29.4.06

Listen up

This issue of Meanjin magazine - Blak Times has been edited by Peter Minter, poet and lecturer at the Sydney University Koori Centre. It is chock full of apposite, informative and powerful essays, interviews, stories and poems by and about Australian Indigenous writers, visual artists, critics and musicians. It has a sixteen page, full colour spread of artworks and stills from recent films.
From Peter's introduction: In the late twentieth century, settler Australia was reminded more vigorously and effectively than ever before of colonisation's exploitation or annihilation of Indigenous communities. This was not simply the result of an awakened post-colonial social conscience or a renewal in civic moral virtue. It was driven rather by a resurgence in many Indigenous cultures after generations of physical and psychological warfare. Australia was asked to take notice, listen up and come to terms.

Blak Times is a crucial collection. I'm selecting it as my imperative reading for April


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