Meanjin began in Brisbane (Meanjin) in 1940, later moved to Melbourne, and died in 2025. Its final number was December 2025. Comment by the former Deputy Editor, Eli McLean. There should be universal regret at this event.
Before Meanjin expired, Melbourne University Press published First Nations Writing: Meanjin 1977 to today, edited by Jeanine Leane and Dan Bourchier. The blurb says the book 'showcases a richness of First Nations writing and ideas that reflects on the past and imagines a future built on respect, fairness and truth'.
From the nearly 40 poems, essays and commentary included, this reviewer found especially rewarding Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Kabul Oodgeroo Noonnuccal, 'The rainbow serpent' (1988), Herb Wharton, 'Living on bread and water' (1994), Rosemary van den Berg, 'Noongar perceptions of reconciliation' (2000), Melissa Lucashenko, 'Black on Black' (2000), Larissa Behrendt, 'What lies beneath' (2006), Evelyn Araluen, 'Too little, too much' (2020), and Carolyn Briggs, 'Yulendj Boonwurrung' (2023).
It is sobering that so many of the issues the book's contributors write about have persisted for the almost 50 years the book covers; many of the earlier essays could be given more recent dates without much amendment. Read, for example, Ian Anderson's essay from 2000, reviewing the book Reconciliation, edited by Michelle Grattan. Anderson ended on a fairly optimistic note; would he say the same 26 years later?
'I don't see', wrote Noongar man, Kim Scott, in 2007 'that the cultures of Australia's first societies have been allowed, let alone encouraged, to contribute to contemporary Australian society' (page 146). What's the score on that one, nearly 20 years on? Melissa Lucashenko in 2015 quoted (White) anthropologist WEH Stanner on the social structure of Australian Indigenous society, which Stanner called 'an intellectual and social achievement of a very high order' (page 181). Lucashenko herself wrote that 'the evidence for viable Australian democracy before Cook is compelling' (page 180). Are those views widely accepted a decade after Lucashenko wrote?
Lucashenko wrote also of the lack of Indigenous politicians and Indigenous self-determination and about closing the gaps in measures of First Nations well-being. 'Nice words', says Lucashenko on the last (page 187). What has changed since 2015? 'The real gap', Lucashenko said, 'is in the aspirations of mainstream society for us (stop whingeing, shut up and assimilate, already) and the aspirations of Aboriginal people to be left the hell alone by incompetent white governments, to manage our own lives in ways that work in the twenty-first century' (page 187).
There has been that knowledge and awareness issue as well. 'Almost no Australians', Bruce Pascoe claimed in 2018, 'know anything about the Aboriginal civilisation because our educators, emboldened by historians, politicians and the clergy, have refused to mention it for 230 years ... We stab out our eyes rather than regard Aboriginal achievement in this country' (pages 206, 209).
Meanjin played its part in bringing about that silence. Before 1977, First Nations voices were largely absent from the magazine. Editors Leane and Bourchier nail the significance of that:
To omit First Nations voices ... relegates the nation's already murky relationship with its hidden truths - its settlement by invasion, massacre, cultural destruction and disconnection, and the erroneous legal fiction of terra nullius - to the spectre of irresolution that continues to hang over the nation. It leaves a nation frightened: unready for the great changes it must make, and ill-fitted for the robust debates it must have (page 2).
This volume tries to make up for that past relegation. Karen Wyld, of Martu descent, used her piece, 'Face the music' (2020), to imagine a gathering of 20 figures from the past and 20 from the present 'to come up with solutions to the grim future facing our descendants' (page 252). Some of her First Nations attendees were Tarenorerer, Fanny Balbuk Yooreel, Jimmy 'King Billy' Clements, Mum Shirl Smith, Faith Bandler, Gary Foley, Charlie Perkins, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Bruce Pascoe, Tjamu Yami Lester, Corey Tutt, David Unaipon, William Cooper, Amy McQuire, Ambelin Kwaymullina, and Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
There would have been some good ideas coming from those people. If some of their names are unfamiliar, read Wyld's article for more information - or look them up.
Buy this book as a memorial of Meanjin and as a repository of thought-provoking writing. Contributors Melissa Lucashenko, Lynette Russell, Larissa Behrendt, Anita Heiss, and Kim Scott are among Defending Country's distinguished Supporters.
Picture credit: detail of book cover, featuring Emily Kam Ngawarray's Soakage Bore (1995)
