It has become our tradition to read a book by a First Nations writer in July, as our commemoration of NAIDOC Week (albeit we meet at the end of July, while NAIDOC Week occurs at the beginning). NAIDOC Week’s 2023 theme was “For our elders”, which, coincidentally, tied in nicely with the book we chose, Debra Dank’s We come with this place, because she pays a lot of heed to the value and importance of elders.
One of the reasons we chose Dank’s book out of the many possibilities was that, at the time of choosing, it had just won a record number of four awards in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards: the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, the Indigenous Writers’ prize, and the overall Book of the Year. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize, and, after we scheduled it, it also won the ALS Gold Medal. These are significant awards, and for most of us the book lived up to its advance publicity.
We come with this place is one of those books that is tricky to categorise. It’s a sort of multigenerational memoir that is also a guide to her culture and a social history of her people, before and after colonisation. As always, we started with our first impressions, which included a contribution from one of our travelling members
First impressions
- initially, I found it a difficult book not knowing whether it was a novel or nonfiction at first, and being confronted by some of the subjects discussed, particularly Soda’s mother’s rape. But I liked the writing and how she contrasted the difficult with the lighter side of life (Shakespearean). By the time I finished, I loved the love shown in this book. It’s a beautiful book. (Concocted from two emails from a travelling member.)
- overall I enjoyed it, though agreed with the first person’s original impressions too. I was struck by the connection to Country, and how she writes and is able to convey that. I liked, for example, her comparison of feeling sand (not her Country) to dirt (her Country), early in the novel. It’s a gentle book, despite the darkness.
- I enjoyed it, but didn’t find it outstanding compared to, say, Nardi Simpson’s The song of the crocodile (our post) which I felt had more meat in terms of story. But, I did read it in hospital which may have affected my response. Her connection to Country is powerful.
- I was unsure about reading this book but then I heard Debra Dank interviewed on Conversations, and this made me keen to read it. I loved it and found it a bit cathartic in terms of some of my own experiences growing up in rural Australia. I loved how she took us on a journey.
- I enjoyed reading a First Nations book set in an area I know; Mt Isa, Camooweal, the Barkly Tableland are vivd for me. The first First Nations tribe I heard of were the Kalkadoons, whom Dank mentions in the book. It’s a confronting book but so expressively written. The structure felt similar to that of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s recent dance Yuldea. Both start with origin stories, then move through colonial history, and conclude with the power of kinship and connection to Country, but are not quite as linear as this sounds.
Discussion
With just five members present, one of whom hadn’t managed to read the book, our conversation started off a little quieter than usual but we soon all became engaged in exploring our thoughts. There was one issue, in particular, that we kept returning to, from different angles, throughout our discussion – her love of, her connection to, and her willingness to share her Country. We all appreciated the generosity she showed in teaching us whitefellas about how to see Country. There were so many ways in which she described Country, and so many scenes in which she showed how she and First Nations people interact with Country. It also stimulated a discussion about how we too can truly love place, though our relationship with it is nothing like this.
Several of us like her description of a road running through Country that was not her own:
Someone had taken out a grader and dug a straight line across the landscape as easily as they would have used a ruler to draw a line on a paper map. And they built that road, so straight and flat that it ironed out all the history this country had lived and seen, leaving just that awful scarring mark. But, when we look behind us, swirling and billowing waves of red dust obliterated the road, twisting and turning in eddies and breezes. There was not a straight line to be found anywhere.
Some of the scenes we noted included Dank’s journey in the desert with her grandfather Bimbo, during which they fished in “arid” land; Dank’s son Jabanji talking about his feet knowing the country, and making a fire to cook fish; Dank being guided by her ancestors as she waded in crocodile-infested water to fetch crocodile eggs. We also commented on the way she described minute details, the sort that some of us remember noticing as children:
… a few drops of rain water fell into the dirt. I watched the water fall in slow motion to the ground and hit the dirt with a minute splash of dust. And then it formed a tiny puddle that almost immediately turned into a hollow fairy dish of drying mud and, as it dried into a smooth shiny surface, it became like chocolate.
Of course, we talked about some of the tough scenes, such as the invidious position of Dank’s father Soda’s mother whose choice was to be “a drover’s boy or special girl”, and the barbaric rape scene. We commented on how terribly we settlers have behaved towards First Nations people and how more of us need to know these stories. The scene in which Dank hits her father after he’d been violent to her mother provided such clarity about intergenerational trauma. We could also see how much worse the outcome would be in a family with less emotional intelligence. We were impressed by how Dank imparted the tough stories, so that we could absorb them – “in a quiet way” said some in the group. Australia needs a truth-telling process.
Through all the toughness, however, there was a vein of light humour which we all liked.
Dank’s use of her own language throughout the book, without translating for us or providing a glossary, was something else we discussed. In most cases the meaning was clear from the context, but we also felt it mirrored in some way how First Nations people had to pick up language when the colonisers arrived.
Staying with the subject of language, Dank regularly references her love of words, which includes recognising that “it’s scary what words can do”. But she also gives major weight to her culture’s stories which “are the memories that scratch and gnaw as we walk, and we rub shoulders with the past, but mostly our stories travel with those big freshwater rivers, always looking to find their way back to the birthing salt water but still nurturing us as we bend and drink from those same waters”. The “birthing salt water” refers to her Country’s origin in the three Water-women who came from the salt water and created Gudanji Country: “they made stories and grew the country”, those stories becoming their law. We come with this place begins and ends with these women, which gives the narrative an overall cyclical structure.
With the Voice referendum being a major news topic right now it would have been strange if we had not turned to talk about it. One of us commented on the challenge of responding to (valid) First Nations anger, and her concern about deciding for those whose lives she does not understand, but we felt that voting YES would, at the least, not do harm.
Present: 5 (returning to our pre-COVID winter numbers!)
Minerva Reads ACT 