Ep 77: Belonging, Identity and Seeing Australia Differently: Tyree Barnette with Stolen Man on Stolen Land

Yeah, excellent.

And so when I read a little bit about you, Tyree, this is your debut novel.

So Stolen Man on Stolen Land, being African-American in Australia.

And so in the book it explores some things that are unfamiliar to us, but some things that are familiar as well in terms of, you know, having... having children and that experience of changing your perspective but what you really go through is the intersection of all of those things race privilege american geopolitics fatherhood not familiar to me and finding belonging and community whether on the seat of a barber's chair in Raleigh, North Carolina, or on the streets of Sydney's inner west.

So you're a writer and member of the sweatshop literacy movement.

Yeah, really interesting.

And living on the unceded lands of the Darug people in Sydney.

I love how your book acknowledged a lot of the Indigenous Australian experience and perspective as well, which is, you know, like you may have found too.

In fact, you mentioned it in the book that you and your wife were going through a market at one point and talking to some Indigenous Australians who were referencing all of the Indigenous or Native American peoples that you haven't learned about in school as well.

So it's interesting how sometimes it's easier to see things or learn about it from a different cultural perspective.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I feel like there is a lot about each other's countries that we don't often examine or underappreciate or don't learn enough about.

And so while Australia still has a long way to go with reconciling with its First Nations people, In some ways, I think, my personal opinion, it is farther ahead in terms of visibility of indigenous peoples than America often is.

In America, Native Americans, to me, were invisible.

It's only recently I've seen more First Nations presence in America in popular culture, in dialogue, in things like talking to colleagues here about how some universities in some, you know, blue cities, right, liberal leaning cities may have an acknowledgment on their website of the first peoples of the land, which is rare in America because also many of the tribes or people were removed from land before it was settled.

It's often not straightforward to find out who the original custodians were in America.

And so where I'm from in Raleigh, there could be a few different nations that inhabited the land now known as Raleigh, North Carolina.

So sometimes it's also historically more challenging to pinpoint who the original inhabitants were as well.

Yeah, that's interesting.

But it's a good thing, isn't it? to try and discover that and respect and honour that.

But what I like in one of the lines I underlined in your book was, then you wonder if these gestures could make up for what's been lost already in terms of the languages and the customs.

And this is particularly about Australian Indigenous people.

So I hear what you're saying about how it is a good thing and it's a step, it's progress, but there's still more to go.

Exactly.