Aboriginal History Monographs
Aboriginal History monographs present studies on particular themes or regions, or a series of articles on single subjects of contemporary interest.
Please note: The following list of titles is sorted by publication date, with the most recent first.
Displaying results 1 to 25 of 36.
The Wild Australia Show »
The Story of an Aboriginal Performance Troupe and its Afterlives
Authored by: Paul Memmott, Maria Nugent, Michael Aird, Lindy Allen, Chantal Knowles, Jonathan Richards
Publication date: July 2025
The Wild Australia Show was a troupe of 27 Aboriginal performers recruited from northern Queensland in the 1890s for a world tour that would culminate at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Those grand plans were ultimately dashed, and the troupe only performed in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne before disbanding. This book tells the story of the Wild Australia Show from its inception to its afterlives. It traces how the performers were recruited, the places they came from, the repertoire they created, rehearsed and performed, their experiences on tour and the politics of their representation in word and image. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspaper reports, government records, and court proceedings, richly complemented by photographs and other visual images, the authors seek to reconstruct the Wild Australia Show story from the perspectives of the performers themselves. The book contributes to a growing literature on the history of Aboriginal performers and performances under colonial conditions, and the ways in which public performance could be a means for cultural survival and resurgence.
Format: Hardback
Rebellion at Coranderrk »
Authored by: Diane Barwick
Publication date: August 2024
More than a century ago an Aboriginal community in Victoria campaigned for recognition of their right to occupy and control the small acreage they had farmed for 25 years. Others wanted to develop this tract. Government spokesmen denied that the occupants had inherited any rights to this land and declared that, anyway, they were not really Aborigines. This book is about the rebellion at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station between 1874 and 1886. It describes how Coranderrk families fought to keep their land. To explain why they fought I must begin with the years before, to show what this ‘miserable spadeful of ground’ meant to them, and how they came to be there. Finally, I sketch what ultimately happened.
First published in 1998, 12 years after the death of its author Diane Barwick, Rebellion at Coranderrk was an attempt to rectify some of the injustices of the past two-hundred-plus years in Australia, and to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
It remains acutely relevant.
This book includes the names and images of people who are now deceased.
‘All Australians have good reason to be grateful to Diane Barwick.’
— H. C. Coombs
‘The painstaking research, the perceptive judgements of people and events, and the brilliant prose combine to produce a magnificent account of the Kulin and their European “administrators”. The book is simply packed with historical reinterpretation and vivid reconstructions of families and individuals.’
— C. T. Stannage
‘The author’s research found that Coranderrk is an excellent example of … an Aboriginal (farming) success story. It is very relevant to modern land-rights protests throughout Australia.’
— Canberra Times
Ebenezer Mission Station, 1863–1873 »
The Diary of Missionaries Adolf and Polly Hartmann
Edited by: Felicity Jensz
Publication date: July 2023
This book contains the annotated diary of Adolf and Mary (Polly) Hartmann, missionaries of the Moravian Church who worked at the Ebenezer mission station on Wotjobaluk country, in the north-west of the Colony of Victoria, Australia. The diary begins in 1863, as the Hartmanns are preparing to travel from Europe to take up their post, and ends in 1873, by which time they are working in Canada as missionaries to the Lenni Lenape people.
Recording the Hartmann’s eight years at the Ebenezer mission, the diary presents richly detailed insights into the daily interactions between Aboriginal people and their colonisers. The inhabitants of the mission are overwhelmingly described in the diary as agents in their lives, moving in and out of the missionaries’ sphere of influence, yet restricted at times by the boundaries of the mission. The diary reveals moments of laughter, shared grief, community, advocacy and reciprocal learning, alongside the mundane everyday chores of mission life.
Through the personal writings of a missionary couple, this diary brings to light the regular, routine and extraordinary events on a mission station in Australia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century—a period just prior to British high imperialism, and a period before increasingly restrictive legislation was enforced on Indigenous people in the Colony of Victoria.
