri leader, despairs with his sister, Miinaa, who works and lives with a white family, about the construction of the crushed rock road to the place renamed “Bathurst.” Miinaa thinks back to that time. In revisiting the moment from Miinaa’s perspective, the reader has a sense of how the violence between white people and towards Country is unimaginable.
…Windradyne says, with a bitter tone. “When they built that road over our trading routes, when the white men in rags and chains came here as their punishment, they brought punishment upon us as well. Making us live their way.’ Miinaa was a younger girl when the white ghosts first arrived, but she recalls the day that the Gubbna Ghost raised a piece of red, blue and white material and renamed her homeland a settlement, calling it “Bathurst.’ She remembers vividly the first time she ever saw a white ghost: his coat was the colour of blood, and when he removed that coat, she thought he was peeling off a layer of skin. She had to blink hard before realising there was another layer of cloth there, and then very, very white skin beneath that. She felt silly that day, but then she felt sick. Those earlier times, of seeing convicts arrive, threw her into emotional turmoil she’d never known. Seeing them beaten if they did not work past exhaustion shocked her and the other yinaa-galang, but they came to learn it was important for the white ghosts to finish the road, so that more of their kind could arrive. And that the people giving the orders were often far, far away. It was back then that she first realised her gumbal, Windradyne, was a leader; that it was his role to meet the leader of the white ghosts, the one they called the Gubbna. (p. 8-9)
This extract opens with Windradyne bemoaning to his sister how the First Nations’ trading routes informed where the colonisers built roads. The trading routes were interrupted by this act of British violence and exemplify how First Nations peoples’ activities were impacted upon by colonisation. Miinaa details the impacts of one of the first examples of road construction in so-called Australia through her eyes. She remembers the renaming of Dalman (place of plenty) as “Bathurst” (an absent British politician — Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst). The specificities of place are subservient to governance from afar. The hierarchical structure of the English governance normalises a subservient set of relationships that come with a political economy where people are subject to extractive relationships as much as land, waters and seas are perceived as being there for the taking. This moment in the novel leads the reader to question the moral distance between the absent politician and the roadbuilding scene from Miinaa’s perspective.
The physical chains and usage of enforced convict labour to create the roads appals Miinaa. As we read this section of the text we shift between an efferent and aesthetic response as we speculate as to the cause of Miinaa’s turmoil. Miinaa questions the morality and legitimacy of the violence towards the convicts and how Country is being treated and for what purpose. The text also positions Miinaa as being potentially fearful of ‘seeing them beaten if they did not work past exhaustion’ and horrified at the concept, as this did not occur prior to the arrival of the white ghosts. She is also potentially emotionally responding to the land of the Wiradyuri being stolen to the behest of the white ghosts. This helps the reader understand the idea that Country is a living entity and Miinaa understands the importance of the road creation to the absent officials.
For thousands of generations, people lived well in so-called Australia without roads. For the past eight generations people have lived with the violence of roads. This violence is normalised in our present relationship to Country enabling passage across/through/between Aboriginal Nations in so-called Australia without any need to prove identity or negotiate reception. While prior to colonisation more than 250 Nations required identity for welcome to their lands, the colonial passport system has replaced this, and border negotiations at the edges cover movement across the entirety of the continent with internal First Nations boundaries erased from mapping. Many renamed place names pay homage to white men and women and reminders of life in the invaders’ homeland, looking to elsewhere rather than what is on the ground where one is standing. When there have been attempts to retain the True Name on western maps there usually errors in language and meaning. These false starts of notation are representative of all the errors that occur on Country since colonisation.
Miinaa knows that ‘it was important for the white ghosts to finish the road, so that more of their kind could arrive.’ This scene in the novel highlights the relationship between colonisation and the road network in so-called Australia. Australian including the islands, covers 7,688,287 square kilometres (Geoscience Australia, Reference Australia2014), with a current the total road network coverage in so-called Australia estimated at 877,651 km in length (BIS Oxford Economics, Reference Economics2019). This commodification of Country and its measurement through roads also determines the concept of “remoteness” — which is based on distance from the perceived “centre” or areas of high road density and larger populations. This shifts the way that country is conceived, as wherever we live is the centre of our world, and what is remote to us is what lies beyond that. The notion of remoteness in an industrial military complex, controlled by invaders who control the discourse of remoteness, also determines contemporary health and educational outcomes, as provision and access to health systems that are needed in post-colonial nation states are determined by roads. Contemporary projects that seek to acknowledge Country are beset by the ubiquitous network of roads that erase the boundaries and purposes of the First Nations peoples’ relationships with Country, as they enable fast passages and flows of movement across and through Nations in so-called Australia. Miinaa’s witnessing of the road violating the sustainable paths created through thousands of generations of custodians walking the trail leads the reader to wonder.
