With Indigenous suicide rates at an epidemic level, the songwriter regrets not talking sooner about his own battle with mental health. Telling his story through music, and memoir, has helped him heal

• Read more about Guardian Australia’s Unmissable books of 2019

For the Gunditjmara people of south-west Victoria, the kneeangar – what white Australians call the wedge-tailed eagle – is the creator of the landscape. For the Bundjalung of north-east New South Wales, it is the gunggayay, or red-bellied black snake.

On the spine of Archie Roach’s memoir, Tell Me Why, the gunggayay encircles the kneeangar, a logo that encapsulates the Indigenous songwriter’s heritage: his Bundjalung father Archie Senior, and his Gunditjmara mother Nellie Austin.

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