Turpin, Gerry, and Smyth, Elizabeth (2026) Ethnobotany, Migrant Writing and Australian Tropical Rainforest: A Conversation About Story, Plants and Place. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. (In Press)

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Abstract

Australian tropical rainforests are increasingly recognised as cultural landscapes. Aboriginal peoples maintain strong and complex connections with rainforest. Stories told by migrant and settler-colonial writers often misrepresent or omit Indigenous perspectives and thus facilitate exploitation of traditional knowledge for commercial gain. This has ongoing consequences for Aboriginal peoples due to loss of intellectual property rights and financial benefits. Despite Indigenous writers increasingly producing self-authored literature and criticism, the voices of some identity groups remain underrepresented. This article argues for employing conversation as a tool to accelerate the reach of Indigenous voices into Australian literary studies. Through a conversation about Welsh migrant writing in John Naish’s The Cruel Field, Mbabaram ethnobotanist Gerry Turpin and literary scholar Elizabeth Smyth reposition Naish’s representation of rainforest relative to Aboriginal biocultural knowledge. This cross-disciplinary approach demonstrates how oral communication can fruitfully advance literary research when essential comparative stories are held in minds and memories

Item ID:	92429
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2168-1414
Keywords:	Rainforest, plants, Indigenous, ethnobotany, Australian fiction, John Naish
Copyright Information:	© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Date Deposited:	06 Jul 2026 23:32
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 50% 45 INDIGENOUS STUDIES > 4503 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental knowledges and management > 450304 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental knowledges @ 50%
SEO Codes:	21 INDIGENOUS > 2104 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture > 210404 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge @ 50% 13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 50%
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