Aboriginal Literature Research Articles

Whispers of the Outback: Exploring the Australian Bush in Literature

The project provides an exploration of the ‘Australian Bush’ in literary work. The Australian bush, with its vast landscapes, unique flora and fauna, and distinctive cultural heritage, has played a pivotal role by demonstrating literary imagination and cultural identity. Figures, data, citations, and statements abound in this work, which is divided into four subtopics: ripping yarn, bush poetry, 20th-century Australian literature, and Aboriginal literature. In each part, it sheds light on the influence of the Australian bush on the writers, poets, and storytellers who highlight the relationship between humans and the bush in a metaphorical way.

“Time Has Caught on Fire:” Eco-Anxiety and Anger in Selected Australian Poetry

This essay discusses fire as a significant factor shaping Australian social and cultural life. It focuses first on the climate-change induced emotions such as eco-anxiety and anger that can be tied with the Australian landscape, and then moves on to a discussion of the presence and function of fire in selected contemporary Australian poetry. The reflection on the poetics of trauma in the second part of the essay is accompanied by a discussion of solastalgia connected with land dispossession as an experience of the First Nations expressed in the Aboriginal literature in English.

The Construction of Canadian Metis Identity in Halfbreed

Halfbreed is a representative aboriginal novel of Canadian female writer Maria Campbell. It is an extraordinary memoir that records Campbell’ life experience as a Canadian Metis woman and initiates a rebirth of Canadian aboriginal literature. In the novel, Campbell began her recovery journey after overcoming the difficulties of poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution. Through her recovery, she became aware of self-consciousness and dedicated herself to fighting for the rights of Canadian Metis. This essay analyzes the complex psychological process of inferiority, hatred, obedience, and loss that experienced by Canadian Metis when they suffered discrimination and oppression both physically and spiritually, as well as the way of constructing their cultural identity. Meanwhile, three elements of Campbell’ consciousness awakening process are demonstrated. Campbell has always been the leader in the process of pursuing her cultural identity. It is the result of the joint influence of individual, family and society factors. The awakening of the awareness of Canadian Metis will help and inspire the aboriginal groups and people sharing similar experiences around the world, to pursue their own cultural identities and strive for revitalizing their own cultures.

The Translation and Reception of Alexis Wright’s Fiction in China

Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria was translated by Li Yao into Chinese in 2012. The following text describes Li Yao’s personal reflections on this translation, the reasons for Carpentaria’s success in China, and connected projects that the translation has led to. Beside promoting Aboriginal literature in China, translating Carpentaria has allowed Li Yao to build connections with Alexis Wright, as well as with fellow academics working in other Chinese universities and Chinese artists living in China and abroad.

Glimpses of Meaning: Aboriginal Literature and Western Audiences

One of the most subtle and complex oral literatures, Australian Aboriginal literature, still keeps meaning covert to Western readers, despite its ever-growing popularity and prolificity. As an introduction to an ongoing research into orality in Australian Aboriginal Literature, this paper aims to focus on a number of reasons which, while make Aboriginal stories more palatable for Western culture, distil original meaning of concepts, beliefs and traditions. In other words, what are some of the elements which hinder source – reader communication when it comes to Australian Aboriginal literature? The focus of this paper is meaning transformation through layers of interpretation, starting from an original performance of a story, with its syncretism of art forms. It is well worth it to explore such development of meaning, from performance to oral translation into English, with its later written form, to ultimately broken-down fragments covert within poems or novels. It is of no wonder Western readership comes up against difficulty in grasping meaning from Australian Aboriginal literature, as our own understanding of universal concepts, such as time, space, spirituality is so fundamentally different. There are, however, valuable lessons to be learnt and any effort will yield reward.

