About Dr. Eugenia Flynn
Dr. Eugenia Flynn is a Larrakia, Tiwi, Chinese Malaysian and Muslim writer and researcher. Her research has a primary focus on Indigenous literature and sits at the intersection between literary studies, creative writing, critical Indigenous studies, and studies in race and gender. Eugenia’s essays, short stories and poems have been published widely.
Publications
Flynn, E. (2015). The classroom. The Lifted Brow, (28), 59–60. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.635500248147900
Flynn, E. (2018). Longbum. The Lifted Brow, (40), 17–19. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.035967339344912
Flynn, E. (2022). An Indigenous grand narrative voice: Alexis wright’s carpentaria as Indigenous epistemology. Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 44(2), 1–15. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.728301279539920
Flynn, E. (2023). Australia in three books. Meanjin, 82(1), 24–27. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.030583985052148
Flynn, E., & Caldwell-Bright, B. (2023). Editorial. Meanjin, 82(3), 19. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.329754971573807
Flynn, E., Cox, A., & Goodwin, T. (2008b). “Options for the Future of Indigenous Australia”: Young Indigenous People at the Australia 2020 Summit. Indigenous Law Bulletin, 7(5), 6–8. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.399305555677246
Grant, K., Allam, R., Mohak, S., Morrissey, P., Flynn, E., Davis, E., & Stephenson, P. (2010). Popularity of Islam growing among Indigenous Australians: With a 60%25 increase in followers in the last five years, Islam is now the fastest growing religion among Indigenous Australians. Living Black. Tvnews.tex20104501654. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/tvnews.tex20104501654
Lin Chin, L., Allam, R., Stephenson, P., Flynn, E., Mokak, S., & Davis, E. (2010). “Islam Dreaming”: Islam is the fastest growing religion among Aboriginals. World News Australia. Tvnews.tex20104501527. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/tvnews.tex20104501527
Wilson, N., & Flynn, E. (2016). Our Stories: Eugenia Flynn – Ep 26. . Edutv.1398042. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/edutv.1398042
Video Transcript
How would you like to introduce yourself?
So my name is Eugenia Flynn. I’m Vice-Chancellor’s Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow here at RMIT University and I’m a Larrakia and Tiwi woman from the Top End, but I grew up on Kaurna Country in Adelaide and I’m also Chinese, Malaysian and Muslim.
Do you think of yourself as a literary writer or an academic or both?
Yeah, I mean I guess I think about myself in lots of different ways. I don’t necessarily define myself by what I do. I enjoy what I do but I don’t, you know, you kind of have to write those bios about yourself but I, you know, I don’t really identify with any of those things. I think the things that I do is I like working with research. I like the kind of scholarship that I do. I like the writing that I do so I definitely like literature and creative writing and the written form and I like helping other people in the arts as well. I like working with creative makers whether that is in music and sound or if that’s in theatre or other people in writing, yeah, anything.
How do your writing and sense of identity/identities correlate?
So my writing, I guess I started writing, you know, when I was a kid, if we go all the way back, you know, when I was a kid my dad instilled a really strong love of books in me and my siblings and I kind of tell this funny story about how if I wanted a toy or something that my dad would buy me a book or a teddy bear instead and also just have really strong memories of going to the library and borrowing like the maximum number of books and then just speeding through them. So I think books and then writing has always been a huge part of my life and I guess I started writing kind of non-fiction, you know, at a time when there were lots of, I guess the kind of democratisation of media and writing particularly online, whereas, you know, prior to that it was very much kind of media and editors and publishing houses had very tight control over what got published and what people were able to read and so I didn’t see myself reflected anywhere or my thoughts and opinions. So I started writing online about things that were of interest to me and as someone who grew up Aboriginal and Chinese and then someone who then became a Muslim kind of not long after September 11, you know, I felt that there wasn’t a perspective that talked about the kinds of racialisation and the kind of racism that exists in this country and particularly the gendered elements of that racism and the kinds of the way that race and racism and colony and gender work in this country because a lot of the writing that existed about that often came from overseas and particularly the US. So that’s why I started writing what I did and found a natural audience for that and then I was really encouraged by other older women, particularly, you know, kind of like big sisters, particularly black women, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, but also other women as well, women in the Muslim community who were already academics, these women really encouraged me to pursue kind of a PhD so I did that and I guess my writing and my academic work in thinking critically about ideas to do with race and racism and in particular about Indigenous knowledges and the way that colonisation really, you know, colonisation is first and foremost about land, right, but it permeates because there’s a racist logic behind it. It permeates everything. So even the way that Indigenous storytelling and Indigenous knowledges, even, you know, colonisation seeks to, you know, either appropriate those things or subjugate them, you know, really to oppress them or to silence them or ignore them. So those are the kinds of things that I think about in my research and I think that there is a very strong relationship between that and literature.
