AustLit

In 1962, Douglas Pike, the Professor of History at the Australian National University, published a book called Australia: The Quiet Continent. As the title indicates, Pike describes a land only awakened from its historical slumber by the arrival of Europeans at the end of the eighteenth century. Aboriginal participation in the nation’s story is quieted in Pike’s work. Aboriginal people are barely mentioned in 233 pages of text, other than being referred to as “native people [held] in stone-age bondage” (1) or as “primitive food-gatherers [who] were no match for the white invader” (36). Passages stating that “the Australian communities took shape as peaceful outposts of British civilization” (3), ignore or suppress any suggestion that the land was taken from Aboriginal people by force. This was entirely in keeping with the fashion of Australian historical narrative for the time.' (Introduction)

'The Australian film Jindabyne (dir. Ray Lawrence, 2006) opens with a blurry shot of dry grasslands and a string of barbed wire in sharp focus horizontally across the screen (Fig. 1). The shot runs for 32 seconds before the camera tilts up, bringing into focus both the grassland and a cluster of huge boulders on a hill in the background – all in one take, no cut. Next the camera shows a pick-up truck, motor idling, with an older non-Aboriginal man behind the wheel hiding behind the rocks – the murderer of an Aboriginal woman, as we will learn later – followed by an extreme high angle long shot of the dry landscape below the hill where a car is approaching. Shots inside the car present a young Aboriginal woman, happily driving, while intercutting shows the man leaving his hide-out to intercept her.' (Introduction)

'This book is a valuable asset to every library focusing on Indigenous Studies in general and Australian Aboriginal Studies in particular. It offers a comprehensive overview of Australian Aboriginal literature from its beginnings in print up to the present with a focus on a variety of topics and genres, including life writing, songpoetry, (young) adult fiction, gothic texts, drama, film and popular music. The book itself is aesthetically very enjoyable, with a beautiful painting on the cover mixing different Aboriginal artistic styles (it would have been nice to get information on the artist and title), a superb (copy)editing, a pleasant font, and general handling. The editor provides a very helpful twelve page-chronology of Australian Aboriginal history and a ten-page index.' (Introduction)