Issue Details: First known date: 2002... 2002 Minding Your 'Ps and Qs' : Poetry, Propaganda, Politics and Pictures
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Halliday critiques two picture books, The Last of His Tribe (Henry Kendall )and The Drover's Boy (Ted Egan & Robert Ingpen) by asking who speaks, who is silenced and what constructions are used to reinforce this silence in texts which purport to represent Aboriginal people and their experiences. Halliday argues that these texts (like many others), say more about the construction of white identity than they do about Aboriginality and that they reinforce an ideologiocal position that is fundamentally racist (p.38). This occurs through the representation of Aboriganal people as '...a race whom history has passed by' and Halliday asks the question, are these texts are an attempt to reconcile [white] feelings of shame and sorrow or are they blatant propganda?(pp.38, 47) She concludes her analysis by arguing that while these texts may introduce the child reader to some of the untold stories and lost histories of Aboriginal people, essentially they reinforce 'a dominant white hegemony as the desired norm for Australian society' (p.47).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 29 Mar 2018 11:20:11
38-49 http://www.paperschildlit.com/pdfs/200210515.pdf Minding Your 'Ps and Qs' : Poetry, Propaganda, Politics and Picturessmall AustLit logo Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature
X