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.
