‘Not many free colour folks lef’ round here’: Truth-telling in the sugar country narratives of John Naish

was ahead of his time in his condemnation of Indigenous-white relationships and in his appreciation of the reality of Indigenous dispossession in tropical north Queensland.This was a legacy that spilled over into the cane fields where, as a 10 assisted immigrant, Naish cut cane in the 1950s and 1960s when immigrants directed to cut cane invariably encountered people of colour.Naish was therefore uniquely placed to write critically of the racial tensions he observed in the small sugar towns and of the means used to subjugate Aboriginal people to ongoing surveillance and control.In a time before Aboriginal writers appropriated the right to speak to their own realities Naish wrote sensitively and realistically giving his Indigenous characters subversive power that challenged the white characters' assumption of rights.His works are a medium for not only understanding the past but are a mirror reflecting the uncomfortable reality of being an Indigenous person in 1950s