Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand [Paperback]

Bain Attwood (Editor), Fiona Magowan (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1865085545 | ISBN-13: 978-1865085548 | Publication Date: April 2, 2002

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. This book 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. The 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. The book freely explores the multiple forms of indigenous history in New Zealand and Australia.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bain Attwood (a graduate of the Universities of Waikato and Auckland) is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University. He is the author of The Making of the Aborigines (Allen & Unwin, 1989), and the editor of Power, Knowledge and Aborigines (La Trobe, 1992) and in the Age of Mabo (Allen & Unwin, 1996). Fiona Magowan is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Adelaide, and has published on Australian Aboriginal women's music and dance. She is co-editor of a special issue of The Australian Journal of Anthropology on 'The Politics of Dance' (2000), and has worked as an anthropological consultant in Arnhem Land and North Queensland. Jeremy Beckett is Emeritus Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney, and the author of Torres Strait Islanders: Custom and Colonialism (1987) and the editor of Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality (1988). His Wherever I Go: Myles Lalor's Oral History, which he discusses in his chapter, was published in 2000. Judith Binney is Professor of History at the University of Auckland, and the author of several books, including Mihala (1979), Nga Morehu (1986), and Redemption Songs (1995), the 'trilogy' she discusses in her chapter. She has recently written an overview report on the early history of the

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1865085545
• ISBN-13: 978-1865085548
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,452,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)