releasing in 2024

Näku Dhäruk
The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy

In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Näku Dhäruk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born.

Näku Dhäruk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples. 

And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.

Clare Wright’s Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and continued with You Daughters of Freedom. It concludes with this compulsively readable account of a momentous episode in our shared story.  

In an extraordinary feat of scholarship and creativity, Clare Wright shows how an act of brave and dignified resistance by the Yolŋu people in 1963 helped remake Australian democracy. Their story should be as well known as Eureka and Gallipoli. Here, we have a historian of unusual originality tell it with skill, sensitivity and insight. Wright has produced a history that combines a stunningly beautiful lyricism with formidable intellectual power. I am in awe of this book. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read.

Prof Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU