Story by Aiden Plumbe
Photo by Ryan Low
Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman, a award-winning writer of poetry, picture books and plays. She has also created several artworks and is recording an album with Mark Kester-Harvey. She has written eight highly acclaimed books, her first one being The Incredible Freedom Machines published in 2018. All of her books have been celebrated by the Prime Ministers award as well as many other awards.
Through her writing, art and consultant, Kirli’s goal is to connect people together and promote First Nations culture. Kirli has collaborated with several global organisations including Fender, Google, Sydney Opera House, Qantas, Spotify, Mecca, Vogue, National Geographic, Aesop, ABC and Denver Zoo. She created a play, Going Home and two award-winning movies including Cry of the Glossy and Wallflowers and Evergreens. She has collaborated with VIVID to create her artwork, Traces. Her drone light show was for the First Lights festival in 2023.
In her talk, she began with an acknowledgment of country and talked about her origins, being born and raised in the southern highlands. She opened her presentation with her artwork, Mate, You’re Standing on Stolen Land, at the Wollongong Art Gallery. She depicted it as a welcome or a warning, linking it to the meaning of the snake in her tradition. When she visited Uluru, she saw two large brown snakes which prompted her to talk to the elders of the land at the gallery. They went to the bush and talked, Kirli being welcomed to the land. Thus, these snakes she saw were welcoming her which inspired the snake-like nature of her artwork.
Kirli discussed her experience at the Yabun Festival, where Uncle gave her an ochre and left her in charge of the women dancers. The ochre served as a symbol of where they came from and the hand prints painted on them showed the presence of their ancestors. She commented on the red-tailed black cockatoo, an important cultural bird that tells the story of fire.
Kirli said she enjoys telling stories through dance, drawing and writing. When she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, she wanted to take control of her life. So, she created her first book, The Incredible Freedom Machines, about her experiences. She was devastated when the publisher didn’t write back but they eventually did, launching her career as a writer. Her next book, Kindred, is a poetry collection about our responsibility to share culture and community. Bindi is about an eleven-year-old girl who speaks Gundungurra. The Land Recalls You is the story of her mother who she got taken away from when she was put in a children’s home in Glebe. Afloat was the Book of the Year for 2025, commenting on our climate crisis and First Nations people losing their homes. Her last two books, Returning and Eclipse, are both poetry collections.
One of her artworks was publishing poems on the backs of buses and trains so that the public learnt about black cockatoos. This raised awareness for the endangered animal which allowed her to plant more trees that they feed off. Fender reached out to her to paint one of their guitars, raising money for Aboriginal communities to play music. Traces was a digital voice-to-art piece she collaborated with Google on for VIVID. The pitch, tone and intonation of the speech dictated how the artwork appeared on the walls. She created the First Lights drone show, Buungbaa-ma-ndhu, to honour her mother. She was also a special guest on Playschool television in the “Big Ted’s Time Machine” episode.
She finished the presentation by asking the students to howl with her. This happened after she shared how she taught her nephew to howl at the moon.