A subversive memoir of the Stolen Generations

A subversive memoir of the Stolen Generations Per Henningsgaard (bio) God, the Devil and Me. Alf Taylor. Broome: Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, 2021. 289 pp. A$29.99. ISBN 978-1-925936-39-1 Many books have been written about Australia's Stolen Generations. There have been books of history and scholarship, of course, but among the most powerful and affecting books are the numerous works of life writing. Certainly, the best-known book about the Stolen Generations would have to [End Page 390] be Doris Pilkington's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, published in 1996 and adapted as a film in 2002. Pilkington was a member of the Stolen Generations, but Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of her mother's and aunts' escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, where they had been taken after being removed from their families. It is, therefore, an unusual book for being a secondhand account but told by a member of the Stolen Generations. It is also unusual for being Pilkington's second book; her first was a novel titled Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter (1991), which won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer. Among the many other works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations, it is more typical for these books to be an author's first—or even their only—book. The first Aboriginal writer to have a book published was David Unaipon in 1929. Kath Walker's book of poetry We Are Going (1964) is arguably the next major milestone in the publishing history of Aboriginal literature. Nonetheless, as Anita M. Heiss writes in her seminal book on the subject, Dhuuluu-Yala—To Talk Straight: Publishing Indigenous Literature (2003), "Aboriginal written literature did not fully develop into a distinct genre until the 1970s, 80s and 90s" (25). It was also in the 1970s that some of the earliest works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations began to appear. Margaret Tucker's If Everyone Cared: Autobiography of Margaret Tucker (1977) was one of these early standout books. The 1980s saw an even greater number of these books published, including such notable titles as Glenyse Ward's Wandering Girl (1987) and Ruby Langford Ginibi's Don't Take Your Love to Town (1988). All three of these books, and many more like them, describe their authors' firsthand experience as members of the Stolen Generations, and all of them were debut books for those authors. Jump forward more than thirty years, and Alf Taylor has added an important new book to the long list of works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations. In God, the Devil and Me, Taylor proves that this subject is far from exhausted, even as the individuals with firsthand experience as members of the Stolen Generations grow older and many of them pass away (Taylor himself is seventy-four years old). Indeed, Taylor addresses in his book the very topic of the death of his peers: "I'd run into a few of the boys I went to school with, ask for such and such. Sadly I'd get the same response: 'Oh, he died through alcohol,' or, 'The piss has killed him and only in his late thirties or early forties, or a drug overdose.' I mean, after going through New Norcia Mission, was death the only salvation for these young warriors of yesterday?" (210–11). Clearly, Taylor does not shy away from difficult subjects. However, confronting the hard stuff—like floggings and meals of "sheep-head broth and weevils" (56)—is not what distinguishes God, the Devil and Me from previous works of life writing on the subject of the Stolen Generations; most of them are similarly unforgiving. Rather, one thing that distinguishes Taylor's memoir is that it combines the firsthand experience of books like Wandering Girl and Don't Take Your Love to Town with the finely honed craft found in a book like Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, which can be achieved only when a book is produced in an advanced stage of that writer's career. Like Pilkington, Taylor...

‘Coexisting in the Outside Space in the Shade for the Afternoon’: Poetics of Loss and Connection in Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and Light

The theoretical debate about place opposing, on the one hand, the existential necessity for a degree of permanence and continuity between person and place, and on the other, the definition of place as the chance convergence of trajectories proves useful when dealing with the way place and placelessness are imagined in contemporary Aboriginal literature. The article examines how, in Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven negotiates between a “typically Aboriginal” way of relating to place and her own generation’s worldview.

The Lives Behind the Statistics: Policing Practices in Aboriginal Literature

In contemporary Australia Aboriginal parents, and parents of Aboriginal kids, work to prepare their children for potentially negative encounters with police. Racialised policing practices target and enact state sanctioned violence upon Aboriginal communities. Statistics evidence these practices, with Aboriginal people being over-represented in all aspects of the criminal justice system. This paper explores the stories behind the statistics through a detailed examination of Boori Monty Pryor’s young adult fiction novel Njunjul the Sun. Close reading of this text illustrates how Aboriginal literature can deepen our understanding of social indicators through narrativising the complex and nuanced experiences of police and policing practices, including racist police violence.

