Hello to everyone who is joining us from Queensland, across Australia and around the world for this #NAIDOCWeek2020 event - the #FryerLecture presented by Alexis Wright. We'll be live-tweeting in this thread if you want to follow along!
We begin with the University Librarian, Caroline Williams, welcoming us to this year's #FryerLecture and giving an Acknowledgement of Country, as well as acknowledging Professor Alexis Wright and Associate Professor Sandra Phillips and community members joining us today.
Caroline reminds us of this year’s NAIDOC theme, “Always was, Always will be” and acknowledges the stories and songs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are live links to the earliest inhabitants of this country, before introducing Associate Professor Sandra Phillips
Sandra references Vice-President elect Kamala Harris’ speech yesterday afternoon about time when speaking about the imagination of Professor Wright, which allows us to enter into the past, present and future of this continent through an Waanyi perspective
Sandra is now introducing Professor Wright, speaking about her award-winning fiction, particularly her novels Carpentaria and Tracker, as well as her important scholarship in the area of Australian Literature, which has inspired many scholars, including Sandra herself
This year's #FryerLecture honours Oodgeroo Noonuccal, who was born 100 years ago last week and Professor Wright will be speaking about her influence and impact.
Professor Wright is now starting her lecture by Acknowledging the Land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations, whose land she is speaking from today, as well as Acknowledging lands across Australia and the Land of Australia itself as the oldest library in the world.
Alexis speaks about Oodgeroo as an exceptional and original poet, referencing her poem 'Not my style' when discussing her role in introducing the stories and struggles of Aboriginal people to many people across the world.
Professor Wright humbly extends her love and gratitude to Oodgeroo for her leadership and activism in a racist and oppressive society, in which she managed to make a huge impact that many Indigenous people could not imagine at the time.
Racist colonial laws oppressed, and continue to oppress, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around Australia. Professor Wright highlights the last lines of Oodgeroo's poem 'A Song of Hope' as speaking the truth about injustice and encouraging hope for the future.
In this, Wright compares Oodgeroo to South American poets like Pablo Neruda, speaking with absolute love of her people. "Oodgeroo's poetry was like a key, used to unlock government policies that suppressed our stories"
Wright reads a section from Oodgeroo's poem 'We are going', published in her first collection in 1964, speaking to the genocidal oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Oodgeroo's poems were inspirational for men and women who grew up on Missions, in white institutions and under white oppression, using stories as a weapon to speak up to racism ingrained in the mindset of Australians
Professor Wright's mother was born around a year earlier than Oodgeroo, on Waanyi country in the Gulf of Carpentaria, with memories and experiences of genocidal and segregation laws.
Oodgeroo (and many other contemporary leaders) led Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into a period of increased struggle for their rights, using the pen to break through the gatekeepers of the literary establishment, to bring forward a new voice.
Alexis references the 1984 album, Rebel Voices from Black Australia, which included Oodgeroo's poem 'No more boomerang', when speaking about her experiences of racism in Mount Isa pubs
Professor Wright is now speaking about the Kalkaringi Constitutional Convention, a huge meeting of Northern Territory lawmen and women, and the importance of Indigenous culture and literature to the NT statehood referendum in 1998.
Alexis reads the names of many incredible and highly recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers - too many and too quickly to note here. They include Jack Davis, Kevin Gilbert, Doris Pilkington, Sam Wagan Watson, Tara June Winch, Nakkiah Lui and Anita Heiss.
A role call of contemporary Aboriginal poets can be found in @UQPbooks 'Fire Front', Wright notes, noting many of the writers featured, including Evelyn Araluen, Ali Cobby Eckermann and Ellen van Neerven.
The individual complexity and variety of works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait authors means that 'Aboriginal literature' cannot be considered as a small neat box - this does it a disservice, says Wright, noting the national and international impact of many authors in many fields
'There should be no more talking about Aboriginal literature as a small offshoot of Australian literature...nor is there a straightforward way of linking Aboriginal literature to world literary theory' - it is a self-governing literature, which cannot be summarised neatly
Professor Wright quotes from Freedom by Mau Power, featuring Archie Roach, wondering what Oodgeroo would say in this world of climate change, which may force people to leave their ancestral lands, and cause bushfires stronger than any she would have experienced in her life.
Alexis speaks in a lyrically sad way about the bushfires of 2019 and 2020, evoking the image of a butterfly in a wombat burrow, hiding from the inferno, and asks what poetry and literature would make of these changes
Oodgeroo spoke about these kind of end times in her poem 'Gooboora, the Silent Pool', which Alexis quotes from, asking whether we can make a type of literature which cuts through the 'violence of indifference' we encounter in 2020.
'Global warming is already eclipsing all normality in current literary concerns'. Professor Wright notes that these stories are already told in the songlines and the calls of magpies and currawongs, which have been concerned with fire and land for many many generations.
Professor Wright also talks about coronavirus, which highlights the expendability of Black lives to many governments, and the Rio Tinto destruction of Juukan Gorge, which highlights the expendability of Black culture.
Oodgeroo's memory shines, her poetry sublime, an example of a culture that has been preoccupied with land since it's inception.
Wright suggests that we should have a National Oodgeroo Noonuccal Day, mirroring Ireland's Seamus Heaney day, in which we celebrate the importance of her poetry and activism.
Other days should also be considered, including National Aboriginal Sovereignty Day, which would be celebrated every day, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people celebrated as the longest governors and custodians of this land, caring for all aspects of it.
Alexis quotes from Murrandoo Yanner's beautiful words at the Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair earlier this year, talking about the time before people, which is expressed in different ways around the world, saying that the Rainbow Serpent, God and Allah are all the same thing
Murrandoo Yanner: "We didn't walk here from Africa. We would remember that - we remember everything" #NAIDOCWeek2020
We are living through hugely difficult times, says Professor Wright, and we need to be imaginative and urgently work harder to create a future for ourselves. Writers have an important role to play, in helping nurture this new reality.
Professor Wright finishes her lecture by citing Oodgeroo as a writer who had this ability and urges us to read her work and be inspired by her going forward.
Thank you for joining us this afternoon everyone, for what was an important and inspiring lecture. The lecture has been recorded, and we will be publishing the text in full in our publication Fryer Folios early next year. We hope you all have a deadly #NAIDOCWeek ❤️💛🖤
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