Can you tell us about the framework and approach for reading that you propose in your PhD?
Yeah, so my PhD, you know, I started in wanting to think about creative practice and I guess thinking about producing a piece of work or a creative work in writing that kind of looked at these ideas of race and gender in particular and I moved from there. You know, I ended up doing, I guess, what some people would call possibly like a literary theory PhD. I really was inspired. I was working with my supervisor and she was giving me things to read and I was really inspired by the work of Robert Warrior who is a North American Indigenous scholar and I was really, you know, just thinking about these ideas about knowledge in particular and thinking about our knowledges and our storytelling and yeah, just thinking about kind of literature and text in that way. So my PhD, you know, they’re just one of those things, isn’t it? Like research is just you think you’re going to end up here but you, you know, you kind of go round and around and then you end up somewhere completely different. So the thing that I was, I ended up with, you know, through experimentation and reading and thinking through the ideas was, you know, thinking about Indigenous paradigm. We often get told that that is culture and I think, you know, thinking about a worldview and I had a light bulb moment in thinking about, you know, when I was a little girl and the only books that were available to me were from the UK, you know, they were Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl and then it became America and it was Judy Blume and whoever else and then obviously white Australian authors but thinking about, you get indoctrinated into thinking that that is the only system of learning that going through primary school and high school and tertiary education in Western, the Western knowledge system, that that’s the only knowledge system that exists. And so in doing the PhD, it was very, you know, light bulb moment for me in thinking about actually I have been in lots of ways indoctrinated into another system but we call it culture or we don’t necessarily think about it, you know, and I was very privileged I think to have that ability to have that, to grow up in that way and to have a sense of a way of being and doing and knowing that is fundamentally indigenous, you know, that’s tied to our sovereignty and that was important to me. So I think that that, having that realisation that that is a perspective that I bring to how I do my research but also when I’m reading books, when I’m writing my own text, you know, that that’s the perspective that I bring was really important. So my PhD research effectively proposes a, you know, a paradigmatic approach to reading and engaging with our literature, with our text. So looking at kind of five books across Indigenous literary history in this context, in the Australian context, you know, looking at those books and reading them from that perspective, from our indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing and yeah, just thinking through that as a model for the way that we can read. How does this proposition intervene the academy? Well, for me as a blackfulla the purpose of research has to be for our mob and what’s the purpose? Why would I come here and be this and do this if I didn’t think that there was some kind of benefit for the mob? So that’s always kind of something that you’re thinking about. It’s not just sort of research for inquiry’s sake. I mean, I think that that’s fun, but yeah, that was important to me. So, you know, in proposing this kind of model, this way of reading or wanting to think really deeply about our ways of engaging with our text, we have a marketplace of books and ideas and we have a publishing industry and a literary sector that’s majority non-Indigenous, right? And so if you look across literary history, you can see there’s the appropriation of Indigenous stories. So the colonists would appropriate our song and words, they would make things up or they would take things and then publish them. And then, you know, you just see this kind of criticism of Indigenous writing and text that it’s, you know, maybe it’s not enough of it. We, you know, we, you know, don’t think that this text is very good because it’s not up to kind of the Western literary standard, that kind of thing. So this kind of supremacy, in a way, kind of permeates. And so when we ignore all of that and when we say, what do we think on our own terms as blackfullas about our own literature? It’s about asserting that power and that sovereignty over our own words. And I think that that’s important to do on a number of different levels. I think that that’s important in terms of literary criticism because if we go back to that idea about publishing industry and we think about the literary sector, you know, the non-Indigenous majority are always going to drive trends in that marketplace. You know, what they want to read, what they think is interesting, what they think is good words, you know, what they think is written well. So when we have our own approach to our own reading, I think that that is important because it means, you know, we might think something is really good because we have an ear that’s attuned to the way something is written. You know, we’ve got an eye for it. And so we can see the humour in something or we can see the story behind the story. And I think that that’s important for us to assert that. And then I think in terms of Indigenous knowledges, you know, and this kind of thing about Indigenous research methodologies that people are always talking about, I think that the Academy has a lot to catch up with, you know. I don’t know that I think that terms like decolonizing or this idea of indigenising, you know, curriculum, for example, I think that these things are admirable. But I think until a university, I don’t know, gives land back, a lot of them are very big landholders. I don’t think that you can decolonize and I don’t know why we would indigenise. But I think I’m very interested in using the resources of universities and being part of this discipline called critical Indigenous studies and thinking through, you know, I don’t know whether translation is right or documentation, but, you know, I think that there is, there should be space for us to think through our knowledges and our ways of producing knowledge and disseminating knowledge, refining knowledge, all of those sorts of things. I think that there’s real value in that.