Yindyamarra for Ngurambang
The following edited extract captures an interaction between two men, Windradyne and Andrew Nugent. Windradyne is based on the famous warrior and leader of the Wiradyuri resistance in the Bathurst Wars. In colonial historical texts he is often referred to as ‘Saturday,” and the novel suggests this is because he mostly was seen by white settlers on a Saturday. Andrew Nugent is a fictional character who is an Irish settler farmer. The two men are talking outside on a cleared “paddock.” Andrew is clearing, reseeding and farming land that he has renamed “Cloverdale.” Windradyne is making a valiant, but reasonably futile, attempt to engage in truth-telling with Andrew. Through the scene we see him controlling his temper as every offer he makes Andrew is not taken up and concession after concession Windradyne makes is not heard.
‘…It is only good for durrumbal to grow here now.’ Windradyne pulls up some weeds, also foreign to his ngurambang. The land is changing so rapidly, right before his eyes. “This also came with the white ghosts,’ he adds, holding the weeds up to Andrew who looks around the property then back to Windradyne, ignoring the comment about the weeds. (p. 22)
Windradyne discusses family relationships and relationships with other tribes in depth so that Andrew can understand them.
…Windradyne turns to look Andrew in the eye. ‘It’s those connections to other tribes that mean leaders can work together, for whatever needs to be done.’ He is subtle, wondering if Andrew Nugent understands that the warriors from all areas will come together if need be, to fight for their ngurambang, because none of them will ever give up their place here. ‘They’re welcome to visit whenever they want, Windradyne. They will always have a home here,’ Andrew says sincerely, and Windradyne can feel his fists curl a little. He won’t hit Nugent, but he is astounded every time a white ghost speaks in a way that fails to acknowledge whose land they are on. Of course Wiradyuri people will always be welcome on their own ngurambang; it is not the role of the white ghost to offer that. (p. 23)
A little later in the scene above, Windradyne muses:
…. As he weaves his language into the foreign words he’s been taught and forced to use at Cloverdale, he wishes Andrew Nugent would try harder to speak the language of the ngurambang he now lives on, and wonders if the Irishman understands that Wiradyuri language, land and people are all one, and being further disconnected with the coming of more white ghosts and their beasts. He turns to Andrew. ‘It looks like there are more sheep.’ ‘Yes, Windradyne,’ Andrew says, in an unsettling voice. ‘More of those hard feet,’ Windradyne ponders. ‘Hooves,’ Andrew offers. ‘More hooves,’ Windradyne repeats, learning another white ghost word. Staring forward he adds, ‘They are hard on the ngurambang. They damage it.’ He points, moving his left arm back and forth, left to right. ‘The more they roam this property, the more damage they do.’ (p. 21-22)
We have a new convict arriving, Andrew says without ceremony, interrupting Windradyne’s thoughts. “Tomorrow, most likely,’ he continues. ‘He’s also Irish. Catholic. He’ll see the rest of his time out here. I might put him to work on building some fences, to create smaller pockets of land.’ Andrew winks at Windradyne, an acknowledgement that he was listening, that he will attempt to do less damage. Windradyne doesn’t react. He’s not going to praise the white ghost for small positive acts. They should be accountable; they should have yindyamarra for ngurambang, just like he and his mayiny have. (p. 24)
We selected the edited passages above as they illustrate the ways in which the novel draws the readers’ attention to multiple impacts of colonisation highlighted by a lack of truth-listening and different ontological positionings with respect to Gunhi Bangalbuwarayi. Windradyne draws Andrew’s attention to the impacts of the invasive weeds and introduced species on the land, and the ways in which the land is ‘changing so rapidly, right before his eyes.’ He firstly pulls out weeds in front of Andrew. He notices, and Andrew agrees, that that there are even more sheep than before. Windradyne points out explicitly the impact of hard hooves of the sheep and the ways in which this pounds the top layers of the soil. In this exchange, conducted in English, Windradyne is making the concessions — he is learning the language for hooves, he is pointing out the damages, ‘The more they roam this property, the more damage they do.’ He also endeavours to communicate to Andrew by using language from the invader’s ontology, such as “property” to describes the land they are on.
