Terra Nullius

Addressing a blind spot in my Australian author diet which till now consisted of Jane Harper and Liane Moriarty (huge fan of both btw) Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar Aboriginal, a people who have traditionally occupied the south-west corner of Western Australia long before history started being recorded there.

Terra Nullius is the story of Settler arrogance and their disdain for the Natives. Bending them to their language, their rules, their religion only to offer them a life of enslavement. Jacky manages to escape his Settler captors and makes a run for the bush which sets off a chain of events. I loved the mid-story turn but I feel this would have been better served as a short story or novella. The impact slowly trickles away with each subsequent chapter.

This harkens to the Residential schools of Canada, with a light dusting of Nickel Boys and a heap of the Southern Baptist faithful who interpreted the word of God as still allowing for the ownership of slaves and split with their abolitionist church goers in the north.

It seems colonizer narratives are sadly all too familiar regardless of what country you come from.