Power and Dysfunction »
The New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines 1883–1940
Authored by: Richard Egan
Publication date: October 2021
In 1883, the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines was tasked with assisting and supporting an Aboriginal population that had been devastated by a brutal dispossession. It began its tenure with little government direction – its initial approach was cautious and reactionary. However, by the turn of the century this Board, driven by some forceful individuals, was squarely focused on a legislative agenda that sought policies to control, segregate and expel Aboriginal people. Over time it acquired extraordinary powers to control Aboriginal movement, remove children from their communities and send them into domestic service, collect wages and hold them in trust, withhold rations, expel individuals from stations and reserves, authorise medical inspections, and prevent any Aboriginal person from leaving the state.
Power and Dysfunction explores this Board and uncovers who were the major drivers of these policies, who were its most influential people, and how this body came to wield so much power. Paradoxically, despite its considerable influence, through its bravado, structural dysfunction, flawed policies and general indifference, it failed to manage core aspects of Aboriginal policy. In the 1930s, when the Board was finally challenged by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups seeking its abolition, it had become moribund, paranoid and secretive as it railed against all detractors.
When it was finally disbanded in 1940, its 57-year legacy had touched every Aboriginal community in New South Wales with lasting consequences that still resonate today.
On Taungurung Land »
Sharing History and Culture
Authored by: Roy Henry Patterson, Jennifer Jones
Publication date: December 2020
On Taungurung Land: Sharing History and Culture is the first monograph to examine how the Taungurung Nation of central Victoria negotiated with protectors and pastoralists to retain possession of their own country for as long as possible. Historic accounts, to date, have treated the histories of Acheron and Mohican Aboriginal stations as preliminary to the establishment of the more famous Coranderrk on Wurundjeri land. Instead of ‘rushing down the hill’ to Coranderrk, this book concentrates upon the two foundational Aboriginal stations on Taungurung Country. A collaboration between Elder Uncle Roy Patterson and Jennifer Jones, the book draws upon Taungurung oral knowledge and an unusually rich historical record. This fine-grained local history and cultural memoir shows that adaptation to white settlement and the preservation of culture were not mutually exclusive. Uncle Roy shares generational knowledge in this book in order to revitalise relationships to place and establish respect and mutual practices of care for Country.
The Bible in Buffalo Country »
Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931
Publication date: October 2020
Arriving in the remote Arnhem Land Aboriginal settlement of Oenpelli (Gunbalanya) in 1925, Alf and Mary Dyer aimed to bring Christ to a former buffalo shooting camp and an Aboriginal population many whites considered difficult to control. The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931 represents a snapshot of the tumultuous first six years of the Church Missionary Society’s mission at Oenpelli and the superintendency of Alfred Dyer between 1925 and 1931. Drawing together documentary and photographic sources with local community memory, a story emerges of miscommunication, sickness, constant logistical issues, and an Aboriginal community choosing when and how to engage with the newcomers to their land.
This book provides a fascinating and detailed record of the primary sources of the mission, placed alongside the interpretation and insight of local Traditional Owners. Its contents include the historical and archaeological context of the primary source material, the vivid mission reports and correspondence, along with stunning photographs of the mission and relevant maps, and finally the oral history of Esther Manakgu, presenting Aboriginal memory of this complex era.
The Bible in Buffalo Country emerged from community desire for access to the source documents of their own history and for their story to be known by the broader Australian public. It is intended for the benefit of communities in western Arnhem Land and is also a rich resource for historians of Aboriginal history (and other scholars in relevant disciplines).
Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia »
Histories and Historiography
Edited by: Laura Rademaker, Tim Rowse
Publication date: September 2020
Histories of the colonisation of Australia have recognised distinct periods or eras in the colonial relationship: ‘protection’ and ‘assimilation’. It is widely understood that, in 1973, the Whitlam Government initiated a new policy era: ‘self-determination’. Yet, the defining features of this era, as well as how, why and when it ended, are far from clear. In this collection we ask: how shall we write the history of self-determination? How should we bring together, in the one narrative, innovations in public policy and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initiatives? How (dis)continuous has ‘self-determination’ been with ‘assimilation’ or with what came after? Among the contributions to this book there are different views about whether Australia is still practising ‘self-determination’ and even whether it ever did or could.
