1The narrative style employed within the novel Carpentaria by Waanyi writer Alexis Wright has been rigorously discussed across mainstream media, literary publications, and the academy (Davison 2006, Gleeson-White 2009, Rodoreda 2016, Steger 2007). Within such discourse the narrative voice of Carpentaria is at times characterised as foreign (Morrison 2017) and difficult to read:
It seems clear that Wright is not interested in writing a realist novel. The narrative is sometimes blatantly anti-realist…While Wright will write in whatever mode she chooses, does she have a sense of audience? Who will read Carpentaria? Does she expect it to sell well in Cloncurry, her home town? I don’t think so, because it is frankly just too difficult to be read by non-professional or non-literary readers. (Syson 2007, 86)
2Wright herself acknowledges that the deliberate choice to use Indigenous oral storytelling styles as narrative voice for the book was a risk to the novel’s future success with non-Indigenous publishers, readers and critics. When Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Literary Award The Age newspaper reported:
Wright told the story in the voice of a native Gulf elder, a decision she believes could have sabotaged the success of the novel.
“I was taking a big risk in writing it in that voice, it’s the type of voice which has always been rejected in this country,” she said. (“Alexis Wright Wins Miles Franklin Award” 2007)
In acknowledging the rejection of Aboriginal narrative styles within Australian literary culture – the novel nearly went unpublished (Fitzgerald 2006) – Wright simultaneously acknowledges the rejection of Aboriginal voices across Australian history, through to the novel’s publishing in 2006. Across this history Indigenous writers have – both through the act of writing and other interventions – challenged the status quo within Australian literature, contributing to an increase in non-Indigenous readership across the fifteen years since Carpentaria’s publication. Works such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s ground-breaking We Are Going: Poems (1964) challenged both Australian society and the literary sector, close to sixty years ago, paving the way for the many Indigenous writers that followed including Wright herself. Thirty years ago, Indigenous scholar, activist and now Elder, Jackie Huggins, questioned the literary sector’s dominating reading of Indigenous texts: “Why is there an inherent expectation that we all read in a hegemonic, shared, unquestioned, glamorous, applauding way? [...] Reach out of your closets, your ethno and eurocentric cognitive frameworks. Get real, get out and promote other Black literatures” (1993, 463–64). Across Indigenous literary history, Indigenous journals and periodicals, publishing houses, workshops and events, together with Australian literary award wins and Indigenous-led initiatives within non-Indigenous literary institutions have all contributed to expanding both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous readership of Indigenous literature (Heiss 2003, 48–82, 111–52).
3More recently, Indigenous literature has experienced an exponential rise in non-Indigenous interest, as race relations have come to the fore through international and Australian Black Lives Matter movements (Hinchliffe 2020). With this rise Heiss (2020) notes an increase in audience diversity and different ways of reading. For example, while non-Indigenous familiarity and experience with Indigenous narrative styles have increased, much of the critical engagement with Carpentaria continues to be with the novel through traditional literary approaches found within western frameworks (Flynn 2022, 167–69).
4Though western frameworks dominate most engagement with Indigenous literature, key Indigenous literary scholars such as Jeanine Leane and Sandra Phillips have previously engaged with Carpentaria through Indigenous frameworks, albeit not always with announced principles that centre Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing. Leane argues that “Time and timelessness, history, memory and the sacred are central concerns of Carpentaria” (Leane 2015, 151) and highlights Wright’s presentation of Indigenous knowledge within the text. Phillips and Ravenscroft contend that within Carpentaria Wright configures Indigenous story as knowledge dissemination (2016, 107). Building on the work of these scholars, this article presents a re-reading of Carpentaria through an Indigenous paradigmatic framework, centred around Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies, respectively defined as ways of being, ways of knowing, and ways of doing by Indigenous scholars (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003, 206–11; Moreton-Robinson 2013, 340–43; Wilson 2008, 73–79). Through the application of this Indigenous-centred approach to reading Carpentaria, this article puts forth an expansive approach to engaging with Indigenous literature that can be applied to other Indigenous texts. Within a context of power and domination, across the literary sector and more broadly (as highlighted by Wright herself), this approach to engaging with Indigenous writing is aimed at shifting power imbalances within the Australian literary sector.
