Custodians of the Land: Environmental Destruction and Aboriginal Identity in Tara June Winch’s The Yield

Abstract

While mainstream discussions around the Anthropocene often fail to recognise the existence of different vulnerabilities to the climate crisis, Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch’s The Yield (2019) provides a fundamental Indigenous perspective on the issues of climate change, environmental destruction and land ownership. Through three different narratives spanning over two hundred years, Winch’s critically acclaimed novel follows the main character August Gondiwindi as she returns to her Australian hometown to fend off plans to turn it into a mining site. This article explores the novel’s depiction of what Robert Nixon (2011) describes as ‘slow violence’ of climate change, which clearly underlies the connection between environmental destruction and settler colonialism. Furthermore, it investigates the portrayal of the interconnected relationship between Aboriginal people and Country. Intertwining the narrative with the recovery of the Wiradjuri language, Winch sets out to “regenerate Country” (Bartha-Mitchell 2024) and stresses the importance of non-Western epistemologies and knowledge in the context of the Anthropocene.