This book covers domains of government policy and Indigenous agency including local government, education, land rights, the outstation movement, international law, foreign policy, capital programs, health, public administration, mission policies and the policing of identity. Each of the contributors is a specialist in his/her topic. Few of the contributors would call themselves ‘historians’, but each has met the challenge to consider Australia’s recent past as an era animated by ideas and practices of Indigenous self-determination.
Goodna Girls »
A History of Children in a Queensland Mental Asylum
Authored by: Adele Chynoweth
Publication date: September 2020
Goodna Girls tells the story of children incarcerated in Wolston Park Hospital, an adult psychiatric facility in Queensland, Australia. It contains the personal testimonies of women who relate—in their own no-holds-barred style and often with irreverent humour—how they, as children, ended up in Wolston Park and how this affected their adult lives. The accounts of hospital staff who witnessed the effects of this heinous policy and spoke out are also included.
The book examines the consequences of the Queensland Government’s manipulation of a medical model to respond to ‘juvenile delinquents’, many of whom were simply vulnerable children absconding from abusive conditions. As Australia faces the repercussions of the institutionalisation of its children in the twentieth century, brought about through a series of government inquiries, Goodna Girls makes a vital contribution to the public history of the Stolen Generations, Former Child Migrants and Forgotten Australians.
Goodna Girls presents the research that informed a successful, collective campaign to lobby the Queensland Government to make long overdue and much-needed reparations to a group of courageous survivors. It holds contemporary resonance for scholars, policymakers and practitioners in the fields of public history, welfare, child protection, education, nursing, sociology, medicine and criminology.
Labour Lines and Colonial Power »
Indigenous and Pacific Islander Labour Mobility in Australia
Edited by: Victoria Stead, Jon Altman
Publication date: August 2019
Today, increases of so-called ‘low-skilled’ and temporary labour migrations of Pacific Islanders to Australia occur alongside calls for Indigenous people to ‘orbit’ from remote communities in search of employment opportunities. These trends reflect the persistent neoliberalism within contemporary Australia, as well as the effects of structural dynamics within the global agriculture and resource extractive industries. They also unfold within the context of long and troubled histories of Australian colonialism, and of complexes of race, labour and mobility that reverberate through that history and into the present. The contemporary labour of Pacific Islanders in the horticultural industry has sinister historical echoes in the ‘blackbirding’ of South Sea Islanders to work on sugar plantations in New South Wales and Queensland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as in wider patterns of labour, trade and colonisation across the Pacific region. The antecedents of contemporary Indigenous labour mobility, meanwhile, include forms of unwaged and highly exploitative labouring on government settlements, missions, pastoral stations and in the pearling industry. For both Pacific Islanders and Indigenous people, though, labour mobilities past and present also include agentive and purposeful migrations, reflective of rich cultures and histories of mobility, as well as of forces that compel both movement and immobility.
Drawing together historians, anthropologists, sociologists and geographers, this book critically explores experiences of labour mobility by Indigenous peoples and Pacific Islanders, including Māori, within Australia. Locating these new expressions of labour mobility within historical patterns of movement, contributors interrogate the contours and continuities of Australian coloniality in its diverse and interconnected expressions.
In Search of the Never-Never »
Mickey Dewar: Champion of History Across Many Genres
Edited by: Ann McGrath
Publication date: April 2019
Mickey Dewar made a profound contribution to the history of the Northern Territory, which she performed across many genres. She produced high‑quality, memorable and multi-sensory histories, including the Cyclone Tracy exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the reinterpretation of Fannie Bay Gaol. Informed by a great love of books, her passion for history was infectious. As well as offering three original chapters that appraise her work, this edited volume republishes her first book, In Search of the Never-Never. In Dewar’s comprehensive and incisive appraisal of the literature of the Northern Territory, she provides brilliant, often amusing insights into the ever-changing representations of a region that has featured so large in the Australian popular imagination.
