Happy NAIDOC Week everyone! This year’s theme is: Get up! Stand up! Show up! And to me, there is no better way to spend NAIDOC Week than engaging with some incredible First Nations audiobooks.
As an Indigenous person, NAIDOC Week is deeply significant as it allows us to showcase the incredible talent and power that we hold. It’s also a great way for non-Indigenous people to gain a deeper understanding of our culture and learn how they can help make positive change.
It’s also a great week to support Indigenous content creators, small businesses and people in general.
With the theme this year inviting us all to action, what’s better than to support and digest some incredible First Nations storytelling?
Storytelling is at the heart of our culture as Indigenous people so it’s great that First Nations authors are able to spread their talents through audiobooks with Audible.
These First Nations audiobooks are available exclusively via Audible from July 5 to help celebrate NAIDOC Week 2022.
All synopses have been provided by Audible.
5 First Nations audiobooks to get in your ears
Another Day In The Colony: Chelsea Watego
A collection of deeply insightful and powerful essays, Chelsea examines the ongoing and daily racism faced by First Nations peoples in so-called Australia. Rather than offer yet another account of ‘the Aboriginal problem’, she theorises a strategy for living in a society that has only ever imagined Indigenous peoples as destined to die out.
Chelsea Watego is a Mununjali Yugambeh and South Sea Islander woman.
Listen to Another Day In The Colony on Audible.
Legacy: Larissa Behrendt
Narrated by Shakira Clanton, Simone Harlowe is a young Indigenous lawyer, straddling two lives and two cultures while studying for her Masters at Harvard. Her family life in Sydney is defined by the complex relationship she has with her father Tony, a prominent and respected figure in the Aboriginal community.
Listen to Legacy on Audible.
Ghost Bird: Lisa Fuller
Narrated by Tuuli Narkle, Stacey and Laney are twins – mirror images of each other – and yet they’re as different as the sun and the moon. Stacey works hard at school, determined to get out of their small town. Laney skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend. But when Laney disappears one night, Stacey can’t believe she’s just run off without telling her.
Lisa is a Murri woman from Eidsvold, Queensland.
Listen to Ghost Bird on Audible.
Mullumbimby: Melissa Lucashenko
Narrated by Tasma Walton, when Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree chanced, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title was between the local Bundjalung families.
Melissa Lucashenko is an acclaimed Aboriginal writer of Goorie and European heritage.
Listen to Mullumbimby on Audible.
The Boundary: Nicole Watson
Narrated by Sandy Greenwood, hours after rejecting the Corrowa People’s native title claim on Brisbane’s Meston Park, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered in his home. Days later, lawyers against the claim are also found dead. Aboriginal people were once prohibited from entering Brisbane’s city limits at night, and Meston Park stood on the boundary.
Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group.
Listen to The Boundary on Audible.
While you’re at it, check out these First Nations businesses and artists’ Instagrams to support this week (and every week).
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