Death of a River: the Work of Teena McCarthy

McCarthy is an Italian/Barkindji woman who is a descendant of The Stolen Generations. Her work documents her family’s displacement and Aboriginal Australians’ loss of culture and their ‘hidden’ history.

In Richard Flanagan’s 1994, award-winning novel, Death of a River Guide, as the mixed-race main character lies trapped, drowning, he sees his life revisited in three stories; his own life, his parents’, and the history of Tasmania (Australia) itself in Aboriginal ‘spiritual-dreaming’ terms.

There are three strands to nearly every Aboriginal person’s life