Clare Wright, Defending Country Patron, wins NSW Book of the Year for Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions

Professor Clare Wright of La Trobe University has won two awards at the NSW Literary Awards this week. Her book, Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions, won Book of the Year and the Douglas Stewart Award for Non-fiction. Reports: Guardian; ABC; Sydney Morning Herald.

Clare Wright is one of Defending Country's distinguished Patrons and is Chair of the Council of the National Museum of Australia.

Reviews: Tim Rowse in The Conversation; Monique Grbec (Wiradjeri) in Sydney Review of Books. Video of October 2024 lecture by Clare Wright in Perth.

Comments on the book and list of awards and shortlistings.

More than sixty years after the Yolŋu people extended their hand towards ‘progress’, Clare Wright’s Näku Dhäruk reaches back toward the Yolŋu people with love, respect, admiration, and the gift of truth-telling and recognition. Through detail and divergency she presents an immensely valuable resource that exposes an Australian government which, instead of ensuring the safety and dignity of its citizens, ‘den[ied] accountability, pass[ed] the buck and blame[d] the victims’, in Wright’s words. But she also provides an understanding of the experience of missionary life, and the struggles of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who were moved from their homelands and robbed of their custodianship and inherited wealth. While Näku Dhäruk is a lesson in the failure of democracy to safeguard against unlimited power, justice has finally been served. It is a story that should be included in school curricula alongside stories about the Eureka Stockade and the Vote for Women. (Monique Grbec)

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