Literature by Indigenous authors that adjusted my perspective

Tell Me, Kenyalang (Sarawak)

Written by Kulleh Grasi (Iban) and translated by Pauline Fan (Malay), this book of poetry is originally written in Malay with other Dayak languages embedded into it including Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu. This is an intentional choice made by Grasi as he inserts himself firmly within the national narrative rather than becoming, as he puts it, a ‘marginalised minority’. He explores the different forms that Dayak tales take including the non-written such as oral, Pua Kumbu (woven), tattoo, dance and song. His poetry is firmly grounded in his home of Sarawak depicting an evocative tale of the loss of the natural sounds and rhythms of the rainforest.

Terra Nullius (Australia)

Claire G. Coleman, who identifies with the South Coast Noongar people, creates this absurd and amazing cli-fi world where humans have been colonised by aliens. The uncanniness of the situation leaves the reader in intrigued discomfort. The aliens struggle to control the human race on Australia because of the climate there – desert-like against their moist skin. It addresses terraforming, the act of transplanting foreign species of plants onto their soil which some believe is when the Anthropocene first began.

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (Ontario, Canada)

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer. This is an elegiac sonic narrative that depicts the sounds of living. Their ways of life are mourned as they are forced to the edge, excluded from conversations about their future. This is a book written by Indigenous people for Indigenous people, not orientated around the white experience of it.  There is no need for the characters, for the writer, for the people to explain themselves because then the story is no longer about them or for them.

Solar Storms (Boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada)

Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw novelist, writes about this familial line of Native American women as they travel across the land to save their homes. They cross boundaries of ownership on their journey and across their own bodies. Their journey aims to prevent the building of a Hydroelectric dam that threatens the Indigenous communities. This reveals their intimacy with water, expressing how their lives are enmeshed within the places they call home. The destruction of one leads to the destruction of the other.

Indigenizing the Anthropocene

An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the Ontological turn: ‘Onotlogy’ is just another word for colonialism

(Canada)

Zoe Todd is a Red River Métis literary critic who sometimes talks about being a woman who can pass in white circles and observe/hear what people talk about when they think Indigenous people are not present. For example, extracting Indigenous knowledge and giving no credit to these cultures when they present them as their own ideas. It can be easy to colonise Indigenous culture with academic theory from the Global North as these belief systems create stable foundations for ideas. Todd, instead, enters into a dialogue with Indigenous belief systems.

As I write this listicle and look at the meagre collection of Indigenous authors I have on my bookshelf, I realise that how difficult I have found sourcing Indigenous South East Asian/Bornean books. These Indigenous communities have long traditions of oral tales where the words have been passed through families. I’m planning to share some folktales with you in the future as well.