The Lives of Stories »
Three Aboriginal-Settler Friendships
Authored by: Emma Dortins
Publication date: December 2018
The Lives of Stories traces three stories of Aboriginal–settler friendships that intersect with the ways in which Australians remember founding national stories, build narratives for cultural revival, and work on reconciliation and self-determination. These three stories, which are still being told with creativity and commitment by storytellers today, are the story of James Morrill’s adoption by Birri-Gubba people and re-adoption 17 years later into the new colony of Queensland, the story of Bennelong and his relationship with Governor Phillip and the Sydney colonists, and the story of friendship between Wiradjuri leader Windradyne and the Suttor family. Each is an intimate story about people involved in relationships of goodwill, care, adoptive kinship and mutual learning across cultures, and the strains of maintaining or relinquishing these bonds as they took part in the larger events that signified the colonisation of Aboriginal lands by the British. Each is a story in which cross-cultural understanding and misunderstanding are deeply embedded, and in which the act of storytelling itself has always been an engagement in cross-cultural relations. The Lives of Stories reflects on the nature of story as part of our cultural inheritance, and seeks to engage the reader in becoming more conscious of our own effect as history-makers as we retell old stories with new meanings in the present, and pass them on to new generations.
Indigenous Mobilities »
Across and Beyond the Antipodes
Edited by: Rachel Standfield
Publication date: June 2018
This edited collection focuses on Aboriginal and Māori travel in colonial contexts. Authors in this collection examine the ways that Indigenous people moved and their motivations for doing so. Chapters consider the cultural aspects of travel for Indigenous communities on both sides of the Tasman. Contributors examine Indigenous purposes for mobility, including for community and individual economic wellbeing, to meet other Indigenous or non-Indigenous peoples and experience different cultures, and to gather knowledge or experience, or to escape from colonial intrusion.
‘This volume is the first to take up three challenges in histories of Indigenous mobilities. First, it analyses both mobility and emplacement. Challenging stereotypes of Indigenous people as either fixed or mobile, chapters deconstruct issues with ramifications for contemporary politics and analyses of Indigenous society and of rural and national histories. As such, it is a welcome intervention in a wide range of urgent issues. Second, by examining Indigenous peoples in both Australia and New Zealand, this volume is an innovative step in removing the artificial divisions that have arisen from “national” histories. Third, the collection connects the experiences of colonised Indigenous peoples with those of their colonisers, shifting the long-held stereotypes of Indigenous powerlessness. Chapters then convincingly demonstrate the agency of colonised peoples in shaping the actions and the mobility itself of the colonisers.
While the volume overall is aimed at opening up new research questions, and so invites later and even more innovative work, this volume will stand as an important guide to the directions such future work might take.’
— Heather Goodall, Professor Emerita, UTS
The Contest for Aboriginal Souls »
European missionary agendas in Australia
Authored by: Regina Ganter
Publication date: May 2018
This book covers the missionary activity in Australia conducted by non-English speaking missionaries from Catholic and Protestant mission societies from its beginnings to the end of the mission era. It looks through the eyes of the missionaries and their helpers, as well as incorporating Indigenous perspectives and offering a balanced assessment of missionary endeavour in Australia, attuned to the controversies that surround mission history. It means neither to condemn nor praise, but rather to understand the various responses of Indigenous communities, the intentions of missionaries, the agendas of the mission societies and the many tensions besetting the mission endeavour. It explores a common commitment to the supernatural and the role of intermediaries like local diplomats and evangelists from the Pacific Islands and Philippines, and emphasises the strong role played by non-English speakers in the transcultural Australian mission effort.
This book is a companion to the website German Missionaries in Australia – A web-directory of intercultural encounters. The web-directory provides detailed accounts of Australian missions staffed with German speakers. The book reads laterally across the different missions and produces a completely different type of knowledge about missions. The book and its accompanying website are based on a decade of research ranging across mission archives with foreign-language sources that have not previously been accessed for a historiography of Australian missions.
‘A remarkable intellectual achievement, compelling reading.’
— Dr Niel Gunson
‘The range of knowledge on display here is very impressive indeed.’
