Words that matter: Yindyamarra, Wiradjuri resilience and the settler-colonial project in Tara June Winch’s The Yield
Words that matter: Yindyamarra, Wiradjuri resilience and the settler-colonial project in Tara June Winch’s The Yield

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the implications of the concept of resilience in contemporary Indigenousnarratives in which resilience is commonly evoked in reference to the adaptation and per-sistence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures despite the settler-colonial policies of exter-mination and persisting pressure to assimilate. Simultaneously, however, Indigenous narrativesalso present a sustained critique of resilience as perpetuating settler-colonial dominance andcultural hegemony through co-opting Indigenous adaptability by global neoliberal governmen-tality. The analytical part uses the example of a recent Australian Indigenous novel, TheYieldby the Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch (2019), to demonstrate how a contemporary literarytext can be instrumental in unpacking the entangled, double-edged nature of resilience. A closereading of several key moments from the novel points to its intentional ambiguities which notonly highlight the linguistic and cultural renewal (which I call resilience-as-survivance) but alsoproblematize Indigenous resilience by critiquing the ongoing, oppressive nature of the currentsettler-colonial project, whether in the space of the mainstream museum or environmental deg-radation (which I call resilience-as-risk).

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