Jennifer Bird Jennifer Bird i(22892817 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Jennifer Bird Review of Joel Stephen Birnie, My People’s Songs : How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania Jennifer Bird , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , no. 8 2024;
— Review of My People's Songs : How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania Joel Stephen Birnie , 2022 single work biography 'Colonisation has disrupted Indigenous communities’ traditional cultural practices across the globe. It has changed how Indigenous peoples have engaged with the world and imposed Western ideals upon them. Their languages were restricted or banned, and many were physically removed from their culture and all it represented. Contemplating the process of colonisation over hundreds of years in Australia and systematic government-enforced child removal practices brings into question what constitutes family for Indigenous communities. Why are the genealogies of Australia’s Indigenous peoples expected to be proved by linear bloodline? This proof seeks to legitimise or delegitimise individuals’ links to their birthright, culture and Country. There is no scope for understanding how these practices may contest Indigenous community cultural beliefs, nor to believe colonial documents may record information in error.' 

(Introduction)
1 Robert Edward Knox : Revealing Relationships of a Recidivist Convict Jennifer Bird , 2023 single work biography
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , no. 7 2023; (p. 35-52) 'On 11 September 1862, the chief justice of New South Wales, Sir Alfred Stephen,
sentenced Alexander McGregor to 15 years’ hard labour on the roads, the first two
years in irons. In his sentencing, Stephen stated ‘that McGregor was an abominably
bad character who was known as one of the worst characters at Norfolk Island where
he was known by the name of Robert Knox’.1 Moreover, the chief justice ‘knew his
character well’ (see Figure 1).2 In other words, he had recognised McGregor as the
recidivist convict Knox. As the account of the court hearing published in the Bathurst
Free Press and Mining Journal suggests, this was not the first time Stephen had had
dealings with the habitually reoffending convict, nor would it be his last. In 1867 he
was consulted regarding Knox’s exile from the colony of New South Wales, where
he had spent around 30 of his 40 years imprisoned. Knox’s subsequent departure,
without Stephen’s consent, would be the final act of a life lived in defiance of the
colonial penal administration in Australia. This article examines the relationships
of the recidivist convict known variously as Edward Knox, Robert Knox, Robert
Edward Knox and Alexander McGregor, between 1829 and 1869. It asks: what can
a biography of a recidivist convict, whose name and story have disappeared from
cultural memory, tell us about convict relationships? What can a convict who never
married, had no known children, and spent the best part of his life incarcerated,
reveal about relationships in the colonial penal system?' (Introduction) 
1 Jennifer Bird Review of Cassandra Pybus, Truganini : Journey through the Apocalypse Jennifer Bird , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , August no. 5 2021; (p. 239-243)
— Review of Truganini : Journey through the Apocalypse Cassandra Pybus , 2020 single work biography 'My 18-year-old daughter, on seeing Cassandra Pybus’s Truganini lying on my bedside table, immediately picked it up and stroked its cover sighing, ‘what a beautiful book’. Indeed, it is. Inside and out. The cover photograph of Peter Dombrovskis’s ‘Giant kelp’ taken at Hasselborough Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, gives an emotive, textural feeling to a beautifully written book.' (Introduction)
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