Introduction: Alexis Wright's Significant, Growing Oeuvre

Introduction:Alexis Wright's Significant, Growing Oeuvre Belinda Wheeler (bio) This issue of Antipodes includes essays about several works written by the leading Waanyi author Alexis Wright (1950–). Wright's growing canon is continuing to make a major impression on both Australian literature and the global canon. Wright's novels have won numerous awards, including Australia's highest literary award, the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award. She won the award in 2006 for her breakthrough novel Carpentaria, and in 2013 her novel The Swan Book was shortlisted for the award. In 2018, her latest contribution, Tracker, a five-hundredplus-page tribute to the Indigenous Australian activist Leigh Bruce, won the Stella Prize, an award specifically for female authors that is also in honor of Stella Maria Sarah "Miles" Franklin. In addition to the accolades Wright has received for her work, her books are often published by international publishing houses (Carpentaria with Atria Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, for example) or Australian publishers with international distribution. Wright has also published in other literary genres including short stories and essays. Several of Wright's works have also been written primarily for a French audience, as was the case with Croire en l'incroyable and Le pacte du serpent arc-en ciel, the subject of several essays included here. Originally when I had proposed my follow-up to A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature (2013) to my publisher, Camden House (an imprint of Boydell and Brewer), it was as a joint companion to the works of Alexis Wright and Kim Scott. These two Indigenous Australian authors were selected because of their exceptional growing oeuvre that is making a decisive impact locally, nationally, and globally. My publisher saw much promise in the collection and asked me to consider two companions: A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott and A Companion to the Works of Alexis Wright. Work on the Scott companion was seamless, and it was released in 2016. Things were moving forward with the Wright collection, but various personal and professional situations would have delayed production of the companion on Wright's work even further. Thankfully, several of the essays that were to originally appear in the Wright companion have now found a wonderful home at Antipodes.1 The four essays published in this issue are an ideal fit for Antipodes as they are written from the lens of diverse authors from different countries with either a direct or an indirect connection to Australia. Each essay also discusses one or more of Wright's most canonical works. [End Page 62] The essay by Geoff Rodoreda focuses on Alexis Wright's Grog War (1997), a critically important text in Wright's canon as it is her first nonfiction book and it details a debilitating problem—alcohol abuse—that was gripping her home country in Northern Australia.2 Like landmark anthropologist-writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, according to Rodoreda, Wright draws on "historical research, government documentation, newspaper reportage, and interviews with community members" to tell the community's story from their perspective. Rodoreda's essay eloquently argues that while Grog War is "about one community organization's resourcefulness and perseverance to overcome racism and white indifference in one remote town, it can also be read as an allegory for Indigenous campaigning across Australia in an ongoing struggle for community improvements at a local level." As Wright scholars know, Northern Australia plays a prominent role throughout much of her work. Thus, if one wishes to truly begin to understand Wright's important growing oeuvre, reading Grog War and important essays like Rodoreda's is a must. Not long after Wright completed Grog War, she embarked on a successful collaboration with Actes Sud, a French publisher. In 2000, Wright wrote a commissioned essay, Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the unbelievable), for Actes Sud, which was translated by Sabine Porte. As of 2019, the essay has not been published in English, despite requests for to the author to allow it to be translated and republished in English. Estelle Castro-Koshy and Philippe Guerre explore Wright's essay in conversation along with her collection of short stories translated into French, Le pacte du serpent...

"In My Mind I See Cross-Roads for Everything I Believe In": The Way Home in Alexis Wright's Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the Unbelievable) and Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel

