Songlines
by Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly, illustrated by Blak Douglas
Published by Thames & Hudson Australia - September 2023 - Softback - 124pp - 21.5cm x 16cm
This Younger Readers adaptation of Songlines comes from the critically acclaimed, best-selling First Knowledges series, with striking illustrations by Archibald winner Blak Douglas.
How do you find your way around, get your food and drink, connect with your friends and family? How do you know the right and safe way to do things, or how to make things? Before the white people came to the continent, all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples knew how to do all these things – and much, much more.
Margo Ngawa Neale and Lynne Kelly invite you on a journey through the oldest, biggest library of knowledge on Earth. This knowledge isn’t held in books: you will find it in Songlines of the land, sea and sky.
Learn about history, art, song, science and more in this engaging and inviting introduction to Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they can help all people thrive into the future.
Margo Ngawa Neale is the head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges, senior Indigenous curator, and principal adviser to the director of the National Museum of Australia (NMA). She is also an adjunct professor at the Australian National University and has authored or edited eleven books, including the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. She has curated groundbreaking, award-winning national and international exhibitions, including Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters; Utopia: The Genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye; and Urban Dingo: The Art and Life of Lin Onus.
Lynne Kelly is a science writer working as an honorary research associate at La Trobe University. Her field of research is the memory methods used by those who depended on their memories for everything they knew: oral cultures including Australian Aboriginal, Native American, Pacific and African cultures. She is also a mnemonist, committing vast amounts of information to memory using the memory technologies of Indigenous peoples. She is the author of The Memory Code and Memory Craft.
Blak Douglas is a modern artist with proud Dhungutti Aboriginal origins. His works are culturally and politically charged with a sense of irony, parody and truth. Blak is a trained illustrator, designer and a self-taught painter. He won the 2018 Kilgour Prize, the 2020 STILL award and the 2022 Archibald Prize. His works are collected by the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW, QAGOMA, the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Museum of Australia, AIATSIS and other galleries in Australia and abroad.
About the series: This is the first title in the First Knowledges for Younger Readers series, based on the award-winning adult books.
Titles in the series include:
Songlines by Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly, illustrated by Blak Douglas (2023)
Design and building on Country by Alison Page & Paul Memmott, illustrated by Blak Douglas (2024)
