Leonie Norrington’s Community Picture Book Project

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Author Leonie Norrington has been working with Indigenous communities to write and illustrate children’s stories. Leonie grew up in the sixties in a remote Aboriginal community at a time when Aboriginal people were being put into settlements away from towns. She was brought up by an Aboriginal woman, Clare Bush, at Barunga in Southern Arnhemland, and still has close family connections and responsibilities for her and her extended family. The knowledge of Indigenous culture Leonie obtained growing up and living with remote Indigenous people all her life, and her connections across Indigenous communities in Northern Australia is invaluable in her work on these projects. She is passionate about writing books with Indigenous people, for Indigenous people;

"Humans speak, sing, read and write themselves into being. We understand ourselves, our society and our place in society through story. It is through personal experience (the stories we live), the stories we hear, read, and see, throughout our lives that we learn to understand the world and our community. That’s why children’s literature which reaffirms children’s identities, gives them good role models and helps them see resilience and success are considered so important in Australia."

The communities and their books

The most recent book project was based at Gapuwiyak near the upper reaches of the Buckingham River in the Northern Territory. Leonie spent time there in July helping to facilitate storytelling, and the Indigenous Literacy Project paid for Sally Heindrich and Beth Norling to work for a week with women from the women's centre, the creche, the mums and bubs club, the school, and the arts centre. Sharee (a young mum) wrote a book for babies called ‘Tiffany’s Day’, which is illustrated by Sally Heindrich. A group of women from the Women’s Centre have written a book together of traditional lullabies and old missionary lullabies translated into language. They have also recorded the songs onto tape and CD, and have written translations of all the songs in both language and English. Leonie wrote a book with the schoolchildren for 0-3 year olds, called ‘Shapeshifter’, and Beth has begun to work on the illustrations. The group also worked with a fine artist Alison Wunungmura on two stories that she has written in English and language and has started to illustrate herself.

Leonie also worked on Look see, Look at Me with women from three northern communities (Wugularr, Barunga and Manyalalluk). The women were horrified that the rest of Australia believed the negative reports that led to the ‘Intervention’, so were determined to produce a book that would show the rest of Australia that Indigenous parenting is love and care. After seeing copies of You and Me,Our Place the women wanted Dee Huxley to illustrate their story. The Indigenous Literacy Project paid for Dee Huxley to work with the women for a week and she created the roughs for the picture book, talking and negotiating with people from the same three communities.

Leonie had always wanted to do books with communities, but found it hard to get funding to take people out there – “Community life is so different that I think people have to go and experience the joys and colour becore they can interpret it in a literary way,” she says. You and me; our place, which Leonie wrote with the long grass community of Darwin and with the illustrator Dee Huxley was her own initiative, and quickly became a favourite at Riverbend Books where the Indigenous Literacy Project began. “They were keen to show that although their land is now a ‘white fella’ city that their traditional attachment and ownership of the land is still strong and valid,” Leonie says of the long grass community. Leonie involved the community at all stages of making the book, and continues to do so in her work in communities with the ILP.

Leonie is the author of The Barrumbi Kids series, The Devil You Know, You and Me; Our Place and Last Muster.