"In My Mind I See Cross-Roads for Everything I Believe In":The Way Home in Alexis Wright's Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the Unbelievable) and Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel Estelle Castro-Koshy (bio) and Philippe Guerre (bio) The idea of crossroads opens up the idea of horizons pregnant with hope and reviviscence.1 It points toward the possibility of a life that is dynamic and not solely defined by inflicted wounds and forced separations. Conceptualizing and firmly believing in crossroads as a metaphor for thinking and for nostalgia is not easy.2 Undertaking this difficult task, however, opens up possibilities to move from painful memories into action, to refuse the unacceptable, and to counter discourses arguing that the ancient (the past, the ever-present immemorial) has been erased or does not matter. Different directions, points of departures, and possible routes indeed emerge when observing crossroads. This article draws and reflects on the fertility of the notion of crossroads that Alexis Wright explores in Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the Unbelievable, 2000), an essay—translated by Sabine Porte—which thus far has been published only in French, in book format. It was commissioned by Marc de Gouvenain, the founder and then editor of the Antipodes Collection at Actes Sud, a major publishing house in France. This article uses the notion as an entry point to shed light on the poetic and thematic connections between Croire en l'incroyable and Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel, a collection of short stories by Wright—translated by Sylvie Kandé and Marc de Gouvenain—also published by Actes Sud in 2002. Expanding on the notion of crossroads is justified by the connections established by or in the two works between fiction, reality, and questions posed to the readers, as well as between English, French, and Indigenous languages, specifically Waanyi and Warumungu (Wright, Grog 8; Pacte 15, 31). Both works ask readers to carefully consider the past, the present, and the possible modes of action to address the continuing legacies of colonization and contemporary formations of disadvantage for Aboriginal people in Australia.3 Readers are also invited to better understand Aboriginal people's "mindscape" (Wright, Croire 7), their "cultural," "physical," and "political landscapes" (Croire 13), and the beauty, energy, and extraordinary possibilities that arise from their world.4 The first part of this article provides contextual elements about the publication of the two books in French as well as a presentation of Croire en l'incroyable that, in [End Page 79] our view, could stand as a reference work for courses on (Indigenous) Australian studies. The second part explores the spatial, mental, and affective meanings held by the notion of crossroads and associated notions of mindscape and country. Reflecting on such notions encourages readers to seek and see connections, between histories, times, people, and places, as well as to develop better ways of paying attention to others' paths, tracks, sufferings, hopes, and stories. The third part reflects on an ethics of responsibility and care to which Wright invites all readers by urging them to refuse to turn a blind eye on injustice and Aboriginal people's suffering, especially children's suffering. In this article, we put forward that thinking in terms of crossroads and believing the unbelievable is making "a choice of life over death" (Croire 25). This article prolongs a conversation between Wright's work and its international readership and establishes, in particular, further dialogue between her writing and Francophone thinkers and poets. It was written collaboratively by two French scholars: Philippe Guerre, a poet and philosopher, and Estelle Castro-Koshy, a scholar of Aboriginal literature who has worked since 2003 with Indigenous Australian writers and performers. We share a passion for literature along with anticolonial convictions. The latter are to a great extent founded on our growing up with stories of the Resistance and understanding that we owe our lives and freedom to those who fought and went before us. Editorial and Publication Context Wright's work was introduced to the Francophone readership by Marc de Gouvenain, an editor—and translator—who developed an interest in "the Antipodes" thanks to his numerous travels...

“In My Mind I See Cross-Roads for Everything I Believe In”: The Way Home in Alexis Wright's <em>Croire en l'incroyable</em> (Believe in the Unbelievable) and <em>Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel</em>

