The 1972 Aboriginal Embassy was one of the most significant indigenous political demonstrations of the twentieth century. What began as a simple response to a Prime Ministerial statement on Australia Day 1972, evolved into a six-month political stand-off between radical Aboriginal activists and a conservative Australian government. The dramatic scenes in July 1972 when police forcibly removed the Embassy from the lawns of the Australian Houses of Parliament were transmitted around the world.

Noel Tovey's previous memoir, Little Black Bastard ( Hodder Headline Australia 2004, shortlisted Victorian Premier's Prize for Indigenous Writing, Australian Human Rights Award) chronicled his extraordinary life – from a childhood lived in poverty, through to his international stage career, return to Australia and eventual reconciliation with his past. In this uplifting new work, Tovey crafts a tale that reveals a creative and sensitive spirit. And Then I Found Me is the triumphant story of his stellar career in London as an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, director and curator.

A ground-breaking work - and a call to arms - that exposes the ongoing colonial violence experienced by First Nations people. In this collection of deeply insightful and powerful essays, Chelsea Watego examines the ongoing and daily racism faced by First Nations peoples in so-called Australia. Rather than offer yet another account of ‘the Aboriginal problem', she theorises a strategy for living in a society that has only ever imagined Indigenous peoples as destined to die out. Drawing on her own experiences and observations of the operations of the colony, she exposes the lies that settlers tell about Indigenous people. In refusing such stories, Chelsea narrates her own: fierce, personal, sometimes funny, sometimes anguished. She speaks not of fighting back but of standing her ground against colonialism in academia, in court and in the media. It's a stance that takes its toll on relationships, career prospects and even the body. Yet when told to have hope, Watego's response rings clear: Fuck hope. Be sovereign.

In this groundbreaking work of Indigenous scholarship, nationally renowned visual artist Fiona Foley addresses the inherent silences, errors, and injustices from the perspective of her people, the Badtjala of K'gari (Fraser Island). She shines a critical light on the little-known colonial-era practice of paying Indigenous workers in opium and the 'solution' of then displacing them to K'gari. Biting the Clouds--a euphemism for being stoned on opium--combines historical, personal, and cultural imagery to reclaim the Badtjala story from the colonisation narrative. Full-colour images of Foley's artwork add further impact to this important examination of Australian history.

The smash-hit play, in print for the first time with a foreword and notes from multitalented playwright, writer, commentator and actor Nakkiah Lui. Love, politics and other things you shouldn't talk about at dinner.
Charlotte Gibson is a lawyer with a brilliant career ahead of her. As her father Ray says, she could be the next female Indigenous Waleed Aly. But she has other ideas. First of all, it's Christmas. Second of all, she's in love.

"Blak Cook Book explores the two main competing views of Cook and all that he symbolises. It also presents a view of James Cook as just one man and a view of his journeys from the perspective of the First Nations whose lives, lands and stories were ruptured as a result."

A stunning mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire, and critique composed by a powerful new voice in poetry. It is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet's fearless examination of the present.

From the much-loved author of Shadowboxing comes a stunning debut novel in the spirit of Honey Brown and Chris Womersley. From the moment he saw her, wrapped in a blanket at the hospital, Jesse knew that he'd be the one to look after his little sister, Rachel. Mum was always on the move and always bringing home trouble. When his mum's appetite for destruction leads the little family into the arms of Ray Crow, beneath the charm and charisma, Jesse sees the brooding violence and knows that, this time, the trouble is real.

WINNER: 2019 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Young Adult Nothing's been the same for Beth Teller since she died. Her dad, a detective, is the only one who can see and hear her - and he's drowning in grief. But now they have a mystery to solve together. Who is Isobel Catching, and what's her connection to the fire that killed a man? What happened to the people who haven't been seen since the fire?

In this unforgettable new collection, Tony Birch introduces a cast of characters from all walks of life. These remarkable and surprising stories capture common people caught up in the everyday business of living and the struggle to survive. From two single mothers on the most unlikely night shift to a homeless man unexpectedly faced with the miracle of a new life, Birch's stories are set in gritty urban refuges and battling regional communities. His deftly drawn characters find unexpected signs of hope in a world where beauty can be found on every street corner - a message on a T-shirt, a friend in a stray dog or a star in the night sky.

As Europeans moved into new lands in Queensland in the 19th century, violent encounters with local Aboriginals mostly followed. Drawing on extensive original research, Timothy Bottoms tells the story of the most violent frontier in Australian colonial history.

Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing — behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie.

Decolonizing Solidarities is a thorough examination of the problems that can arise when activists from colonial backgrounds seek to be politically supportive of indigenous struggles. Blending key theoretical and practical questions, Clare Land argues that the impulses that drive middle-class settler activists to support indigenous peoples will not lead to successful alliances and meaningful social change without an essential process of public political action and critical self-reflection.

'Don't Take Your Love To Town' paints a picture of what it was like growing up in Australia from the 1930s onwards, in a society divided between black and white, in both rural and urban areas.

