How Did We Get Here? Truth-Listening to Climate Crisis Through Reading Literary Works by Australian First Nations Writers

AbstractIn this paper we theorise climate fiction in the context of Dirrayawadha: Rise Up, by Anita Heiss (2024). Dirrayawadha: Rise Up is a literary novel that narratises historical truths in a dialogic encounter. Through an exploration of love, resilience and resistance, the novel recounts early moments of invasion while simultaneously revealing the links between colonial violence and environmental crisis. We examine four excerpts from the novel to illustrate how the narratisation of historical truths and usage of literary devices and language works. We also show how the translanguaging in the novel, where some sections shift between English and Wiradyuri, enable the text to transcend some of the limitations of English. The novel reveals how the genesis of environmental crisis in so-called Australia begins in the first moments of invasion. Heiss (2022) argues the need for settlers to read more First Nations writing as a form of truth-listening (Kwaymullina, 2020).