"In My Mind I See Cross-Roads for Everything I Believe In":The Way Home in Alexis Wright's Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the Unbelievable) and Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel Estelle Castro-Koshy (bio) and Philippe Guerre (bio) The idea of crossroads opens up the idea of horizons pregnant with hope and reviviscence.1 It points toward the possibility of a life that is dynamic and not solely defined by inflicted wounds and forced separations. Conceptualizing and firmly believing in crossroads as a metaphor for thinking and for nostalgia is not easy.2 Undertaking this difficult task, however, opens up possibilities to move from painful memories into action, to refuse the unacceptable, and to counter discourses arguing that the ancient (the past, the ever-present immemorial) has been erased or does not matter. Different directions, points of departures, and possible routes indeed emerge when observing crossroads. This article draws and reflects on the fertility of the notion of crossroads that Alexis Wright explores in Croire en l'incroyable (Believe in the Unbelievable, 2000), an essay—translated by Sabine Porte—which thus far has been published only in French, in book format. It was commissioned by Marc de Gouvenain, the founder and then editor of the Antipodes Collection at Actes Sud, a major publishing house in France. This article uses the notion as an entry point to shed light on the poetic and thematic connections between Croire en l'incroyable and Le Pacte du serpent arc-en-ciel, a collection of short stories by Wright—translated by Sylvie Kandé and Marc de Gouvenain—also published by Actes Sud in 2002. Expanding on the notion of crossroads is justified by the connections established by or in the two works between fiction, reality, and questions posed to the readers, as well as between English, French, and Indigenous languages, specifically Waanyi and Warumungu (Wright, Grog 8; Pacte 15, 31). Both works ask readers to carefully consider the past, the present, and the possible modes of action to address the continuing legacies of colonization and contemporary formations of disadvantage for Aboriginal people in Australia.3 Readers are also invited to better understand Aboriginal people's "mindscape" (Wright, Croire 7), their "cultural," "physical," and "political landscapes" (Croire 13), and the beauty, energy, and extraordinary possibilities that arise from their world.4 The first part of this article provides contextual elements about the publication of the two books in French as well as a presentation of Croire en l'incroyable that, in [End Page 79] our view, could stand as a reference work for courses on (Indigenous) Australian studies. The second part explores the spatial, mental, and affective meanings held by the notion of crossroads and associated notions of mindscape and country. Reflecting on such notions encourages readers to seek and see connections, between histories, times, people, and places, as well as to develop better ways of paying attention to others' paths, tracks, sufferings, hopes, and stories. The third part reflects on an ethics of responsibility and care to which Wright invites all readers by urging them to refuse to turn a blind eye on injustice and Aboriginal people's suffering, especially children's suffering. In this article, we put forward that thinking in terms of crossroads and believing the unbelievable is making "a choice of life over death" (Croire 25). This article prolongs a conversation between Wright's work and its international readership and establishes, in particular, further dialogue between her writing and Francophone thinkers and poets. It was written collaboratively by two French scholars: Philippe Guerre, a poet and philosopher, and Estelle Castro-Koshy, a scholar of Aboriginal literature who has worked since 2003 with Indigenous Australian writers and performers. We share a passion for literature along with anticolonial convictions. The latter are to a great extent founded on our growing up with stories of the Resistance and understanding that we owe our lives and freedom to those who fought and went before us. Editorial and Publication Context Wright's work was introduced to the Francophone readership by Marc de Gouvenain, an editor—and translator—who developed an interest in "the Antipodes" thanks to his numerous travels...

Bond to Bondage: Stolen Generation Musings in Sally Morgan’s My Place

Australian Aboriginal literature is a new arena in Australia’s literary scenario. Aboriginal women’s writing has gained special credit in the recent years for its varied themes and concerns related to the indigenous studies. One such writer is Sally Morgan, a mixed-blood Australian whose works have gained immense credit in Australia’s literary world. Her maiden creation, My Place is both an autobiography and a testimonial writing on the Stolen Generation of Australia. The objective of this article is to identify the aborigines, and to trace the veiled history of the Australian Stolen Generation. It will also explore the bleak past of the afflicted inmates at the foster homes with reference to Daisy, Arthur and Gladys featuring in My Place. In the due course of the study the buried past of the Stolen Generation will not just be unearthed but the murky lives of the contemporary Australian aborigines will also be shed light on.

An Analysis of the Development of Cultural Augmented Reality Education in Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature

An Analysis of the Development of Cultural Augmented Reality Education in Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature

The Residential School Experiences in Drew Hayden Taylor’s Motorcycles & Sweetgrass and Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen

In Canada, the residential school system established in the nineteenth century remains a dark chapter in the nation’s history. The schools operated under that system were one of the major instruments used by the government to assimilate Aboriginal people into mainstream Canadian society. Based on the assumption that children were easier to manipulate and control than adults, the residential school system targeted Aboriginal children. As a common theme in Canadian Aboriginal literature, residential school experiences are represented in Drew Hayden Taylor’s Motorcycles & Sweetgrass and Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen. The present paper focuses on the traumatic residential school experiences depicted in the two novels as well as their long-term effects. Healing the wounds of history remains a daunting task for the Canadian government.

