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y separately published work icon The Way We Civilise single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 1997... 1997 The Way We Civilise
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This account does not tell a history of 'savages' and 'natives', but it reinstitutes Aboriginal people as human beings with a knowable and known past." from the Foreword by Marcia Langton. This is a groundbreaking history of government's intervention in the lives of Aboriginal people. For more than a century, who they married, where they lived, how their wages were managed, all were determined by bureaucrats.Queensland has the highest population of indigenous people in Australia and this comprehensive account, based on previously restricted material, documents the extraordinary history of a century of Aboriginal affairs in the state. It moves beyond racial conflict to provide new perspectives on government practices.The often strained relations between churches and the government reveal the struggles and appalling conditions of under-funded missions and settlements. Documents also show that vested interests unscrupulously competed to retain cheap or unpaid labour.Between 1914 and 1986 three powerful individuals controlled Aboriginal affairs. Kidd describes how they wielded enormous influence over every aspect of the lives of Queensland's Aboriginal population. She reveals the bitter conflicts between state and federal politicians, and examines why governments failed to turn the rhetoric of reform into reality.Timely and significant, this disturbing account is essential to an understanding of Aboriginal grievances today.' (Source: Publisher's website)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

[Review] The Way We Civilise David Baker , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: Queensland Review , October vol. 4 no. 2 1997; (p. 87-89)

— Review of The Way We Civilise Rosalind Kidd , 1997 single work criticism
'Rosalind Kidd's singularly important history of the administration of Aboriginal Affairs in Queensland seeks to range "beyond the conventional repression/liberation frameworks which have dominated aboriginal studies during the last twenty years". Kidd doesn't want to think of government as an "effect of ideology" where different institutions - church, state, health, media etc. - all run the same repressive racist line. Rather, the picture of government that emerges in this work is a picture of liberal government in the widest sense: government as a site of the formation, administration and problematisation of various objects (in this instance "aboriginal population") as well as government as a kind of brokering agency, an institution that negotiates with and trades off the various competing interest groups who are constituted as "stake-holders" in relation to those objects of governance.' (Introduction) 
[Review] The Way We Civilise David Baker , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: Queensland Review , October vol. 4 no. 2 1997; (p. 87-89)

— Review of The Way We Civilise Rosalind Kidd , 1997 single work criticism
'Rosalind Kidd's singularly important history of the administration of Aboriginal Affairs in Queensland seeks to range "beyond the conventional repression/liberation frameworks which have dominated aboriginal studies during the last twenty years". Kidd doesn't want to think of government as an "effect of ideology" where different institutions - church, state, health, media etc. - all run the same repressive racist line. Rather, the picture of government that emerges in this work is a picture of liberal government in the widest sense: government as a site of the formation, administration and problematisation of various objects (in this instance "aboriginal population") as well as government as a kind of brokering agency, an institution that negotiates with and trades off the various competing interest groups who are constituted as "stake-holders" in relation to those objects of governance.' (Introduction) 
Last amended 1 Dec 2015 15:21:13
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