Reading Book List: Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!

Tie-in these reads to the curriculum and galvanise your students into celebrating the strengths and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The books are written and illustrated by First Nations peoples’, and are some of the many great books you use in the classroom.

This list was originally published for SBS Learn’s NAIDOC Week 2022 Teacher Resource, which links the books to particular activities aligned to this year’s NAIDOC Week theme: Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up! While NAIDOC Week usually takes place in July each year, it can celebrated all around the school year.

Foundation

Yakanarra Song book: About our place in Walmajarri and English by Jessie Wamarla Moora, Mary Purnjurr Vanbee, Chris Aitken, Jessie Wamarla Moora and Mary Purnjurr Vanbee, Alison Lester (Illustrator). (Pan MacMilan Australia, 2017)

There are 14 songs in this fabulous book, ten in Walmajarri language and four in English, all beautifully illustrated by the kids from the Yakanarra Community School. These are songs about how the Walmajarri came to Yakanarra and their special places: songs about hunting, fishing and collecting bush food; songs about the animals and birds, and the sounds that they make; and much much more. The songs were written to help the kids at Yakanarra speak Walmajarri. But given that they are intended to be sung to the tunes of well known classics, this is a book to be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of age or language.

Ceremony: Welcome to Our Country by Adam Goodes and Ellie Laing, illustrated by David Hardy (Allen & Unwin, 2022)

A joyful celebration of family and culture, the Welcome to Our Country series introduces First Nations history to children. From Australian of the Year Adam Goodes, co-writer Ellie Laing, and Barkindji illustrator David Hardy. Welcome, children! Nangga! Nangga! Yakarti!

Tonight will be our Ceremony. Our family gathers as the fire burns. The smoke rises up as we take it in turns… Then clapsticks tap – one, two, three – but a stick is missing! Where could it be? Joyful and full of fun, Ceremony invites you to celebrate the rich traditions of dance, family, community and caring for Country from the world’s oldest continuous culture.

Our Home, Our Heartbeat by Adam Briggs and illustrated by Kate Moon and Rachael Sarra (Bright Light, a Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing imprint, 2020)

Adapted from Briggs’ celebrated song ‘The Children Came Back‘, Our Home, Our Heartbeat is a celebration of past and present Indigenous legends, as well as emerging generations, and at its heart honours the oldest continuous culture on earth. Readers will recognise Briggs’ distinctive voice and contagious energy within the pages of Our Home, Our Heartbeat, signifying a new and exciting chapter in children’s Indigenous publishing.

Yirrikipayi the crocodile lives on the Tiwi Islands. he’s hungry. He goes hunting, chasing animals in the sea and on land. What’s for dinner? Meet the animals and learn their Tiwi names in this delightful book for all ages. ‘No Way Yirrikipayi began as a workshop idea and has grown into a fabulous picture book. You’re going to love this funny Tiwi story with its beautiful Illustrations.’ Alison Lester

Years 1 & 2

Welcome to Country by Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy (Walker Books Aus, 2016)

An Aboriginal ceremony of Welcome to Country is depicted for the first time in a stunning board book from two Indigenous Australians.

Welcome to the lands of the Wurundjeri people. The people are part of the land, and the land is a part of them. Aboriginal communities across Australia have boundaries that are defined by mountain ranges and waterways. Traditionally, to cross these boundaries, permission is required. Each community has its own way of greeting, but the practice shares a common name: a Welcome to Country. Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, the senior Aboriginal elder of the Wurundjeri people, channels her passion for storytelling into a remarkable and utterly unique picture book that invites readers to discover some of the history and traditions of her people. Indigenous artist Lisa Kennedy gives the Wurundjeri Welcome to Country form in beautiful paintings rich with blues and browns, as full of wonder and history as the tradition they depict.

Looking After Country with Fire: Aboriginal Burning Knowledge With Uncle Kuu by Victor Steffensen, Sandra Steffensen (Illustrator). (Hardie Grant Publishing, 2022)

Looking After Country with Fire is a picture book for 5 to 10 year olds that demonstrates respect for Indigenous knowledge, following the success of Victor Steffensen’s bestselling adult book Fire Country.

