Aboriginal History monographs present discussions or a series of articles on single subjects of contemporary issues.

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Monograph 16 (2007)

Transgressions : critical Australian Indigenous histories
Edited by Ingereth Macfarlane and Mark Hannah

This volume brings together an innovative set of readings of complex interactions between Australian Aboriginal people and colonisers. The underlying theme is that of 'transgression', and Michel Foucault's account of the necessary dynamic that exists between transgression and limit. We know what constitutes the limit, not by tracing or re-stating the boundaries, but by crossing over them. By exploring the mechanisms by which limits are set and maintained, unexamined cultural assumptions and dominant ideas are illuminated. We see the expectations and the structures that inform and support them revealed, often as they unravel. Such illuminations and revelations are at the core of the Australian Indigenous histories presented in this collection.

The papers consider the relationship of a contemporary historian to an eighteenth century French ethnographic observer (Shino Konishi); the longings expressed in people's explorations of variant indigeneities (Jane Mulcock); in the politics of the establishment of the Tent Embassy (Kathy Lothian); in Indigenous leadership in various forms (Naomi Parry; Denis Foley); in the creation of iconic representations of Aboriginal identity (Jillian Barnes); in rethinking legal aspects of land tenure and the working relationships of the northern pastoral industry (Thalia Anthony); in tracing the patterns of missionary attitudes to Aboriginal male sexuality (Jessie Mitchell); in the emotional freight of religious conversion (Devin Bowles); in an emphasis on romance as a dynamic of identity (Jinki Trevillian); and in Indigenous ceremonial life played out within the structures of a built environment (Angelique Edmunds).

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Monograph 15 (2007)

Culture in Translation : The anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews
Edited by Martin Thomas
Translations from the French by Mathilde de Hauteclocque and from the German by Christine Winter

‘I only wish I dare say in print what years ago I said to him in private but it was just a little bit too libellous.’
W. Baldwin Spencer 1907

‘Despite earlier critics I am coming to believe that he was our greatest recorder of primary anthropological data.’
Norman Tindale 1958

R. H. Mathews (1841-1918) was an Australian-born surveyor and self-taught anthropologist. From 1893 until his death in 1918, he made it his mission to record all 'new and interesting facts' about Aboriginal Australia. Despite falling foul of some of the most powerful figures in British and Australian anthropology, Mathews published some 2200 pages of anthropological reportage in English, French and German. His legacy is an outstanding record of Aboriginal culture in the Federation period.

This first edited collection of Mathews' writings represents the many facets of his research, ranging from kinship study to documentation of myth. It includes 11 articles translated from French or German that have previously been unavailable in English. Introduced and edited by Martin Thomas, who compellingly analyses the anthropologist, his milieu, and the intrigues that were so costly to his reputation, Culture in Translation is essential reading on the history of cross-cultural research.

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Monograph 14 (2007)

'The axe had never sounded' : Place, people and heritage of Recherche Bay, Tasmania
John Mulvaney

'This book meets well the triple promise of the title - the inter-connections of place, people and heritage. John Mulvaney brings to this work a deep knowledge of the history, ethnography and archaeology of Tasmania. He presents a comprehensive account of the area's history over the 200 years since French naval expeditions first charted its coastlines. The important records the French officers and scientists left of encounters with Aboriginal groups are discussed in detail, set in the wider ethnographic context and compared with those of later expeditions.

The topical issues of understanding the importance of Recherche Bay as a cultural landscape and its protection and future management inform the book. Readers will be challenged to consider the connections between people and place, and how these may constitute significant national heritage.'

Professor Isabel McBryde,
The Australian National University

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Monograph 13 (2007)

What Good Condition? : Reflections on an Australian Aboriginal Treaty 1986-2006
Edited by Peter Read, Gary Meyers and Bob Reece

'This is a fascinating and feisty volume'.

'It chronicles the debates about whether a treaty would be a useful mechanism to achieve reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians over the last quarter century, a debate that has proceeded in fits and starts.

