ABSTRACT
Indigenous women experience some of the highest rates of violence against women in Australia and are at a greater risk of homicide, rape and violent assault than non-Indigenous women. The first literary genre that was widely taken up by Indigenous women was life-history writing, which gathered momentum in the 1980s. Writing Dark Secrets enables the poet herself in effect to ‘write back’ to settler women in particular and to reconvene a virtual conversation with the generations of women who succeed the settler women the poetry portrays. It continues the dialogue initiated by Indigenous and minoritised women in the 1980s about white feminism and constitutes an overt invitation to settler women to rethink their relationality with Indigenous women. Kerry Reed-Gilbert is a Wiradjuri poet and activist. She has published two collections of poetry, Black Woman, Black Life and Talkin’ about Country and edited several collections of Aboriginal writing.
