Alison Page is a Walbanga and Wadi Wadi woman. She is an award-winning designer and film producer whose career links Indigenous stories and traditional knowledge with contemporary design. She appeared for eight years as a regular panellist on the ABC television show The New Inventors, and in 2015 was inducted into the Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame. She is an adjunct associate professor at the School of Design, University of Technology Sydney, and the founder of the National Aboriginal Design Agency.
Today, Alison Page is on the blog to tell us about her new book Design: Building on Country, and to share with us her favourite reads from First Nations authors. Read on!
About Design: Building on Country
Design: Building on Country issues a challenge for a new Australian design ethos, one that truly responds to the essence of Country and its people.
Alison writes from an Indigenous perspective on her areas of expertise: design and storytelling; while Paul writes from a Western perspective on his areas of expertise: anthropology and architecture. Both authors are pioneers in their respective fields. Their cultural and individual differences are one of the strengths of this book.
Book recommendations from Alison Page
Songlines
by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly
This is the book to be reading right now if you have ever wondered what songlines are. They are not as simple as a way to navigate around this land as Bruce Chatwin suggested, but a multi-faceted system of story, place and traditional knowledge.
Buy it here
Inside My Mother
by Ali Cobby Eckermann
The ‘mother’ in this collection of poems is multi-faceted; the mother tongue as the author weaves in her native language, mother nature in relation to Country and most poignantly the literal mother as we learn about Ali’s troubled past. Ali Cobby Eckermann will be known as one of the most gifted poets Australia has ever produced.
Buy it here
Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia
by Victor Steffensen
Victor Steffenson puts the capital C into Country as he takes us on a personal journey with his elders to learn the science and spirituality of caring for the land.
Buy it here
Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture
by Rebecca Kiddle, Patrick Stewart and Kevin O’Brien
This book is a collection of critical essays by First Nations architects, designers and urban planners all over the world. The connection to Country and community and how these values can be expressed in the built environment is a common language shared by native designers and architects globally and is a fresh voice in architectural discourse.
Buy it here
Not Meeting Mr Right
by Anita Heiss
Anita Heiss is constantly broadening the way we see Aboriginality in this country especially with her inclusion of chicklit among her long list of selected works. The main character Alice is ‘deadly, desirable and delicious’ and the book is a hilarious take on an Aboriginal woman who is successful, independent, and a confirmed serial dater.
Buy it here
My Place
by Sally Morgan
This book changed the way I saw myself when I read it as a child in the 1980’s, mainly because it was a book about Aboriginal identity that was read and discussed by my friends at school. It’s raw and emotional and an honest insight into identity and the treatment of our people.
Buy it here
Am I Black Enough For You?
by Anita Heiss
When they say the pen is mightier than the sword, I think of this book, which is Anita’s deeply personal account of her involvement in successfully charging a newspaper columnist with breaching the Racial Discrimination Act where he accused her of being ‘too fair skinned’.
Buy it here
Walking With the Seasons in Kakadu
by Diane Lucas and Ken Searle
I read this scrumptious book nearly every night to my kids who learned the rhythms and poetry behind the seasonal calendar of Kakadu. A beautiful intro into the world of traditional knowledge and Country for kids.
Buy it here
Design: Building on Country
Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. It is visible in the aerodynamic boomerang, the ingenious design of fish traps and the precise layouts of community settlements that strengthen social cohesion.
Alison Page and Paul Memmott show how these design principles of sophisticated function, sustainability and storytelling, refined over many millennia, are now being applied to contemporary practices...
Book recommendations from Tony Birch!
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