24 research outputs found
Locality and legacy in Indigenous history now
No full textOver the past decade there has been a burgeoning interest in compiling material that looks back at early settler-colonial interactions with Indigenous peoples. There has also been an increased interest in historically examining the protest movements that defined Indigenous politics from the 1960s onwards. In visual and performing arts, in novels and poems, in documentary and feature films and in public and academic history, investiga-tions have focused, with more critical lenses, on the localised specificities and cultural leg-acies of Indigenous experiences. In Living with Locals: Early Europeans’ Experience of Indigenous Life by John Maynard and Victoria Haskins, and A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off by Charlie Ward, two very different explorations of Indigenous history are presented. One centres on localised examples of early European settlers who lived with Indigenous peoples. The other focuses on the cultural legacy left behind by the Gurindji people’s struggle for economic, political and cultural self-determin-ation. Each, in its own distinct way, is a welcome and refreshing addition to Indigenous historical inquiry. They are both balanced, intriguing and sophisticated, and there is little doubt that they are important contributions to a historical field that is comfortably expanding.Full Tex
Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity
No full textWho are the hidden faces that have contributed to the formation of an Australian identity? In what ways have individuals and groups been “excluded, neglected, or simply forgotten” in the dogged drive to narrate a cohesive story of identity‐making in Australia (p.2)? Such questions are addressed in this timely and comprehensive edited collection. As the volume's editor Paul Longley Arthur notes, the book sets out to uncover the “historical blind spots” that have been persistently concealed in the quest to uphold an “Australian settler dream” (pp.2‐3). Drawing upon a wide array of historical materials and approaches, this volume brings to the page histories of people who have been cast as peripheral to, or at odds with, commonplace Australian identity narratives. The uneasy colonial and gendered politics of the “official” archive, along with the complex interplays that exist between migration, memory, biography and belonging, are explored by an assortment of talented scholars who — when assessed as a whole — reveal the methodological richness of Australian historical inquiry and how it can interact with the conceptually robust disciplines of cultural and literary studies.No Full Tex
Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia
No full textRemembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia offers important new insights into what constitutes ‘migration history’ and ‘migration heritage’ in Australia. The book, edited by Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, is a timely, interdisciplinary contribution that effectively stipulates how oral history, together with memory and heritage studies, can distinctly inform us about migrations to Australia. Twenty-one chapters – written by an assortment of seasoned, mid-career, and promising early career researchers – present a rich diversity of methodological approaches, detailed case studies, as well as migrant ethnicities and recollections. Examining how ‘individuals, communities and the nation have commemorated and recorded the experiences of migration’, Remembering Migration pays serious attention to an area of Australian history that is often emotionally charged and politically fraught (4). It sets out to consider how migrants in Australia remember, retain and rework their pasts and it critically centres how ‘small stories or single accounts of migration’ add relevant meaning to the broader processes of Australian heritage making (11). Untold stories are brought to life; familiar stories are reframed anew; and the entangled relations between migrant pasts and presents are presented with fresh historical dynamism. This dynamism is sustained on two fronts: by reinstating the value of oral history for understanding the phenomenon of migration and by revealing how stories of migrancy are complexly sourced, sorted and represented by Australian heritage sectors.No Full Tex
Migrant Labour and Their “Capitalist Compatriots”: Towards a History of Ethnic Capitalism
No full textThe relationship between migration and Australian capitalism has long been a topic of robust scholarly debate in sociology and economics. Researchers in those fields have highlighted how migration has left an indelible imprint on Australian capitalism. By contrast, Australian migration histories have given scant attention to the role ethnic groups played in Australian capitalism. This lack of attention is particularly curious in historical studies of Greek Australia given the significance of small business in facilitating migration and settlement. From Federation onwards, Greek ethnic capitalism - or, more precisely, the relations between Greek migrant labourers and their petite bourgeoisie employers - became a topic of media coverage. In fact, the relations between Greek workers and employers were so important that newspapers routinely reported on the subject. This article examines this media coverage, its racialist and criminalising connotations, and historical relevance. It concludes with some observations on how histories of capitalism can productively engage with the histories of ethnicisation.Full Tex
Politics of Forgetting: New Zealand, Greece and Britain at War
No full textPolitics of Forgetting: New Zealand, Greece and Britain at War . By Martyn Brown. (Australian Scholarly Publishing, London/New York, 2018), pp.408, 21 figures, AU$49.95 (pb).
