Australian novels of recent decades, canonical and lesser-known works, created by both Indigenous and non-indigenous writers, have been telling stories the nation and its readers have not wanted to hear for most of Australia’s colonial history. While novelists did engage, prior to the 1980s, with Indigenous presence on the continent, such engagement was sporadic and mostly peripheral to grander stories of pioneering bravado, white achievement and the battle with nature on the frontier. Now, peripheral stories have moved to the centre, for Australia was not an empty land settled peacefully by the British. The land was already occupied by sovereign nations of people. Storied, sung place was invaded with orchestrated violence; the land was taken, not ‘taken up’. Indigenous peoples now demand that their ‘ancient sovereignty’ be allowed to ‘shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood’ via constitutional amendment and treaty. Read against the backdrop of relatively recent developments – land rights, the Mabo decision, Stolen Generations, History Wars – this chapter examines work by non-indigenous authors like Kate Grenville and Andrew McGahan as well as Indigenous writers such as Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch, in tracing the rise of the postcolonial novel in Australian fiction.

A legacy is ‘something that is handed down or remainsfrom a previous generation or time’ (Bloomsbury EnglishDictionary, s.v. ‘legacy’). It may notalways be beneficial. While it can bolster you andprovide you with a solid foundation for futureaction, it can also become a burden, a weight ofhistorical encumbrance. Larissa Behrendt's 2009novel, titled Legacy,captures something of the tension inherent in thebolstering-yet-possibly-burdensome associations ofthis word. Simone Harlowe, the younglawyer-protagonist of the novel, is both emboldenedby her father's history of Aboriginal rightsactivism of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and hamperedin pursuing her goals by that same father's legacyof personal flaws. The legacy of the story's titleencompasses both the public and the private, theleverage and the liability, that becomes the sum ofwhat Simone and her generation must work with toadvance the cause of justice for Aboriginal peoplein the twenty-first century.

The legacy of the High Court of Australia's decision inMabo and Others v Queensland(No. 2) of 1992, otherwise known as theMabo decision, might likewise be seen as bothleverage and liability. Eddie Koiki Mabo and hisTorres Strait Islander co-claimants ‘changed thelegal and social landscape of Australia’ with theirHigh Court victory (Behrendt 2002, 1). Theysucceeded, for the first time in Australia'shistory, in gaining official and nationwiderecognition that Indigenous Australians were thefirst land owners of the continent. The judges inthe Mabo decision acknowledged that Indigenouspeople had rights to land that should have beenrecognised and respected after British occupation in1788 and that the violent dispossession ofIndigenous peoples from their lands flouted thecommon law and amounted to the greatest ofhistorical injustices. What's more, the High Courtfound that those rights to use ancestral lands mightstill exist and be claimed by other IndigenousAustralians today. Under the framework of the NativeTitle Act of 1993, a claims process was establishedthat has resulted in substantial additions to whatis now called the Indigenous Estate (Pollack 2001;Altman, Buchanan and Larsen 2007).