Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to not quite right.
My name is Ed and I'm here to introduce a series of interviews and discussions that
Amanda and I recorded at Words on the Waves this year.
Words on the Waves is a local writers festival here on the NSW Central Coast
and this was the third year we've had the privilege of being part of the festival.
We were able to attend 2 events this year, Story Club on the Friday night,
which is always a stand out.
And this time we also managed to catch the inaugural Words on the Waves Poultry
Slam, which was really amazing.
But in the meantime, we got to chat with a dozen or so authors
and personalities on a very diverse range of topics.
And we'll be sharing those interviews with you here on this podcast stream over
the coming weeks.
Our first interview is with Deborah Dank.
Deborah is a Gudanji, Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the
Berkeley Table Land in the NT.
She's the author of We Come With This Place and her latest book, Tara Glossier.
And we spoke to Deborah about language and semiotics and the ways in which words
and symbols can have very different meanings depending on your cultural
background.
Now Words on the Waves set aside a lovely little room for us to record these
interviews in.
Had a beautiful view overlooking your minor beach where you could see all the
way out to Baron, Joey and Pittwater, which was an amazing environment to have
these chats in.
But unfortunately the acoustics of the room weren't great.
We've done what we can to clean up the audio,
but it's not perfect and we hope you'll bear with us.
So now the first of our interviews at Words on the Waves 2025.
Here is our interview with Deborah Dank.
So we're here at Words on the Waves with Deborah Dank.
Hi, Deborah.
Hi.
How are you?
It's a pleasure to be here.
And we've caught you actually before your session, haven't we?
I know.
And how amazing.
I get to kind of do a bit of a warm up first.
So really useful and beautiful place to be warming up as well.
I think I'm.
I'm not a beach person.
I do not like sand.
OK.
But it's just gorgeous.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful view.
So tell us why you're here.
Words of the Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to have been
invited to take part in two different panels,
and one is facilitating A stellar panel, which I'm kind of a little jittery about
because I'm speaking with three amazing authors whose books have been shortlisted.
Sorry, Long listed for Stella this year and
tomorrow I'm on a panel about historical amnesia.
So as someone who's really, really interested in words and what the
words actually truly mean, I'm looking forward to talking about the
idea of amnesia within the Australian context because I'm not quite sure that
that is the right word.
What does that mean to you?
Historical amnesia?
I imagine that we're going to be talking about the the context around invasion or
settlement of now called Australia and the idea of, you know,
because we're around reconciliation time and all of these sorts of conversations
inevitably arise given the continued contestation.
I think of the historical space and I think the word amnesia,
it's very much reminiscent of having a memory or having an event to remember and
then forgetting.
And I think within the context of reconciliation,
I don't know that we actually want the theme that we can now have forgotten.
So when you say the thing, what do you mean by the thing?
That relationship, that beginning, that shared narrative of our beginnings
as the contemporary Australian nation?
I think that there is still such a strong lack of knowing, but also a, a,
a strong lack of ownership or recognition of the implications around those
beginnings.
So if we don't actually all, I think take ownership and,
and it's it should never be about guilt.
It shouldn't ever be about somebody having a finger pointed at them being
told you are responsible.
But by goodness, we all need to be remembering and and
knowing that we have all benefited from the historical context.
You know, if invasion hadn't happened the way it
did, we'd certainly not be sitting here.
Yeah.
You know, Patrick, Absolutely.
So I'm interested in your thoughts.
We're at a writers festival.
Your thoughts about the difference or similarities between oral histories and
written histories as well, and how they impact that memory later on.
Oh, that's such a great question.
My academic background is around narrative theory,
and I like to imagine that I'm able to call myself now a semiotician.
So this is absolutely by area of interest.
And I have a book coming out next week that I will be talking about tomorrow.
Exciting.
Yeah.
And it's called Terra Glossier.
And Terra Glossier is neologism that I've invented directly in response to Terra
Nollis.
And going back to your question, it's that idea of oral history and
written history.
Well, Aboriginal Australians have always now in
the last 150 years, been defined with, through and by or western frameworks,
not within our own frameworks and our own understandings.
And I've read so many times that Aboriginal Australians only have an oral
history and an oral practise around storytelling.
And I think no, no, no, no, no.
Just because others within our community do not have the capacity to understand
our books, that does not negate our written word.
Now my family can read now so called art and read layers raise and layers.
So, you know, it's not just bark paintings,
it's right engraving as it's send work, all of those sorts of things.
They all constitute a written history or a written practise around storytelling.
So yeah, I think within Western framings it's the
most obvious kind of thing.