Integrated Care Search: Adding Value to the Search Filter

Introduction: Integrated care IC is a multifaceted concept, with a vast range of overlapping terminologies. Bibliometric analyses have demonstrated the evidence base for IC is diffuse. Peer-reviewed research is published in a range of journals which are indexed in bibliographic databases with subject coverage extending beyond health. A significant amount of relevant IC literature is found outside conventional publishing channels in the grey literature. Thus, practitioners and researchers face significant challenges to finding relevant IC literature. To address the issues associated with retrieving integrated care literature, an IC search filter, badged as Integrated Care Search ICS, was developed. A search filter is an evidence-based search strategy with a known level of retrieval effectiveness. Various “value adding” products were also developed to enhance the effectiveness and usability of the search filter. Methods: Following a well-established experimental methodology [1], and informed by bibliometric analyses and consultation with an established Expert Advisory Group EAG, ICS was developed and validated for use in PubMed. Additionally, a research librarian translated the validated search filter for use in other databases, and developed a guide for searching the grey literature for content relevant to IC. Finally, input from the EAG was solicited via survey to guide the development of relevant topic searches to be combined with the search filter to further refine results. Results: Given the challenges associated with IC literature retrieval, two versions of the validated search filter were developed. ICS Narrow enables more precise searching, whereas ICS Broad enables more sensitive searching. Supplementary topic searches covering care settings, populations, geographic regions and facets of IC are provided, to enable more focused searching by end-users. Both search filters were translated for use in other databases including: Medline Ovid, Embase Ovid, PsycINFO Ovid, CINAHL EBSCOhost, Cochrane Library Wiley, Scopus, Web of Science, and ProQuest. Finally, step-by-step instructions for searching for relevant IC grey literature were developed.These products are available on an interim site https://www.caresearch.com.au/caresearch/tabid/4757/Default.aspx, and it is planned that they will be moved to the IFIC website in time for launch at ICIC18. Discussion: ICS and its associated value-adding products provide end users with the ability to locate difficult-to-retrieve published and unpublished IC literature. Conclusions: A flexible approach to database searching using a combination of keyword and subject headings is required for optimal retrieval of the published IC literature across a range of databases. Lessons learned: The polymophous nature of IC necessitated the development of not one but two validated search filters, and an additional suite of products, including guidance for IC grey literature retrieval. Limitations: The envisioned functionality of the search filters has not been fully achieved, as they are currently hosted on an interim site. Suggestions for future research: Further research studies could include an evaluation of the impact of Integrated Care Search on end-user satisfaction with retrievals and search confidence.

Historicising Silence: An Introduction to Australian Aboriginal Poetry

The paper looks at texts selected from the Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter as well as poets chosen from the website Creative Spirits from Oodgeroo (Kath Walker) to Zelda Quakawoot to understand how gaze invents and reinvents people and their culture. The metaphor of the museum is used to question the Empire‟s attempt at erasing and archeologically reinventing ancient societies, while interrogating how dispossession leads to silencing of communities. The second part analytically delineates the evolution from a victim position to, consciousness raising, resistance, recovering and reconstruction of one‟s cultural heritage and voice. The third section of the paper conclusively argues how modern aboriginal poetry has attempted at non-choral, esoteric as well as representational identity formulations as a prelude to dehusking the valance of prejudice and civilisational arrogance, which continue to indent the First Citizen in cultural spaces.

