‘A dream’ was how Bundjalung illustrator Charmaine Ledden-Lewis described working on children’s book Found with award-winning author Bruce Pascoe. Since her first reading of Pascoe’s manuscript, Ledden-Lewis discovered that artistically she went on a completely different tangent to the author’s initial concept.
‘I’ve learnt that he didn’t set out to write something about the Stolen Generation, and yet, it was really obvious to me that that’s what the story was about,’ Ledden-Lewis told ArtsHub.
From First Nations publisher Magabala Books, Found follows the story of a lost calf trying to find his family.
Children’s book Found by Bruce Pascoe and illustrations by Charmaine Ledden-Lewis.
‘I was thinking of people in distress; animals in distress,’ Bruce Pascoe said of Found.
‘What I was writing about was sadness of an animal. And, you know, the fact that it has correlations with the Stolen Generation is because anything sad, and violent that happens to people, happens to us all,’ Pascoe told ArtsHub.
‘It’s just one of those things that is a parallel between the natural world and the human world. You can always find those parallels,’ he said.
First Nations publishers understand
Ledden-Lewis, the winner of the 2019 Kestin Award ($10,000), said that it was Magabala’s encouragement that allowed her to express the story in this way.
‘I felt really emotional,’ she said. ‘But also really privileged; really privileged that I live in time and in a country where I can speak out about this [the Stolen Generation] and know that there have been generations in my family before me who haven’t been able to talk about this.’
Pascoe’s described his own journey with the First Nations publishing house as nothing but positive.
‘Some of the unhappiest publishing experiences I’ve had have all been with the bigger publishers,’ he said. ‘Simply because their view of Australian history and my view of Australian history never matched. I was having to defend the Aboriginal history of Australia. And with Magabala we never even talk about it.’
‘Some of the unhappiest publishing experiences I’ve had have all been with the bigger publishers.’
– Bruce Pascoe
Pascoe emphasised the contribution to culture Magabala have made over the years. ‘They’re Small Publisher of the Year [Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) 2020] for a very good reason, and yet Australians seem to be unaware that this is an Aboriginal publishing house, and has produced some of the best books in the country.’
Ledden-Lewis added, ‘They have so much heart and soul.’
She said the support Magabala gave her ‘definitely empowered me to be more vocal about my experiences as a person who is Indigenous, but doesn’t necessarily look Indigenous.
‘You know, and there’s a lot of people like myself in the world who perhaps don’t have access to culture because it was taken from them – because it was stolen from them. And Magabala were really sensitive to my perspective on that, and really nurtured what I wanted to contribute with the book.’
Charmain Ledden-Lewis. Photographer: Tristram Miller.
Reflections on BLM
‘You know, I think we’re living at a pretty great time at the moment with Black Lives Matter movement,’ she said. ‘It’s really wonderful to feel that you’re contributing in a good way in history. To something that’s moving away from a bad place and moving towards something hopeful.’
Pascoe reflected that ‘it would be a disgrace if Black Lives Matter meant that suddenly Australians realised what had happened in their own history. It would be an absolute disgrace.
‘You know we shouldn’t be jolted into something because of something that happens in America. We have been sheltered by our own history. It really gets up my nose. We’re seeing how easily Australians absolve themselves of the history of this country,’ he said.
‘So you know Black Lives Matters is crucial, what happened in America is awful, and continues to happen there, but it also happened here.’
‘We’re seeing how easily Australians absolve themselves of the history of this country.’
– Bruce Pascoe
Using stories and illustrations to educate young people on Australia’s true history was something both artists are passionate about.
Picture books like Found are ‘a gentle way of perhaps introducing the next generation to what’s happened in our country,’ Ledden-Lewis said.
‘I know that when I was at school, things were very different,’ she continued. ‘I’m 38 this year, so it’s going back a bit, but I don’t think I would have been aware about the Stolen Generations or Aboriginal genocide in our own country unless my mum told me about it.
‘She’s a schoolteacher and she’s a proud Indigenous woman, and so she raised me with that. But I think it’s important that the non-Indigenous community have an awareness of that and you can start a young age,’ she said.
Read: First Nations and POC writers envision a new Australia
Pascoe said finding the right language to talk to children was ‘not hard at all.’
He said, ‘People under-rate children all the time. And I never talk down to kids. Tough concepts; happiness, unhappiness, you know kids can cope. They cope with it every day of their life. So I don’t think we should shield kids from these things. We should encourage them to engage, and obviously there’s a limit and there are appropriate things, but you talk down to kids at your peril,’ he said.
Found by Bruce Pascoe and illustrated by Charmaine Ledden-Lewis is published by Magabala Books.
