'From time to time scholars have posed the question: why have Australian Aborigines not developed cargo cults with the same intensity and flamboyance as their Melanesian neighbours? This discussion evades the implications that Aborigines may have been negligent in their cultural production of responses to colonisation, and seeks to engage with some of the responses some Aboriginal people actually have made to colonisation. Focussing on stories of Ned Kelly, and contrasting them with stories of Captain Cook, the suggestion here is that Aboriginal people's search for a moral European communicates the challenging and provocative possibility that coloniser and colonised can share a moral history and thus can fashion a just society. ' (Publication abstract)
'My friend Hobbles Danayari and I once camped together in a brokendown vehicle on a night when it was difficult to sleep. It was just after Christmas; the rains were sporadic, and the heat was intense. We, along with many other people, were visiting a small community north of Yarralin in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory. Hobbles apparently felt lively that night, and his vitality often sought outlet in stories. During that one night he told me stories which set the agenda for much of the research in which I was then engaged. His stories so expanded my sense of the possible that nine years later I continue to consider the issues of time, space, and narrative which they raised for me.' (Publication abstract)
'My friend Hobbles Danayari and I once camped together in a brokendown vehicle on a night when it was difficult to sleep. It was just after Christmas; the rains were sporadic, and the heat was intense. We, along with many other people, were visiting a small community north of Yarralin in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory. Hobbles apparently felt lively that night, and his vitality often sought outlet in stories. During that one night he told me stories which set the agenda for much of the research in which I was then engaged. His stories so expanded my sense of the possible that nine years later I continue to consider the issues of time, space, and narrative which they raised for me.' (Publication abstract)
'From time to time scholars have posed the question: why have Australian Aborigines not developed cargo cults with the same intensity and flamboyance as their Melanesian neighbours? This discussion evades the implications that Aborigines may have been negligent in their cultural production of responses to colonisation, and seeks to engage with some of the responses some Aboriginal people actually have made to colonisation. Focussing on stories of Ned Kelly, and contrasting them with stories of Captain Cook, the suggestion here is that Aboriginal people's search for a moral European communicates the challenging and provocative possibility that coloniser and colonised can share a moral history and thus can fashion a just society. ' (Publication abstract)