— Professor Peter Monteath
Brokers and boundaries »
Colonial exploration in Indigenous territory
Publication date: April 2016
Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers’ motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred.
'This collection breaks new ground in its emphasis on Indigenous agency and Indigenous–explorer interactions. It will be of value to historians and others for a very long time.'
— Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney
'In bringing together this group of authors, the editors have brought to histories of colonialism the individuality of these intermediaries, whose lives intersected colonial exploration in Australia and New Guinea.'
— Dr Jude Philp, Macleay Museum
In Defence of Country »
Life Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Servicemen and Women
Authored by: Noah Riseman
Publication date: January 2016
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been protecting country since time immemorial. One way they have continued these traditions in recent times is through service in the Australian military, both overseas and within Australia. In Defence of Country presents a selection of life stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ex-servicemen and women who served in the Australian Army, Navy and Air Force after World War Two. In their own words, participants discuss a range of issues including why they joined up; racial discrimination; the Stolen Generations; leadership; discipline; family; war and peace; education and skills development; community advocacy; and their hopes for the future of Indigenous Australia. Individually and collectively, the life stories in this book highlight the many contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and women have made, and continue to make, in defence of country.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Indigenous Intermediaries »
New perspectives on exploration archives
Publication date: September 2015
This edited collection understands exploration as a collective effort and experience involving a variety of people in diverse kinds of relationships. It engages with the recent resurgence of interest in the history of exploration by focusing on the various indigenous intermediaries – Jacky Jacky, Bungaree, Moowattin, Tupaia, Mai, Cheealthluc and lesser-known individuals – who were the guides, translators, and hosts that assisted and facilitated European travellers in exploring different parts of the world.
These intermediaries are rarely the authors of exploration narratives, or the main focus within exploration archives. Nonetheless the archives of exploration contain imprints of their presence, experience and contributions. The chapters present a range of ways of reading archives to bring them to the fore. The contributors ask new questions of existing materials, suggest new interpretive approaches, and present innovative ways to enhance sources so as to generate new stories.
‘This is a very fine collection of essays. It offers a deep and richly textured assessment of the crucial work of indigenous intermediaries in imperial and colonial exploration.’
— Professor Tony Ballantyne, University of Otago, New Zealand
Long History, Deep Time »
Deepening Histories of Place
Edited by: Ann McGrath, Mary Anne Jebb
Publication date: August 2015
The vast shape-shifting continent of Australia enables us to take a long view of history. We consider ways to cross the great divide between the deep past and the present. Australia’s human past is not a short past, so we need to enlarge the scale and scope of history beyond 1788. In ways not so distant, these deeper times happened in the same places where we walk today. Yet, they were not the same places, having different surfaces, ecologies and peoples. Contributors to this volume show how the earth and its past peoples can wake us up to a sense of place as history – as a site of both change and continuity.
This book ignites the possibilities of what the spaces and expanses of history might be. Its authors reflect upon the need for appropriate, feasible timescales for history, pointing out some of the obstacles encountered in earlier efforts to slice human time into thematic categories. Time and history are considered from the perspective of physics, archaeology, literature, western and Indigenous philosophy. Ultimately, this collection argues for imaginative new approaches to collaborative histories of deep time that are better suited to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Contributors to this volume, including many leading figures in their respective disciplines, consider history’s temporality, and ask how history might expand to accommodate a chronology of deep time. Long histories that incorporate humanities, science and Indigenous knowledge may produce deeper meanings of the worlds in which we live.
Settler Colonial Governance in Nineteenth-Century Victoria »
Edited by: Leigh Boucher, Lynette Russell
Publication date: April 2015
This collection represents a serious re-examination of existing work on the Aboriginal history of nineteenth-century Victoria, deploying the insights of postcolonial thought to wrench open the inner workings of territorial expropriation and its historically tenacious variability. Colonial historians have frequently asserted that the management and control of Aboriginal people in colonial Victoria was historically exceptional; by the end of the century, colonies across mainland Australia looked to Victoria as a ‘model’ for how to manage the problem of Aboriginal survival. This collection carefully traces the emergence and enactment of this ‘model’ in the years after colonial separation, the idiosyncrasies of its application and the impact it had on Aboriginal lives.
