Kim Scott noted in 2001 that the biographical notes accompanying his first two novels (True Country, 1993, and Benang: From the Heart, 1999) changed from ‘Kim Scott ... of Aboriginal and British ancestry’ to ‘Kim Scott ... one among those who call themselves Noongar’. Scott probed his self-identification to make a more confronting point: ‘There’s a shift in a sense of self. It indicates a journey, I think. Or is it the shiftiness of a charlatan? Are you worried that I am going to have an identity crisis in front of you, to bleed in public as Australia seems to expect of its Aboriginal people? In the interests of Reconciliation, you understand. Of sharing the history’ (Alfred Deakin Lectures, 14 May 2001). A more recent biography is even more layered: ‘Kim Scott’s ancestral Noongar country is the south-east coast of Western Australia between Gairdner River and Cape Arid. His cultural elders use the term Wirlomin to refer to their clan, and the Norman Tindale nomenclature identifies people of this area as Wudjari/Koreng.’