Melissa Lucashenko busts colonial myths and highlights Indigenous heroes
- Written by Tamika Worrell, Lecturer in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University, Macquarie University
This article mentions ongoing colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie[1], takes the reader on a journey through magnificent and heartbreaking dual narratives set five generations apart. The reader steps through time, and weaves back and forth between the early 19th century and 2024, on the precipice of these stories possibly meeting.
Edenglassie is written with an intrinsic understanding of Country as kin. Both Country and Ancestors remind the reader of the lessons Country has guided mob by:
Patience. You are not the centre on which the world turns
Alongside this, we see the continual disturbances of Country and kin caused by colonial violence and unrest – through kidnapped children and massacres.
Review: Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko (UQP)
Lucashenko gifts us with characters impossible to not to invest in. They are perfectly whole and lovable, with minor flaws. As an Aboriginal woman, I found them all relatable – I could picture various Community members just like them.
Read more: With wit and tenderness, Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko writes back to the 'whiteman's world'[2]
It’s Granny Eddie’s world
The first character we meet is Granny Eddie, who has been hospitalised after a fall. She is as stubborn as she is wise, at the ripe age of 103. Her growl expresses that familiar balance of hard-to-swallow truths that make you realise when you’re wrong, even if you want to argue. Her grandaughter Winona is on the receiving end of it – and knows when to shut her gob “like a real Goorie must do when being growled by her elder”.
Local Magandjin/Brisbane readers will recognise local details like Story Bridge.
Darren England/AAP
Complex current realities of Indigenous life are seamlessly woven into the book. Mental health challenges are represented early on, through what Winona describes as the Voice. This voice eats at her insecurities – calling her a loser and the “numbawan dumb dawwwwwwg”.
The novel also touches on the Stolen Generations[9], white control of Blak bodies and the ongoing violence of the colony through vitriolic racism, abuse and murder. We are presented with the origins of contemporary realities, too, through the Frontier Wars[10] and acts of genocide.
And we’re reminded of the ongoing nature of this violence, through injustice towards and racialisation of Blak bodies – exemplified through Mulanyin’s observations of drunk white men prowling to assault Aboriginal women, and white people exerting control through addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco and opium.
Read more:
The day I don’t feel Australian? That would be Australia Day[11]
‘Your body is not your own’
Edenglassie also acknowledges Indigenous global relatives around the world. In the 1800s, Mulanyin is interested to learn about the Goories of all countries, and surprised to learn about Native Americans: their opposition to settlers and their “great flat plains full of game, antelope and buffalo”.
In the present, Winona and Granny Eddie interact and relate with Māori mob, through shared understandings of birthing practices and opposition to white cultural appropriation. Winona recieves an “Ey, good onya sis” from a Māori woman after educating a whitefella, and Granny Eddie is farewelled with lots of waving from a Māori family leaving the hospital with their new family member.
I found myself laughing, crying and fighting off goosebumps as I read. There were moments when I had to put the book down, to sit with what I was reading.
Lucashenko[12] has once again crafted a novel that is gritty, emotive and funny – like her previous novels, the 2019 Miles Franklin winning Too Much Lip[13] and Mullumbimby[14] (2013). In Edenglassie, she continues her art of affirming our Indigenous futures.
We see this through staunch Winona, who dreams big and is headstrong and unwavering.
She imagined endless offices filled with endless Blak bodies, mob all around typing emails and having meetings and doing whatever the fuck else office workers did, (not much in her experience), until each Blak body in turn closed their laptop stood up and walked out the door never to return. Because the whole mob of em had bought back the farm, over and over and over, in their tens of thousands, till they once more owned the continent they had never agreed was lost. Imagine it. Streets and suburbs and country towns, all owned by happy blackfellas.
As you make your way through Edenglassie’s two narratives and timelines, you will find how and why they collide – and the nature of the past informing the present, and vice versa. This structure highlights the impacts and the depth of the ongoing strengths of Indigenous cultures.
This novel is a gift to all who pick it up and journey with the stories it holds. It is clear Lucashenko has done extensive research to position this historical fiction through past and present Magandjin localities.
This is further evidenced by Lucashenko’s extensive acknowledgments and thanks to contributors and knowledge holders in the book’s author notes. Among them are Boe Spearim and his groundbreaking podcast Frontier War Stories[15]: a must-listen for those wanting to learn more about the wars on Australian soil.
Infinite lessons can come from this brilliant novel, for those who are ready to reflect, listen and learn – and to sit in potential discomfort as colonial narratives are unwoven and corrected.
References^ Edenglassie (www.uqp.com.au)^ With wit and tenderness, Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko writes back to the 'whiteman's world' (theconversation.com)^ Black Lives Matter hat (www.sbs.com.au)^ Haus of Dizzy (hausofdizzy.com)^ Sobah (sobah.com.au)^ 'Why didn't we know?' is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people (theconversation.com)^ Oodgeroo Noonuccal (www.austlit.edu.au)^ this essay (meanjin.com.au)^ Stolen Generations (theconversation.com)^ Frontier Wars (theconversation.com)^ The day I don’t feel Australian? That would be Australia Day (theconversation.com)^ Lucashenko (www.uqp.com.au)^ Too Much Lip (www.uqp.com.au)^ Mullumbimby (www.uqp.com.au)^ Frontier War Stories (boespearim.podbean.com)