5Any Indigenous-centred approach must be informed by the masterful body of work on Indigenous knowledges and knowledge production, which has been developed by Indigenous Peoples globally. Within the academy, Rigney contends that “Indigenism” is one of a number of successive waves of epistemological theorising, preceded by feminism, post-colonialism and post-modernism (2001, 7). As with feminism, post-colonialism and post-modernism, Indigenism seeks to challenge the established epistemologies of the western academy while also embedding Indigenous cultural knowledge systems, which have previously been excluded from and denied prominence by the western academy (Rigney 2001, 9). In reading Carpentaria through an Indigenous-centred approach, this article uses a theoretical framework of interrelated Indigenous notions of connection to country and relationality – ways of being, knowing and doing – as the essential elements that constitute an Indigenous paradigm. Related to and ensuing from this Indigenous paradigm is the methodology for reading Indigenous literature that is becoming part of a body of scholarship by Indigenous scholars that Rigney describes as “Indigenist” (2001, 1).
6Scholars Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Karen Martin explicitly define Indigenous paradigms while translating Indigenous conceptualisations to the western academy. According to Moreton-Robinson an Indigenous research paradigm always includes epistemology, axiology and ontology, with methodology variably included, dependent on the scholar’s definition (2013, 337). She further contends that an Indigenous research paradigm “is informed by our embodied connection to our respective countries, all living entities and our ancestors; our sovereignty” (Moreton-Robinson 2013, 337). That is, Indigenous connection to country and notions of relationality inform an Indigenous researcher’s way of being (their ontology), way of knowing (epistemology) and way of doing (axiology), with Indigenous research methodologies informed by these three elements that comprise Moreton-Robinson’s definition of an Indigenous research paradigm.
7Concepts of Indigenous ontology are central to an Indigenous paradigm and theorising Indigenous research paradigms has formed a body of scholarship around key constituting elements, such as relationality and connection to country, that have existed across thousands of generations and amongst thousands of Indigenous Peoples across the globe. As an international field of study, the scholarship on Indigenous knowledge production is both unifying and diverse (Rigney 2006, 39). Evidence of Indigenous research’s simultaneous homogeneity and heterogeneity can be found in the varied articulations of each individual Indigenous researcher’s connection to country. For example, my paradigm is informed by my Indigeneity as a Larrakia woman through my connection to Larrakia country. My relationship to country is different to other Indigenous scholars who define their research paradigms through relationships to their country. Importantly, this conceptualisation of connection to country is shared with others who articulate Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in their work. For example, Karen Martin describes how her relationship to Quandamooka country informs her research framework (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003, 206–8), which is congruous with other Indigenous researchers who work within Indigenous research paradigms. However, Martin reminds:
I draw upon the knowledges, beliefs, behaviours, experiences and realities from my own Quandamooka worldview and show how these become the framework for Indigenist research. In doing so, my authorship does not equate to absolute authority on all things regarding Quandamooka. I am articulating what many Quandamooka people, for centuries, have already expressed in words, technology, writing, dance, art and life. (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003, 206)
Martin and I share an internationally recognised notion of ontological relationality that ensues from Indigenous connections to country and which comprises part of Indigenous research paradigms. However, our individual connections to country are different and, as described by Martin and others (Graham 2008), this connection to our respective countries, and in particular the knowledge that arises from that connection, is shared with those who are part of our family and kinship structures across thousands of generations.
8In my approach to reading Carpentaria I use my Indigenous paradigm as a theoretical frame, where such a paradigm derives from my ontological connection to Larrakia country, to inform my methodology. This methodology, an Indigenous paradigmatic reading approach, is constituted by five key elements that are underpinned by the theoretical framework of my Indigenous paradigm. Firstly, my theoretical framework positions Indigenous texts as knowledge, with storytelling practices positioned as the production, maintenance and transmission of knowledge. Secondly, an Indigenous-centred approach to reading Indigenous literature is informed by Indigenous ontological practices of relationality between family, kin and community. Third and fourth, these same Indigenous ontological practices of relationality inform what is looked for when reading the text, inclusive of reading for human and non-human relations and reading for country (songlines) in the texts. Lastly, I read Indigenous literature with the understanding that the past and future are simultaneously present in the present.
