Cirrus@Austlit

In this chapter a number of Black Australian literary approaches to the past are examined: the usage of singular and venerable black narrative structures, the attempt to explore the lives of heroic black figures of the past and the revisionist view of Australian history which conveys, for the first time, an Aboriginal interpretation of past events. Black literary views of history are primarily concerned with an illustration of the lives of Aboriginal people, but it is unavoidable that an alternative assessment of Australian post-contact past should engage with white historical figures and 'myths' as well. Shoemaker aruges that an eagerness among Black writers to counterbalance the bias of previous interpretations of the continent's interracial history, sometimes runs the risk of over-compensating by positing equally biased and contentious versions of the past. The literary search for a viable Black history signifies an Aboriginal effort to establish racial facts and fictions at least equal in stature to those of white Australia. The works of Jack Davis, Robert Merritt, Colin Johnson, Nancy Cato and Robert Drewe are analysed.