Mother Nature has a language. If we listen, and read the signs in the land, we can understand it. 

For thousands of years, First Nations people have listened and responded to the land and made friends with fire, using this knowledge to encourage plants and seeds to flourish, and creating beautiful places for both animals and people to live.

Join Uncle Kuu as he takes us out on Country and explains cultural burning. Featuring stunning artwork by Sandra Steffensen, this is a powerful and timely story of understanding Australia’s ecosystems through Indigenous fire management, and a respectful way forward for future generations to help manage our landscapes.

At the back of the book, you will also find lyrics to a song written by author Victor Steffensen with the same title, ‘Looking After Country with Fire‘. 

Albert Namatjira by Vincent Namatjira (Magabala, 2021)

Award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira tells the life story of his great-grandfather, Albert Namatjira, one of Australia’s most iconic artists.

Vincent’s witty and moving paintings are accompanied by evocative text, which records the pivotal moments in Albert’s life. In telling his great-grandfather’s story, Vincent builds a compelling picture of the times and conditions in which Albert lived and worked, capturing his triumphs and tragedy against a backdrop of social change and historical injustices.

This poignant children’s book provides an important tool for discussion about Australia’s art history, and a launching pad for exploration of the key moments in Australia’s Aboriginal Rights movement.

The Little Red Yellow Black Book: An introduction to Indigenous Australia (Fourth edition) by Bruce Pascoe (AIATSIS, 2018)

Originally published in 1994, The Little Red Yellow Black Book has established itself as the perfect starting point for those who want to learn about the rich cultures and histories of Australia’s First Peoples. Written from an Indigenous perspective, this highly illustrated and accessible introduction covers a range of topics from history, culture and the Arts, through to activism and reconciliation. In this fourth edition, readers will learn about some of the significant contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made, and continue to make, to the Australian nation. Common stereotypes will be challenged, and the many struggles and triumphs that we’ve experienced as we’ve navigated through our shared histories will be revealed. Readers will also learn about some of the key concepts that underpin Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldviews including concepts such as the Dreaming, the significance of Ancestral Heroes and Country.

Hello and Welcome by Gregg Dreise (Penguin, 2021)

Feel the welcome as we celebrate Indigenous culture, Elders and future generations. Join the corroboree in the traditional Gamilaraay language of the Kamilaroi people as we listen and learn together. A wonderful companion to Gregg Dreise’s highly acclaimed My Culture and Me, this joyful picture book celebrates Australia’s Indigenous heritage and the diversity we enjoy today. Hello and welcome to our corroboree. Hello and welcome to our gathering. Father Sky, Mother Earth, together here with me. Different colours, different people, together in harmony.

Years 3 & 4

Kunyi by Kunyi June Anne McInerney (Magabala, 2021)

Kunyi June Anne McInerney was just four years old when she and three of her siblings were taken from their family to the Oodnadatta Children’s Home in South Australia in the 1950s. Through an extraordinary collection of over 60 paintings, accompanied by stories, Kunyi presents a rare chronicle of what life was like for her and the other Children’s Home kids who became her family.

Her paintings are a healing trove of memories that reveal the loneliness, fear and courage of the Stolen Generation children who were torn from family and loved ones. From bible lessons to sucking bone marrow and collecting bush fruits, the escapades, adventures and sorrows of the children are painted with warmth, humour and unflinching honesty.

Kunyi’s story is one of healing and reconciliation. She is telling it so that the lives of the children at Oodnadatta Children’s Home will not be forgotten. This is a collection of tender and honest stories that will educate children on our nation’s history and remind adult readers of the real impact of the Stolen Generations.

Once There was a Boy by Dub Leffler (Magabala, 2011)

The whimsical story of a little boy with a broken heart who meets a young girl who shares his secret. This timeless and elegant tale is transformed into a beautiful grown-up story by the use of subtle analogies, such as the use of sapotes as forbidden fruit. A celebrated children’s picture book debut by Dub Leffler.

