In 2014, the lecture focused on the power of writing for advancing reconciliation and expressing identity. Miles Franklin Award nominee author Tony Birch was the keynote speaker, and was complemented by poetry readings from three ACT-based Indigenous writers from ‘Us Mob Writing’: Samantha Faulkner, Joyce Graham and Michelle Bedford. Tony shared a narrative from his archival research into the resistance of an Indigenous community to official attempts to forcibly remove them from their land in Victoria. This historical narrative clearly resonated with present day policies of disenfranchising remote Indigenous communities. The three ACT poets demonstrated that poetry can be a powerful mechanism of finding one’s voice and identity in a language that was once used for colonial oppression.