It's the understandable thing, the fact that Aboriginal community sit
and talk and tell their stories.
So that's interesting too, because when we think about Egyptian
history and we think about hieroglyphics, most people understand what hieroglyphics
are and what they're for.
And then, as you say, a lot of people see aboriginal writing in
that form and call it art.
And it's a very different way of looking at something.
I know I don't know about you, Ed, but my daughter's learn about those
symbols at school and they're, you know, invited to create artworks with them,
you know, not stories in that sense.
So absolutely.
Yeah.
I think that's really interesting to be able to read that,
to be able to understand all that.
I mean, that must be amazing.
So you said send me a Titian.
Yeah.
So I saw in your biography this word semiotics,
and I'm not familiar with that word or I am now, now that I've met you.
But it is a really interesting area.
I look, I really don't think that within our
space that is so diverse and multicultural, genuinely,
despite the practise and the reality in Australia, we are so monolingual,
but we are by and large a multicultural country.
We always have been, you know, my dad always said to me as when I was a
child growing up and I was misbehaving, you know, are you good, Angie?
Are you Wakaya or are you that mob and that mob where our neighbours next door,
are there Aboriginal communities?
You know?
But it was very clear that oh goodness, no, no, no, I'm,
I don't ever want to be them.
Right.
So this notion of multiculturalism, so semiotics means that we have a have a
sense of understanding that communities construct the way meaning is made within
and of their community thinking.
So we have a strong understanding of how we interpret the signs across our
communities.
And one sign might mean something for me as a good engine woman and it might mean
something else entirely for my non aboriginal husband.
Yeah, right.
For me as a good engine woman, the wind signifies a particular thing,
whereas for my non aboriginal surfy husband,
the wind is going to be telling him lots about how that's impacting the winds.
Yeah.
So semiotics, I think is critically important as a
knowledge, as an area of study for us all to have
some kind of awareness of if we are genuinely going to be inclusive around
this community.
So it sounds like when you're talking about signs,
you're not just talking about like written signs,
you're talking about this kind of wider use of symbols in language,
like archetypes and things like that.
Like you mentioned the wind.
So how does that all linked together with I guess the written signs?
And I'm just curious, you mentioned differences between groups,
like how similar would your mobs interpretations be to like your next door
neighbours of the same symbols and signs?
See, that's a really hard question here
because I am good Angie Walker and Kalkadu.
So I have a good sense of what signs mean within those communities.
But the war among you are have very, very, very close neighbours,
and I genuinely don't know what those same signs mean for the war among you.
Hence the interest in semiotics.
Because you know, while Rick can tell me a whole volume
around different wings and surf and I mostly listen to it because I have
learned so much he how it's dank by name, dank by nature with him.
So it it kind of raised raises this question always am I communicating in
ways that are valid for the other person given that they are from a different
cultural context.
And the word country, for example, is a really good example when we talk
about Aboriginal context, because country for Aboriginal people
means a whole range of things more than a geographic space as it is identified in
Western frameworks.
So and then of course we've got this other thing happening now in Australia.
We have more and more non Aboriginal folk talking about their tribe,
talking about their culture, talking about their kinship,
which is critically important.
But we need to understand that there are distinct differences in that kind of
terminology between Aboriginal communities, non Aboriginal communities,
new Australian communities.
So semiotics kind of flags.
That tells us, hey, you're using the vocabulary,
but have a have a think a deeper think about what sits underneath the choices
around the vocabulary use.
So I guess tying it back to how we open the discussion, you know,
the differences between how everyone interprets our shared history or our not
so shared history.
I guess the word country that you just use there is a great example of how
different people have a different take on the same idea or different idea about the
same word.
Like, how do you see that moving forward in
your in your mind, what's an ideal way of having everyone
kind of come together with a shared understanding?
Do you see a way forward?
Is this a matter of talking about it of of putting different views in the
spotlight?
Oh, I think absolutely there's a way forward.
You know, we are all Australians.
Some of us are new, some of us are not so new,
but this is our country, this is our space.
I think we have a responsibility, a very real responsibility,
to be accountable to each other.
I think as people we need to understand the humanity and the many faces that
humanity has and understand that they are all each valid.
I am not aspiring to be a white Australian because I can't ever be anyway.
So I'm not wasting my time on imagining trying to be something that I'm not.
I'm very comfortable in my skin.
But at the same time, there are so many narratives that exist
across the Australian nation that are really quite faults around Aboriginal
framing.
You know, my grandmother was raped and there are
narratives in some parts of a wider community that she was the problem.