Tarantino meets Deadwood in this full-throttle drama of our colonial past, written by the indomitable Leah Purcell. Henry Lawson's story of the drover's wife pits the stoic silhouette of a woman against the unforgiving Australian landscape, staring down a serpent--it's our frontier myth captured in a few pages. In Leah's new play the old story gets a very fresh rewrite. Once again the drover's wife is confronted by a threat in her yard in Australia's high country, but now it's a man. He's bleeding, he's got secrets, and he's black.

‘A gentle whisper from the past Visits me in my dreams Or is it the future that I see...' From well-known poets John Kinsella and Charmaine Papertalk-Green comes a tête-à-tête that is powerful, thought provoking, and challenges what we think we know about our country, colonisation, and how we understand our land. Striking conversations surrounding childhood, life, love, mining, death, respect, and diversity; imbued by silken Yamatji sensibility and sublimely responded to by the son of a foreman from South Champion Mine.

Delving deep into the Australian landscape and the environmental challenges we face, Fire Country is a powerful account from Indigenous land management expert Victor Steffensen on how the revival of Indigenous fire practices, including improved'reading'of country and undertaking'cool burns', could help to restore our nation. Victor developed a passion for traditional cultural and ecological knowledge from a young age, but it was after leaving high school that Victor met two Elders who became his mentors, particularly to revive cultural burning. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire – with burning done in a controlled manner – for land care and healing.

This important anthology, curated by Gomeroi poet and academic Alison Whittaker, showcases Australia's most-respected First Nations poets alongside some of the rising stars. Featured poets include Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Ruby Langford Ginibi, Ellen van Neerven, Tony Birch, Claire G. Coleman, Evelyn Araluen, Jack Davis, Kevin Gilbert, Lionel Fogarty, Sam Wagan Watson, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Archie Roach and Alexis Wright. Divided into five thematic sections, each one is introduced by an essay from a leading Aboriginal writer and thinker - Bruce Pascoe, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Chelsea Bond, Evelyn Araluen and Steven Oliver - who reflects on the power of First Nations poetry with their own original contribution.

First Australians is the dramatic story of the collision of two worlds that created contemporary Australia. Told from the perspective of Australia's first people, it vividly brings to life the events that unfolded when the oldest living culture in the world was overrun by the world's greatest empire.

Childhood stories of family, country and belonging What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

Fifty years ago, a group of striking Aboriginal stockmen in the remote Northern Territory of Australia heralded a revolution in the cattle industry and a massive shift in Aboriginal affairs. Now, after many years of research, this book tells the story behind the Gurindji peoples famous Wave Hill Walk-off in 1966 and questions the meanings commonly attributed to the return of their land by Gough Whitlam in 1975. Written with a sensitive, candid and perceptive hand,

Winner of the 2013 David Unaipon Award. In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real. Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist.

A story of homecoming, this engrossing novel opens with a young, city-based lawyer setting out on her first visit to ancestral country. Candice arrives at 'the place where the rivers meet', the camp of the Eualeyai where in 1918 her grandmother Garibooli was abducted.

'[W]e are strong, we are beautiful and we should be proud of our culture, our stories, our languages.' - Danzal Baker (aka Baker Boy) Homeland Calling is a collection of poems created from hip-hop song lyrics that channel culture and challenge stereotypes. Written by First Nations youth from communities all around Australia, the powerful words display a maturity beyond their years.

From the Aboriginal fringe camps of his birth to the catwalk, basketball court, DJ console and more. This is a new anniversary edition of Boori Monty Pryor's life, his pain, his joy and his hopes, and is as powerful now as it was when it was first published in 1998.

A darkly funny novel of romantic love and cultural warfare. When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree change, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter Ellen, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours, and a looming Native Title war among the local Bundjalung families.

My Place begins with Sally Morgan tracing the experiences of her own life, growing up in suburban Perth in the fifties and sixties. Through the memories and images of her childhood and adolescence, vague hints and echoes begin to emerge, hidden knowledge is uncovered, and a fascinating story unfolds - a mystery of identity, complete with clues and suggested solutions.

In November 2004, Mulrunji Doomadgee's tragic death triggered civil unrest within the Indigenous community of Palm Island. This led to the first prosecution of a Queensland police officer in relation to a death in custody. Despite prolonged media attention, much of it negative and full of stereotypes, few Australians know the turbulent history of "Australia's Alcatraz", a political prison set up to exile Queensland's 'troublesome blacks'.

Outstanding new fiction from the Miles Franklin-shortlisted author of BloodIn this breathtaking new work, Tony Birch affirms his position as one of Australia? finest writers of short-form fiction.Using his unflinching creative gaze, he ponders love and loss and faith. A trio of amateur thieves are left in charge of a baby moments before a heist. A group of boys compete in the final of a marbles tournament, only to find their biggest challenge was the opponent they didn't see coming. Two young friends find a submerged car in their local swimming hole and become obsessed by the mystery of the driver's identity. Across twelve blistering stories, The Promise delivers a sensitive and often humorous take on the lives of those who have loved, lost and wandered.

