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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers' motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred.' (Source: TROVE)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Brokering in Colonial Exploration: Biographies, Geographies and Histories,
single work
criticism
'The history of exploration has often been thought of as a heroic drama in which the explorer is the principal, sometimes exclusive, protagonist and narrator. This edited volume – along with a companion volume Indigenous Intermediaries: New Perspectives on Exploration Archives – treats exploration as a collective effort and experience involving a variety of people from across social strata and cultures coming together, sometimes for a sustained time, at others only briefly, in various kinds of relationships and interactions. ...'
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Bennelong and Gogy : Strategic Brokers in Colonial New South Wales,
single work
biography
'On the road between Parramatta and Prospect a meeting took place on Monday last for the purpose of inflicting punishment on a native well known at the above settlements by the name of Goguey ... His crime was defensible upon custom immemorial, but so likewise was his extraordinary mode of arraignment an event consequent upon the former. ...'
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Aboriginal Guides in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales,
single work
biography
'...This chapter explores the role of Aboriginal guides in the Hunter Valley between 1818 and 1830, covering the closure of the penal station at Newcastle and establishment of free settlement in the valley. During these years the overland expeditions from Windsor, on Sydney’s western fringe, forged routes through the mountains between the Hawkesbury and the Hunter rivers and the occupation of the alluvial river flats and prime farming land by European settlers took place. ...'
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Guided by Her : Aboriginal Women’s Participation in Australian Expeditions,
single work
criticism
'... This chapter will argue that while it is vital to maintain awareness of accounts of women in hiding, we also need to look at representations of women’s involvement in expeditions and to consider their contributions, motivations and interests in guiding explorers through country. The chapter will briefly discuss historiographical material on women’s agency in expeditions and how women’s presence in exploration journals has been obscured or ignored in histories of exploration. ...'
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Bobby Roberts : Intermediary and Outlaw of Western Australia’s South Coast,
single work
bibliography
'... The story of Bobby Roberts may be viewed as an example of such Aboriginal agency exercised in the early colonial context. A Noongar man from the south coast region of Western Australia, Bobby assisted colonial interests as a guide and, later, a ‘native constable’. However, colonial authorities also knew him as a brazen criminal. ...'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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[Review Essay] Brokers and Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 2017; (p. 101-102)'Early narratives of colonial exploration mythologised the role of the explorer. He, for inevitably the explorer was a man, was often cast as a lone heroic figure venturing into the vast uninhabited unknown. This mythical trope was a resilient one that found its way into published journals of exploration and works of literature and art well into the twentieth century. Yet the reality of colonial exploration was vastly different from the myth. The territory being explored was, in fact, inhabited and had been so for millennia. Furthermore, explorers relied on the expertise and knowledge of Indigenous intermediaries and mediators to navigate the unfamiliar landscape. It is the role of these intermediaries that is examined in Brokers and boundaries: colonial exploration in Indigenous territory. The editors of this volume of collected essays have brought together historians of Australia and Papua New Guinea to formulate new narratives in the history of exploration that address the complex interactions between explorers and intermediaries. These accounts draw attention to the agency that was often exercised by these intermediaries and the manner in which they used their positions to navigate relationships with not only colonial explorers but also other Indigenous peoples.' (Introduction)
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[Review] Brokers & Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , vol. 40 no. 2016; (p. 297-299)
— Review of Brokers and Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory 2016 selected work criticism biography
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[Review] Brokers & Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , vol. 40 no. 2016; (p. 297-299)
— Review of Brokers and Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory 2016 selected work criticism biography -
[Review Essay] Brokers and Boundaries : Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 2017; (p. 101-102)'Early narratives of colonial exploration mythologised the role of the explorer. He, for inevitably the explorer was a man, was often cast as a lone heroic figure venturing into the vast uninhabited unknown. This mythical trope was a resilient one that found its way into published journals of exploration and works of literature and art well into the twentieth century. Yet the reality of colonial exploration was vastly different from the myth. The territory being explored was, in fact, inhabited and had been so for millennia. Furthermore, explorers relied on the expertise and knowledge of Indigenous intermediaries and mediators to navigate the unfamiliar landscape. It is the role of these intermediaries that is examined in Brokers and boundaries: colonial exploration in Indigenous territory. The editors of this volume of collected essays have brought together historians of Australia and Papua New Guinea to formulate new narratives in the history of exploration that address the complex interactions between explorers and intermediaries. These accounts draw attention to the agency that was often exercised by these intermediaries and the manner in which they used their positions to navigate relationships with not only colonial explorers but also other Indigenous peoples.' (Introduction)