NITV: Dr Fiona Foley takes top literary prize for truth-telling about QLD history

Article by Nadine Silva

Badtjala artist, academic and NAS alumna Dr Fiona Foley has won the top prize at this year’s Queensland Literary Awards for her book which sheds a light on the colonial-era practise of paying Indigenous workers with opium.

The book ‘Biting the Clouds: A Badtjala perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897’ took out the $25,000 Queensland Premier’s Award for a work of ‘State Significance’.

Read the full announcement through the link below. Find out more about the artist and her practice through the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum article, published in 2020.

Image: Fiona Foley. Photo: Dominic Lorrimer.