Cirrus@Austlit

'W.E.H. Stanner’s coinage ‘the great Australian silence’ must be one of the best known in Australia’s modern history. It must also rank alongside Donald Horne’s ‘the lucky country’ as one of the least understood.' (Introduction)

'How William Cooper became “the man who stood up to Hitler”'

'An important tribute to the work and life of an extraordinary Aboriginal activist

'William Cooper's passionate struggle against the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the denial of their rights, and his heroic fight for them to become citizens in their own country, has been widely commemorated and celebrated. By carefully reconstructing the historical losses his people suffered and endured, William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story reveals how the first seventy years of Cooper's life inspired the remarkable political work he undertook in the 1930s Focusing on Cooper's most important campaigns - his famous petition to King George VI for an Aboriginal representative in the Australian parliament, his call for a day of mourning after 150 years of colonisation, the walk-off of the Yorta Yorta people from Cummeragunja reserve in 1939 and his opposition to the establishment of an Aboriginal regiment in the Second World War - this carefully researched study sheds important new light on the long struggle that Indigenous people have fought…' (Publication summary)

'In recent years Australian historians have begun to show the ways in which Australia’s black history has simultaneously been concealed and disclosed over a long period of time. This article focuses on one such example of this phenomenon – a 1937 fictionalised family history by the Western Australian writer Henrietta Drake-Brockman – and seeks to uncover the unusual set of biographical, historical, intellectual and generic factors that spurred her to raise questions about this black history rather than look the other way. At the same time, we examine the ways in which Drake-Brockman herself turned a blind eye to the Drake-Brockmans’ entanglement with another racial history.' (Publication abstract)

'In this splendid book, Billy Griffiths investigates a historical revolution that occurred in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century – the dramatic discovery by archaeologists that this continent had a deep Aboriginal history, and the accompanying assertion by Aboriginal people of their status and rights as the nation’s first peoples – which saw the country’s Aboriginal past shift from the periphery of the nation’s story to its centre.'  (Introduction)

'Bain Attwood takes us to the heart of the conflict about the Aboriginal past in Australia. He tracks the growing popularity of history and weighs the consequences for the nature of historical knowledge and the authority of the historian. He asks why and how Aboriginal history has become central to Australian politics, culture and identity. He examines the work of historical 'revisionists' and tests their promise of historical truth. Finally, Attwood ponders how the traumatic history of frontier conflict might better be remembered - and mourned - and why telling the truth about history matters for the nation and for all of us. ' (Source: Publisher's website)

'Thinking Black tells the story of Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, and their campaign for Aboriginal people’s rights. Through petitions to government, letters to other campaigners and organisations, and entreaties to friends and well-wishers, Thinking Black reveals their passionate struggle against dispossession and displacement, the denial of rights, and their fight to be citizens in their own country.'

'Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus document the circumstances behind the most significant moments in Cooper’s political career — his famous petition to King George V in 1933, his call for a ‘Day of Mourning’ in 1938, the walk-off from Cummeragunja in 1939 and his opposition to an Aboriginal regiment in 1939. It explores the principles Cooper drew on in his campaigning, not least his ‘Letter from an Educated Black’, surely one of the most intriguing political testaments written by an Australian leader.'

'Thinking Black sheds new light on the history of what it has meant to be Aboriginal in modern Australia. It reveals the rich and varied cultural traditions, both Aboriginal and British, religious and secular, that have informed Aboriginal people’s battle for justice, and their vision of equality in Australia of two peoples: equal yet distinct.' (Source: Publisher's website)

'The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights is the first book of its kind. Not only does it tell the history of the political struggle for Aboriginal rights in all parts of Australia; it does so almost entirely through a selection of historical documents created by the Aboriginal campaigners themselves, many of which have never been published. It presents Aboriginal perspectives of their dispossession and their long and continuing fight to overcome this.'

'In charting the story of Aboriginal political activity from its beginnings on Flinders Island in the 1830s to the fight over native title today, this book aims to help Australians better understand both the continuities and the changes in Aboriginal politics over the last 150 years: in the leadership of the Aboriginal political struggle, the objectives of these campaigners for rights for Aborigines, their aspirations, the sources of their programmes for change, their methods of protest, and the outcomes of their protest.'

'Through the words of Aboriginal activists, across 150 years, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights charts the relationship between political involvement and Aboriginal identity.' (Source: Publisher's website)

Discusses the problematics of the nature and construction of Aboriginality, and examines the epistemological discourses and institutional frameworks through which Morgan authenticates her Aboriginality, particularly the role which My Place plays in this process (history/myth).