It is no exaggeration to say that the work on colonial Victoria represented here is in the vanguard of what we might see as a ‘new Australian colonial history’. This is a quite distinctive development shaped by the aftermath of the history wars within Australia and through engagement with the ‘new imperial history’ of Britain and its empire. It is characterised by an awareness of colonial Australia’s positioning within broader imperial circuits through which key personnel, ideas and practices flowed, and also by ‘local’ settler society’s impact upon, and entanglements with, Aboriginal Australia. The volume heralds a new, spatially aware, movement within Australian history writing. – Alan Lester
This is a timely, astutely assembled and well nuanced collection that combines theoretical sophistication with empirical solidity. Theoretically, it engages knowledgeably but not uncritically with a broad range of influences, including postcolonialism, the new imperial history, settler colonial studies and critical Indigenous studies. Empirically, contributors have trawled an impressive array of archival sources, both standard and relatively unknown, bringing a fresh eye to bear on what we thought we knew but would now benefit from reconsidering. Though the collection wears its politics openly, it does so lightly and without jeopardising fidelity to its sources. – Patrick Wolfe
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
In the Eye of the Beholder »
What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity
Authored by: Barbara Dawson
Publication date: November 2014
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.
Indigenous and Minority Placenames »
Australian and International Perspectives
Publication date: August 2014
This book showcases current research into Indigenous and minority placenames in Australia and internationally. Many of the chapters in this volume originated as papers at a Trends in Toponymy conference hosted by the University of Ballarat in 2007 that featured Australian and international speakers. The chapters in this volume provide insight into the quality of toponymic research that is being undertaken in Australia and in countries such as Canada, Finland, South Africa, New Zealand, and Norway. The research presented here draws on the disciplines of linguistics, geography, history, and anthropology. The book includes meticulous studies of placenames in central NSW and the Upper Hunter region; Gundungurra cave names; western Arnhem Land; Northern Cape York Peninsula and Mount Wheeler in Queensland; saltwater placenames around Mer in the Torres Strait; and the Kaurna in South Australia.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Dharmalan Dana »
An Australian Aboriginal man’s 73-year search for the story of his Aboriginal and Indian ancestors
Authored by: George Nelson, Robynne Nelson
Publication date: April 2014
A Yorta Yorta man’s 73-year search for the story of his Aboriginal and Indian ancestors including his Indian Grampa who, as a real mystery man, came to Yorta Yorta country in Australia, from Mauritius, in 1881 and went on to leave an incredible legacy for Aboriginal Australia. This story is written through George Nelson’s eyes, life and experiences, from the time of his earliest memory, to his marriage to his sweetheart Brenda, through to his journey to Mauritius at the age of 73, to the production of this wonderful story in the present.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Making Change Happen »
Black and White Activists talk to Kevin Cook about Aboriginal, Union and Liberation Politics
Authored by: Kevin Cook, Heather Goodall
Publication date: September 2013
This book is a unique window into a dynamic time in the politics and history of Australia. The two decades from 1970 to the Bicentennial in 1988 saw the emergence of a new landscape in Australian Indigenous politics. There were struggles, triumphs and defeats around land rights, community control of organisations, national coalitions and the international movement for Indigenous rights. The changes of these years generated new roles for Aboriginal people. Leaders had to grapple with demands to be administrators and managers as well as spokespeople and lobbyists. The challenges were personal as well as organisational, with a central one being how to retain personal integrity in the highly politicised atmosphere of the ‘Aboriginal Industry’. Kevin Cook was in the middle of many of these changes – as a unionist, educator, land rights campaigner, cultural activist and advocate for liberation movements in Southern Africa, the Pacific and around the world. But ‘Cookie’ has not wanted to tell the story of his own life in these pages. Instead, with Heather Goodall, a long time friend, he has gathered together many of the activists with whom he worked to tell their stories of this important time. Readers are invited into the frank and vivid conversations Cookie had with forty-five black and white activists about what they wanted to achieve, the plans they made, and the risks they took to make change happen.