9Important to my reading of Carpentaria is the first element of the reading approach outlined above – the Indigenous notion of stories as knowledge and storytelling practices as the production and transmission of knowledge. Wright herself articulates this in relation to her writing practice:
I grew up with stories from my family, especially those told by my grandmother. When I was a child I spent a lot of time with her and she remained very important to me throughout my life. I would like to think she was the greatest influence on my life. She had stories to explain everything – who we are, who each of us were, and the place on our traditional country that was very deep and special to her. She was our memory. She was what not forgetting was all about. It was through her that I learnt to imagine. Imagine what had been stolen from us. I also learnt from the images she gave us of our country.
The other thing she had encouraged me to do was to listen. I also learnt how to be silent through all of the times we walked around the bush together. Also, to be silent when other people spoke and told stories at night. I probably asked questions, I don’t remember, however, I do remember I spent a lot of time imagining what I had been told. This is how I went off to bed at night. (Wright 2002, 10)
In writing about the storytelling practices of her grandmother, and her as the listener and re-imaginer (from where she eventually became the re-teller of stories), Wright describes an Indigenous epistemology that is interrelated with ontological connections to country and relationality. This conceptualisation of Indigenous epistemological frameworks is pivotal to my approach to reading Carpentaria. The notion of storytelling as knowledge, and as part of knowledge production, comes from my own connection to country and the practices of relationality I have been part of within my family, kinship structure and community, as well as the Indigenous literary culture in which I am engaged. Scholars such as Lee Maracle have contributed to my understanding of Indigenous stories and storytelling as knowledge and knowledge production, something I have experienced and known across my life, but which is difficult to articulate and create space for within the structures of western academia. Specifically, Maracle’s Memory Serves: Oratories (2015) is both about Indigenous storytelling as knowledge and a practice in transcribed oratory as knowledge production and transmission. Maracle’s transcribed praxis correlates to my own experiences of Indigenous cultural practice as epistemological framework, beginning with simple children’s stories designed to teach customary behaviour, through to contemporary Aboriginal music that presents knowledge of Indigenous contemporary realities. When reading Carpentaria with an Indigenous paradigmatic approach I immediately recognised the figure of Mozzie Fishman and his “never-ending travelling cavalcade of religious zealots” (Wright 2006, 119), characters who are perplexing to readers (Ravenscroft 2010) and with Mozzie Fishman known simply as a “spiritual leader” (Barras 2021, 179). Through my own sovereignty, connection to the spirit world and experiences as a Larrakia and Tiwi woman who grew up on Kaurna country, I know that within the world of Carpentaria these men play a very specific role in maintaining and practicing Aboriginal law – a core element of Indigenous epistemological frameworks – and as fictional characters I recognise their origins in contemporary Aboriginal realities through their music and car choices. Further, I recognise that as an Aboriginal woman there are limits to what I can know (and discuss publicly) vis-à-vis Indigenous law, just as Wright herself has similar limits. Within Carpentaria, the fictionalised acts of Mozzie Fishman have just enough detail to provoke recognition within me but not so much detail that the text moves outside of the boundaries of Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing. As a practice in Indigenous epistemology, Wright has embedded this element of Indigenous law within the story of Carpentaria in a way that stays within the gender-specific boundaries of Indigenous ways of knowing.
