Five must-read books by Indigenous authors

In the final report into the federal curriculum review (pdf), released last week, Professor Barry Spurr argued that too much weight was given to Indigenous writers and history in the English curriculum.

Instead the curriculum should be re-oriented towards the teaching of “western Judaeo-Christian culture”.

One of the best ways to protest Spurr’s lack of support and interest in Indigenous literature (and his description in his emails of Indigenous people as “human rubbish tips”) is to read one of these great Indigenous classics.

Guardian Australia asked Dr Sandra Phillips of Queensland University of Technology for her top picks.

Phillips is a lecturer and industry-trained book editor, where she worked with Magabala Books, University of Queensland Press, and Aboriginal Studies Press. Her research interests include Indigenous Australian literature and storytelling.

She says “these books should be read widely as they astonish, perplex, and at times comfort the reader into re-imagining our relationships Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This impact is achieved with immense narrative prowess in the case of the novels, and with striking critical acuity in the case of the non-fiction. All books thus deserve a wide Australian and international readership.”

The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (2013). Shortlisted, Miles Franklin Award 2014

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Alexis Wright’s futuristic novel is set in northern Australia. The climate has been ruined and indigenous people’s live under a form of intervention.

The Australian’s Geordie Williamson said in a review: “The Swan Book should be regarded as one of the most beautiful, furious and urgent novels to be published in this country in recent years. It reminds readers that the misery and upheaval promised by climate change has already come to Australia’s first people.”

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (2010). Joint winner, Miles Franklin Award 2011

Described by Guardian critic Carol Birch as “an exercise in lush impressionism, evoking a time when the Aboriginal Noongar people of Western Australia first encountered the ‘horizon people’ … British colonists, European adventurers, and whalers from America, ghost-like white people intent upon establishing a settlement in a land both forbidding and primevally beautiful.”

Skins: Contemporary Indigenous Writing. Edited by Katerina Akiwenzie-Damm and Josie Douglas 2000

An anthology of Indigenous writing features work by writers from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Contributors include Maria Campbell, Alootook Iepllie, Sally Morgan, Thomas King and Witi Ihimaera.

Sovereign Subjects. Edited by Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 2007

An agenda setting book about Indigenous sovereignty from some of Australia’s best thinkers.

The collection explores political and cultural issues facing Indigenous people and discusses how to tackle sometimes intractable political issues.

Because A White Man’ll Never Do It by Kevin Gilbert (A&R Classics 2002, first published 1973)

A classic released in 1973, Because A White Man’ll Never Do It attacks the British colonisation of Australia. Land theft, human rights abuse, slavery, inequality, paternalism and theft of land are all charges levelled at the new arrivals.

Gilbert makes a plea that white Australia should leave black Australia alone.