Can Indigenous contemporary literature of Australia sustain itself by becoming international?

Nourishing and sustaining cultural diversity in today’s constantly changing world, with all its complexities and socio-cultural peculiarities of people and their creations, and at times of an aggressive economic Anglophone globalisation of cultures and literatures, is a task of an imperative formation that needs to be cared for at many levels of the social life and organisation. In Australia, to maintain one’s own culture is to be persistently aware of personal heritage and to be able to elaborate traditions. As time passes quickly and we live in a world that praises swiftness and efficiency, money and mass culture, losing the mother tongue and become estranged from our cultural environments occurs frequently. Everyday mainstream cultural reality pushes us to concentrate on our own area of work. An immediate result is that our own cultures fall down into the ghostly area of our life and mind. Our favourite mother tongue expressions, heroes, legends and customs stay in the backdrop of our Anglophone everyday realm. The same way as phantoms are distant and faceless, our own cultures become secluded and even confusing. Most people simply do not have the time or opportunity to explore the cultural riches with which our ancestors entrusted us. In consequence, on the socio-political scene, a balance and development of small cultures1 become indistinct. Communities under the dominance of majority cannot foresee the future of their culture, which becomes a mere folklore, throughout which a person’s unique cultural identity is further scattered and eventually distributed through the main cultural stream