While the truth-telling in this scene is clear, the lack of truth-listening is also shown. Andrew does not stop any of the practices. He merely winks at Windradyne, none of his responses indicate he has heard, as he continues expanding his ideas about fencing. Across these pages, we feel Windradyne’s frustrations and anger growing, as these attempts to tell the truth of the situation, to negotiate, are ignored. This scene illustrates the different ontological relationships to Country. Andrew is operating from a world view where the land is a possession used for extraction and profit. He has a lack of care and accountability to Country for his actions. Windradyne is operating out of more holistic worldview where ‘Wiradyuri language, land and people are all one, and being further disconnected with the coming of more white ghosts and their beasts.’ Windradyne is really trying to listen to Andrew’s perspective, but Andrew is paying lip service to everything Windradyne says, ‘They should be accountable; they should have yindyamarra (to respect, to honour, be polite, to go slow) for ngurambang (Country, land), just like he and his mayiny (people) have.’
The extract is relevant to the realities of negotiating the climate crisis where the truth of evidence for impending climate crisis is clear while those in control focus on the benefits of their own extractive practices, consumption and ecocide. Environmental educators can educate about climate crisis through discussing the themes of the text and positioning of characters in this novel.
Discussion
For us, as settlers, engaging deeply with the truth-telling gifted through literary fiction written by Australian First Nations writers has enabled us to journey towards a deeper understanding of environmental crises and our roles as teacher educators. In casting the imaginary of each moment to enable the reader to think beyond it, Heiss raises the important question embedded in all fiction — ‘What if?” (Boas & Jenkins, Reference Boas and Jenkins2019). What if the convicts were never transported? What if people were never shackled, murdered and killed? What if the roads were never built on Country? What if billions of tonnes of rock, sand and soil were never disturbed? What if the hard hooved sheep were never present? What if invasive weeds were never introduced? What if the colonisers respected Country as a living entity? What if the white ghosts never came? What if Treaty had been signed in the early years of colonisation? What if the terms of land usage were negotiated with the traditional owners? What if settlers like Andrew Nugent listened to the concerns raised by Windradyne?
These questions of ‘What if’ are linked to what was and still are moments of invasion in the text. The result of this truth-listening reveals how environmental transformations begin in the first moments of invasion and are entangled with the genesis of environmental crisis in so-called Australia. Heiss (Reference Heiss2022) writes an argument of 20 reasons why ‘people should read Blak’ (p. 322-332). The reasoning includes ‘You should read Blak because if #WeWriteTheEnvironment’ (p. 325). She writes, ‘We write poetically about the power of nature in a form some might describe as magic realism, but this categorisation does not change our concern for the environment and the consequences of climate change’ (p. 325). In our own reading of First Nations Australian fiction published in the past few years we can see the concerns for the environment and the consequences of climate change present in many texts.
The theme of invasive weeds and feral animals/introduced species from Dirrayawadha: Rise Up is in other contemporary novels by First Nation writers. In both Edenglassie (Lucashenko, Reference Lucashenko2023 b) and The Visitors (Harrison, Reference Harrison2023), we witness early colonial releases of cats into the environment, each rendering alerting the reader to the future impact of the moment. Cut to 2025, and the seemingly innocent moments of species introduction have had/are having/will have a devastating impact on native species, with cats’ major contributors to the extinguishing of more than 27 species since colonisation (Invasive Species Council, 2022). Legge et al., (Reference Legge, Woinarski J.C., Dickman, Murphy, Woolley and Calver2020) found that pet cats that were allowed to roam in so-called Australia killed more than three animals every week, most of them native species. On average, over a year each roaming and hunting pet cat in so-called Australia kills 186 animals. This number includes 110 native animals (40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals). Many cat owners do not believe that their cat kills anything, as they do not see the evidence (Dielenberg et al., Reference Dielenberg, Murphy, Dickman, Woinarski, Woolley, Calver and Legge2020). Reading of these initial moments in the past of early colonial cats escaping, pets free ranging, dissecting the relationship between the seemingly innocent act of colonial pet possession and the consequent trail of destruction and species extinction, makes the origin of our present cat crises clear and positions pet ownership of introduced species as part of the colonial project.
Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright, also addresses the themes of the violence of roads and feral animals through a protagonist, Cause Man Steel, who is also known as “Global Warming” because of his preaching on Climate Crisis. Cause Man envisions the use of the feral donkeys wandering his country to build a fossil free transport system to save the world. This is all done in the context of the theme of governance from afar, where “Canberra” is remote physically and ontologically to the town of “Praiseworthy” but exerts power and control over the people. Not only can Praiseworthy clearly be categorised as Blackfella futurism (Saunders, Reference Saunders, Taylor, Iiii, Dillon and Chattopadhyay2023) but Wright’s incredible text develops literary form and expands the canon.
The concept of everywhen is important for environmental education, to understand pasts, presents and future as ever present. Whyte (Reference Whyte2018) describes spiralling time as concept where time emphasises everywhen is important for environmental education, to understand pasts, presents and future as ever present. Understanding this helps ‘to engage philosophical and aesthetic places that honour Indigenous histories, perspectives and projects (i.e., activism, work, research, etc.) and that support constructive and critical conversations of allyship’ (p.225).
