Conversations
In this page, I list conversations that I've had with creative practitioners, writers, and community members who have either had experience of island confinement or have chosen to creatively express the meaning of a particular site of history in their chosen medium. While they refer to carceral island histories, all of these conversations reflect on the contemporary and relational meaning of these sites for community today.
Conversation with Dhoombpoo Lionel Fogarty on Gadigal Country, 2025.
Subjects include: Dhoombpoo Lionel Fogarty, poetry, activism, Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve (formerly Barambah Reserve), punitive removal, punishment, the ration shed, storytelling, the Brisbane Three, solidarity, detention centres, family history, sovereignty, justice.
Conversation with (Waskam) Emelda Davis, ASSIPJ President
Subjects include: Sydney links to blackbirding, Ferrymead Plantation, Tweed, Tanna, Ambae, Santo, Blackbirding, CSR Sugar, plantation labour, repatriation, oral and family history, PALMS, Shireen Malamoo.
Conversation with an Aboriginal South Sea Islander Woman on Gadigal Country, 2025.
Subjects include: Aboriginal and South Sea Islander families in Tweed Heads, relationships formed in the sugarcane fields after deportation, Bundaberg plantations, Faith Bandler's fiction, and Australian politics.
Conversation with Iqbal Asadi, on Zoom, 2026.
Subjects include: asylum seekers, Christmas Island Detention Centre, Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin, mechanisms of control, privatised interests in detention, the Writing Through Fences organisation, artworks created during detention, Iqbal's work as an artist and illustrator, and the challenges faced by refugees who settle in Australia.
Conversation with Winnie Dunn
Subjects include: Dirt Poor Islanders, Pasifika Sydney Stories, Sweatshop, Tonga, Mount Druitt, postcode wars, suburbia, autofiction, oral history, migration, PALMS, Western Sydney, white nationalism, recursion vs. geneaology.
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