This volume performs a great service by capturing a rich tapestry of perspectives on the treaty issue. It has considerable historical value in tracking the treaty debate in all its twists and turns over the last 28 years and also great political significance in clarifying the range of options at stake. Most of all, it is significant in forcing us to face the tough question about whether the treaty enterprise is doomed from the start. Now that all the pieces of the puzzle are so clearly laid out in this marvellous volume, there is some possibility of resolving this issue.'

Hilary Charlesworth, Professor in the Regulatory Institutions Network in the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU and Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the ANU College of Law

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Monograph 12 (2005)

‘Peopling’ the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia, 1850–1980
by MA Smith

This book traces the dynamic contact history of the Cleland Hills through the stories of individual people, both Aboriginal and European. It brings Aboriginal people into historical focus, redressing the anonymity that frontier histories usually confer on Aboriginal people. At the same time, it maintains a longer time perspective than a biographical study would normally allow. Historical processes on a frontier can take a century or more to play out, so we need to follow families over several generations. To do this in western Central Australia involves correlating events and people mentioned in the journals of explorers, police and surveyors with descriptions of Aboriginal people in anthropological records and genealogies.

This is an unusual and compelling history of an Australian frontier. In it, the archaeologist turns historian. Mike Smith sifts documents and memories in order to describe the last century and a half of culture contact in the region where older sediments have previously been his study.

He uses Puritjarra as a place from which to view the modern social exchange and disruption generated across Kukatja country by the European colonial invasion. This is not just a fine, original history, but also a challenging model of archaeological practice.

Tom Griffiths
Australian National University

'a work full of insight and redemptive force. ... Meticulous in its reconstruction of lost time and near-vanished memories, restrained and sober in its tone and voice, this book sets a benchmark for writing that seeks to capture the clash of civilisations in central Australia.'

Nicolas Rothwell,
The Australian,
3 December 2005

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Monograph 11 (2005)

Many Exchanges: archaeology, history, community and the work of Isabel McBryde
Edited by Ingereth Macfarlane, Mary-Jane Mountain and Robert Paton

This book celebrates the work of archaeologist Isabel McBryde. Her long-term contributions to the understanding of Indigenous culture and heritage in Australia are explored in this collection of valuable new cross-disciplinary studies by leaders in the fields of archaeology, history, heritage management, linguistics and anthropology.

Contributors include Robyne Bancroft, Phil Boot, Sandra Bowdler, Helen Brayshaw, Denis Byrne, Ann Curthoys, Iain Davidson, Jack Golson, Luise Hercus, Peter Hiscock, Dave Johnston, Rhys Jones, Roy Kennedy, Judith Littleton, Betty Meehan, John Mulvaney, Ken Mulvaney, Winifred Mumford, Mary Pappin, Michael Pearson, Peter Read, Andrée Rosenfeld, Jim Specht, Sharon Sullivan, Barbara Tjikatu, Robin Torrence, Marilyn Truscott, Sean Ulm.

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Monograph 10 (2002)

The Aboriginal population revisited: 70 000 years to the present
Edited by Gordon Briscoe & Len Smith

This volume contains the papers prepared for a meeting of experts on the contested topics in Australian Indigenous population studies - the size of the population in prehistory and at colonisation, the Indigenous demographic transition, the definition of the population, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity, the factors responsible for the recent remarkable growth of the population, and the critical aspects of population movement distribution and location.

Contributors include John Mulvaney, Len Smith, Gordon Briscoe, Helen Ross, Anna Shnukal, Elspeth Young, John Taylor, Alan Gray, Kate Ross and Jack Caldwell.

Monograph 9 (2002)

The Pajong and Wallabalooa: A history of Aboriginal farming families at Blakney and Pudman creeks
Ann Jackson-Nakano

This second volume of the Weereewaa History Series looks at the Pajong and Wallabalooa farming families of Pudman and Blakney creeks, which are in Boorowa and Gunning shires respectively.