The themes in the novel illustrate the ways distancing enables the colonisers to reduce their sense of moral responsibility. Governance at a distance breaks the ontological and epistemological relationships to Country. This denigrates the Indigenous Knowledge Systems that impede the capitalist mode of production. It validates and justifies an extractive relationship to the material world that normalises extraction as a mode of production.
Conclusion: listening to Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi
Bala-dhu Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi. I am Mother Earth. I lie numb now. Drowning in the blood and tears of the Wiradyuri. Trodden on and desecrated by sheep and cattle in numbers too immeasurable to count. Windradyne has travelled back to his Ancestors, a young man in white ghost terms…
…These are the truths that the white ghosts will forever struggle to listen to, and will find even harder to believe. Many of the future white ghosts will never grasp the depth of grief, of broken hearts and shattered dreams, at the hands of the invaders, and while sovereignty will never be ceded, they will have to offer forgiveness if there is ever to be peace, as Windradyne showed…
…And only when there is trust can a future of peace be determined. Will the white ghosts of tomorrow understand what it will take to live in peace? Or will the greed for land, and the devaluing of Wiradyuri life and lore, continue? Other tribes have learned from the experiences here, and they will have their own wars of resistance in years ahead. Because Bathurst is just the beginning. Have the white ghosts learned anything? Only time will tell.
Heiss’ sophisticated narrative shows how the gift of contemporary First Nations historical fiction reveals truths about the links between ecocide, genocide and colonisation. Engaging with truth-listening through reading these narratives can play a central role in environmental education, helping us to understand how we got here. As we stated in the opening, this gift enables us to work to understand the possibilities offered by resilient and respectful ontologies and knowledge systems. While we acknowledge the that we can never fully comprehend the truths these texts mediate, our own ontologies and knowledge systems are held to account in comparison. As Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi asks at the end of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up:
Have the white ghosts learned anything? Only time will tell. (p. 309-311)
Afterword. So, what cli-fi novel should I pack in my backpack?
We are often asked by colleagues for recommendations of texts. Here’s a very short, nowhere near exhaustive, list of very recent Australian literature Jo recommends for environmental educators. All of these texts contribute to the work of truth-telling. They also provide insight into environmental themes.
We highly recommend Dirrayawadha: Rise Up by Anita Heiss. While the setting and narrative are driven by colonial violence, the novel is also about the power of family, love and resistance. It’s a great read as well. It would be a terrific book to use in secondary schools for Year 9 and above. If you enjoy Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, you could also read, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray: River of Dreams, Anita Heiss (Reference Heiss2021).
If you wanted to start with short stories, try This All Come Back Now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction. Edited by Mikaela Saunders (Reference Saunders2022), every story expands and flips yours mind as you spiral through the possibilities unfurling through outstanding stories in what she has termed the ‘Blackfella futurism’ genre.
If you want accessible, beautifully rendered historical fiction try Melissa Lucashenko’s (Reference Lucashenko2023 b) Edenglassie. University of Queensland Press. Or Jane Harrison’s The Visitors (2023). I really loved both of these, and they both have incredible moments of humour and attend to environmental themes as outlined in the brief discussion of each earlier.
Alexis Wright’s (Reference Wright2023) Praiseworthy is a gamechanger for the Australian literary canon that confronts ecocide and genocide head on in a poetic, beautiful, violent text. Jo highly recommends this novel, it is a ‘writerly’ text, where the reader embarks on an imaginative journey of co-production of the textual meaning, rather than a ‘readerly’ text, where everything is straightforward. The meaning of the text is never “authorized” (Barthes, Reference Barthes1975). The paperback weighs in at 797g and is 727 pages, more like a 28-day Outward Bound Standard Course than a mere day hike or overnighter. That said, if you engage with Praiseworthy, the literary pleasures will more than outlast the 28-day hike, and, like Standard Course, this engagement will teach you things you will carry with you forever.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers for their time and insights.
Financial support
None.
Ethical standard
Nothing to note.
Author Biographies
Joanne O’Mara is a Professor of Education and the Chair of secondary subject English teaching method at Deakin University on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. She is the President of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English. She researches all aspects of the language arts/subject English curriculum: young people’s creation and usage of texts; innovative pedagogy, curriculum design and teaching practices; as well as the sustainability of the English teaching professional, including the conditions of teachers’ work.
Glenn Auld is an uninvited guest living and working on unceded lands researching social justice in literacy education. His research is filled with paradoxes seeking out the good life in literacy learning while knowing justice can never happen on stolen land.
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