Cirrus@Austlit

'‘I left Tennant Creek in 1955, aged thirteen. I had never been back and never wanted to go back. In fact, I’d wanted not to go back.’ (15)

'But 50 years later, he did go back. Dean Ashenden begins with tourist signs and their silences, on his way to Warumungu Country where he lived as child. As Ashenden moves northwards, he takes us on a tour of great billboards erected in prominent places of small towns, paying homage to ‘explorers’ and ‘pioneers’. Where were the Aboriginal people?'  (Introduction)

'Tiwi people have plenty to be proud of. This little tropical island community has more than its fair share of surprising stories that turn ideas of Australian history upside down.

'The Tiwi claim the honour of having defeated a global superpower. When the world's most powerful navy attempted to settle and invade the Tiwi Islands in 1824, Tiwi guerrilla warriors fought the British and won. The Tiwi remember the fight and oral histories reveal their tactical brilliance.

'Later, in 1911, Catholic priest Francis Xavier Gsell styled himself as the 'Bishop with 150 wives'. Gsell said he 'purchased' Tiwi women and 'freed' them from traditional Tiwi marriage, and Tiwi girls grew up into devoted Catholics. But Tiwi women had more power in their marriage negotiations than the missionaries realised. They worked out how to be both Tiwi and Catholic. And it was the missionaries who came around to Tiwi thinking, not the other way around.

'Then there are stories of the Tiwi people's 'number one religion': Aussie Rules Football; the eldest living Tiwi woman, Calista Kantilla, remembers her time growing up in the mission dormitory; and Tiwi Traditional Owner Teddy Portaminni explains the importance of Tiwi history and culture, as something precious, owned by Tiwi and the source of Tiwi strength.

'Tiwi Story showcases stories of resilience, creativity and survival, as told by the Tiwi people.' (Publication summary)

'Everywhen is a groundbreaking collection about diverse ways of conceiving, knowing, and narrating time and deep history.

'Looking beyond the linear, Everywhen asks how knowledge systems of Aboriginal people can broaden understandings of the past and of our history. Indigenous embodied practices for knowing, narrating, and re-enacting the past in the present blur the distinctions of linear time, making all history now. Questions of time and language are questions of Indigenous sovereignty — and recognising First Nations’ time concepts embedded in languages and practices is a route to recognising diverse forms of Indigenous sovereignty.

'Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker and Jakelin Troy, this collection draws attention to every when, arguing that First Nations’ ways of thinking of time are vital to understanding history and offers a new framework for how it is practiced in the Western tradition. Everywhen shows us that history is not as straightforward as some might think.'(Publication summary)

'Settler Australia is sometimes said to have experienced a ‘time revolution’ on realizing that Aboriginal people have dwelt here for millennia, mirroring the earlier European ‘time revolution’ when Europeans discovered humanity’s ‘deep’ past. This essay unpicks these twin ‘revolutions’ and explores how the idea of ‘time revolutions’ serves a settler society such as Australia. I suggest that celebration of quantitative ‘revolutions’ obscures qualitative shifts in European times and sidelines Indigenous way-of-being in time. I wonder about the possibility of a more fundamental ‘time revolution’, that is, a turning to see that time might not be simply linear, universal and homogenous.'(Publication abstract)

'In an attic in Somerset, fifty leather-bound books lay lost for over a century. They were found in 2015. Their discoverer was Sophie Hale and the books were diaries of her great-grandfather: the missionary and colonial bishop, Mathew Blagden Hale. Her remarkable find prompted this book.'  (Introduction)

'In seeking to understand the deep past, the knowledges of First Nations peoples and of the various academic disciplines can seem incommensurable. In this essay, we argue the concept of “historicities”, that is, the encultured ways of narrating and conceiving of the past offers to enrich the study of deep history. Sensitivity to the various ways the past is remembered and understood, as well as the ways in which these historicities are dialogically and relationally constructed, offers ways of bringing distinct accounts of the deep past into conversation. Through closely reading various narrations of deep histories of the Tiwi Islands, we suggest ways in which historicities might be understood as coexisting and in relation, without reducing their accounts to a single universalizable story of the past or hierarchy of knowledges. This special issue further explores decolonizing challenges to ways of knowing the deep past from a range of disciplinary perspectives.' (Publication abstract)

'Over the course of the twentieth century, scholars have found diverse ways of reading ‘Aboriginal Dreaming’ stories as historical accounts of events in Australia’s ‘deep time’. This article argues that, when analysed alongside developments in Australian settler–Indigenous relations, the various readings of Aboriginal stories map onto changing views of Indigenous difference as well as the usefulness and value of Indigenous culture as a ‘deep history’ or heritage for the settler nation. This analysis reveals that merely engaging with Indigenous stories is not inherently decolonising. Rather, the interpretation of Aboriginal story is best done with great care and in partnership with Indigenous owners of this knowledge.' (Publication abstract)

'This book hit a nerve. It’s not that Terri Janke sets out to confront her readers; if anything, she is at pains to convey goodwill. Janke, who is of Meriam and Wuthathi heritage, writes to build bridges and, above all, to give useful advice. But beneath this is a profound challenge for those who write and create: that is, to rethink how we know.'  (Introduction)

'Linguistically speaking, Australia is special. With around 250 languages spoken when Australia was first colonised, Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.' (Introduction)

'In the 1970s and 1980s, Luise Hercus pioneered interdisciplinary approaches to Aboriginal history. Bringing her linguistic expertise to history, she presented Aboriginal histories in Aboriginal languages to an academic readership. Biḍa-ru ‘gana mayi aḷali baldi-lugu gadna-ru ‘they killed her, they ripped her open with a bullet’. Speaking in Wangkangurru, Ben Murray retold stories of the massacres of his forebears in the Simpson Desert in the pages of Aboriginal History (Hercus 1977: 56, 58, 61). Hercus conducted and recorded interviews in Wangkangurru and Arabana to hear Aboriginal perspectives on the wadjabala maḍimaḍi (‘white fellows with hair-string’), that is, the ‘Afghans’ and their travels across South Australia (Hercus 1981, 1985: 27, 39). Whereas others had tended to ignore or downplay the actual words Aboriginal people spoke and the language of their stories, she insisted on representing Aboriginal stories first in Aboriginal languages, and then in English (Austin, Hercus & Jones 1988: 116-117; Hercus & Sutton 1986:4). Of course, these histories come to us mediated by Hercus’ transcription, translation and interpretation – we are not with Ben Murray as he speaks – but Hercus brought her readers closer to Aboriginal people’s experience and memories through representing Aboriginal languages.'

'Just Relations begins with the comment that Mary Bennett’s biography is ‘long overdue’. Australian historians are already familiar with Bennett’s Christian feminist and humanitarian activism. But the ‘delay’ has allowed Alison Holland to bring together a vast quantity of fresh research done over the last two decades on humanitarianism and Aboriginal policy in its national, imperial and international contexts. The result is a comprehensive and sophisticated study of Bennett in her ideological and political milieu and a thorough representation of the evolution of Aboriginal policy debates. It is an important contribution to Australian history that was worth the wait.'  (Introduction)