Australian letter is the weekly newsletter from our Australian office. Register to get it via email. This week's edition is written by Julia Bergin, a reporter based in the Northern Territory.
Closing her eyes, raising her head, leaning her back against the polished stone floor of the Old Physics Building on the University of Melbourne campus, Marie Elena Ellis paused for a moment to breathe in the sunlight before turning back into the house to continue talking about coming out. copy.
Ms Ellis, an author and publisher based in Arrernte and Warlpiri in Central Australia, recently took part in a six-month fellowship with the University of Melbourne, to learn about mainstream Western publishing and provide participants in different contexts of indigenous approaches to similar problems. work.
A challenge? Got used to being inside a lot.
“I'm not used to sitting in a doghouse,” Ms Ellis said as she showed a room of Melbourne academics photos of her own “office” back home – where Ilparpa clay pan wilderness reserve, all red soil and shallow water. “There I can think,” she said.
Sandra Phillips, Wakka Wakka and Gooreng Gooreng professor of publishing and women's studies, said the University of Melbourne's goal was that the two-way exchange would help the mainstream publishing industry examine its own assumptions and practices.
According to Dr. Phillips, while many of the fundamentals of publishing are common to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous publishers, the methods are not the same. The concepts of time, relationships, power and agency are all viewed differently.
For example, Ms. Ellis said, a non-Indigenous publisher might say “this book will not sell” with a certain cover or title, while for an Indigenous publisher, these Such decisions belong to the author: “We say, 'I don't care, it's my story. And I will tell it and show it my way.”
In mainstream publishing, many tasks are often discrete: commissioning a piece, finding the artwork, designing the cover, choosing a title, making editorial revisions, and finally getting the product into print and marketed.
At organizations like Running Water Community Press, the Alice Springs-based Indigenous publisher where Ms. Ellis works, the process is more inclusive. It starts with finding a narrator, sitting down with them, supporting writing development, and finally considering what the finished book will look like.
For Ms. Ellis, this intensive one-on-one process with authors and would-be authors keeps her on her toes.
“I don't hide behind my desk and say 'Stop it all here' or 'Missing a comma there.' If I have a story to share, I go outside and sit under a tree and they tell me what the story is about,” she said. “I use my own vehicle. I pay for gas. I try to visit because it's time for us to tell our story.”
According to Creative Australia, there are about 300 publishers in Australia, of which only three are Indigenous: Magabala Books, Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Running Water. Built into the industry is a Western culture of hard deadlines, long-distance correspondence and market-driven decision-making that Professor Phillips describes as often at odds with storytelling ideas. of Indigenous Nations.
As a result, natives sometimes accept cuts and changes based on what mainstream publishers deem marketable. At other times, they enlisted non-native authors (well versed in the system) to create written versions of the oral tales.
Louise Buckingham, executive director of the Australian Arts Law Center, calls the issue particularly worrying because Australian copyright law only covers things in fixed form: written stories, song lyrics, poems and computer programs. That means whoever writes an oral story that is passed down through generations owns the rights to that story.
While there are moves to enact independent Indigenous intellectual property laws in Australia, Dr Buckingham said it was important to empower community-led organizations like Running Water to ensure artists Indigenous peoples can share their work, knowledge, culture and history and maintain rights to it.
Back at the University of Melbourne conference table, Ms Ellis said she was “desperate to learn” about Western publishing practices so she could put them under the microscope, translate them into Arrernte and go home with something Something she could curl up around the campfire.
But Dr. Phillips objected, saying that Ms. Ellis's task was nobler and perhaps more difficult than that.
“It's not about learning something first and then creating the equivalent in your world,” she said. “You embody your people and your thousand-year-old culture, and you always translate and translate for all of us.”
Now here are our stories for the week.
Do you like dispatches from our Australian office?
Let us know what you think NYTUC@nytimes.com.
Like this email?
Forward it to your friends (they could use a little fresh perspective, right?) and let them know they can subscribe This.