What has been your experience within universities?
Yeah, so my work sits between literary studies and creative writing and those disciplines and this field of critical Indigenous studies. I think that there is some overlap at times. I think that the academy can be, you know, people in their disciplines need to be open and ready to other epistemologies and ways of thinking and ways of doing. And I think that, you know, I think my work has been received well, you know, by people. I think you have to get on and do the work and that’s what I’m interested in. I think that there is a lot of institutions that have been historically exclusive. So there’s a lot of work that has to happen on making those spaces inclusive. And I’m very privileged to be in a research-only position, to be in a postdoc position. So I don’t have to be part of that agenda of making the university institution safe, culturally safe. That’s other people’s job and I’m very, very, very grateful to them. But I can put my head down and get on with the work.
Can you tell us about the focuses or lines of enquiry for your current post-doctoral project?
Yeah, so I’m looking at my own writing, so getting back into my creative writing practice and thinking through Indigenous ways of writing. I’m super interested in that. And I’m super interested in the idea of literature and storytelling as our knowledge kind of production and dissemination. So I’m interested in looking at that and looking at, you know, positioning Indigenous people as knowers on things like race and racism and colony and gender. And when we do that, when we tell, when we have that knowledge and we put that into our literature and our storytelling, yeah, what does that mean? That’s what I’m interested in.
Can you share about the project you’ve just been funded by Informit’s Cultural Fund to undertake?
Yeah, so it’s an idea that I’ve had. I have worked previously, you know, as a writer and as a guest co-editor, so for a literary journal and I guess drawing on those experiences, I’m interested in our own publication and, you know, thinking through what does it mean when you have editors who are blackfullas editing our own words and I’m interested in the scholarship on Indigenous literature and text and writing and I guess I’m interested in, you know, having a publication, so I’ve been funded to start a publication and we’ll see how that goes, but, you know, to start up a publication that publishes not only Indigenous text and literature and writing but also scholarly writing about Indigenous literature, text and writing, so yeah, I think that there is a lot of really great work about decolonising and indigenising and pushing into the mainstream. I think that that’s all really important work but I’m also just super interested in us talking to ourselves and referencing and citing each other and having that conversation and that discourse and that discussion amongst ourselves, you know, literary critique, you know, Aunty Jeanine Leane talks about black on black critique, so yeah, I’m interested in all of those things and exploring that through the journal. It doesn’t have a name yet. I want to work with a team of people so that’s sort of what the proposal is for and yeah, hopefully we’ll have a first issue out in the first half of next year.
How important is community for writers, especially First Nations writers?
Yeah, I mean I think that I don’t think as an Aboriginal writer that writing is something that happens on its own. I don’t think that writing happens in a vacuum. I think that our writing is something that, you know, we talk about with other blackfullas that we, you know, within the sector we come together and support each other. So I think that that’s really important, that sense of community. But also I would never do something without the mob behind me. I just, I wouldn’t start a project like this if I hadn’t spoken to people beforehand and had a yarn with them about what do you think about this idea? And, you know, if they told me that they thought it was a bad idea, I’d probably drop it, you know, because one, I know that they’ve got my back and they’re supportive. And number two, I wouldn’t do something if I thought that, you know, the community wasn’t behind it. So yeah, I think that sense of community is really important.
How is the rise and rise of Australian Indigenous literature shaping national identity/ies?
