Thread by @IndigenousX

Ok so last week #BlackfullaTwitter was yarning about the erasure of Aboriginal women *coughs* @QandA and....(yes it’s a thread)

I shared part of a speech by Audre Lorde that she delivered to a conference in Melbourne in 1985 where she rouses them for ignoring Aboriginal women - it’s in A Burst of Light and what annoyed me was...

https://twitter.com/drcwatego/status/1367601127810736132

It got a lot of attention and RTs which reminded me again how we are only visible as Indigenous women when others deem us worthy. BTW Aunty was clearly ahead of her time cause we have had race scholars here since who don’t think they can learn from us here.

I used to be coordinator for a course called Aboriginal Women later branded Gendered Business and I want to share with you some of the reading list because a/ ppl need to do the readings and b/ chances are a Blackfulla said it first and said it better anyways 💁🏽‍♀️

First up of course is @QAmity Talkin Up To The White Woman - if you haven’t read this book, if it’s not on your bookshelf then we know the limitations of your knowing already. Also that other book abt tears or whatever isn’t all that original (yeah I said it)

The matriarch Aunty Jackie Huggins Sister Girl is foundational sadly @UQPbooks it’s hard 2 get our hands on this one but it’s due for reprint. Blackfullas need this in their homes. This the book that gave us ‘cosmetically apparent’ & the sense of speaking from a damn place #4077

While I’m on abt history - 2 non Indigenous nominations go to @LizConor for Skin Deep and Ros Kidd for The Way We Civilise - respects ✊🏼

The Dist Prof @LarissaBehrendt gets 2 noms - White Lies of the Feminist Movement helps give a sense of the frustration of Blackfullas last week in having been deemed in lcapable of having something 2 say abt sexual violence. We don’t have another story we have a different story.

The other from @LarissaBehrendt is Finding Eliza and that ‘trapped in the tropics’ narrative that Eliza Fraser captured and so many white women have followed in on their books about the Aborigines.

It was Finding Eliza that helped me read Cathy McLennans Salt Water - which to quote @alisonwhittaker ‘is not a recommendation but an observation’. I wrote about it in @austfem special issue but I can’t share it cause they wouldn’t publish it 💁🏽‍♀️

Instead I got to publish an editorial with my feels about it all. But the special issue of Black women’s writing is worth a damn read tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

It features @LarissaBehrendt @alisonwhittaker @crystalam Nicole Watson Hannah McGlade Jeanine Leane Natalie Harkin Stephanie Gilbert Virginia Marshall Narelle Bedford and....

David Rolph who isn’t a Black woman but was added by the journal to this special issue to lecture us on defamation law defining the parameters in which we can speak - spoiler alert: the Black scholar can’t criticise the texts of white women.

Which makes me lol cause it was just a month ago that I was lectured by a Black man about how ‘easy it is to criticise’ and I wasn’t doing the real work on race - but yeah I digress, back to the readings kids!

It’s not a list without @amymcquire and look I’ll just say read everything cause sis has range. But the one I quote all the time is meanjin.com.au/essays/black-a…
She got a book coming out with @UQPbooks but she won’t tweet abt it cause she doing the work every damn day!

I did have some of the best guest lecturers FYI - Fiona Foley was a fav where she talked abt that massacre memorial she cemented outside the Brisbane Magistrates Court. Buy #BitingTheClouds amp.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queen…

I will never forget the guest lecture from @NayukaGorrie I think they’d just landed from Naarm having sat on one of those dumb panels and the unpacking of it in real time was a mf’ing masterclass.

Every year our final lecture was left with a TO and matriarch - Aunty Leonie Coghill who for a long time was the whole repatriation department for the @qldmuseum in her telling she was Indigenous Women’s Standpoint embodied.

In these pics you will note that @murrawah is here. Officially she was a student, but in the space that was created she was not.

She is after all the Beyoncé of fighting coal mines thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/indigenou… - and yeah take note of who authored it (ya see what’s going on here?)

And look I did call on a cousin or two - @leesawatego gave the masterclass of Black women online. Cuz does a stack of stuff but I’m not sure mob realise what a great educator she is and how so much of her labour is spent uplifting. Fkg respect cuz 🖤

But yes the readings - can I give a shout out to another cousin Munanjahli author Ellen Van Neerven - check out everything!

In terms of collected works can’t go past @TheLiftedBrow #BlakBrow edition. I’m a big fan of the artistic and intellectual work of @paolaballa what she packs in a yarn is truly powerful. She also gave us ‘sovereignty is love and resistance simultaneously’ 👸🏽

Okay this thread has turned into a walk through my Instagram but I don’t hear anyone complaining. I’ll leave this picture to tell the story - go read up on it. #AintIABlackWoman #IYKYK

I also want to give a shout out to the mob whose work is not named on reading lists because it’s in the being. And sorry this is just some...I will leave #BlackfullaTwitter to keep building this thread and yeah happy #InternationalWomensDay #CelebrateIndigenously

Okay I have to do school run so wrapping this up...this is why I love my job being surrounding by the generosity of the intellectual political and cultural work of Black women...

Oh and last reading list is of course the @wildblackwomen podcast from me and my sis @AngelinaRHurley - was the best 3 years of my life in what was the most challenging for me personally...but this is the beauty of the Black woman 🖤 989fm.com.au/category/wild-…

Oh wait I forgot one of my favs!!!! You have to watch #NiceColouredGirls from Tracey Moffatt - I taught with this year after year and it really fks with so many ideas about Aboriginal women and that whole agency/structure thing.
vimeo.com/201245792