New Release
Australian Scholarly Publishing, PO Box 299, Kew, VIC 3101
T: (03) 9329 6963 F: (03) 9329 5452 E: [log in to unmask]
www.scholarly.info
WRITING HERITAGE
The Depiction of Indigenous Heritage in European-Australian Writings
by Michael Davis
>From the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, European-
Australians were actively recording, documenting and collecting Aboriginal
heritage. This book examines how they did this, exploring perceptions of
authenticity and innovation in Aboriginal heritage and approaches to
ethnographic collecting. If Indigenous people were present at all in these
texts, they were often represented as passive objects of Europeans’ gaze
or amusement, or as bystanders in an ongoing process of collecting,
recording and commenting. The idea of Aborigines as a ‘dying race’
stimulated a sense of urgency in Europeans’ collecting activity, which was
also seen as a way of preserving the ‘remnants’ of the disappearing
Indigenous cultures. By presenting Indigenous heritage
as ‘curiosities’, ‘relics’, ‘antiquities’ or ‘monuments’, writers were
masking or denying it as a living force …
Michael Davis is a writer, researcher and policy specialist with interests
and experience in Indigenous heritage.
Australian Scholarly Publishing & National Museum of Australia Press
RPP $39.95
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