Bain Attwood

Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History

An Aboriginal Life Story

William Cooper

The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors

Good Country

Andrew Markus

The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights is the first book of its kind. Not only does it tell the history of the political struggle for Aboriginal rights in all parts of Australia; it does so almost entirely through a selection of historical documents created by the Aboriginal campaigners themselves, many of which have never been published. It presents Aboriginal perspectives of their dispossession and their long and continuing fight to overcome this. In charting the story of Aboriginal political activity from its beginnings on Flinders Island in the 1830s to the fight over native title today, this book aims to help Australians better understand both the continuities and the changes in Aboriginal politics over the last 150 years: in the leadership of the Aboriginal political struggle, the objectives of these campaigners for rights for Aborigines, their aspirations, the sources of their programmes for change, their methods of protest, and the outcomes of their protest. Through the words of Aboriginal activists, across 150 years, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights charts the relationship between political involvement and Aboriginal identity.

A documentary history

The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights

This book provides a new approach to the historic treatment of indigenous peoples' sovereignty and property rights in Australia and New Zealand. By shifting attention from the original European claims of possession to a comparison of the ways in which British players treated these matters later, Bain Attwood not only reveals some startling similarities between the Australian and New Zealand cases but revises the long-held explanations of the differences. He argues that the treatment of the sovereignty and property rights of First Nations was seldom determined by the workings of moral principle, legal doctrine, political thought or government policy. Instead, it was the highly particular historical circumstances in which the first encounters between natives and Europeans occurred and colonisation began that largely dictated whether treaties of cession were negotiated, just as a bitter political struggle determined the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi and ensured that native title was made in New Zealand.

Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People

Empire and the Making of Native Title

William Cooper’s passionate struggle against the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the denial of their rights and his heroic fight for them to become citizens in their own country has been widely commemorated and celebrated. By carefully reconstructing the historical losses his Yorta Yorta people suffered and endured, William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story reveals how the first seventy years of Cooper’s life inspired the remarkable political work he undertook in the 1930s. Focusing on Cooper’s most important campaigns-his famous petition to the British king George for an Aboriginal representative in the Australian parliament, his call for a day of mourning after 150 years of colonisation, the walk-off of the Yorta Yorta people from Cumeroogunga reserve in 1939 and his opposition to the establishment of an Aboriginal regiment in the Second World War-this carefully researched study sheds important new light on the long struggle that Indigenous people have fought to have the truth about Australia’s black history heard and win representation in Australia’s political order.

Stephen Glynn Foster

Based on a forum held at the National Museum in Canberra this book presents a series of essays by leading contributors on the subject of conflict between Aborigines and settlers.

The Australian Experience

Frontier Conflict

Moulding of the Indigenous peoples into a recognizable social and political ethnic grouping; missions; Ramahyuck; employment; Nineteenth century thought and Nineteenth Century Victorian government policy; historiography.

The Making of the Aborigines

Fiona Magowan

Recent decades have seen a tremendous upsurge of interest among the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand in their history. Life stories, land claims, genealogy, song, dance and painting have all made new contributions to the recovery and representation of the past. Telling Stories looks at the place of life stories and of memory in history: who tells life stories, the purpose for which they are told; the role of story and history in the politics of land claims; and the way language impacts on research and writing. Ann Parsonson writes about 'stories for land' in the oral narratives of the Maori Land Court; Deborah Rose Bird retells the 'saga of Captain Cook'; Andrew Erueti and Alan Ward examine Maori land law in the context of the Treaty claims process; Jeremy Beckett looks at the autobiographical oral history of Myles Lalor; and Bain Attwood discusses the stolen generations narrative. With Judith Binney, Fiona Magowan, W.H. Oliver, Basil Sansom and Penny van Toorn, these contributors explore the questions arising when different kinds of history meet: different kinds of evidence, from different cultures, sometimes telling the same story from conflicting perspectives. Telling Stories is a timely book that freely explores the multiple forms of indigenous history in New Zealand and Australia.

Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand

Telling Stories

Most non-Indigenous Australians know of Charles Perkins. Many are familiar with a few other Aboriginal leaders. Yet few have heard of William Cooper, one of the most important Aboriginal leaders in Australia's history. "Thinking Black" tells the story of Cooper and the Australian Aborigines' League, and their campaign for Aboriginal people's rights. Through petitions to government, letters to other campaigners and organisations, and entreaties to friends and well-wishers, the book reveals their passionate struggle against dispossession and displacement, the denial of rights, and their fight to be citizens in their own country. Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus document the circumstances behind the most significant moments in Cooper's political career -- his famous 1933 petition to King George V, his call for a 'Day of Mourning' in 1938, the walk-off from Cummeragunja in 1939 and his opposition to an Aboriginal regiment in 1939. It explores the principles Cooper drew on in his campaigning, not least his 'Letter from an Educated Black', surely one of the most intriguing political testaments by an Australian leader. "Thinking Black" sheds new light on the history of what it has meant to be Aboriginal in modern Australia. It reveals the rich and varied cultural traditions, both Aboriginal and British, religious and secular, that have informed Aboriginal people's battle for justice, and their vision of equality in Australia of two peoples: equal yet distinct.

Bain Attwood

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