Abstract:
In this paper, I examine the representation of the Indigenous women characters in two novels
by Indigenous Australian writer Marie Munkara, namely Every Secret Thing (2009) and A Most
Peculiar Act (2014). Munkara’s novels are set in the early phase of the colonisation of Australia
and trace the takeover of Indigenous lands and lives by the Catholic Church and bureaucrats
employed by the office of the Chief Protector of Aborigines. I argue that colonial constructions
of white femininity disempowered both settler and Indigenous women. Despite being doubly
colonised because of their race and gender, Munkara’s female characters maintain their
sovereignty by engaging in decolonising practices. Indigenous women’s resistant subjectivity
works in tandem with their connection to their lands to expose white ways of knowing as not
the universals they are taken to be. They reveal that acquiring the coloniser’s language and
imitating white cultural practices do not take away from their Indigeneity. Rather these are
signs of Indigenous people’s dynamism and syncretism; they are means by which Indigenous
women survive colonisation, maintain their sovereignty, and even creatively counter the
colonial imposition.
