'Marnie Kennedy's story begins with her birth in 1919 on the banks of Coppermine Creek in Western Queensland. She tells of her journey to Palm Island where she grew up 'under the act' which dominated the lives of Aboriginal people in Queensland.
The book includes descriptions of Kennedy's hard working life on the cattle stations throughout the north and the people she encountered there. She wrote her story so that white people would come to know and understand the plight of her people by reading of her own life as a 'half-caste'.' Source: Publisher's blurb
'During the 1980s Aboriginal Australians experienced setbacks in their quest for the restoration of their land rights. Neoliberal politics reframed such demands as special interests seeking to gain a material advantage at the expense of the general community and as a threat to the economic security of the nation. As a consequence, politicians failed to pass legislation that would formalize the national land rights system that would guarantee Aboriginal economic self-sufficiency. This paper argues that it was in this context that Aboriginal memoir emerged to prompt social action by recounting experiences of discrimination and exploitation erased by official history and by challenging the imposed racist stereotypes used to marginalize Aboriginal claims. These memoirs prompted sympathy and understanding among a broad readership, which enabled the formation of a political solidarity over the recognition of Aboriginal land rights. These memoirs also expressed a commonality of Aboriginal experience that served to unite an increasingly frayed Aboriginal activist movement eroded by neoliberal policies.' (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)
'This is a very short book, just 68 pages and well illustrated. That was not the reason that I read through it, without pause, in one session. Marnie Kennedy's story absorbed me to the end. The story is told in a straight-forward style that reflects the open honesty of the writer. She comments several times in her story that she successfully managed many jobs on the stations where she worked, even though she wasn't trained for them, because she worked to a system. The system she made for writing this book worked well too.' (Introduction)
'This is a very short book, just 68 pages and well illustrated. That was not the reason that I read through it, without pause, in one session. Marnie Kennedy's story absorbed me to the end. The story is told in a straight-forward style that reflects the open honesty of the writer. She comments several times in her story that she successfully managed many jobs on the stations where she worked, even though she wasn't trained for them, because she worked to a system. The system she made for writing this book worked well too.' (Introduction)
'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)
'During the 1980s Aboriginal Australians experienced setbacks in their quest for the restoration of their land rights. Neoliberal politics reframed such demands as special interests seeking to gain a material advantage at the expense of the general community and as a threat to the economic security of the nation. As a consequence, politicians failed to pass legislation that would formalize the national land rights system that would guarantee Aboriginal economic self-sufficiency. This paper argues that it was in this context that Aboriginal memoir emerged to prompt social action by recounting experiences of discrimination and exploitation erased by official history and by challenging the imposed racist stereotypes used to marginalize Aboriginal claims. These memoirs prompted sympathy and understanding among a broad readership, which enabled the formation of a political solidarity over the recognition of Aboriginal land rights. These memoirs also expressed a commonality of Aboriginal experience that served to unite an increasingly frayed Aboriginal activist movement eroded by neoliberal policies.' (Publication abstract)
