Books
Natalie Harkin
APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA
Narungga creative researcher Natalie Harkin’s archival-poetic practice was recognised with the 2020 RAKA Award, for the best poetry by an Indigenous writer published between 2015 and 2020. Attending to Aboriginal women’s labour history, her work in the colonial archives addresses the Australian government’s system of indentured domestic servitude and slavery. Her book APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA reveals a part of Australian history that governments are still actively working to conceal.
At the interface of art, activism, history and memoir, the epistolary structure of APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA includes poetry, essay, memorialisation, extracts from colonial archives, articles, letters, family photos and images of Harkin’s compelling visual arts practice. Along with impressive typography, the design of the book is invigorating and enhances the multilayered, intergenerational investigation. It is an offering of true crime that allows the reader to surveil the surveillor.
Domestic service file notes are potent records of the sinister intent of Commonwealth policies. Unfettered surveillance assesses Aboriginal girls from the age of 11 for their physical and behavioural capabilities. Correspondence shows a paper trail of slave-trading and stolen wages that betray the rationale for policies of assimilation, child removal and institutionalisation. Punitive measures of control and oppression by employers and authorities appear alongside denigrating language and the redirection of wages into state and government coffers.
Historic injustice bleeds into contemporary censorship with then South Australian attorney-general Michael Atkinson’s ruling to block records from 1866 to 1968 that relate to the administration of Aboriginal people. Harkin captures this in the aptly named section, “Swept Under the Carpet”.
Part two, “Memory Stories”, enters the blood archive to convey the overriding societal value of truth-telling. Alongside evocative black-and-white photographs of Aboriginal domestics, the survival/nurture stories from their children and grandchildren are tender-hearted, like a yarn at the kitchen table. These stories reconcile the experiences of their loved ones with pride, love and strength.
As a descendant of three generations of Aboriginal domestics, I found the impact of the final part of Harkin’s APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA profound. Multilayered images from her exhibition of the same name summoned memories of my mum, the times I spent sobbing in freedom of information offices or at home alone trying to clean up the colonial mess I’ve inherited. Through her opulent artworks and archival-poetics, Harkin illuminates a dark history to embody a future archive that is grounded in truth and the promise of community spirit. The more we share, the more we learn, the more we heal.
Wakefield Press, 224pp, $49.95
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 27, 2025 as "APRON-SORROW / SOVEREIGN-TEA".
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