Woven, edited by Māori poet, editor and weaver Anne-Marie Te Whiu who belongs to the Te Rawa iwi in Hokianga, represents the second collaboration between Magabala Books and Red Room Poetry, following the acclaimed 2020 anthology Guwayu – For All Times. It is comprised of poetic exchanges between Indigenous poets and emerged from Fair Trade, a project established by Red Room Poetry in 2021 through which poets could connect across borders to create works together. Inaugurated during the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time when poets and the creative arts sector were significantly impacted by the rapid global spread of the virus, the project offered a balm to feelings of disconnection as well as hope that a time would come when we could be and create together again.

In a world first, Woven features collaborations by 30 First Nations writers from around the globe. Reflecting on the anthology, Te Whui describes the collaboration as being about “(re)generating poetic First Nations bonds – solidarity, consensus, family, land, oceans, the moon, remembering, dreaming, sharing, opening, mourning, respect, celebrating, finding, losing, healing and more healing”. Woven is a rare and abundantly generous gift: intimate and unguarded, it offers the reader the great privilege of being present with its speakers and listening to their stories. In the context of Covid-19, the anthology becomes an act of resistance against isolation, replacing division with kinship, fear with kindness and the desire to isolate oneself with the courage to remain open, friendly and curious. Most significantly, it becomes a generous enactment of continued giving of oneself at a time when some were hoarding scarce resources. Like A Savage Turn, Woven also represents an Indigenous blueprint – this time, for how to survive global crisis and catastrophe through reciprocity, respect and relationality. Reading the anthology was a masterclass in the ways in which Indigenous communities can draw on their cultural strengths to transform themselves and to offer solutions to global challenges in the 21st century.

In the poem ‘Story Tree’, co-authored by the poet and Yankunytjatjara woman Ali Cobby Eckermann and Joy Harjo, a writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the reader is gifted the great privilege of listening to an intimate conversation between two renowned writers in the form of an exchange of letters. Each correspondence is addressed to ‘Sister’, evoking a sense of familiarity – an image of family members in conversation at the kitchen table, sharing news from home. Writing of her home in Tulsa, Harjo reflects that

Down the street the ashes of the fires we left behind in the forced march
were rekindled beneath the Council Oak Tree. It is still there: our story and
the tree who holds it in place, and the memory of fire. 

(6)

Remembering what was taken in the past, Harjo goes on to acknowledge what was being taken in the present by Covid-19, stating, “And now the pandemic hunts us Indians, takes us, / especially those of us who are older.” She shares that these burdens are also taking her rest and sleep: “I lay my body down. My mind does not slow for sleep. It has no place to rest.” Eckermann’s reply mourns the destruction of forests in her own home:

You and I know old trees hold memories. It is tragic these trees have
been destroyed. No factual re-telling of first contact is encouraged here.
So much is denied when truth hangs dismal in the air 

(8)

The destruction of trees and the erasure of a landscape cared for through Indigenous knowledge become an analogy for the erasure of Indigenous truths of colonial violence and dispossession. Both writers lament colonial disruption to their cultures and sing for regeneration, knowing too well how precarious cultural life can be in colonial landscapes, with Harjo writing: “Here we are on the verge of shift. We lost three culture-carriers within days. / Others are on ventilators, turning toward the next sacred story” (7). In a moment of deep intimacy, the writers share their sorrow for what Eckermann describes as “a desolate land barren of trees” and their voices harmonise in melancholy song for regeneration (9).

Elsewhere, Narungga woman and poet Natalie Harkin and Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson come together in the poem ‘we are the moon’. Across multiple pages, the two esteemed writers reflect on Indigenous women’s role in supporting their families and communities to survive and resist the ongoing impacts of colonisation, with Harkin describing their situation as:

we are running somewhere between dogged  
resolve trepidation and fatigue             and like all the
grandmothers before us who created everything from
nothing             we know             there is so much work to 
do

(14)

The tenderness of sharing sorrow and burden is deeply moving, and particularly so when Harkin offers Simpson a promise: “we will collect your tears / weave every drop back / to you when you can weep no more     we will warm you / against this chill” (16). The sense of global Indigenous women’s solidarity is triumphant: “sister     please know this your every missing child / we love     your every precious bond we cradle     your / every stolen baby we kiss”. A global Indigenous identity and movement that transcends colonial borders invites the reader to reflect on the power of Indigenous culture and practices of kinship-making to overcome division, with Simpson offering in return: “we spread out the pieces between us     sewing one to / the next     patching and repairing     weaving / and braiding” (20).

This practice of weaving and repair is embedded in both Woven and A Savage Turn. Both collections represent an exchange of perspectives and lived experiences and invite the reader to be present with the speakers, hear news from their homelands, listen to their stories and heed their wisdom. The conversations shared within Woven and A Savage Turn are intimate and unguarded and abundantly generous in their storytelling about Country and kin. In Woven, it is this storytelling that weaves together not only the writers, but also the writers and readers who share in the authors’ stories, laughter and tears. These connections criss-cross lands, rivers and seas that were never created to separate us but to nurture us and to be shared with kin. In A Savage Turn, Luke Patterson defiantly weaves Indigenous assertions of sovereignty back into the foundation of Australian nationhood and Indigenous stories of Country and kin back into narratives of national identity. At a time when the fabrics of communities and nations are being torn apart by division, being taught to weave with respect, reciprocity and relationality is more important than ever.