10Critically, the immediacy of my recognition of the representation of Mozzie Fishman and “these one hundred men” (Wright 2006, 119) and the law they practice does not indicate that Indigeneity alone allows me to read Carpentaria differently. Central to an Indigenous paradigmatic approach to reading Indigenous literature is the concept of ontological relationality, which develops through a combination of sovereignty, connection to the spirit world, and shared experiences with other Indigenous people. Through her study of Indigenous women’s life writings, Moreton-Robinson theorises that Indigenous women’s knowledges are intertwined with these Indigenous notions of relationality and with Indigenous women’s storytelling practices:
Through the use of oral histories and collective memories Indigenous women’s narratives make visible and affirm the continuity and persistence of Indigenous subjugated knowledges in spheres of interdependent cultural domains which are peopled by both spiritual beings and human beings. […] Unlike most white women’s autobiographies, these narratives express collective relations between a number of Indigenous people transcending several generations. These relations are underpinned by connections with their country and the spirit world. In each of the life writings all the Indigenous people are related by descent, country, place or shared experiences. Such relationality means that in their relationships with other Indigenous women, men and children they are inclusive rather than exclusive. That is, personal and intimate relations are extended beyond immediate kin and the boundaries between Indigenous women and other Indigenous people are negotiated on this basis. In Indigenous cultural domains relationality means that one experiences the self as part of others and that others are part of the self; this is learnt through reciprocity, obligation, shared experiences, coexistence, cooperation and social memory. (Moreton-Robinson 2002, 16)
11Indigenous connection to country and relations with others are underpinned by Indigenous ontological notions of relationality that ensue from Indigenous sovereignty, different to the way in which non-Indigenous literature represents non-Indigenous connection to place through descent, location, and shared experiences without Indigenous sovereignty. Through Moreton-Robinson’s positioning of Indigenous women’s life writings as knowledge, Indigenous modes of knowledge production are also made visible as storytelling and writing. This approach is affirmed by Martin who argues that Indigenous storytelling practices are part of Indigenous modes of learning (2008). Further, Moreton-Robinson’s work demonstrates how Indigenous ontologies such as relationality are interconnected with Indigenous epistemologies (ways of knowing).
12The framing of Indigenous women’s stories and storytelling as knowledge and knowledge production is the premise upon which my reading approach to Carpentaria is initiated, as demonstrated through my recognition of the contemporary reality represented by the character Mozzie Fishman. Through Indigenous ontological connection to country – underpinned by Indigenous sovereignty – Indigenous knowledges, law and spirituality are produced and disseminated through Indigenous storytelling traditions. These storytelling modes have existed for thousands of generations as oral storytelling, ceremony, song, dance and visual art. By reading Carpentaria through an Indigenous paradigmatic approach, I extend the notion of Indigenous storytelling as epistemology to contemporary Indigenous literature. This positioning informs how I read, interpret and analyse Carpentaria and includes an understanding of Indigenous storytelling that is broad. That is, while engaging with Carpentaria I read not only with the notion that the text is Indigenous knowledge, but also that any language, song and ceremony included within the text is likewise part of those epistemological traditions. Accordingly, I look and read for knowledge and epistemological frameworks within the content of the text. Further, when reading Carpentaria as knowledge and the act of storytelling as the production, maintenance and transmission of knowledge, I read and look for knowledge and epistemological traditions in the form of the work. That is, the form of Carpentaria and the storytelling practice that has led to its production is just as important as looking and reading for story (knowledge) and storytelling (production of knowledge) in the content of the work.
13By applying this Indigenous-centred approach (methodology) to reading Carpentaria with an understanding of literature as knowledge, I have found that both the form and content of Carpentaria highlight the novel’s role within Indigenous epistemologies. With a narrative voice based on Indigenous orality and storytelling traditions, application of an Indigenous paradigmatic approach reveals that Carpentaria is an example of Indigenous epistemology where the stories told are knowledge and storytelling practices are knowledge production, maintenance and dissemination. Carpentaria invokes a commanding narrative voice from the very beginning of the novel, commensurate with the grandeur of its story, and Chapter One is titled “From time immemorial,” gesturing toward – at first reading – the grand narratives of Greek mythology or Biblical story, before immediately moving away to a grand Indigenous narrative voice. The opening of the chapter is similarly suggestive:
A nation chants, but we know your story already.
The bells peal everywhere.
