Acclaimed and award-winning author Anita Heiss has said that her latest historical novel Dirrayawadha (Simon and Schuster 2024) is ‘possibly the most important book I’ll ever write’ and I think she is correct on a number of different levels (especially its use of Aboriginal language, which I will explore further).
This tender and engaging love story, set against the fear and brutality of colonialism, offers the reader many perspectives about this time in Australia’s history, and gives a voice to the many characters then living in this country: First Nations people (most specifically the Wiradyuri of the Bathurst region); white settlers (both those sympathetic to the plight of Aboriginal people and those murderously antagonistic); the convicts transported from England and forced to work the harsh land down under; and the inevitable blending of families from different backgrounds, whether that was the result of vicious rape and abuse, or heartfelt love and desire.
Dirrayawadha means Rise Up and this title sums up the spirit of the story. Featuring the great warrior Windradyne, a leader of his people at the forefront of the uprising and resistance of the Frontier Wars, the story mostly centres on his sister, Minaa, and her blossoming romance with the Irish convict Dan O’Dwyer. Minaa was only a young girl when the ‘white ghosts’ arrived and claimed her people’s land for their own, bringing with them their sheep, their diseases, their rules and their selfish, ignorant and arrogant attitude towards the environment and the existing inhabitants of the land. Minaa is ‘lucky’ in that she works for a generous, kind (and certainly progressive in their attitudes) white family, Andrew and Susanna Nugent, on their property Cloverdale. While Minaa and her relatives are employed by the Nugents, they are also treated relatively well and with some respect for their native customs. When Dan O’Dwyer arrives and is given to Andrew Nugent to work alongside other convicts, he and Minaa form a shy, tentative but ultimately passionate and loving relationship. Although there are many things Dan simply does not understand about Minaa’s people and their relationship with the land, the flora and fauna, the river, the Ancestors and more, he is willing to learn. And he draws many parallels between his own experience of the Irish uprising against English rule, and wanting their own freedom and agency, with the situation rapidly developing in New South Wales. But his opinions on the English invading the country, misusing its resources, mistreating and massacring its people and claiming more and more land as their own, fencing it off to keep out the blackfellas, are not popular amongst his white-skinned friends and fellow convicts, or the free settlers who are quite happy to accept whatever land is ‘given’ to them, no matter the cost to Australia’s first people.
What follows is a story of war and revenge, hatred and murder, retribution, displacement and freedom-fighting, but this is woven throughout with a story of love, desire, courage, passion, friendship, acceptance, truth-telling, compromise, familial responsibility and respect.
As I noted, perhaps one of the most significant achievements of this book is the use of native Indigenous language. Heiss is a pioneer in highlighting this in her own recent books for both adults and children, and has encouraged others to do the same, writing in one of the many hundreds of languages or dialects that were used by First Nations people at the time of invasion. Many of those words that had been used for 65 000 years had sadly been relegated in the past quarter century since invasion to almost lost languages entirely because Indigenous people were prevented from speaking them. And as more and more Elders pass on, the gathering and collection and learning of these languages has become more important than ever.
A determined group of First Nations people have been instrumental in writing down and speaking these languages and the meanings of words in an attempt to keep as much of the original Aboriginal voice available to be used and to be heard.
Most of these are involved in academic work, systematically and carefully notating oral history and committing it to paper. But Heiss and other fiction writers have gone a step further: she has not merely sprinkled a few native words amongst her writing but has naturally and organically reverted to Indigenous language whenever possible. It doesn’t feel forced or artificial. And it does not detract from the narrative or make the writing dense in any way. In contrast, it reinforces the blending of cultures and encourages the reader to begin to recognise unfamiliar words the more often they are used. While Heiss helpfully provides a Glossary to guide the ignorant (like me), I found that the further into the novel I read, the more often I began to recognise familiar words and to parse their meaning without having to refer to the Glossary. Heiss uses the words in context in such a way that it is easy to interpret their meaning often even without checking the list. Not only is this a fantastic achievement in terms of an accessible and highly readable story, but it is a playful and fun way to learn words from a (new to me) language, and to understand how and when they might be utilised. Words are used casually but with enough effect for us to be, for a short time, in the head of another, and to comprehend what it might be like to cope not only with invasion and massacre and all the atrocities that accompanied it, but to not even be allowed to use our own basic form of communication – words – to speak amongst ourselves. It is a powerful message in dispossession.
Thankfully there are now many more stories being published that rewrite the previously accepted history of Australia (all written of course by the colonisers) to include perspectives of First Nations People and other groups marginalised by the English. What I love about Dirrayawadha is that Heiss is never black and white. She writes in shades of grey. Yes, she confronts the reader with violence, murder, abuse, rape and displacement. But she balances this with the kindnesses of some of the white people of the time, and the fact that some (not the majority, but some) were willing to try to understand Aboriginal customs, to respect the families already living on the land and to question the heinous actions of those in charge. She doesn’t shy away from the horror but she acknowledges the humanity. (I hesitate to use the word ‘generosity’ as of course it always was and always will be Aboriginal land, so anyone else who has come from across the seas in the last 250 years cannot be ‘generous’ with something they have stolen.)
In any event, Heiss is balanced, and that makes for an easily digestible story that is accessible to everyone and achieves valuable truth-telling about an often unpalatable history.