Always Will Be by Mykaela Saunders is a call to a national awakening and represents a profound paradigm shift in our thinking.
A much deserved winner of the David Unaipon Award and a Queensland Literary Award, the book is a speculative fiction that takes us on a remarkable journey into a decolonised future in which Goori people from the author’s Tweed homeland live positive, meaningful lives informed by Aboriginal sovereignty.
These stories are imbued with a sacred sense of connection to Country and culture. The characters live in loving communities, working hard to reverse the effects of capitalism and colonisation on their land and people.
In ‘River Story’, Saunders takes us on an exquisite journey through the otherworldly consciousness of the recently departed Juna, who is now part of the Dreaming, interconnected with all of creation and reaching out to her grieving daughter. In her final death throes, Juna casts a fishing net over the river in her mind, in order to prepare a meal for her daughter Gracie.
When Gracie arrives, ‘Unspoken words of regret and sorry business dance in the space between their faces.’ Their roles reversed, Gracie is now carer while Juna has reverted to babyhood, ‘baby hairs are stuck to her damp forehead forming spit curls … her fragile neck and small, round skull’. Juna passes over, her final moments of consciousness with the river and moments later her grieving daughter goes to the river, remembering the story of her birth as told to her by her mother.
This is a stunning, visceral birth scene on the banks of the river – natural and primal, harking back to the days of Dreaming. Juna squats in the water with crows and midwives cheering her on, births Gracie, bites the umbilical cord and, after feeding the placenta to the crows, says, ‘That’s us you’re eating. You’re responsible for her now too.’ The midwives pass baby Grace around, telling her stories of ‘resistance and triumph’ and ‘sing her myriad connections to an intimate community rooted deeply in this country in all-time’.
This is an incredibly profound, spiritual story of the cycle of life, of death and birth, mother and child, renewal and the Dreaming. When Juna dies, ‘A new star is born in the sky and ancestors around the campfires welcome their radiant daughter home.’ Some writing is so celestial, so sacred, so infused with light that it appears the writer must have been channelling a higher intelligence. I had to reread this story three times, such was the hold its beauty and power had on me. After losing my son three years ago, its message was a soothing balm that brought me great comfort.
‘Cyclone Season’ is a fantastical tale that could easily replace Mad Max as Australia’s next great post-apocalypse story. It imagines a future after the ice caps have melted and the ocean has risen and colonised the land. We meet a community of “ocean bikies” called The Stingrays. They’re a ragtag bunch of eco-pirates, surfers and activists who travel around on jet skis and live in boats stolen from “the colonisers”. Their aim is to claw back their territory, reverse the damage capitalism has wreaked upon the Earth and teach their kids “warrior ways”.
The wonderfully militant main protagonist “The Blacksmith” is a formidable grey-haired elder who collects scrap plastic from the ocean and converts it into ‘reef, tools and weapons’. She surfs colossal waves that dangerously hurtle towards submerged skyscrapers and harpoons expensive yachts as a warning to colonisers to stay away from her waters. This wonderful story of resistance, repair and renewal centres on a group who dare to fight back, who revel in their strength and autonomy, the preservation of their culture and restoration of their waters.
Always Will Be is a must-read for every Australian who cares about the future of our country and our Indigenous people. Buy it now. Buy three copies and hand them out to your friends. Ask your kids’ teachers to read the stories out loud and discuss them. This is a stunning, ground-breaking collection that forges new territory in Australian literature.
Read: Book review: Kind of, Sort of, Maybe, But Probably Not, Imbi Neeme
Always Will Be, Mykaela Saunders
Publisher: UQP
ISBN:9780702266386
Pages: 320pp
Publication Date: 27 March 2024
RRP: $32.99
