‘A book that should be read by all Australians’: Clare Wright wins book of the year at the NSW Literary awards

A “highly original” nonfiction by Melbourne historian Clare Wright, charting the creation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions – a seminal moment in Australia’s history of land rights – has won book of the year at the NSW literary awards. The Petitions were landmark documents presented by Yolŋu elders to the Australian parliament in 1963 on painted bark frames, which sought government intervention after a portion of Arnhem Land Reserve was licensed to a French mining company. Though it didn’t halt mining on the land, the petitions led to the first land rights legislation in Australia, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. Photograph: Text Publishing Written more like a novel than a historical nonfiction, Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions treats its subjects as characters, bringing the reader along with their political aspirations and acts of resilience, without the sense of inevitability that usually accompanies a work of history. At a ceremony at the NSW state library on Monday night, Näku Dhäruk won the $10,000 top prize along with the $40,000 Douglas Stewart prize for nonfiction. Judges called the book “a work of national significance”, saying the personal accounts included in the narrative felt “vividly alive” with “an extraordinary depth of research and sophisticated scholarship”. “It is a book that should be read by all Australians,” judges said. …