'Aboriginal claims for sacredness in modern Australia may seem like minor events, but they have radically disturbed the nation's image of itself. Minorities appear to have too much influence; majorities suddenly feel embattled. What once seemed familiar can now seem disconcertingly unfamiliar, a condition Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs diagnose as 'uncanny'. In Uncanny Australia Gelder and Jacobs show how Aboriginal claims for sacredness radiate out to affect the fortunes, and misfortunes, of the modern nation. They look at Coronation Hill, Hindmarsh Island, Uluru and the repatriation of sacred objects; they examine secret business in public places, promiscuous sacred sites, ghosts and bunyips, cartographic nostalgia, reconciliation and democracy, postcolonial racism and New Age enchantments. "Uncanny Australia" offers a new way of understanding how the Aboriginal sacred inhabits the modern nation.' (Source: TROVE)
'[...]most predictably, the European experience of Australia affirms the fundamental uncanny qualities of the landscape. [...]that obviously covered my mistakes. Because if I tried to write Deadman Dance, it better be damn perfect, or I would deserve everything I get. Filippo Menozzi has identified an intersection between colonialism and ecology in postcolonial fiction, which can be applied to Mitchell's narratives of Australia: "The literary figuration of biological invasiveness is a site where the legacy of colonialism is shown at work on multiple levels or planes, from politics to nature" (182). Modernity is threatening the planet through the excessive exploitation of natural resources and the creation of world-destroying technologies such as nuclear weapons.' (Introduction)
'In Australia there have been for a long time two distinct yet connect-led public and intellectual debates concerning the significance of descent, belonging and culture. One revolves around the cleavage between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, and especially the status of indigenous claims deriving from a history of colonisation. It is about land, health, heritage, housing, intellectual property, identity, education, 'stolen children', and much else as well. The other debate centres on the immigrant, and his or her challenge to Australian society at large. It focuses on the non-British immigrant and the notion of multiculturalism, and is about cultural diversity, ethnic politics, and immigration policy. In this chapter I develop the argument that these two debates can neither be conceptualised together nor maintained as fully distinct. As a result of the public debates on both indigenous and immigration policies triggered by independent member of parliament Pauline Hanson in 1996, they converged and interacted in the later 1990s to a greater degree than at any time in the previous two centuries. Yet their conversation remains uneasy.' (Introduction)
