Cirrus@Austlit

'The story of the extended encounter between Eora Aboriginal man Bennelong and Arthur Phillip, first governor of the British colony at Sydney, has often been told as both emblematic and predictive of the history of British possession of Australia, and of Aboriginal dispossession. Historians such as Grace Karskens and Keith Vincent Smith have peeled back the layers of this narrative to find ways of telling more complex, contextualised, and open-ended stories. Fullagar reaches a new stage in this journey, and the journey of Australian history more generally. She offers a fresh perspective on Bennelong and Phillip, on the nature of their exchange and the broader currents in which they swam.' (Introduction)          

'The Lives of Stories traces three stories of Aboriginal–settler friendships that intersect with the ways in which Australians remember founding national stories, build narratives for cultural revival, and work on reconciliation and self-determination. These three stories, which are still being told with creativity and commitment by storytellers today, are the story of James Morrill’s adoption by Birri-Gubba people and re-adoption 17 years later into the new colony of Queensland, the story of Bennelong and his relationship with Governor Phillip and the Sydney colonists, and the story of friendship between Wiradjuri leader Windradyne and the Suttor family. Each is an intimate story about people involved in relationships of goodwill, care, adoptive kinship and mutual learning across cultures, and the strains of maintaining or relinquishing these bonds as they took part in the larger events that signified the colonisation of Aboriginal lands by the British. Each is a story in which cross-cultural understanding and misunderstanding are deeply embedded, and in which the act of storytelling itself has always been an engagement in cross-cultural relations. The Lives of Stories reflects on the nature of story as part of our cultural inheritance, and seeks to engage the reader in becoming more conscious of our own effect as history-makers as we retell old stories with new meanings in the present, and pass them on to new generations.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The point of departure for Country Women and the Colour Bar is the contrast (and friction) between the now fairly well-known Freedom Rides, which toured New South Wales (NSW) in 1965 – drawing attention to the racism and segregation still rife in many country towns – and the ‘quiet activism’ in which many country women had been engaged for a decade or more, working together with sympathetic white people to create networks of support and improvements in living conditions for Aboriginal communities. Country Women and the Colour Bar immerses the reader in this world of country women, and the local concerns and relationships of women in six NSW towns where branches of the Country Women’s Association (CWA) open to, or expressly for, Aboriginal women existed between 1956 and 1972.' (Introduction)

'In life, Bennelong was by no means the only mediator between the Aboriginal peoples of the Sydney region and the colonists, but across the latter half of the twentieth century, he took on a singular role as chief intermediary between the present and the past. It is through Bennelong's story that many Australians feel they know something of the great encounter between the invading Europeans and the Australian Aborigines, and something of the truth of its outcomes.

Storytellers have demonstrated a loyalty to Bennelong's tragedy or failure across significant shifts in Australian and Aboriginal historiography. This paper begins to explore some of the variations on Bennelong's tragic story, attempts to separate out some of its layers of plausibility, and to enquire into the possible meanings of this repeated reinscription of cross-cultural tragedy.' Source (adapated) : Emma Dortins.