Church bells calling the faithful to the tabernacle where the gates of heaven will open, but not for the wicked. Calling innocent little black girls from a distant community where the white dove bearing an olive branch never lands. Little girls who come back home after church on Sunday, who look around themselves at the human fall out and announce matter-of-factly, Armageddon begins here. (Wright 2006, 1)
Through her language choices such as “church bells,” “tabernacle,” “wicked,” “church on Sunday,” and “Armageddon,” Wright invokes Christian imagery as a further gesture toward Biblical grand narrative. However, the prominent narrative voice used in Carpentaria is not a western narrative voice, as found in the Bible or Greek mythology; rather it is an Indigenous voice that signals the book’s place within Indigenous epistemologies. Directly following the opening narrative, Wright quickly moves on:
The ancestral serpent, a creature larger than storm clouds, came down from the stars, laden with its own creative enormity. It moved graciously – if you had been watching with the eyes of a bird hovering in the sky far above the ground. Looking down at the serpent’s wet body, glistening from the ancient sunlight, long before man was a creature who could contemplate the next moment in time. It came down those billions of years ago, to crawl on its heavy belly, all around the wet clay soils in the Gulf of Carpentaria. (2006, 1)
Here, Wright deploys an Indigenous grand narrative voice with phrasing such as “ancestral serpent,” “creative enormity,” “ancient sunlight,” and “billions of years ago.” The placement of these two passages, the Christian imagery first then the Indigenous creation narrative immediately following, sets up Indigenous spiritual narrative as an admonishment to the grand narrative of Christianity that is part of the violence of dispossession and colonisation of Australian Indigenous Peoples. As noted by Barras:
By telling the Australian Indigenous story of the serpent immediately after sarcastically mentioning the colonial myth of the Nation in capital letters, Wright makes clear that Carpentaria is both a critique of colonialism and a reaffirmation of Australian Indigenous cultures, both a map of the effects of colonial history and a song of the multiple voices and of the various ecological practices that compose the Gulf of Carpentaria. (2021, 172)
14Importantly, Wright uses playful tones to position Australian national mythology and the colonising force of Christianity as story or myth, all while invoking the gravitas of Indigenous spirituality as reality through the inflection of a grand Indigenous narrative voice. This narrative voice is continued throughout the entirety of the novel, centring Indigenous storytelling practices that are specifically related to the narratives of spirituality and law and therefore signalling the text’s place within Indigenous ways of knowing. The relationship between narrative voice, Indigenous storytelling practices, law, spirituality, and knowledges and knowledge production within Carpentaria emerges through the text, and is also a conscious choice by Wright. Wright has written about Carpentaria specifically since the book’s publication, and extensively about her literary praxis. In her essays and published orations on writing, literature, storytelling and the realities of contemporary Indigenous life, Wright indicates a deep understanding and experience of Indigenous law, spirituality and knowledge, as related to her understandings of Indigenous connection to country, ancestors and elders, and immemorial Indigenous belonging (Wright 2011a, 2011b, 2018a, 2019a, 2019b, 2020). Repeatedly, she connects these understandings to Indigenous storytelling. In writing about the ceremony Gurrir Gurrir, Wright explains the connection to storytelling practices:
The ceremony demonstrates the continuing way Indigenous people have retained knowledge through a cultural sense of what the great ancestors in the environment are telling us. This is how the stories tie us to the land as guardians and caretakers, and the land to us as the most powerful source of law. (2011b, 72–73)
Here, Wright makes an explicit connection between storytelling and land, law, spirituality, and knowledge. Stories, as expressed through ceremony, are a way of passing on knowledge that is related to the land and the law ensuing from that land, tying the storyteller and story-listener to country. This interconnection between storytelling and law, spirituality, knowledge, and land is further emphasised by Wright when reflecting on her writing of place:
