'Most members of the Stolen Generations had white fathers or grandfathers. Who were these white men? This book analyses the stories of white fathers, men who were positioned as key players in the plans to assimilate Aboriginal people by 'breeding out the colour'. The plan to 'breed out the colour' ascribed enormous power to white sperm and white paternity; to 'elevate', 'uplift' and disperse Aboriginality in whiteness, to blank out, to aid cultural forgetting. The policy was a cruel failure, not least because it conflated skin colour with culture and assumed that Aboriginal women and their children would acquiesce to produce 'future whites'. It also assumed that white men would comply as ready appendages, administering 'whiteness' through marriage or white sperm. This book attempts to put textual flesh on the bodies of these white fathers, and in doing so, builds on and complicates the view of white fathers in this history, and the histories of whiteness to which they are biopolitically related.' (Publication summary)
'Settler colonialism produces distinctive structures, spaces and boundaries that seek to differentiate coloniser from colonised, black from white. Two works that explore these cultural spaces, social structures, racial hierarchies—and the intimate and actual lived-in spaces that lay in-between—are Fiona Davis’ Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station: Redrawing Boundaries and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey’s Made to Matter: White Fathers, Stolen Generations. Both works engage with theories of whiteness, foregrounding it as a necessary concept to grapple with the different racial, cultural and social spaces produced by settler colonialism in Australia, yet they do so from different “fields” or “sites”.' (Introduction)
It is rare to come across studies of important themes in the context of a national culture, such as the Australian, and think, why has this not been examined properly before? Fiona Probyn-Rapsey's Made to Matter. White Fathers, Stolen Generations represents such a study. While stolen generations have been the subject of many studies in the wake of the Bringing Them Home Report released in the mid-nineties, the stolen generations' white fathers have not attracted such scholarly attention. There are many reasons for this neglect, which could presumably include: the spotlight was on the direct victims of this atrocious and cultural-genocidal policy culminating of course in Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology; as Probyn-Rapsey points out some white fathers would disown their "half-caste" offspring, others would own up to them at the risk of attracting attention from the white authorities, whose vigorous pursuit of white justice is mercilessly laid bare in the dramatized autobiography, Rabbit Proof Fence, and Baz Luhrmann's fictional account Australia. [From the journal's webpage]
It is rare to come across studies of important themes in the context of a national culture, such as the Australian, and think, why has this not been examined properly before? Fiona Probyn-Rapsey's Made to Matter. White Fathers, Stolen Generations represents such a study. While stolen generations have been the subject of many studies in the wake of the Bringing Them Home Report released in the mid-nineties, the stolen generations' white fathers have not attracted such scholarly attention. There are many reasons for this neglect, which could presumably include: the spotlight was on the direct victims of this atrocious and cultural-genocidal policy culminating of course in Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology; as Probyn-Rapsey points out some white fathers would disown their "half-caste" offspring, others would own up to them at the risk of attracting attention from the white authorities, whose vigorous pursuit of white justice is mercilessly laid bare in the dramatized autobiography, Rabbit Proof Fence, and Baz Luhrmann's fictional account Australia. [From the journal's webpage]
'Settler colonialism produces distinctive structures, spaces and boundaries that seek to differentiate coloniser from colonised, black from white. Two works that explore these cultural spaces, social structures, racial hierarchies—and the intimate and actual lived-in spaces that lay in-between—are Fiona Davis’ Australian Settler Colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station: Redrawing Boundaries and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey’s Made to Matter: White Fathers, Stolen Generations. Both works engage with theories of whiteness, foregrounding it as a necessary concept to grapple with the different racial, cultural and social spaces produced by settler colonialism in Australia, yet they do so from different “fields” or “sites”.' (Introduction)
