AUDIOBOOK
About
We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people.
There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land. Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually and physically.
Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water.
We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be. A Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory, Dr Debra Dank is an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She has spent 40 years working in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles, in urban and remote areas across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory. She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous honours in 2023, including four New South Wales Premier's Awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Debra is passionate about the environment, especially as her Country, on the Beetaloo Basin, is under threat of being fracked. A deeply personal, profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs. Debra Dank will be known to many booksellers through her work as the first Project Manager for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation She has spent her career in education and completed her PhD at Deakin University in 2021 Debra is an experienced public speaker, with great charisma, who has the ability to convey her deep understanding of Country, language and the importance of education in a non-confrontational but compelling way, that brings the audience with her She is a beautiful writer, and this book will be nominated for every applicable literary prize An extensive publicity campaign will be undertaken to support the book It will be beautifully packaged with cover artwork from her daughter, Ryhia Dank, a talented artist and graphic designer
There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land. Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually and physically.
Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water.
We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be. A Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory, Dr Debra Dank is an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She has spent 40 years working in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles, in urban and remote areas across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory. She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous honours in 2023, including four New South Wales Premier's Awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Debra is passionate about the environment, especially as her Country, on the Beetaloo Basin, is under threat of being fracked. A deeply personal, profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs. Debra Dank will be known to many booksellers through her work as the first Project Manager for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation She has spent her career in education and completed her PhD at Deakin University in 2021 Debra is an experienced public speaker, with great charisma, who has the ability to convey her deep understanding of Country, language and the importance of education in a non-confrontational but compelling way, that brings the audience with her She is a beautiful writer, and this book will be nominated for every applicable literary prize An extensive publicity campaign will be undertaken to support the book It will be beautifully packaged with cover artwork from her daughter, Ryhia Dank, a talented artist and graphic designer