Our elders talk of our spirituality being inside country and of being inside ourselves, and it has been these voices, of our law storytellers, that have stayed in my mind while trying to develop a literature grown from our own ancient oral storytelling culture. It is about sovereignty of mind for place, of country, and of people who govern themselves. (2019b, 48)
15Wright’s storytelling sensibilities begin with Indigenous “law storytellers” and continue through to her praxis as a pioneer of Indigenous literature, with the grand narrative voice that Wright employs in Carpentaria part of this praxis. At the beginning of the novel, Wright is able to move seamlessly between ancient oral storytelling modes and contemporary Indigenous fiction writing. Carpentaria’s opening scenes of the ancestral serpent descending and grounding into the wet clay soils of the land deploys a grand narrative voice, comparable with ancient oral storytelling, before moving to the literary fiction story of Normal Phantom. The first three paragraphs exemplify the grandeur of ancient oral storytelling that is tied to Indigenous spirituality:
This tidal river snake of flowing mud takes in breaths of a size that is difficult to comprehend. Imagine the serpent’s breathing rhythms as the tide flows inland, edging towards the spring waters nestled deeply in the gorges of an ancient limestone plateau covered with rattling grasses dried yellow from the prevailing winds. Then with the outward breath, the tide turns and the serpent flows back to its own circulating mass of shallow waters in the giant water basin in a crook of the mainland whose sides separate it from the open sea. (Wright 2006, 2)
16The next paragraph begins the transition from the spirituality, knowledge and law found within Indigenous oral storytelling modes, moving toward the literary fiction narratives of Carpentaria. However, Wright never breaks the thread between the ancient and the contemporary, highlighting instead the way in which the contemporary characters of Carpentaria know country and its law and spirituality:
To catch this breath in the river you need the patience of one who can spend days doing nothing. If you wait under the rivergum where those up-to-no-good Mission-bred kids accidentally hanged Cry-baby Sally, the tip of the dead branch points to where you will see how the serpent’s breath fights its way through in a tunnel of wind, creating ripples that shimmer silver, similar to the scales of a small, nocturnal serpent, thrashing in anger whenever the light hits its slippery translucent body, making it writhe and wrench to escape back into its natural environment of darkness.
The inside knowledge about this river and coastal region is the Aboriginal Law handed down through the ages since time began. (Wright 2006, 2)
17In her reflections on writing the novel, Wright is clear about her choices related to narrative voice. She explains her aspiration for Carpentaria to be an epic hero narrative, written as a story of contemporary Indigenous realities, told to the ancestors and to ancestral land (Wright 2018a, 2018b, 2019a, 2020). In order to achieve these aspirations for Carpentaria, Wright chose a narrative voice that is of the speaking style and oral storytelling tradition specific to the Indigenous Peoples of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where the novel is set. Her choice of narrative voice originates in the vernacular and diction of the elders and everyday Indigenous people of the region (Wright 2018b, 2011a), and also follows the rhythm, musical tone and melody of Indigenous storytellers of the Gulf (Wright 2011a, 2018b). Wright connects her choice of narrative style with Indigenous ways of knowing:
The everyday contemporary Indigenous story world is epic […] I feel comfortable in saying that our story world follows the original pattern of the great ancient sagas that defined the laws, customs and values of our culture. The oral tradition that produced these stories continued in the development of the epic stories of historical events, and combining ancient and historical stories, resounds equally as loudly in the new stories of our times.
Thinking about our stories in this way helped me to decide that Carpentaria should be written as a traditional long story of our times, so the book would appear reminiscent of the style of oral storytelling that a lot of Indigenous people would find familiar. (Wright 2018b, 218)
Wright understands Indigenous oral storytelling traditions as “ancient” and part of a story world that is full of “epics” and “sagas” and has therefore written Carpentaria with a voice that is commensurate with such storytelling traditions, making a deliberate connection between Carpentaria as a contemporary novel and Indigenous law, spirituality and knowledge.
