Abstract Mainstream Australia has a long history of marginalising and silencing Indigenous peoples’ experiences and voices. It was not until the emergence of Indigenous literature in the late 1960s that a new understanding of Australia’s past and its enduring exclusionary concept of whiteness began to enter broader public knowledge. The unsettling of traditional rhetoric and processes by which whites imposed and maintained their position of power is frequently enacted by references to colonial race relations. As Leigh Dale contends, for Aboriginal people, engagement with the past remains essential for understanding and contextualising present realities. Written against the backdrop of postcolonial resistance theories, this article deals with the work of Anita Heiss, an internationally acclaimed Wiradyuri author. Exploring her recent historical novel Dirrayawadha or Rise up in English, it argues that, by rejecting the imperial idea of history, Heiss’ writing provides a space for the connectivity with the majoritarian white Australians as well as with various minoritised constituencies worldwide.
Danica Čerče (Mon,) studied this question.