The most recommended books about Indigenous Australians

Our whole family loves this book about an Indigenous child’s smoking ceremony. As a white settler-colonial family in Australia we are keen to read and learn from Indigenous authors and the publisher, Magabala press, are outstanding in the quality of the books they publish. The simple yet effective computer-created artwork gives an intimate insight into the importance of the first lesson of law, connecting to Country, which leads to great conversations and reflection. The inclusion of Indigenous words within the story adds to the depth of sharing with the audience and allows the voices of the women to be heard beyond those who usually attend such an important rite of passage. A real treasure. I wish it came as a board book as our copy has had to be taped together many times!

I devoured this book! Written like she’s chatting to her sister or best friend, Ash comes across as friendly and self-deprecating when highlighting the mental and physical strain that years of being on the WTA tour took on her. 

Family is always on her mind, and Ash isn’t afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve when it comes to thanking and acknowledging the many sacrifices her parents and sisters made to enable her to realise her dream of becoming the world's number one female tennis player.

I admire Ash’s focus and determination. "If I win, it’s a bonus. If I lose, the sun still comes up the next day, and it’s all good." This quote particularly resonates with me because it captures her down-to-earth, resilient, and positive nature. She sounds like a thoroughly decent person.

The book provided instructive reading when I was researching my book. In particular, I was interested in Malouf’s way of approaching the story of colonisation in Australia through an ‘in-between’ character, Gemmy, modelled on a real-life ship’s boy cast ashore in northern Australia in the early nineteenth century. The boy is raised by Aboriginal people. He loses his mother tongue and, when confronted with white settlers, is treated as a ‘savage,' a theme the book explores through a range of points of view. Who are the true savages in the story was a question I was interested to pose in my own book. 

There was one night reading this, when the story affected my breathing, heart rate, and time left on this planet, for the worse, as I galloped through it even though I knew every paragraph could hold up to a few years worth of study, if I hadn’t been so impatient to learn more!

Very crudely, White seems to say that it doesn’t matter what people do, goodness matters and the imaginative and usually obtrusive ways in which he shows good is often quieter than evil, more basic and durable, but sometimes not as strong, seem to me the discipline he tried to train himself in, to get it all down and write the novel in the first place.

That story often feels more painted than written, and when written, written in Australian and not English; people seem to speak when its someone else’s turn… show more.

I loved this book for uncovering the incredibly ancient wisdom the indigenous peoples of Australia have around the sky, some of which is only now being “discovered” by astronomers. 

Written by two indigenous women, one an astronomer, and the other an astrophysicist, they take a broad look at indigenous astronomy and its interrelationship with daily life, the seasons, weather predictions, and food availability, as well as various implications in today’s world.

Most fascinating is how the stars were used as maps across the land, each star indicating a place on the path and containing layers of stories that would guide the journey not only on the physical plane but through layers of learning. For me, this is essential reading.  

This was the book that convinced me that it is worthwhile exploring the past so as to rediscover and rethink works of art made by indigenous people living under imperial conditions.

I love its movement around the world, the close readings of works that no other scholars had ever considered, and the moral urgency that underpins every one of its lines.

A confronting history of the British invasion of Australia, documenting the massacres but also the resistance of indigenous people across the continent as they defended their tribal lands well into the twentieth century. No longer could anyone imagine that Australia had been settled peacefully. The book had a profound impact on Australians’  understanding of their history, but also on the continuing political struggle for indigenous rights.

Poetry like this is crucial to telling the other side of the story. It’s a counternarrative, and that’s why Oodgeroo’s work has shaped my thinking and experiences in life-affirming ways.

Oodgeroo sees her work as an extension of the songkeeping and oral storytelling so intrinsic to Indigenous social life and survival. Her poems are not simply about a bygone past, as every line is relevant today (but hush, you mustn’t say so, Oodgeroo teases). That’s why I treasure her wit and writing – they give me life, a lifeline to a reality often denied us in Western thought.

It is written with so much beauty, elegance, and hope. Full of love for her people and full of grace, passion, and rage. Because there is so much to rage about (but that is another story)…

This is a heartwarming contemporary story about a gay Aboriginal teen exploring his sexuality and falling in love for the first time, set against the vivid backdrop of a fictional, rural Indigenous community. It’s evocative and heady and compelling. It’s one of those stories that makes you want to reach into the book and hug all the characters and tell them everything is going to be okay. Such an important story from a brilliant new voice in Australian YA.

When August’s grandfather—the bedrock of a multi-generational Wiradjuri family—dies, she must return to Australia, and to the town of Prosperous. There, she comes face-to-face with the things that have driven her out, a process that began long before her birth. The book’s three narrators chart the casualties of colonialism: the loss of indigenous culture, the stamping out of language, the land that is taken and forever altered. But the book is so much more than a catalogue of losses, and Winch’s song is ultimately one of identity—and history—reclaimed.