Monograph 8 (2002)

The Kamberri: A History of Aboriginal families in the ACT and surrounds
Ann Jackson-Nakano

The main focus of each volume in the Weereewaa History Series is on an Aboriginal group that once claimed Lake George (which Aboriginal people referred to as Weereewaa) as part of their country.

This first volume of the series includes an introduction to the history of the Weereewaa and the groups that once lived around. It focuses primarily on the Kamberri, who resided to the west and southwest of the lake. The book destroys the myth that the local ACT Aboriginal population became extinct in 1897.

It is an extraordinary and thoroughly persuasive work of scholarship.

Robert Macklin, Canberra Times

Monograph 7 (2001)

Repossession of our spirit
Dennis Foley & Ricky Maynard

Aboriginal people were still living in their traditional country in the 1950s right in the middle of Sydney.

This extraordinary story tells how Dennis Foley, a Gai-Mariagal (northern Sydney) man grew up with his grandmother and uncles. He learned the traditional stories of Manly, Narrabeen, Crows Nest and Forty Baskets Beach.

He was raised in the old ways, surrounded by the new. And nobody suspected. After you've read this story, your Sydney can never be the same again.

Monograph 6 (1998)

History in portraits: Biographies of nineteenth century South Australian Aboriginal people
Jane Simpson & Luise Hercus

This book, an unusual collaboration between historians, linguists and geographers, brings Aboriginal people to the foreground. It contains four major biographies: of Mullawirraburka, who was a significant cultural broker between the Kaurna and the colonists; of Kudnarto, who was the first Aboriginal person in South Australia to marry an Englishman according to English law; of Logic, an outlaw; and of Tommy Walker, a fringe-dweller. The book also contains shorter biographies of the people who travelled with the sealers and negotiated with the colonists. Running through the biographies are themes of identity, integration, resistance, dispossession, communication, and the images constructed by the invaders and Aborigines of each other.

The authors and editors include Rob Amery, Philip Clarke, Robert Foster, Tom Gara, Luise Hercus, Luisa O'Connor and Jane Simpson.

Monograph 5 (1998)

Rebellion at Coranderrk
Diane Barwick

The publication of this book is an attempt to rectify some of the injustices of the past two hundred years, and to prevent similar occurrences in the future. The 'rebellion' at Coranderrk is reflected in current political events. This book is a parable for today.

The painstaking research, the perceptive judgements of people and events, and the brilliant prose (an editor's dream) combine to produce a magnificent account of the Kulin and their European 'administrators'.

CT Stannage

Monograph 4 (1997)

In the best interest of the child? Stolen children: Aboriginal pain/White shame
Link-Up (NSW) & Tikka Wilson

Separating Aboriginal children from family and community began as soon as Europeans set foot on our land. The belief that it is in the best interest of Aboriginal children to be removed from Aboriginal culture and assimilated into White culture has justified the systematic disruption of Aboriginal families.

This book traces the history of removing Aboriginal children in New South Wales and contains testimonies of Aboriginals whose lives have been profoundly and painfully altered by separation.

The book grew out of a submission of Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation to the 1996 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families.

In the best interests of the child? is the best report of this genre I have seen in 34 years of legal practice.

John Nader RFD QC, Former Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, Hearing Commissioner, HRE

Monograph 3 (1996)

Country: Aboriginal boundaries and land ownership in Australia
Peter Sutton

This book is a comprehensive, scholarly critique of two works: a book by Stephen Davis and Victor Prescott, Aboriginal frontiers and boundaries in Australia (1992) and a map by Stephen Davis, Australia's extant and imputed traditional Aboriginal territories (1993).
Peter Sutton's detailed analysis is based on his extensive professional research into Aboriginal land tenure systems, and the book includes expert appendices by more than 40 anthropologists, linguists and geographers.

The text and appendices together provide the most up-to-date, accessible and well-documented account of the many issues surrounding the nature and existence of indigenous land boundaries.

Nicholas Peterson, The Australian National University