Respect by Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson, illustrated by Lisa Kennedy (Magabala, 2020)

Respect is the first title in the ‘Our Place’ series of four children’s picture books which welcome and introduce children to important elements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Respect whispers a soft and heartfelt message about the basic cultural principle that informs all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations throughout Australia. Respect is about a way of life that is older than flickering stars, about stories that shimmer through tall grasses, and redgum leaves that tumble to a parched and red earth. It teaches children the importance of family who show the way and how we need to listen, learn and share.

This eloquent and delicate story shows young and old alike, what Respect looks like for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Years 5 & 6

Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler (Magabala, 2018)

Black Cockatoo is a vignette that follows Mia, a young Aboriginal girl as she explores the fragile connections of family and culture. Mia is a 13-year-old girl from a remote community in the Kimberley. She is saddened by the loss of her brother as he distances himself from the family. She feels powerless to change the things she sees around her, until one day she rescues her totem animal, the dirran black cockatoo, and soon discovers her own inner strength.

A wonderful small tale on the power of standing up for yourself, culture and ever-present family ties.

Game Day! Patty Mills Championship Collection by Patty Mills, Jared Thomas and illustrated by Nahum Ziersch 

This fantastic junior fiction basketball series by four-time Australian Olympian and NBA star Patty Mills is an entertaining, sporty read that will inspire kids to achieve their goals through sport, and also showcases Patty’s pride in his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage.

Before Patty Mills was a basketball superstar leading the Boomers to win an Olympic bronze medal in Tokyo, he was a little kid with a big dream.

Little Patty is a star on the footy field, an ace at athletics and a ripper at rugby. So when he tries out for basketball, he expects it to be a breeze… He soon discovers he has a lot to learn, on and off the court.

Hit the court with little Patty as he has fun learning the rules, practising his skills, bonding with his teammates, taking pride in his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, playing his heart out and helping his team rise to every challenge that comes their way.

Our Race for Reconciliation by Anita Heiss (Scholastic Australia, 2017)

It’s the year 2000 and the Olympics are going to be held in Australia. In a year of surprises, Mel and her family are heading to Sydney on an unforgettable journey to Corroboree 2000, bringing together all Australians as they celebrate Australia’s Indigenous heritage and acknowledge past wrongs.

Say Yes: A Story of Friendship, Fairness and a Vote for Hope by Jennifer Castles, with illustrations by Paul Seden (Allen & Unwin, 2017)

A story about how the events surrounding the historic 1967 Referendum played out in the everyday lives of two young girls.

Once there were two little girls who were best friends. They did everything together. As they got older they weren’t allowed to do the same things anymore. Because they looked different. Because of the law.

This is a story about the landmark 1967 Referendum, the two women who came together to change the law… and how the Australian people said YES

Freedom Day – Vincent Lingiari and the Story of the Wave Hill Walk-Off by Thomas Mayor & Rosie Smiler, Samantha Campbell (illustrator). (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, 2021)

When many voices are joined together, with courage, change can happen. In 1966, more than two hundred courageous Aboriginal people walked off the Wave Hill Cattle Station in the Northern Territory. Led by Vincent Lingiari, these stockmen and their families were walking together to fight for equal pay and land rights. 

Exquisitely illustrated and designed, this non-fiction picture book brings a landmark historical event to a new generation. Many people have seen the iconic photograph of Gough Whitlam pouring a handful of red soil into the hands of Vincent Lingiari – a symbol of the legal transfer of Gurindji land back to the Gurindji people – and recognise this as a key moment in the ongoing land rights movement. Freedom Day delves into the events that led up to this moment, and makes a rallying cry for the things that still need to change in its wake. Thomas Mayor co-authors this book with Rosie, Vincent Lingiari’s granddaughter, to bring this vital story to life. The story has been written in close consultation with the Lingiari family.

Years 7 & 8

Singing the Coast by Tony Perkins, Margaret Somerville (New South Books, 2010)

Most Australians live on the narrow coastal strip that fringes our island continent. For Aboriginal people a place comes into being each time it is sung, and it is through this process that places are learned about and cared for. These songs can be for all of us, in the places where Aboriginal stories are rapidly overwritten with the grids of roads and towns. Together Tony Perkins and Margaret Somerville explore one coastal group’s experience in maintaining the stories and songs of their country: Perkins’ Gumbaynggirr homeland in mid-north coast New South Wales. These stories and songs are unique in their particularities, yet universal in their sense of knowledge, understanding and openness to sharing.

