This is a book that has some very interesting content and I enjoyed delving into Tasma Walton's story. It is a difficult read adn at times I found it hard to understand where the author was coming form and what she was trying to get across. I like reading the history of people and places and found this to be a book that tells of happenings in the past.

All in all a decent book but was not really my cup of tea. I can see if could be a good book but needs to be written in a way that more people can enjoy reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster (Australia) for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

Reading Boonwurrung writer and Aboriginal actress, Tasma Walton's novel, I Am Nannertgarrook on National Sorry Day, felt especially poignant. It's about her ancestor's abduction from her idyllic seaside life in Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay, Victoria) by sealers. It emphasises the way Nannertgarrook is not just stolen from her immediate family, but also from the handing down of cultural knowledge and ceremonies, the country she knows so intimately, and her saltwater kin, like babayin betayil (mother whale). Seeing her robbed of these rich and enduring connections shows just how much we have to be sorry for.

With all the definitions at the back, it isn't the easiest novel to read on a Kindle, so suggest a paper copy, as there is a lot of community language in it. However, even without definitions, it's pretty apparent what is going on: "Men, white as the ochre of death, relentless slaughterers of the koormam. Sealers." Life before we came to this continent looked pretty idyllic: "Women and children going about their saltwater business, diving for abalone, fishing, gathering shells and kelp, holding their sacred ceremonies". What a mess we made of it.

Walton cleverly illustrates Indigenous ways of resource management throughout the novel: "Careful farming of Biik's abundant plains over many seasons means our murnong grow long and strong in family clusters, often bigger than a man's hand. As always, when we separate the yams from their family cluster, we make sure to put one back. This way she can sprout new babies for the next harvest, and the cycle sustains itself over again." By comparison through sealing, whaling, and even capturing birds and women, white men behave: "Like a toddler, they just grab what they want." There is rape, including child rape, death, and violence in this book, and it's sad, but Walton is a good storyteller, and the narrative pulls you through with yearning for Nannertgarrook to see her beloved Biik again.

Tasma Walton, I Am Nannertgarrook, Simon & Schuster (Australia) | S&S Bundyi, April 2025.

Thank you, Net Galley, and Simon & Schuster, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Tasma Walton’s I Am Nannertgarrook is so far removed from my recall of her as the pleasant enough young police officer in Blue Heelers that I suffered elements of the dissonance that, at a level far beyond my experience, must impact indigenous Australians at levels unimaginable every day of their lives. It was a good way to begin reading this heartbreaking novel with its beautiful images of Nannertgarrook’s life in her own setting, where indeed she is Nannertgarrook, and the revulsion for a vastly different life after her captivity when her being is brutally questioned with her renaming as Eliza or no-one.

The first half of the book is a revelation that bears rereading. Walton’s rendition of indigenous life is beautifully woven, with women’s business in the forefront, but the coming together of families after their individual activities are completed, warm, loving, and full of humour. Walton draws us into lives that are complete with domestic and public tasks and events, together with the overarching world of Indigenous spirituality, the land and sea, and its inhabitants. On the outskirts of these lives, harmonious with the environment and with each other, hover the sealers. They bludgeon the seals with little concern for anything but their livelihood, and eventually bludgeon a mother and child, leaving their bodies for the Indigenous community to care for and mourn.

The second half of the book takes place in the sealers’ environment – brutal, uncaring, with values far removed from those experienced though Nannertgarrook’s early life. She and other women from her community are captured, enslaved, bear the sealers’ children and are given English names. Although I would have been satisfied with less of this period, its brutality being well described throughout Nannertgarrook’s lengthy life on various islands with her sealer captor. However, some of the detail provides valuable insight into the superior Indigenous hunting practices, their links with the land and their family and community feelings and beliefs. Records of the time, taken by an insensitive white researcher who appears on the island, provide yet more material about relationships between white and Indigenous people. Unsurprisingly, although outwardly benign in contrast with the sealers’ behaviour, they are brutal in their own way. Nannertgarrook’s eventual departure from the island when her captor falls ill is far from the return home she dreamed about, again demonstrating the benign brutality of white denial of her personhood.

There is a glossary of indigenous words, which is useful. However, the words become part of the reader’s language long before this. As awkward as I found this sometimes, the words being so far from my knowledge, they played a part in drawing me into the novel. After all, the Indigenous groups brought together on the sealers’ islands, being from different communities also had to communicate in unfamiliar language. They ached to understand each other well beyond any desire to be part of the language that would give them entry to the sealers’ world. Walton says that the next novel she writes will not be so harrowing, and I look forward to it. However, I feel privileged to have been invited into this one, with its mixture of beauty and suffering.

Personally this is a genre and story that I love and enjoy reading but unfortunately I was unable to capture the essence of the story. I understood the concept of the story yet found it difficult to grasp and failed to hold onto my attention. Even though I wasn’t able to fully understand or comprehend the story I still wrote this review to inform the author and publisher that it maybe a great story but not all readers might not be able to have a grasp of the story or being able to their attention held to finish reading the book. One day I will read the book again and update my review.

An important book, narrative of an indigenous Australian woman stolen by white slavers and her story of capture. There is a strong contrast of her life before capture and then her enslaved life. Difficult to read at times and an important book to help everyone understand the past and the impact it still has on life in Australia today. Should be compulsory school reading. Thank you to the author for what must have been a hard story to tell. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.