Terraglossia

Our places, our voices. From the award-winning author of We Come with This Place.

You won't find 'terraglossia' on Google, or in a dictionary. It's a word coined by acclaimed academic and award-winning author Dr Debra Dank in response to the first Europeans' description of Australia as 'terra nullius' - no one's land. These new arrivals, with their language born far away, silenced and made invisible the more-than-ancient civilisations that have lived in and with this place for many thousands of years. The First Peoples became 'other', spoken for and about in another language, through another culture, not permitted to articulate their essential being and their complex relationships with Country and its entities, unable to participate in the development of a truly Australian dialogue. It is time for the depth of this linguistic colonisation to be recognised, for the deep intellectual traditions of First Nations Australians to be acknowledged and included, for their multiple living communicative practices and expressions to be heard. Terraglossia is a powerful and moving reply to a false claiming, to the need for understanding that only through responsible living with the earth, not just what can be articulated in a language that arrived 250 years ago, will all the voices of Australia truly be heard.

About the Author

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.