Maralinga’s Long Shadow by Christobel Mattingley (NewSouth Books, 2010)

The powerful story of Yvonne Edwards, artist and community leader, who lived on or near the Maralinga lands, and the cost of the fall-out for herself and her family from the nuclear tests in the 1950s.

‘Grandfather and Grandmother telling lots of stories. They had to live at Yalata. Their home was bombed. That was their home where the bomb went off. They thought it was mamu tjuta, evil spirits, coming. Everyone was frightened, thinking about people back in the bush. Didn’t know what bomb was. Later told it was poison. Parents and grandparents really wanted to go home, used to talk all the time to get their land back.’

Yvonne Edwards was just six years old when the first bombs of the nuclear tests at Maralinga were detonated in 1956. The tests continued until 1963 and their consequences profoundly affected her family and community.

This powerful book, by award-winning author Christobel Mattingley, honours Yvonne Edwards’ legacy as a highly respected artist and community elder.

Years 9 & 10

Common Wealth by Gregg Dreise (Scholastic Australia, 2021)

A powerful illustrated slam poetry picture book about togetherness and Australian and Indigenous history. This beautiful 32-page picture book showcases the persuasive and powerful vision of unity from award-winning indigenous creator Gregg Dreise. Passionate, yet peaceful, Common Wealth is a compelling plea for a future of truth, togetherness and respect for Australia’s deep history. All that I’m wishing, Is that you take a moment to listen . . . You see, I’m on a mission, to spread unity – not division.

Taboo by Kim Scott (Macmillan Australia, 2017) 

From Kim Scott, two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, in equal parts brutal, mysterious and idealistic, about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years …

Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar’s descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife’s dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.

But the sins of the past will not be so easily expunged.

We walk with the ragtag group through this taboo country and note in them glimmers of re-connection with language, lore, country. We learn alongside them how countless generations of Noongar may have lived in ideal rapport with the land. This is a novel of survival and renewal, as much as destruction; and, ultimately, of hope as much as despair.

Talking to my Country by Stan Grant (Harper Collins, 2017) 

In 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral, not only in Australia but right around the world, shared over 100,000 times on social media. His was a personal, passionate and powerful response to racism in Australia and the sorrow, shame, anger and hardship of being an indigenous man. ‘We are the detritus of the brutality of the Australian frontier’, he wrote, ‘We remained a reminder of what was lost, what was taken, what was destroyed to scaffold the building of this nation’s prosperity.’

Stan Grant was lucky enough to find an escape route, making his way through education to become one of our leading journalists. He also spent many years outside Australia, working in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, a time that liberated him and gave him a unique perspective on Australia. This is his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country.

Talking to My Country is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country — what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?

Am I Black Enough For You by Anita Heiss (Penguin, 2012)

The story of an urban-based high achieving Wiradyuri woman working to break down stereotypes and build bridges between black and white Australia.

I’m Aboriginal. I’m just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.

What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate advocate for Aboriginal literacy, rights and representation, was born a member of the Wiradyuri nation of central New South Wales but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school.

In this heartfelt and revealing memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, with large doses of humour, Anita Heiss gives a firsthand account of her experiences as a woman with a Wiradyuri mother and Austrian father. Anita explains the development of her activist consciousness, how she strives to be happy and healthy, and the work she undertakes every day to ensure the world she leaves behind will be more equitable and understanding than it is today.

Blacklines introduced by Ian Anderson, Michele Grossman, Marcia Langton and Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Edited by Michele Grossman (Melbourne University Press, 2012)

Written by established and emerging Indigenous intellectuals from a variety of positions, perspectives and places, these essays generate new ways of seeing and understanding Indigenous Australian history, culture, identity and knowledge in both national and global contexts. From museums to Mabo, anthropology to art, feminism to film, land rights to literature, the essays collected here offer provocative insights and compelling arguments around the historical and contemporary issues confronting Indigenous Australians today.

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