Examining triangular relationships between nation‐states has become a growing topic of interest in historical studies. Such a frame of analysis has typically centred on reciprocal communications shared between three states and the different spheres where past interactions have taken place. Martyn Brown's examination of the “multiple connections” shared between New Zealand, Greece, and Britain during the Second World War contributes to this trend (p.3). In the first detailed study of New Zealand's military engagements in Greece, he offers new insights into the nationalist dynamics of “official” war history and the loaded politics of war remembrance. Brown is interested in the question of “what has been forgotten in the process” of remembering war and sets out to right the wrongs of historical silencing (p.2). The book sets the story of New Zealand's military involvement in Greece and attempts to place military exchanges alongside the complicated politics of conflict, humanitarianism, and the role Britain had in demarcating the contours of the New Zealand‐Greek relationship. Drawing on a wide range of archival materials in New Zealand, Greece, Britain, and the United States, Brown is interested in what is ignored or deliberately left out in New Zealand's Official War History Project.No Full Tex
Smuggled: An Illegal History of Journeys to Australia (Book review)
No full textIn Smuggled: An Illegal History of Journeys to Australia, a chorus of migrant voices rejects the popular notion that the “people smuggler” is an exploitative evildoer. Belonging to a significant oral history tradition in Australian migration history, Ruth Balint and Julie Kalman’s book draws on oral testimonies to give a refreshing history-from-below. They contend that illegal acts have played crucial roles in facilitating the movement and survival of many who have come to call Australia home.Full Tex
Like A Braided River: Rethinking Migration Through The Personal Essay (Book Review)
No full textDiane Comer. The Braided River: Migration and the Personal Essay (Otago University Press, 2019), 304 pp., ISBN 9781988531533, $35 (paperback).No Full Tex
Stuff the British Stole: a probing podcast on the legacies of imperial theft
No full textLaden with brutal stories of theft and looting, the history of European imperialism is often baffling and irksome. The perplexing paradox that peoples and places across the world were divided and conquered, while the artefacts of such people and places could be valued, classified and preserved in genteel European institutions reveals an imperial history that is contradictory and contested. In Radio National’s new podcast Stuff the British Stole, Marc Fennell, a lauded film critic, technology reporter and radio personality, imaginatively explores the layered histories and contemporary relevance of Britain’s stolen objects. In five punchy, well-researched, and entertaining episodes, Fennell offers his listeners an inviting and intimate non-fictional storytelling podcast format. Tracing the not-so-polite history behind objects that the British blatantly took under their reign, Fennell is keen to show that the dynamics of British imperialism are never straightforward. Centring on a single object, each episode takes us on a journey from where the object originated to the moment of seizure, and to where the object is currently housed to exploring its enduring meaning to the everyday lives of descendants of colonised people.Full Tex
An unconventional history of Roma in Australia
No full textHow much do we know about Gypsy – or Roma – peoples in Australia and the making of a specifically Roma Australian culture? It turns out, very little before Mandy Sayer’s Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History which offers a unique insight into an uncharted area of Australian social and cultural history. An intriguing example of how history can be approached by an historically inquisitive non-academic writer, Sayer brings previously untold stories to the page in an affecting and sincere way. In her mission to uncover the lived experience of Roma in Australia she introduces us to an underexamined historical topic that engages with both Australian and Romani histories. Her contribution sets out to ‘discover the true history of the Gypsies’ and to address how and why they were marginalised by Australian mainstream society (x). The book attempts to break down remarkably durable stereotypes, populate the historical imagination with significant Roma individuals, families, and communities, and give voice to a self-identifying Romani Australian population. The book will interest informed specialists – including Australian folklorists, migration historians, oral historians, and memory studies scholars – as well as the broader public.No Full Tex
Migrant-cum-Settler: Greek Settler Colonialism in Australia
No full textRepresentations of early Greek migrants in Western Australia constituted a process of Greek migrant-cum-settler colonialization. This process was informed by the exclusionary operations of Australian race-making and the transnational dynamics of Greek labor migration. By claiming an exemplary attachment to whiteness and alerting immigration authorities to the fact that Greek proprietors were breaching labor laws, Greek migrants who wrote to Australian local presses and government agencies articulated a settler sense of belonging that aligned with the cultural and legal contours of the Australian settler state. Inspired by the Australian example of the self-sufficient and law-abiding settler, Greek migrant-cum-settler colonialism took shape in the context of Greek migrants' lived experience as a racialized minority in White Australia.No Full Tex
