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Wild Dogs And Decolonization: Ivan Sen’S Mystery Road And Omar Musa’S Here Come The Dogs, Iris Ralph

Animal Studies Journal

The broad subject of First Nations and decolonial perspectives on animal flourishing is addressed in this paper in a reading of references to canids in Mystery Road (2013), a film by the First Nations-Australian director, Ivan Sen, and Here Come the Dogs (2014), a novel by the Malaysian-Australian author Omar Musa. Dingoes and other wild dogs are a prominent trope in Sen’s film and tie to seemingly perdurable debates about the rights of these animals to flourish in Australia. Dingo advocates argue that dingoes are endemic to Australia, are Australia’s oldest introduced animals, and are a top predator species and …