There is no accountability, acknowledgement or responsibility taken
by non aboriginal men.
You know, and I'm not saying that they're guilty,
but there's no holding to account those seats, the white men who raped her,
you know, they invisible eyes and they've kind of
faded into this kind of almost protective shadowing within the history.
And, you know, perhaps that again brings us back to the
historical amnesia conversation.
But there was not ever a time that Australia as a nation said, you know what,
we did really, really, really awful things.
And we all need to acknowledge that, yeah, there's a lot of discomfort around that,
people wanting to distance themselves, of course, from awful things.
But that makes it difficult to connect.
And because it's really painful, it's truly, genuinely painful.
Who is not feeling the pain of knowing that a woman was raped not by one man,
but by 6?
I, I don't think anybody we could hear that
and not genuinely feel that pain, but it's the response.
Then what do we do with that?
What, how do we respond to that?
I think the longer we kind of leave it sit in a shadow,
the longer it continues to just scratch and gnaw away at its own as Australians.
So as I said, nobody is guilty, nobody should feel that they are
responsible, but we all have a responsibility to
recognise this kind of shame.
I think that goes back to like in the symbols and the the words that we use.
And maybe it is a Western thing, but the idea of acknowledging something
like that does imply a sense of guilt.
So I think that's what a lot of people might feel that if if they say, yes,
we accept that these things happened and we're a part of it,
then that does imply to some extent for a lot of people that they are guilty.
So that's part of the communication, I think that might need to happen.
Yeah, that's a that's a really interesting
comment, Ed, and I appreciate it.
As a semiotician, we, we sort of think about the things that
exist underneath or before the vocabulary.
And so Aboriginal languages operate through something that people identify as
matrices system.
So there are a whole range of different opportunities to make choices around
meaning making.
English is a binary language.
It's yes or no, right or wrong, guilty or not guilty.
And for most Aboriginal people, and absolutely for me,
it had never ever occurred to me that by acknowledging something,
someone would feel guilt.
Because, you know, nobody in this contemporary world has
done anything obscene like that to me.
So I have no sense of wider Australia being guilty of, of anything.
And I, and I genuinely don't think that it
should be part of that discourse.
You know, I think it's more a case of empathy
rather than responsibility in that way, like understanding how we come to where
we're at and appreciating, like you say, the benefits and the privileges that we
have as a result of, of how far we've come.
Absolutely.
It's a big space and it's not a terribly comfortable space,
but we really do need to address it because there's so much more to be going
on with.
That's very true.
OK, well, you mentioned your book, Tara Glossier.
Was there anything else that you wanted to share with us before we wrap up?
Can I say tell you something really, really random?
So my my second book, Tara Glossier is out on the 4th on next
week.
But I have this competition that I would be very privileged if you would share it.
My daughter's book is out on the 3rd and she writes books for children and
illustrates them and they they are the most gorgeous, gorgeous books.
And my daughter Raya has her book is about knowing country and,
and it's a little journey around Australia and looking at Aboriginal place
names to the capital cities and a little bit of that historical narrative.
Beautiful.
And it's, yeah.
Children's books.
Totally random.
I know.
No.
So what's the book?
You're never off Judy as a mum, are you?
So Ryhia RYHIAR Dank.
And her book is called Learning Country and the subtitle The First Nation's
Journey Around Australia's Traditional Place Names.
It's beautifully illustrated and she's got little messages embedded within the
iconography.
So she's the illustrator as well.
She's illustrated, she has written the words.
And yes, because she's very cognizant of our
imagery being our written form.
There are little, little things included in the ionography.
I'm just looking at, even at the title there, which is,
is full of those icons.
And you know, I'm imagining there must have been a lot
of thought put into exactly what was used there.
Yes, but it's beautiful.
It's very smart with digital technology.
You know, younger people are quite adventurous even
with with those things.
Whereas I'm very, very worried about pushing the button and
what will happen.
Oh, it's absolutely beautiful.
Beautiful illustrations.
And your book's beautiful, too.
I love these little footprints.
Yeah.
Across the cover.
They are broga tracks.
If you remember the cover of my first book,
there was the silhouette that was my dad and he's totem.
It was the broga.
So beautiful.
This is the second book out of my PhD.
And yeah, we were lucky enough that Echo had the
capacity to put broga tracks on it like that.
Yes.
Another cover design by RYA.
Talented family.
They're good people.
My children are really good people.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you very much for spending some
time with us, Deborah, and best of luck on your panels.
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate chatting with you both today.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Riders Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.