Yeah, well, I think that Australian national identity, it’s one of those things, isn’t it? You know, it is, it’s something that I’ve railed against in the past and I probably will continue to. I don’t believe in nationalism. I think that it’s in that sense of Australian nationalism. I think that Australian nationalism is white and patriarchal and I’m not interested in that. I think that Australian Indigenous writers, I think that we write for ourselves first and foremost and we write for each other. And if that finds an audience and that finds a readership because of the nature of the marketplace, we are a very small minority. So non-Indigenous people want to read those words and that’s great. I think that that’s wonderful and it finds an audience there. But I think the primary readership is ourselves. And I don’t know that we’re hugely, well, I can’t speak for everybody else, but I know that I’m not hugely interested in informing an Australian national identity. I think actually a lot of my writing writes against that sense of a national identity, particularly when we come out of, you know, we’ve been through a period of trying to solidify that national identity around things like Anzac mythology and what we aren’t, anti-immigration kind of policies and rhetoric and anti-native title and anti-reconciliation, anti-saying sorry, those kinds of things have been forging the national identity for a really long time. And I think that, you know, when you read a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing, a lot of it, whether it explicitly does or implicitly does indirectly, it rails against that and I’m, you know, pleased to be part of that community.
Do you feel that there is an increasing appreciation of First Peoples’ knowledges, culture and scholarship in the Australian mainstream?
Let’s be really clear that Indigenous people, blackfullas, have been doing work for a long time. And we’ve been resisting colonisation and working from within our own ways of being, knowing and doing for ages. So that body of work already exists. The fact that it is currently now being heard, I mean, that’s great. I think that that is part of the progress that is happening. If we come back to my research and what I was saying before about sector and industry and a marketplace for books and ideas, you have the majority non-Indigenous. We are a minority in numbers. So when we are a minority in numbers, we are, well, we have, as I said before, and we continue to assert our power and our sovereignty. And we do that through our literature and our text and our writing, through our scholarship as scholars, through our activism, through our community organising, through our health services, through our organisations, all of those sorts of things. So, but the majority non-Indigenous have the numbers in lots of different ways. So when things trend positively, I think that that’s great. And I think of the people who have come before me who fought really hard because as I said before, that is something that has been happening for a really long time, whether it was recognised by the mainstream or not. So that work has happened for a long time. It continues to. But there is definitely a turning point in non-Indigenous people who make up that majority in previously ignoring that purposely for a long time and then through kind of, I guess, the general silencing that is built into Australian society and into the institutions. So I think that a lot of that exists. So, you know, there’s a trend away from that kind of wilful, we’re going to ignore your efforts here and the work that you’re doing and then, you know, the kind of subsequent, we don’t know that you’re doing anything because we’re just, we can’t hear it. So I think that there’s definitely a turn away from that, right? And so you can see that politically, you can see that in the, you know, knowledge production, in Western Academy, all of those sorts of things across all different parts of Australian society. There’s now an openness, I think, to listening and hearing after a long time of shameful silencing. So we think that that’s positive, right? I don’t disagree with that. My concern, which is why my research is positioned in the way that it is and why I have the kinds of ideas that I have about the literature that we write that I don’t think, that I think is concerned about conversations between us as Indigenous people. If it finds an audience with non-Indigenous people, that’s great and that’s fine. But I think our primary concern is actually between us. I place my work, both my creative work and my research in that place and I position it in that way because we can’t rely on the whims of the majority. What if the far right continues to grow in strength and in numbers and that trend swings back? What if we get a Conservative government and the silencing returns? We can’t rely on the goodwill of non-Indigenous people who are the majority. We have to sit in our own power and our own strength and our own sovereignty first and foremost. That’s why I’m interested in our conversation with each other.
Beyond your own work, what do you think is some of the most exciting Indigenous-led research underway?
I mean, I would love to support and shout out to people that I think are incredible scholars who are doing really, really important work. So I think in the creative kind of scholarship realm, there is a collective of really deadly black women in South Australia, Flinders University, who are doing incredible work. They are an artist collective called the Unbound Collective, and they are also all scholars in their own right who are working in both the creative arts and also in this discipline of critical Indigenous studies. And I think in the realm of critical Indigenous studies, there are people who are just incredible thinkers. Of course, distinguished professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, who’s had a huge influence on my work and also associate professor Crystal McKinnon, who works in criminology and is just an incredible thinker, extremely generous and just, yeah, incredible thinker. And I’ve also been influenced by people like Professor Irene Watson and Professor Larissa Behrendt. I think that they’re all just incredible thinkers in this space.