Shadowboxingis a collection of ten linked stories in the life of a boy growing up in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the 1960s. A beautifully rendered time capsule, it captures a period of decay, turmoil, and change through innocent, unblinking eyes. Michael's family, led by his long-suffering mother, live as though under siege, surviving his father's drinking and rage as well as the forces of 'urban renewal'. Their neighbourhood is a world of simple pleasures as well as random brutality; of family life and love as well as violence and tragedy.

Snake Cradle is the first volume of Roberta Sykes's three volume autobiography, Snake Dreaming. Snake Cradle chronicles the early years of one of Australia's best known activists for Aboriginal rights, from the time of her birth in Townsville in the 1940s through to the birth of her son when she was 17, and the trial of the men who raped her. Roberta's voice is strong and true as she describes far north Queensland of the time, her battles with a series of childhood illnesses, and her growing awareness that hers was not an ordinary Australian childhood.

A powerful memoir of a true Australian legend: stolen child, musical and lyrical genius, and leader. Not many have lived as many lives as Archie Roach – stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader – but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was. Roach was only two years old when he was forcibly removed from his family.

Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger. Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things - her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley. Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people.

A searing new novel from leading Indigenous storyteller Tony Birch that explores the lengths we will go to in order to save the people we love.Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save Sissy and protect everything she loves. In The White Girl, Miles-Franklin-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on the 1960s and the devastating government policy of taking Indigenous children from their families.

Tarena Shaw has just finished her law degree but isn't sure she wants to be a lawyer after all. What place does a black lawyer have in a white system? Does everyone in Sydney feel like a turtle without a shell?
Butterfly Song moves from the pearling days of the Torres Strait to the ebb and flow of big-city life, with a warm and funny modern heroine whose story reaches across cultures.

In Black Chicks Talking nine young Aboriginal women, successful in a variety of professions, tell their stories to Leah Purcell. These are diverse stories from women of surprisingly different backgrounds. Some have achieved success in the white fella s world; others are working to improve life within Aboriginal communities or maintain indigenous traditions increasingly under siege.

In the near future Australia is about to experience colonisation once more. What have we learned from our past? A daring debut novel from the winner of the 2016 black&write! writing fellowship.
This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history. This Terra Nullius is something new, but all too familiar. An incredible debut from a striking new Australian Aboriginal voice.

Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz have been drawn into a war that is not their own. Lives will be destroyed, families will be torn apart. Trust will be broken.
Claire G. Coleman's new novel takes us to a familiar world to again ask us what we have learned from the past. The Old Lie might not be quite what you expect.

Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care when he was only a few months old, Uncle Jack was raised under the government's White Australia Policy. The loneliness and isolation he experienced during those years had a devastating impact on him that endured long after he reconnected with his Aboriginal roots and discovered his stolen identity. Even today he feels like an outsider; a loner; a fringe dweller. In this honest and no-holds-barred memoir, Uncle Jack reveals the 'ups and downs of this crazy, drugged up, locked up, fucked up, and at times unbelievable, life'.

Blood on the Wattle draws together, in a single volume, most of the information about the massacres of Aboriginal people which has been recorded in books and journals. It also creates a broad-based level of awareness of the scale of the massacres of Aboriginal people so that this dimension of Australian history can become part of the Australian consciousness.

Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar's descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman.

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind.
Profoundly moving and exquisitely written, Tara June Winch's The Yield is the story of a people and a culture dispossessed. But it is as much a celebration of what was and what endures, and a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity.

Living on Stolen Land is a prose-styled look at our colonial-settler ‘present’. This book is the first of its kind to address and educate a broad audience about the colonial contextual history of Australia, in a highly original way. It pulls apart the myths at the heart of our nationhood, and challenges Australia to come to terms with its own past and its place within and on ‘Indigenous Countries’.

Extracts from the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Children from their Families. Personal stories, mostly unedited from unlocked confidential files.

Kirli Saunders debut poetry collection, is a pleasure to lose yourself in. Kirli has a keen eye for observation, humour and big themes that surround Love/Connection/Loss in an engaging style, complemented by evocative and poignant imagery. It talks to identity, culture, community and the role of Earth as healer. Kindred has the ability to grab hold of the personal in the universal and reflect this back to the reader.

In 2004 on Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement in the "Deep North" of Australia, a thirty-six-year-old man named Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at a white police officer. Forty minutes later he was dead in the jailhouse. The police claimed he'd tripped on a step, but his liver was ruptured. The main suspect was Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, a charismatic cop with long experience in Aboriginal communities and decorations for his work.

Stradbroke Dreamtime is a collection of 27 short stories, ideal for reading in class, from acclaimed Aboriginal author Oodgeroo.
The stories are traditional Aboriginal tales from Stradbroke Island, the Tambourine Mountains and from the Old and New dreamtime. A bright, beautiful and unique colour illustrated book, paired with Dreamtime tales just for younger readers.
Notable, Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards, 1994

Oodgeroo's writing is often a provocative and passionate plea for justice. My People is a collection of poetry and prose and a reminder of Oodgeroo's contribution to indigenous culture and the journey to reconciliation.