Writing Postcolonial Australia : Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians after the Bicentenary

The British colonization of Australia created confrontation and conflict between Indigenous people and settlers with Indigenous people increasingly marginalized and eliminated. When Australia celebrated the bicentenary of its national foundation in 1988, it also became an opportunity to highlight the racism and colonialism within the country’s past. In this respect, the bicentenary served as a turning point for reconsidering Australian history as Indigenous activists protested British settlement and invasion. The landscape of Australian literature was also altered in 1988. Over the last three decades, which can be termed the “period of reconciliation,” literary works that affirmed Indigenous rights and tackled colonial history appeared and the writings of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors began to resonate with each other around these issues. This paper explores the trajectory of Australian literature over the last thirty years and elaborates on the ways in which postcolonial literature has played a role in the reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians