Week 5: Writing about Race and Racial Frontiers

23 August 2004

Tutorial Question:

Can Hsu-Ming Teo’s concept of ‘ethnicisation’ be usefully employed to answer the various challenges of writing the history of Australian race relations? (Be sure to include discussion of issues relating to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous history in your answer)

What are the fundamental differences and intersecting agreements between Indigenous and Non-indigenous writers on frontier and post-frontier race relations? Can we see ourselves within a post-frontier moment? Is all non-Indigenous history in Australia migrant history? What are the problems of writing ‘multicultural history’? What is ‘Aboriginal history’ and who is authorised to write it? Have white scholars benefited from writing a history not their own? Are such contentions useful or essentialist? What other media, apart from scholarly writing, can be used to represent the past and are some more appropriate than others? How does writing the history of race relations compare to other histories of marginalisation, such as those employing gender or class?

Essential Reading:

• McGrath, A. ‘Contested Ground: What is ‘Aboriginal History?’, in A. McGrath (ed). Contested Ground (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995).
• Teo, Hsu-Ming ‘Multiculturalism and the Problem of Multi-Cultural Histories: An Overview of Ethnic Historiography’ in Teo, Hsu-Ming and R. White (eds) Cultural History in Australia (Sydney, 2003)

Additional Reading:

• Attwood, B. ‘Aborigines and Academic Historians: Some Recent Encounters’ Australian Historical Studies 24, April — Oct. 1991, 123 — 135.
• Foley, Dennis. ‘An Indigenous Standpoint Theory’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, vol 5, no. 3, 2002, pp. 3-13.
• Hamilton, Annette. ‘Fear and Desire: Aborigines, Asians and the National Imaginary’, Australian Cultural History, vol 9, 1990.
• Markus, A and Ricklefs, M.C. (ed) Surrender Australia? Essays in the study and uses of history: Geoffrey Blainey and Asian Immigration (Sydney, 1985)
• Read, Peter, ‘Clio or Janus? Historians and the Stolen Generations’ in Darien-Smith, K (ed) Challenging Histories: Reflections on Australian History. Special Issue of Australian Historical Studies, no. 118, 2002, 54 — 60

Extended Reading:

(See also Week 11)

• Anderson, K. ‘Constructing Geographies: ‘Race’, Place and the making of Sydney’s Aboriginal Redfern’, in Peter Jackson and Jan Penrose (eds). Constructions of Race, Place and Nation (London: UCL Press, 1993), pp 81-99.
• Attwood, B and John Arnold. Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, special issue of Journal of Australian Studies (Melbourne: Latrobe Univ Press/National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash Univ, 1992).
• Attwood, B. ‘Understanding the Aboriginal Past: History or Myth’, AJPH, vol 34, no. 2, 1988.
• Attwood, B. The Making of the Aborigines (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989).
• Austin, Tony. ‘Cecil Cook, Scientific Thought and "Half Castes" in the Northern Territory, 1927-1939’, Aboriginal History, vol 14, Nos. 1-2, 1990.
• Barwick, D. ‘Writing Aboriginal History’, Canberra Anthropology, vol 4, October 1981.
• Bottoms, T. Djabugay: An Aboriginal History of North Queensland (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999).
• Brown, Kevin M. ‘Establishing Difference: Culture, Race, Ethnicity and the Production of Ideology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, vol 22, no. 2, 1986, pp 175-186.
• Cowlishaw, G. Black, White or Brindle: Race in Rural Australia (Cambridge: CUP, 1988).
• Curthoys, A. ‘Rewriting Australian History: Including Aboriginal Resistance’, Arena, no. 62, 1983.
• Evans, R. Fighting Words: Writing about Race (Brisbane, 1999)
• Hage, G. White Nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society (Sydney, 1998)
• Hannaford, I. Race: The History of an Idea in the West, John Hopkins UP, Baltimore, 1996
• Hercuse, L. and P. Sutton (eds). This is What Happened: Historical Narratives by Aborigines (Canberra, 1986).
• Jackamos, Alick and Derek Fowell (eds). Living Aboriginal History of Victoria: Stories in the Oral Tradition (CUP, 1991).
• Jupp, James Immigration, Sydney 1991.
• Lattas, Andrew. ‘Savagery and Civilisation: Towards a Genealogy of Racism’, Social Analysis, vol 21, August 1987, pp. 39-58.
• Malik, K. The Meanings of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, Macmillan, Houndsmill, 1996
• Read, Peter ‘Good Historians and True: Revising Aboriginal History’ Victorian Historical Journal vol 61, no.4, December 1990.
• Read, Peter. Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership (Cambridge: CUP, 2000).
• Reynolds, H Aboriginal sovereignty: reflections on race, state and nation, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1996
• Reynolds, H Frontier: Aborigines, settlers and land, Sydney, 1987
• Reynolds, H The law of the land, Penguin, Ringwood, 1987
• Reynolds, H The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Penguin, Ringwood, 1982
• Reynolds, H This whispering in our hearts, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, 1998
• Rowse, Tim. ‘Middle Australia and the Noble Savage: A Political Romance’, in Jeremy Beckett (ed). Past and Present (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988), pp. 161-77.
• Ryan, Lyndall. ‘Reading Aboriginal Histories’, Meanjin, vol 45, no. 1, March 1986.
• Said, E. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Penguin, Ringwood, 1995 (first published 1972)
• Sherington, Geoff Australia’s Immigrants, (Sydney, 1990)
• Shoemaker, Adam. Black Words: White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988 (St Lucia, 1989).
• van Toorn, Penny. Speaking Positions: Aboriginality, Gender and Ethnicity in Australian Cultural Studies (Melbourne: University of Technology Press, 1995).

Paintings:

A number of prominent Indigenous painters have produced powerful visual statements on frontier race relations. For an alternative form of expression of Indigenous standpoints.

• Art Gallery of NSW. My Story, My Country: Aboriginal Art and the Land (Sydney, 1992).
• First Citizen: Albert Namitjera (1989). [Film]
• McLean, Ian and Gordon Bennett. The Art of Gordon Bennett (Sydney: Craftsmen House, 1996).
• Petersen, Kirsten, H. ‘Modern Aboriginal Political Art’, in Anna Rutherford (ed). Aboriginal Culture Today (Canberra, 1988).
• Rabuntja, W. The Town Grew up Dancing (Alice Springs, 2002)