Quarterly Essay 11 Whitefella Jump Up

The Shortest Way to Nationhood

In Whitefella Jump Up, Germaine Greer suggests that embracing Aboriginality is the only way Australia can fully imagine itself as a nation. In a wide-ranging essay she looks at the interdependence of black and white and suggests not how the Aborigine question may be settled but how a sense of being Aboriginal might save the soul of Australia.

In a sweeping and magisterial essay, touching on everything from Henry Lawson to multiculturalism, Germaine Greer argues that Australia must enter the Aboriginal web of dreams.

‘I'm not here offering yet a solution to the Aborigine problem … Blackfellas are not and never were the problem. They were the solution, if only whitefellas had been able to see it.’ —Germaine Greer, Whitefella Jump Up

‘An essay about sitting down and thinking where all the politics start and what kind of legend Australia wants to place at its heart.’ —Peter Craven

‘Highly charged and instantly controversial.’ —Morag Fraser, Australian Book Review

‘Australia might well benefit from a new national narrative that recognizes its post-colonial status and fragile ecology, and pays more attention to its Aboriginal heritage.’ —Robbie Hudson, the Sunday Times

‘Brilliant and original … A powerful polemic, skillfully organised, thoughtful and beautifully written.’ —Philip Knightley, the Independent Review

Germaine Greer is a renowned writer, academic and journalist. Her books include The Female Eunuch, The Obstacle Race, The Change, The Whole Woman, The Beautiful Boy, White Beech and Quarterly Essay 11: Whitefella Jump Up – The Shortest Way to Nationhood. Widely regarded as one of the most significant voices of feminism in the twentieth century, she currently divides her time between England and her rainforest property on the Queensland–NSW border.