AustLit

This study concludes that Black Australian writing and Aboriginal/White relations are so closely interrelated that the denigration of Aboriginal culture demeans the productions of that culture, while it also potentially threatens Australian interracial harmony. Shoemaker argues that much Aboriginal writing is overtly and unashamedly socio-political, that much of it examines Aboriginal/European conflict, and much is based upon an observation and analysis of actual events. While not all Aboriginal writers are activists, their work is inescapably socio-political, because it expresses a culture which has survived despite nearly two centuries of oppression, and because it has been consciously produced to express and investigate relationships with dominant White Australian society.