“You never doubted Kevin Cook. His very presence made you confident because the guiding hand is always there. Equal attention is given to all. I am one of many who worked with Cookie and Judy through the Tranby days and in particular the 1988 Bicentennial March for Freedom, Justice and Hope. What days they were. I’m glad this story is being told.”
— Linda Burney, MLA New South Wales
“Kevin Cook was a giant in the post-war struggle for Aboriginal rights. His ability to connect the dots and make things happen was important in both the political and cultural resurgence of the 1970s onwards.”
— Meredith Burgmann, former MLC, New South Wales
“Kevin has had a transformative effect on the direction of my life and the lives of so many other people. This book is an important contribution to understanding not only Kevin’s life but also the broader struggles for social and economic justice, for community empowerment and of the cooperative progressive movement. It will greatly assist the ongoing campaign for full and sustainable reconciliation.”
— Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary, Maritime Union of Australia
“Cookie has made great contributions in enhancing the struggles of our people. He is a motivator, an astute strategist, and an excellent communicator with wonderful people skills. It’s a pleasure to be able to call him a mate and a brother.”
— John Ah Kit, former MLA, Northern Territory
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History »
Authored by: Samuel Furphy
Publication date: March 2013
Edward M. Curr (1820–89) was a pastoralist, horse trader, stock inspector, Aboriginal administrator, author and ethnologist. A prominent figure in the history of the Colony of Victoria, he rose to a senior position in the public service and authored several influential books and essays. He is best remembered for his nostalgic memoir, Recollections of Squatting in Victoria (1883), which has become a standard historical source.
This book is the first comprehensive biography of Curr and explores both his life and legacy. In particular, it considers his posthumous influence on the Yorta Yorta native title case (1994–2001), when his written account of the Yorta Yorta ancestors played a key role in the failure of the claim. By exploring Curr’s interactions with Aboriginal people—as a pastoralist and Aboriginal administrator—this book advocates a more nuanced, critical, and historically informed interpretation of Curr’s ethnological writings than was evident in the Yorta Yorta case.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Black Gold »
Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870
Authored by: Fred Cahir
Publication date: September 2012
Fred Cahir tells the story about the magnitude of Aboriginal involvement on the Victorian goldfields in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first history of Aboriginal–white interaction on the Victorian goldfields, Black Gold offers new insights on one of the great epochs in Australian and world history—the gold story.
In vivid detail it describes how Aboriginal people often figured significantly in the search for gold and documents the devastating social impact of gold mining on Victorian Aboriginal communities. It reveals the complexity of their involvement from passive presence, to active discovery, to shunning the goldfields.
This detailed examination of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria provides striking evidence which demonstrates that Aboriginal people participated in gold mining and interacted with non-Aboriginal people in a range of hitherto neglected ways.
Running through this book are themes of Aboriginal empowerment, identity, integration, resistance, social disruption and communication.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Country, Native Title and Ecology »
Edited by: Jessica K Weir
Publication date: March 2012
Country, native title and ecology all converge in this volume to describe the dynamic intercultural context of land and water management on Indigenous lands. Indigenous people’s relationships with country are discussed from various speaking positions, including identity and knowledge, the homelands debate, water planning, climate change and market environmentalism. The inter-disciplinary chapters range from an ethnographic description of living waters in the Great Sandy Desert, negotiating the eradication of yellow crazy ants in Arnhem Land, and legal analysis of native title rights in emerging carbon markets. A recurrent theme is the contentions over meaning, knowledge, and authority.
'Because this volume is scholarly, original and very timely it represents a key resource and reference work for land and sea managers; policy makers; scholars of the interface between post-native title responsibilities, NRM objectives and appropriate heritage protocols; and students based in the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. It is rare for volumes to have this much cross-academy purchase and for this reason alone – it will have ongoing worth and value as a seminal collection.'
– Associate Professor Peter Veth, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University.