Cirrus@Austlit

'Dancing in Shadows explores the power of Indigenous performance pitted against the forces of settler colonisation. Historian Anna Haebich documents how the Nyungar people of Western Australia strategically and courageously adapted their rich performance culture to survive the catastrophe that engulfed them, and generously share their culture, history, and language in theatre. 

'In public corroborees they performed their sovereignty to the colonists and in community-only gatherings they danced and sang to bring forth resilience and spiritual healing. Pushed away by the colonists and denied their culture and lands they continued to live and perform in the shadows over the years, in combinations of the old and the new, including indigenised settler songs and dances. Nyungar people survived, and they now number around 40,000 people and constitute the largest Aboriginal nation in the Australian settler state. The ancient family lineages live in city suburbs and country towns and they continue to perform to celebrate their ancestors and to strengthen community wellbeing by being together.

Dancing in Shadows sheds light on a little-known history of Nyungar performance.' (Publication summary)

'Sensational rumours of the murder of three small children by their stepmother ignite the passions of Perth citizens in 1909.

Shocked by horrific descriptions of how she poisoned the children, they demand her execution as one voice. But did she do it? Or was she a victim of the prejudices of her persecutors?

Anna Haebich brings to life the people of Perth and the entangled mesh of self-righteous bigotry, slander and unbridled revenge they invoke to propel the trial of Martha Rendell to its inevitable end.

We see the accused woman's downward spiral from her dreams of a new beginning with her lover to a life of domestic drudgery and deceits; then her final days on the edge of the abyss - becoming the last woman in the state to be hanged.

Based on a true story and meticulously researched, this compelling novel is driven by passion, imagination and an eerie conjuring up of the past.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In Spinning the Dream, the author re-evaluates the experience of Assimilation in Australia, providing a meticulously researched and masterfully written assessment of its implications for Australia's Indigenous and ethnic minorities and for immigration and refugee policy'. (Source: Fremantle Press website)