In the Eye of the Beholder

In the Eye of the Beholder

What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity

Authored by: Barbara Dawson

Please read Conditions of use before downloading the formats.

Download/view free formats
PDF (1.6MB)PDF chaptersRead online (HTML)EPUB (10.1MB)MOBI (2.8MB)

Description

This book offers a fresh perspective in the debate on settler perceptions of Indigenous Australians. It draws together a suite of little known colonial women (apart from Eliza Fraser) and investigates their writings for what they reveal about their attitudes to, views on and beliefs about Aboriginal people, as presented in their published works. The way that reader expectations and publishers’ requirements slanted their representations forms part of this analysis.

All six women write of their first-hand experiences on Australian frontiers of settlement. The division into ‘adventurers’ (Eliza Fraser, Eliza Davies and Emily Cowl) and longer-term ‘settlers’ (Katherine Kirkland, Mary McConnel and Rose Scott Cowen) allows interrogation into the differing representations between those with a transitory knowledge of Indigenous people and those who had a close and more permanent relationship with Indigenous women, even encompassing individual friendship. More pertinently, the book strives to reveal the aspects, largely overlooked in colonial narratives, of Indigenous agency, authority and individuality.

For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.

Details

ISBN (print):
9781925021967
ISBN (online):
9781925021974
Publication date:
Nov 2014
Imprint:
ANU Press
DOI:
http://doi.org/10.22459/IEB.11.2014
Series:
Aboriginal History Monographs
Co-publisher:
Aboriginal History
Disciplines:
Arts & Humanities: Biography & Autobiography, History; Social Sciences: Indigenous Studies
Countries:
Australia

Other publications that may interest you