Published in Overland Issue 232 Spring 2018 Uncategorized Introducing Overland 232 Jacinda Woodhead ‘Once upon a time, there was a first sentence. I wasn’t sure what to write after that.’ There isn’t a contributor here (or perhaps anywhere) who wouldn’t concur with Mel Campbell’s sentiment on beginnings. All the columnists in this edition muse on startings and endings. How do we begin anything, asks Campbell. What if endings are no longer quite so … final, asks Giovanni Tiso. Kestrels, disenfranchisement and the lives of dogs preoccupy Tony Birch. Alison Croggon remembers that when she was four, a witch flew out of her ear. Often the process of assembling a magazine is an act of collage – seek out stories, poems and essays, arrange, rearrange, glue. Individual works reference each other, and the world external, too. We hope that these shapes, sounds and lines of imagery and contentions disrupt assumption, dichotomies and landscape, and make room for new permutations. Because of Bella Li’s astonishing art works, I have been thinking a lot about collage. A magazine like Overland is not strictly collage, of course. We are not only ‘showing’ (hello, Walter Benjamin); our writers are making arguments about our histories and present. Obviously, Li’s art would be impossible without the work of many other artists – a notion examined by Rebecca Giblin in her critique of copyright, fair use and the public good. AS considers artists too, in terms of their responsibilities in depicting precarity – as we enter an age where precarity is unlikely to end. This new age is something Elise Klein studies in detail in her case for a basic income. Jessica Zibung and Nell Butler interrogate reactions to ‘otherness’, defined here as being mixed-race or homeless. There is also Joanna Horton’s provocative polemic against apologising for privilege – or health care. Elsewhere, Carol Que documents a series of refugee rights protests at the NGV, which resulted in the gallery severing its ties to Wilson Security; the essay illustrates how critical organising will be in ending the detention industry. Finally, from Australian colonialism to Israel’s approach to the desert, Barbara Bloch’s account of the Jewish National Fund’s decades-long attempts to grow forests in the Naqab/Negev, and thus erase any existence of the Bedouin people who reside there. Read the rest of Overland 232 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jacinda Woodhead Jacinda Woodhead is a former editor of Overland and current law student. More by Jacinda Woodhead Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 7 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Victoria police back down, is this a case for defunding? Crystal McKinnon and Meriki Onus After three arduous years, Victoria Police have today withdrawn their charges against two organisers of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. Whilst we welcome their decision, we note that their mediocrity gave them no other option. Emboldened by their state-sanctioned impunity, Victoria Police’s ineptitude hit a dead end. Pigs cannot fly. First published in Overland Issue 228 6 February 20237 February 2023 Aboriginal Australia Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali: listen, hear, think, understand from our sacred Mother Earth and our Water Winaga-li Gunimaa Gali Collective To winaga-li, Gomeroi/Kamilaroi people must be able to access Gunimaa. They must be able to connect and re-connect. Over 160 years of colonisation has privileged intensive agriculture, grazing and heavily extractive water management regimes, enabled by imposed property regimes and governance systems. Gunimaa and Gali still experience the violent repercussions of these processes, including current climate changes which are exacerbating impacts, as droughts become longer, floods and heat extremes become more intense, and climatic zones shift, impacting on species’ viability and biodiversity.