18Carpentaria contains Indigenous knowledges throughout, such as knowledge of Indigenous spirituality, law, notions of time, contemporary realities, as well as the story of knowledge itself. That is, narratives within Carpentaria demonstrate that the book is a practice in Indigenous ways of knowing as they contain Indigenous knowledges and stories of Indigenous ways of knowing. For example, the abuse of Norm Phantom’s daughter, Girlie, by the white policeman Truthful represents the contemporary reality of racialised and gendered violence that many Aboriginal women face. As argued by Moreton-Robinson in her study of Indigenous women’s life writings:
White Australia has come to “know” the “Indigenous woman” from the gaze of many, including the diaries of explorers, the photographs of philanthropists, the testimony of white state officials, the sexual bravado of white men and the ethnographies of anthropologists. In this textual landscape Indigenous women are objects who lack agency. The landscape is disrupted by the emergence of the life writings of Indigenous women whose subjectivities and experiences of colonial processes are evident in their texts. (2002, 1)
By including Truthful’s abuse of Girlie within Carpentaria Wright centres Indigenous women’s knowledge of white men, that is, Indigenous women’s knowledge of racialised and gendered sexual violence within White Australia. As a contemporary reality, included within Carpentaria as knowledge, Indigenous women’s subjectivities and experiences of colonial violence are not told for them without agency but rather shared by Wright in such a way as to position Indigenous women as knowers disrupting the white male gaze. Further knowledges within the text include a passage related to Indigenous knowledge of country:
When the mud dried…
Claypans breathed like skin, and you could feel it, right inside the marrow of your bones. The old people said it was the world stirring itself, right down to the sea. Sometimes, in Desperance, everyone heard the drying mud crack in the last claypans. You could hear the ground groaning, splitting its epidermis into channels of deep cuts all across the ground. It looked like a fisherman’s net, except it was red brown, and it trapped whatever was down below from breaking through to the surface. It made you think that whatever it was living down underneath your feet, was much bigger than you, and that gave them old clan folk real power. They said it was a good reason to keep on living right where they were. Keep it right. Everyone had to keep fighting those old spirit wars, on either side of that, Got nothing, going nowhere neither, Uptown. (Wright 2006, 372)
19Placed between two passages related to the broader narrative of the fight against the Gurfurritt mine, Wright is including knowledge of “the old people.” Immediately before this sharp turn toward the claypans, the story of Will Phantom’s destruction of mine pipelines and subsequent escape from authorities is recounted from two years earlier. Following the vivid description of the claypans, Carpentaria returns to the present as Joseph Midnight waits for Will’s return. Whether the details of the claypans are fictionalised or real, this condensed passage serves as an example of how to read country and the importance of protecting country within the broader story of Carpentaria. Although the passage is brief, Wright is able to provide deep knowledge of country to the reader as they are forced to a different understanding of the claypans by adopting bird’s eye viewpoints and seeing them as stretched and cracking skin over a deep earth. As the narrative propels forward, Wright moves from knowledge of country itself to the story of Indigenous ways of knowing when Old Joseph Midnight surprises Will upon his return and gives him directions to find Bala and Hope:
The old man gave him the directions to the safe place in his far-off country – a blow-by-blow description sung in song, unravelling a map to a Dreaming place he had never seen. “I grew up in the hard times – not that any bugger cares.”