Integrated Care Search: Fast and Reliable Access to Integrated Care Research

Introduction : This workshop is an interactive demonstration of a validated search filter which has been developed to assist clinicians and managers in locating published research on integrated care. The presenters will give a brief overview of the project and the methodology used. They will demonstrate the beta version of the search filter and invite comment and feedback from the audience. Attendees are encouraged to share their experiences in locating the peer-reviewed literature on IC, including specific questions on aspects of IC for which evidence is sought. Integrated care (IC) is a prime driver of healthcare policy and practice reform internationally as governments and healthcare organisations endeavour to enhance efficiencies and patient-centred care . It is, however, a multifaceted concept, with a vast range of overlapping terminologies, and arguably lacks a unifying definition [1]. Search filters represent one innovative solution to this problem, by enabling brokered access to the underlying evidence base for rapid utilisation. Methods : The International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), Central Coast Local Health District (NSW), The University of Newcastle (NSW), and Flinders Filters, Flinders University (SA)[2] collaborated to create an IC search filter (or “search strategy”) with known retrieval effectiveness in the PubMed Database, using a well-established experimental methodology[3]. Results: An IC search filter with a known level of sensitivity has been developed and validated for PubMed. This filter will be combined with a range of topics of interest to the IC community for more focused retrieval. These topics will include patient-centred care; health and social care integration; and chronic disease management. The search filter, badged as Integrated Care Search, will be made available on the IFIC website at https://integratedcarefoundation.org/ Discussions : IC is a polymorphous topic with contextually different meanings. Despite inherent complexities, under the guidance of international experts, it was possible to develop and validate a search filter which is capable of retrieving PubMed indexed IC literature at multiple levels of granularity through simple, one-click links. Integrated Care Search will improve the ease, speed, and accuracy by which IC evidence is found. End-users can rely on the fact that it comprises a range of core IC concept terms, comprehensively identified and tested in a set of literature deemed of importance by IC experts. References : 1- World Health Organization. Health Services Delivery Programme. Division of Health Systems and Public Health. Integrated care models: an overview. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2016. 2- Flinders University. Flinders Filters [internet]. Bedford Park SA: Flinders University [unknown date] [cited 2017 Sept 29]. Available from: http://www.flinders.edu.au/clinical-change/research/flinders-filters/ 3- Tieman JJ, Lawrence MA, Damarell RA, Sladek RM, Nikolof A. LIt.search: fast tracking access to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health literature. Australian Health Review. 2014;38(5):541-5. doi:10.1071/ah14019.

A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature ed. by Belinda Wheeler

A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature ed. by Belinda Wheeler

PARALLEL PLIGHTS: ECOCIDE AND GENOCIDE IN JACK DAVIS’ “FOREST GIANT”

To understand the culture of a nation one must look from within that culture. Australian Aboriginal literature helps one to understand this basic premise of anthropology. An understanding of aboriginal literature produced in Australia helps to understand and appreciate the culture of the indigenous people while simultaneously they also reveal the changes the nation has undergone since colonization. They are not produced by outsiders or observers but by those who have lived through these experiences and the creative act of writing becomes an effort to impart an understanding and awareness of the experiences of the indigenous people. Immigrant people have always altered the life of the autochthonous people and a major part of Australian Aboriginal poetry deals with it. Parallel patterning of events consequential to colonization can be found in the history of every nation subjugated by invaders. Jack Davis’ “Forest Giant” is a short poem which details within its ambit the destruction of the environment or ecocide and the decline in the population of the aboriginals due to genocide. The yoking of cultural and environmental history serves to understand the complementary perspectives of aboriginal life and environmental history of the nation.

投之以羊血，報之以水果：台灣文學獵人之禮做為個人、群體和生態的認同象徵

In Taiwanese aboriginal literature, most gifts are given by hunters and most hunters are gift givers. I see these fictional gifts as symbols of personal, tribal and ecological identity. I advance this interpretation based on my reading of anthropological gift theory. Anthropologists have described hunter's gifts as the foundation of social standing, and have gone on to discriminate between gifts and commodities; the former conducive to the formation of interpersonal and ecological relations-relations between people and nature-and the latter conducive to the formation of relations of value between commodities. Societies in which gift giving is the main form of exchange will tend to be communal, while those in which commodity exchange predominate will splinter. This article applies this interpretive framework to the study of contemporary Taiwanese indigenous literature. The gifts I discuss are literary, so we cannot see them as simple reflections of social practice. Rather, I would view them as symbols contemporary aboriginal writers use to contemplate identity. In order to question the notion of the independent individual, I divide identity into three aspects, personal, social and ecological. I discuss Husluma Vava's ”The Hunter,” Auvini Kadresengan's ”Home to Return To,” Ba Dai's ”Ginger Road,” and Topas Tamapima's ”The Last Hunter.” From ”The Hunter” to ”The Last Hunter,” aboriginal villages have been drawn into the international economic order, fragmenting in this process. Facing fragmentation, aboriginal writers not only contemplate but also try to construct or reconstruct indigenous identity. I end with a methodological self-critique, as an aid to further comparative research.