A learning companion is a thematic set of ingredients to read, watch, hear, and explore, chosen to follow up a Truth-Telling session at Mitchelton Library. Each one starts with something you can finish in ten or twenty minutes, then opens four threads you can follow over the weeks ahead.
Hear Debbie tell her aunt Queenie Hart’s story on Curtain, then read Amy McQuire’s Black Witness, watch the Four Corners investigation How Many More?, and read the case on First Nations women in Australia’s prisons.
Each companion asks one question in a different place: who holds the authority to tell a First Nations story? Debbie West answers for First Nations women in the courts and prisons, Brett Leavy for Country, Rhianna Patrick for the microphone, and the people of Cherbourg for their own lives.
Watch Brett’s reconstruction of the Brisbane River before the city, then read Edenglassie, watch Ablaze, hear Rhianna Patrick on who controls Indigenous knowledge, and explore the Gambay language map.
Hear Rhianna tell Eddie Mabo’s story, then read Stan Grant’s Talking to My Country, watch Living Black, hear Rhianna’s own Blak Bias, and search the colonial press on Trove.
Hear Aunty Lesley Williams and Uncle David Wragge answer the government’s files in their own testimony, then read Not Just Black and White, watch Servant or Slave, hear Aunty Ruth Hegarty on growing up in the girls’ dormitory, and read the 1897 Act page by page.
Each learning companion closes by bringing the subject back to Brisbane, with one question to take away.
Every learning companion draws on the series’ own lists, which you can browse at any time.
