Jeanine Leane – July 8 2018

NAIDOC Week – 8-15 July 2018

This year’s theme – Because of her, we can! – celebrates the invaluable contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have made – and continue to make – to communities, families, history and our nation.

Jeanine is an award-winning Wiradjuri novelist and poet from the Murrumbidgee River near Gundagai. She holds a BA in Literature and History, a Graduate Diploma of Education, and a PhD in literature and Aboriginal representation. After a long career in secondary and tertiary level teaching, Jeanine is currently an Australian Research Council Fellow at the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University. She is a former Indigenous Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and a recipient of an Australian Research Council grant. Her other works include the novel, Purple Threads, the short story, White Elephant, and the collection of poetry and short stories, Dark Secrets and Solid Wisdom. Jeanine is also a contributor to the poetry and prose anthology, By Close of Business: Us Mob Writing.

Dark Secrets: After Dreaming (AD) 1887-1961
PressPress, 2010; ISBN 9780980771817
Dark Secrets is Jeanine’s first book of poems and it tells stories of the experience of Aboriginal women – traditional and contemporary – before and after European colonisation. It is sequential poetry inspired by anecdotal and family stories that tells the tragic story of the early invasion of the Wiradjuri lands, the institutionalisation of children and the failure of settlers to read and understand the land, but it also speaks to the resilience of Aboriginal people, especially women.

Walk Back Over
Cordite Books, 2018; ISBN 9780648056850
“Aboriginal women are the great gatherers of many things – food, of course, but also stories and inner strength. The women who raised me had vast reserves of inner strength, and to pass that on was a powerful act of activism. In particular, they taught me to listen to the past as it speaks in the present …. The title alludes to a bridge across the Murrumbidgee River where I grew up but, more symbolically, mirrors the need to revisit our past.” – Jeanine Leane