I bought this book from Jeffrey’s Books in Malvern. I did my normal. Ignored my TBR Pile and wandered in to ask for a recommendation. The parameters I gave were no romance and a local author or Indigenous or both local and Indigenous. This lady is yet another book seller who really hit the mark.
If you’re trying to expand your reading of First Nation’s culture then this is an excellent addition to your reading. Walton has taken her ancestor’s story and crafted it into a beautifully written novel. We see the world through Nannertgarrook’s eyes and mind. She is stolen away from her husband and children and taken to the slave market. There she endures and endures. She continually tries to follow as much of her culture as she possibly can, passing it onto her son who is born in captivity and then to her other children who are born of rape, as well as other abductees and their children.
I loved this book for several reasons
It is beautifully written, the prose is just delightful. I could just about see the visuals of what Walton was trying to show us. This phrasing is just one little piece of the book and is a good illustration of the prose I’ve found. ‘…lovingly ensconced in the calm embrace of the midden dunes…’ It’s such a beautiful way of showing us that the world embraces them in even the most troubling of times. And this next one on the following page is ‘Best you can do is make like a rock and they glide straight past.’ A lovely phrasing of showing us how to be safe in the water around sharks. Ignore the fact that you wouldn’t find me in the water with a shark around, but it sounds like a good thing to do if the shark appears while you’re still there.
The things she shows us of her ancestor’s culture are eye opening and some of them I think are very wise. Early on in the book we see a young lady whose baby has died young. She’s chosen Nannertgarrook’s clan to walk with her on her final ceremony. It’s the last part of the grieving process. Not that this closes the hole made by the grief, but it does help. And this is what I find fascinating. As she says ‘There is no assumption, no rules or guides, on how long a mother may take to move through her own cycles of grief.’ This is something I find wrong with today’s society, we assume that we will move through the grief and then out the other side in a time frame that society finds appropriate. This book shows that the clan in the Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria), and other clans around them, let the grief process happen as the griever needs. This is just one illustration of the clan’s culture shown in this book that I admire.
I loved looking through Nannertgarrook’s eyes. While I hated the things that happened to her, I really enjoyed watching her watch white man. We come across as uncaring and short-sighted with regard to the environment and the world. Which is exactly what I see. First Nations world-wide seem to have a much better understanding of how to balance what we take from the Earth in order to keep it working well.
There is also a glossary in the book. The writing is good enough that I didn’t use it most of the time. I was able to infer the meaning from the text. Occasionally I would pop to the back and see if I was right. Mostly I was, that’s how good the writing was. The problem with glossaries in all books is that it breaks my reading if I need to use them. As I said, most of the time it wasn’t necessary.
Things I really have a strong aversion to
This book, while absolutely beautiful, is heartbreaking. The pages we read about the diseases white man brought to these shores was so distressing. How they infected, and killed, Nannertgarrook’s children and some of her fellow abductees made me cry. In fact, I cried so much during this book, each time was for Nannertgarrook and her heartbreak at being taken away, or abused.
How she lost so much of her culture because she hadn’t learned it yet had me in tears. I have so much admiration for her as she tried to keep whatever she knew alive and working.
In conclusion.
There is a brief map at the beginning of the book. I traced Nannertgarrook’s journey from Port Phillip Bay, Victoria (not far from where I live, but possibly too far for her to have been in my garden) to Albany, Western Australia. It is a huge journey even now, but would have been much larger then on sail boats. I’m remembering this was late 1798 to early 1800s. It was a time when they killed whales and murdered seal pups. We see these barbaric practices through Nannertgarrook’s eyes and through her culture which reveres the whales and other animals.
I strongly recommend you add this to your reading list of First Nations books. It should be recommended reading for those who feel white man did people a favour by coming here. You’ll notice on the photo the three circles indicating prize lists this book has been on. Even getting to a longlist is a great achievement, but to get to a shortlist, or even be a winner are huge. You’ll notice I Am Nannertgarrook has all three. I feel it should have won all three, but I really don’t know what books it was up against.
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