Cirrus@Austlit

'Reading Race addresses the important question of how knowledge about Indigenous people, their cultures and social lives is created and circulated within colonising societies like Australia. As a child growing up during the 1940s, I found that storybooks offered a glimpse of a world beyond my own, but very few of them mentioned Aborigines. One exception was Annie Rentoul and Ida Outhwaite’s Little Green Road to Fairyland, first published in 1922 and one of the first books to offer Australian fairies to Australian children (Marcus 1999). Among the things I learned from that book was that Aboriginal people had become a shadowy and ethereal presence in the land and that there was nothing to fear from them. As a way of overcoming the stereotypes and normalising the assumptions of such texts, Bradford has set out to write beyond the conventions of literary practice and, in doing so, to illuminate the ways in which children’s books use images of Aboriginal culture to create a ‘white’ subject.' (Introduction)

'The Indomitable Miss Pink is a sympathetic portrait of Olive Muriel Pink—watercolourist, botanist, anthropologist, activist and advocate, scourge, indefatigable letter writer, loyal friend, radical and conservative, pursuer of truth and justice, and eccentric. She was a woman of fierce principle and determination, if not outright stubbornness, in her advocacy of what she perceived were Aboriginal interests. Her unwillingness to play the political game and her forthrightness did not, however, make her an effective lobbyist for the causes she held dear. Pink’s life falls into three main phases: the first was her youth in Tasmania, her training as an artist at the Julian Ashton School of Art, and her working life in Sydney as a draftswoman; the second phase began with her study of anthropology; and the third, with her return to Alice Springs in 1944, lasted until her death. But, above all, Pink was indomitable! The book is therefore more than ‘a life in anthropology’, although it was anthropology that changed Pink’s life (p. 53).' (Introduction)

'Reading Talkin’ up to the White Woman reminded me of an observation that I have often heard expressed by my Indigenous colleagues: feminist scholars feel comfortable with black women they can help—their ‘poor black sisters’—but there is bewilderment and discomfort when those sisters start to assert themselves, especially when the activism is directed at the canons of feminism itself. Aileen MortonRobinson’s book is precisely the kind of thesis that will send paternalistic feminists running for cover.'  (Introduction)

'Mission Girls is a very well researched and in-depth history of the lives of Aboriginal women on Catholic missions in the Kimberley between 1900 and 1950. The book looks at important issues such as the establishment of the missions, the treatment of the women by the missionaries who worked cooperatively with the state Aboriginal Affairs Department, the separation of Aboriginal children from their families and culture, and the evangelisation of particularly the Kimberley women.'  (Introduction)

'David Unaipon’s collection of pleasantly told and readable tales is as interesting for the series of its nestled contexts as for the stories themselves. Each story is introduced with a bit of background setting their theme and perceived function. To begin a story on frogs, for instance, he relates, ‘My people delight to give a reason for everything they observe, as well as to draw a moral lesson from it all. The moral lesson we try to teach in the legend of the frogs (Lower Murray, Lake Alexandra and Narringeri tribes) is that man is incomplete apart from woman, and that if males try to live alone, they fail and succumb to every fear’ (p. 164)'  (Introduction)

'Rhys was born in Wales, attended a grammar school in Cardiff and won a scholarship to Cambridge University in 1959 where he studied basic sciences and mathematics, and archaeology and anthropology, participating in excavations and travelling in Europe and southwestern Asia (Meehan 2001). He was appointed as teaching fellow in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Sydney in 1963, graduating with a doctorate from there in 1971, and as research fellow in prehistory at the then Research School of Pacific Studies of the Australian National University in 1968. He held the visiting chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University, was appointed to a personal chair at ANU in 1993, and was a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Society of Antiquarians. Rhys retired in June 2001, when he was presented with a festschrift contributed to by many of his numerous colleagues and friends (Anderson et al 2001). Rhys Jones died in September last year of leukaemia.'  (Introduction)