Review by Liz Dexter, 25 March 2025
In his life, he had made space for himself in the world of those who enjoyed the highest influence in Australia, as he did in the lives of the many Aboriginal people who knew him in their towns and communities, or living out in the bush across the country. With a great sense of fun, he challenged people with his endless wit and intellect. He made himself understandable in any situation. While speaking to eight hundred traditional landowners from across remote lands in Central Australia at the Kalkaringi Aboriginal Constitutional Convention in 1998, he told them, ‘I have got a sore arse from being kicked in the arse in Canberra from them mob telling me we get too much in the Territory’.
In this exceptional and profoundly important work of collective auto/biography, Alexis Wright captures facets of the life and times of Tracker Tilman. The book was first published in 2017 and is republished in the UK by And Other Stories, and has won multiple prizes. Tracker Tilman was an Aboriginal leader, entrepreneur and political thinker who worked right until his early death for Aboriginal self-determination, concentrating on land use and economic opportunities. He was irreverent, and determined and someone who clearly concentrated on the oral rather than the written, leaving few official records but a lot of information in the minds of the people who were related to him, were raised with him, worked with him, encountered him and came into political contact with him. These people’s testimonies are used by Wright to weave together a tapestry of oral history (she thanks her transcriber in the Acknowledgements for hearing words lost to the wind so one can only imagine the circumstances of recording the interviews!). Having known Tracker herself for many years, Wright is able to gather information from people as far back as Lois Bartram, house mother to Tracker on the Croker Island Mission, the residential school he and two of his brothers were removed to by the authorities when they were very young.
Alexis Wright is clear in her introduction that is impossible to know another person and all their nuances completely. And she explains that it would have been inappropriate to try to remember Tracker in a Western-style biography, tracing all his routes and analysing his life from one viewpoint, and that also he didn’t leave the trail of paperwork that’s commonly used for such endeavours, so instead she tried to use as many and various people’s memories and recollections as she could. This includes content from Tracker himself, as well as informal interviews with her questions recorded. So you see various events and issues from many different sides, giving a shifting but deep and rich narrative.
Beginning with a chaotic but important (and hilarious) “Walpiri invasion of Europe” when Tracker takes a group of activists and artists to the UN, the book takes us from Tracker’s very early life, thanks to pieces by house mother Lois, two of his brothers and some contemporaries. It’s notable here that characteristics such as being able to take in a lot of information, parse it and come up with clear messages from it and a constant need to educate himself, as well as a sort of cheerful, charismatic cheekiness which is evident throughout his life, are visible here. But as well, Lois takes it upon herself to educate her charges in history, social justice and world events, sharing with them the work of Black civil rights activists in the US, actions which I don’t believe were common in house mothers and other mission workers of those times or any. She cleverly interleaves Trackers’ and others’ narratives together, bringing different viewpoints to bear and always being clear that those characteristics were always there, right up until he was in hospital and somehow knew all of the staff and their business. It’s not a hagiography: plenty of people were riled and irritated by Tracker, usually only temporarily, and they express that as well as admiration.
Although it is a mark of a classic, or a Good Book generally, to be timeless and relatable to everyone, some books deserve to be read with a little context around them, and this is one of them, in my opinion. One could come to it “cold” so to speak, and I’d be interested to see what someone with no background knowledge at all gets from this book: a lot, I’d imagine, as it’s superlatively put together and has a good, solid scaffolding of supporting information. But I’d recommend having at least a passing acquaintance with settler colonialism in general and the Australian situation in particular to get the best out of this book. I’d recommend as a starting point Doris Pilkington / Nugi Garimara – “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence” and Anita Heiss (ed.) “Growing up Aboriginal in Australia” to get an idea of the residential school system (and how exceptional Lois Bartram was) and the intergenerational trauma of how Indigenous Australians have been treated from the “discovery” of Australia until now.
The aforementioned scaffolding helps the reader to navigate the book without needing specialist knowledge of land rights cases and disputes over mining, etc. The book is divided into sections with chapters within them and, usually, different people’s interviews included there. Terms in the text are glossed or short explanations provided within pieces. Then, footnotes explain actions or organisations in more depth. There’s a list of people, places and organisations in the back of the book, and short biographies of the contributors, so you never feel lost in a sea of contextless content, with the proviso of maybe having some background information as mentioned above.
A long book but a readable book and an important work of record, which has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction.
Liz Dexter keeps an eye on the prizes without feeling she has to read the whole of the long and short lists, and has a keen interest in settler colonialism and Indigenous issues. She blogs about reading, running and working from home at https://www.librofulltime.wordpress.com.
Alexis Wright, Tracker (And Other Stories, 2025). 978-1916751125), 618 pp., paperback original.
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