Sexual violation and the "amoral" woman in Aboriginal verse

This essay examines the ways in which various Indigenous poets contest the ways in which Indigenous women and girls have been constructed within established and enduring hegemonic discourses. Many of the poems considered highlight how, within the Australian context, gender issues have often been overlooked in the pursuit of racial politics, how the abused woman figure is often disregarded in the rhetoric of (male gendered) political struggle. Hence, in its exploration of what it means to be an Indigenous woman in Australia, much of the poetry in the present inquiry situates its female subject as conspicuously oppressed yet politically potent. Moreover, in simultaneously gendering notions of Aboriginality and challenging racialized notions of gender, these writers are able to employ the poetic form to envisage a space where alternative discourses of gender and race can exist.