Will knew. The stories of the old people churned in his guts. He responded in the best way he could to show his affinity, “Inhumane treatment, I know, Pop.” Yet, old man Midnight remembered a ceremony he had never performed in his life before, and now, to his utter astonishment, he passed it on to Will. He went on and on, fully believing he was singing in the right sequence hundreds of places in a journey to a place at least a thousand kilometres away. “Sing this time. Only that place called such and such. This way, remember. Don’t mix it up. Then next place, sing, such and such. Listen to me sing it now and only when the moon is above, like there, bit lower, go on, practice. Remember, don’t make mistakes...” (Wright 2006, 375–76)
20As a story of Indigenous ways of knowing, in this passage Wright tells the story of knowledge production from “the old people,” maintenance through ceremony, and dissemination through sharing song and ceremony between the generations. By including this story of knowledge, in addition to the knowledge held within Carpentaria, Wright ensures that the novel is positioned within Indigenous ways of knowing. Wright does so deliberately and with the experience and understanding of Indigenous oral storytelling traditions as epistemology. In this way, Wright amplifies Indigenous conceptions of “story” through her literary praxis, as Phillips and Ravenscroft argue:
By “story,” we don’t mean only story in the sense of fictional narratives, although it can mean this too. We see story as that which holds knowledge and assists in its production, dissemination and understanding. This is an approach to storytelling as a practice through which knowledge is both generated and carried. In this, we take our lead from contemporary writers – from Alexis Wright for instance and how she figures Indigenous story. (2016, 107)
21Phillips and Ravenscroft affirm Wright’s praxis as part of Indigenous ways of knowing and, further, that within Carpentaria Wright writes both story and about story. In this way, Phillips and Ravenscroft’s positioning of Wright’s literary praxis aligns with the work of Indigenous storywork theorists, Martin (2008) and Archibald (2008), who have also positioned story as knowledge and storytelling as knowledge production. Martin argues that Indigenous storytelling practices are part of Indigenous pedagogy and Archibald develops a theoretical framework based on seven Sto:lo and Coast Salish principles – respect, responsibility, reciprocity, reverence, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy – to support “making meaning from stories and for using them in educational contexts” (2008, ix). Further, Wyld and Fredericks (2015) and Corr (2019) consider the role of Indigenous storywork within the western academy. For Corr, the possibilities of Indigenous storywork are important to generating new ways of engaging with Indigenous literature and she emphasises Indigenous spirituality, place and narrative as critical to shifting away from traditional western literary studies. Similarly, the Indigenous paradigmatic reading approach operationalised in this reading of Carpentaria also places an emphasis on Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing, grounded in Indigenous spirituality and place.
22By applying an Indigenous paradigmatic approach to reading Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria – one that centres on Indigenous ways of being (ontology), knowing (epistemology) and doing (axiology) – the novel has been positioned as part of Indigenous epistemological practices. With her literary praxis ensuing from Indigenous oral storytelling traditions, Wright’s deliberate use of grand Indigenous narrative voice, coupled with the Indigenous knowledges and stories of knowledge told within the text, ensures that Carpentaria is deliberately positioned within Indigenous ways of knowing through both form and content. In several reflections on her praxis, Wright connects her contemporary literary work to Indigenous “ancient oral storytelling,” and her use of a grand Indigenous narrative voice within Carpentaria corresponds with Indigenous ways of knowing via oral storytelling modes that are related to Indigenous connection to country, spirituality, law and knowledge. Further, Wright includes knowledge of Indigenous spirituality, law, notions of time, and contemporary realities within the text, thereby locating the novel within Indigenous epistemologies. Affirming this positioning of Carpentaria as part of Indigenous ways of knowing, Wright also includes stories about stories within the novel. That is, Carpentaria presents stories of Indigenous ways of knowing within the text.
23By using an Indigenous paradigm as a theoretical framework for reading, an alternative to the traditional norms found within western literary culture is offered. However, this article does not seek to establish a binary between Indigenous and western non-Indigenous readers of Australian Indigenous writing, nor does it seek to conclude that Indigeneity alone creates a difference in reading approaches. Rather, this article aims to shift the terms of engagement with Indigenous literary works such as Carpentaria. Non-Indigenous critics, scholars and journalists hold power within the Australian literary sector and the academy, and through their likes and dislikes – which are largely informed by diverse western paradigms – they are able to promote, reinscribe and reify their views on what constitutes Indigenous literature, what makes for “good” Indigenous literature, and who Indigenous writers are (Flynn 2022). In the case of Carpentaria, the novel was almost not published due to its Indigenous narrative voice back in the early 2000s. Now, it is lauded as an Australian literary classic (Evans 2021), with the change in attitude toward the text coinciding with increases in non-Indigenous readership of Indigenous literature across the past fifteen years. An Indigenous paradigmatic approach to reading offers not only new insights into Indigenous literature but privileges and re-centres Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing when engaging with Indigenous literary culture. Importantly, this privileging and re-centring occurs from within the power and strength of Indigenous sovereignty, due to its underpinning of Indigenous ontological connection to country and related Indigenous axiology and epistemology. In this way, the application of this approach to other Indigenous literary works can further support the shifting of power imbalances within Australian literature.
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