Writing across a cultural interface: a guide for non-Indigenous writers

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years non-Indigenous writers have grappled with inclusion and representation of Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples in creative works. Historically, and at times in contemporary fiction, writers have misrepresented, marginalised, or omitted Indigenous people as characters. Writers who craft regional and rural settings perhaps bear a greater onus than their metropolitan peers to characterise Indigenous people due to an expectation of a greater extent of unbroken Indigenous connections to ‘Country’ beyond the dense infrastructure of cityscapes. With the rise of First Nations authorship and authority, non-Indigenous writers are often advised to either avoid writing Indigenous characters or to get to know traditional owners and refine their writing skills to achieve authenticity. In this article, I offer my experience as a non-Indigenous writer crafting a farm novel that situates Aboriginal characters at the centre of the farm and the narrative. My writing process required constant awareness of a cultural interface and an approach that I hoped would recognise yet not impinge on Indigenous knowledge, beliefs, and authorship. My experience led to the development of a set of guidelines that may be useful to other writers crafting Australian settings.