Claire G. Coleman

This is science fiction as it's supposed to be: a story that shows us with plenty of punch, who we are as humans, what we have done and what we might do again. It's a story that puts a fresh perspective on colonisation and as such should be read by pretty much everyone. I deeply appreciate the way it makes us feel what it really is like to be the Native, the one who is colonised by others - it is time, and long past time, for literature to be used for that end. I personally have so rarely show more come across it, especially in the context of Australia.

That's not to say there aren't faults to the novel - there are first-time author problems which I'm more than willing to forgive for the sake of what this novel is doing. The worst of these faults was the repeated tendency to belabour the comparison between the story and our true history - making direct comparisons in so many words. While the action was happening I was nodding in deep appreciation of how it all relates to our history, but then the author would go ahead and explain it, destroying all the subtlety and my participation in the story. Other things too could have done with a more thorough editing, but these things are in no way a reason to avoid this book: I highly, highly recommend it. show less

Set in occupied Australia, Terra Nullius tells three inter-weaved stories: the first is a residential school for Natives run by Settler Nuns headed by a fearsome Mother Superior, Sister Bagra. In this school, Native children have been forcibly taken from their families and are given a basic education so that they will graduate to domestic service for the Settlers.

The second story is the escape of Jacky from a similar place. Jacky is determined to find his birth family. He is told that they show more may be at the former town of Jerramungup, so proudly takes the name ‘Jacky Jerramungup’.

A third group of Natives live fearful lives in a series of squalid camps, always on the run and moving to a new location as the Settlers drive them into the desert. The only advantage of this is that the Settlers cannot live in the desert.

First-time novelist Claire Coleman, a West Australian Noongar, drops little hints that this is not the occupied Australia we know when the British Settlers occupied the land and treated the indigenous people with cruelty. About half-way through the book she reveals that these Settlers come from a space-faring Empire, and these Natives are black and white survivors of their arrival.

The Settlers are nicknamed Toads by the Natives, because they need moisture to survive. Because of the ever-present threat of Settler violence, the name ‘Toads’ is never used in their hearing.

The three main characters, Sister Bagra, Jacky and Esperance the de facto leader of the ever-moving camp are vividly drawn, as well as a big cast around them: Sergeant Rohan the indefatigable hunter of runaway Natives; Johnny Starr the outlaw Settler whose little gang gathers up Jacky Jerramungup on their way to an eventual show-down with Settler power, and Father Grark the reluctant Inspector sent to Sister Bagra’s mission.

I liked Terra Nullius very much. An atmosphere of dread induced both by the Settlers and the difficulty of surviving in the desert pervades the book. The West Australian settings are familiar but changed. The characters are never reduced to caricatures: most Settlers genuinely believe that the Natives were not human; the Native characters are clear individuals.

The pacing is well-handled. Towards the end, I couldn’t put the book down I was so afraid for Jacky and Esperance, and with reason!

It is a didactic novel. I suspect that Australians sceptical of Aboriginal claims will not be convinced by its premise, and may even be annoyed by its ideas. However it will appeal to people looking for reconciliation and deeper insights into our shared history, settler and native. show less

Terra Nullius is about the colonization of the Australian continent. The story revolves around a boy on the run who has escaped from the colonizer’s forced labour and goes in search of his family. For the first half of the book I assumed the colonizers were European and that the people referred to as “Natives” were Indigenous. Mid way through the book though, this assumption was challenged, leaving me to deal with this mind-blowing change of perspective. Read it with a friend so you show more will have someone to talk to about it. You think you know, the all too familiar pattern of colonization, its oppression of Indigenous people, it all sounds familiar until it doesn’t, but then it still kind of does. I’m glad I didn’t notice it was classified as speculative fiction until after I read it. show less

I meet intermittently with a small group of women to discuss poetry. Together we constitute, for lack of a better term, a poetry book club. During a recent meet-up, I mentioned how frustrating I find it when poets compare women to birds. From my perspective (white Anglo-Canadian; degree in English Lit), this is a cliché device usually employed by male poets to patronize and coddle female characters-- to portray them as weak and fragile. But we were discussing a collection of poems by a show more Metis woman. I couldn’t understand why a radical young indigenous poet would frame women this way. Enter stage right: a moment of cross-cultural ignorance. Another group member-- an inquisitive, thoughtful women of colour who looks out for other marginalized women as a matter of course-- explained to me that those particular bird species have special significance to some indigenous groups on Turtle Island. My friend and fellow group member had done her homework; I was lazily relying on the homework I’d done for Intro to Women's Literature a decade and a half earlier.

I kept that learning experience top of mind while reading Claire G. Coleman's Terra Nullius. Coleman is, to quote her bio, "a writer from Western Australia who identifies with the South Coast Noongar people." Her novel is nothing if not a love letter to freedom, self-determination, and the rights of indigenous peoples. It is didactic, but justifiably so, given Australia's colonial history; and certain passages and scenes could be riveting if read aloud (invoking oral tradition?) in a junior high classroom by a teacher who cares about the work of reconciliation. But Terra Nullius is also beset by a peculiarly reticent omniscient narrator who keeps characters at arms length even while revealing their thoughts and feelings; unhelpful fictional epigraphs and epistolary fragments; and the author's frustrating decision to conceal the book's actual plot and setting until more than 100 pages in.

The plot of Terra Nullius follows several threads that are gradually woven together. The most compelling of these is Sister Bagra's reign of terror. She is Mother Superior at a residential school for humans ("natives"), where she contravenes her religious order by malnourishing her charges and training them for menial labour; they are slaves more than students. Sister Bagra is somewhat two-dimensional, even for a villain, and the origins of her bitterness and cruelty are never explored. But a good heel is a brilliant source of catharsis: easy to hate and rally against, especially when we recall that she is a fictional condensation of the religious authority figures who have abused, neglected, and killed indigenous children in colonial residential schools around the world.

To me, this is an important but imperfect novel-- but I am a settler trained in a literary tradition that is only beginning to consider the value of indigenous storytelling and ways of knowing. So don't take my word for it, please. show less