Book of the Month: November
Wakefield Press
Colonialism and its Aftermath
A history of Aboriginal South Australia
The state of South Australia was a British imperial construct, its borders determined by three straight lines, with no reference to the Aboriginal presence.
The colonial process in South Australia began decades before formal annexation, with unregulated interactions between coastal Aboriginal people and European sealers and whalers.
Despite catastrophic interventions in the lives of Aboriginal people during and following colonisation, many communities retain strong identities and cultural and linguistic knowledge, rooted in a deep connection to the land.
Colonialism and its Aftermath traces the ongoing impact of colonialism on Aboriginal individuals, communities and cultures, the disruptions and displacements it has caused, and Aboriginal responses to these challenges.
Book of the Month: October
Out of the Silence
The history and memory of South Australia’s frontier wars
by Robert Foster and Amanda Nettlebeck
This book review is from Wakefield Press
When South Australia was founded in 1836, the British government was pursuing a new approach to the treatment of Aboriginal people, hoping to avoid the violence that marked earlier Australian settlement. The colony’s founding Proclamation declared that as British subjects, Aboriginal people would be as much ‘under the safeguard of the law as the Colonists themselves, and equally entitled to the privileges of British subjects’. But could colonial governments provide the protection that was promised?
Out of the Silence explores the nature and extent of violence on South Australia’s frontiers in light of the foundational promise to provide Aboriginal people with the protection of the law, and the resonances of that history in social memory. What do we find when we compare the history of the frontier with the patterns of how it is remembered and forgotten? And what might this reveal about our understanding of the nation’s history and its legacies in the present?
Past featured books
Check out books that have been previously featured on the Unley Allies website. Note that ‘books of the month’ began mid 2024, with only four featured books during that year.
Periodicals, Publications and Stories
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IndigenousX
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National Indigenous Times
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