Richard J. Martin Richard J. Martin i(6724259 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Eliminating Settler Colonialism : Refusal and Resurgence in Australia Richard J. Martin , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 413 2019; (p. 22-23)

— Review of The Colonial Fantasy : Why White Australia Can't Solve Black Problems Sarah Maddison , 2019 multi chapter work criticism

‘Fuck Australia, I hope it fucking burns to the ground.’ Sarah Maddison opens this book by quoting Tarneen Onus-Williams, the young Indigenous activist who sparked a brief controversy when her inflammatory comments about Australia were reported around 26 January 2018. For Maddison, a Professor of Politics at the University of Melbourne, Onus-Williams’s Australia Day comments (and subsequent clarification) convey a profound insight into ‘the system’. She writes:

The current system – the settler colonial system – is not working ... Yet despite incontrovertible evidence of this failure, the nation persists in governing the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in ways that are damaging and harmful, firm in its belief that with the right policy approach … Indigenous lives will somehow improve. This is the colonial fantasy.' 

(Introduction)

1 2 y separately published work icon The Gulf Country : The Story of People and Place in Outback Queensland Richard J. Martin , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2019 16663953 2019 multi chapter work criticism biography

'The story of the resilient people who make their home in Australia's far north, from the 'wild time' of the frontier days to the present.

''There is something about the Gulf Country that seems to become part of you.'

'With its great rivers, grassy plains and mangrove-fringed coastline, Queensland's remote Gulf Country is rich and fertile land. It has long been home to Aboriginal people and, since the 1860s, also to Europeans and to settlers with Chinese, Japanese and Afghan ancestry. 

'Richard J. Martin tells the story of a century-and-a-half of exploration and colonisation, the growth of cattle and mining industries, and the impact of Christian missionaries and Indigenous activism, through to the present day. He acknowledges the brutal realities of violence and dispossession, as well as the challenges of life on the land in northern Australia. 

'Drawing on extensive interviews with people across the Gulf Country, this is a lively and colourful account of tight-knit communities, relationships across cultures and resilience in the face of adversity.' (Publication summary)

 

1 The Paradox of Recognition : The Cultural Politics of Claiming Native Title Richard J. Martin , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 401 2018; (p. 18-19)

'The year 2017 marked the twenty- fifth anniversary of the High Court’s 1992 decision in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (Mabo), which recognised the existence of Indigenous people’s traditional ‘native title’ rights over the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait. This finding, and the passage through parliament of the Keating government’s Native Title Act the following year, dramatically changed the legal position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian society. Since then, there have been 338 determinations that native title exists in different parts of Australia, delivering significant benefits to a substantial proportion of claimant groups.' (Introduction)

1 The Politics of the Voice : Ethnographic Fetishism and Australian Literary Studies Richard J. Martin , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 2 2013;
'The politics of representing Aboriginality often focuses on questions of authorship and appropriation. Much of this criticism rests on the simplistic assumption that texts created by collaboration and even uneven collaboration are not in some respects voiced by their subject or subjects. This paper discusses two popular texts about Aboriginal ceremonial songs or ‘songlines’ in order to challenge this assumption, reading Bill Harney with A. P. Elkin’s Songs of the Songmen: Aboriginal Myths Retold (1949), and John Bradley with Yanyuwa Families’ Singing Saltwater Country: Journey to the Songlines of Carpentaria (2010) as Aboriginal texts. These texts are particularly interesting insofar as they focus attention on the relationship between voice and text, as well as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, being the products of collaboration by the anthropologists Elkin and Bradley with, on the one hand, a non-Aboriginal ‘Protector’ and popular writer (Harney), and, on the other, the subjects of the ethnography themselves (that is Yanyuwa Families). As I argue, the shifting ways in which the songlines of northern Australia are voiced in Songs of the Songmen and Singing Saltwater Country provides insights into the politics of representing Aboriginality in Australia, and the forces that have historically affected it. The close analysis of these texts focuses attention on the role of ethnographic fetishism for the exotic and authentic within the changing context of cultural production in Australia.' (Author's abstract)
1 Untitled Richard J. Martin , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , November no. 35 2011; (p. 215-217)

— Review of Singing Saltwater Country : Journey to the Songlines of Carpentaria John Bradley , 2010 single work autobiography
1 Fifteen Minutes Richard J. Martin , 1995 single work short story
— Appears in: Sugarmouth: UTS Writers' Anthology 1995; (p. 49-58)
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