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'This book offers a fresh perspective in the debate on settler perceptions of Indigenous Australians. It draws together a suite of little known colonial women (apart from Eliza Fraser) and investigates their writings for what they reveal about their attitudes to, views on and beliefs about Aboriginal people, as presented in their published works. The way that reader expectations and publishers’ requirements slanted their representations forms part of this analysis.'
'All six women write of their first-hand experiences on Australian frontiers of settlement. The division into ‘adventurers’ (Eliza Fraser, Eliza Davies and Emily Cowl) and longer-term ‘settlers’ (Katherine Kirkland, Mary McConnel and Rose Scott Cowen) allows interrogation into the differing representations between those with a transitory knowledge of Indigenous people and those who had a close and more permanent relationship with Indigenous women, even encompassing individual friendship. More pertinently, the book strives to reveal the aspects, largely overlooked in colonial narratives, of Indigenous agency, authority and individuality.' (Source: Publisher's website)
Contents
- Queensland Frontier Adventure - Emily Cowl : Excitement and Humour, single work biography extract
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us about Indigenous Authority and Identity : Review
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 47 no. 2 2016; (p. 330-331)
— Review of In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism One of the challenges of Aboriginal history has long been dealing with sources not of their making. Indeed, much of what is called Aboriginal history is not Aboriginal history at all. It is stories colonisers have told or constructed, either at the time or subsequently, about the encounter with the land’s first peoples. 'While over the past decade there have been innovative and exciting reconstructions of that encounter which recover the history from the Aboriginal side, Dawson’s book does not set out to do so. Rather, she uses the writings of five British women to glean the lives, reactions and adaptations of Aboriginal people ‘after white settlers infiltrated their lands’ (152). She has looked ‘into and behind the “eye of the beholder”’ to do so, using these women’s published and unpublished works to identify Aboriginal people’s ongoing authority and identity. What we end up with is ‘pockets of insight of Aboriginal culture before, or soon after, its subjugation and reassessment’ following British settlement (xv). ...' -
In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth - Century Women Tell Us about Indigenous Authority and Identity : Review
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , December vol. 39 no. 2015; (p. 279-282)
— Review of In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism -
[Review]: Ngapartji, Ngapartji. In Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 39 no. 4 2015; (p. 567-570)
— Review of Ngapartji Ngapartji, in Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia 2014 selected work criticism essay ; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism
-
In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth - Century Women Tell Us about Indigenous Authority and Identity : Review
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , December vol. 39 no. 2015; (p. 279-282)
— Review of In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism -
In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us about Indigenous Authority and Identity : Review
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 47 no. 2 2016; (p. 330-331)
— Review of In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism One of the challenges of Aboriginal history has long been dealing with sources not of their making. Indeed, much of what is called Aboriginal history is not Aboriginal history at all. It is stories colonisers have told or constructed, either at the time or subsequently, about the encounter with the land’s first peoples. 'While over the past decade there have been innovative and exciting reconstructions of that encounter which recover the history from the Aboriginal side, Dawson’s book does not set out to do so. Rather, she uses the writings of five British women to glean the lives, reactions and adaptations of Aboriginal people ‘after white settlers infiltrated their lands’ (152). She has looked ‘into and behind the “eye of the beholder”’ to do so, using these women’s published and unpublished works to identify Aboriginal people’s ongoing authority and identity. What we end up with is ‘pockets of insight of Aboriginal culture before, or soon after, its subjugation and reassessment’ following British settlement (xv). ...' -
[Review]: Ngapartji, Ngapartji. In Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 39 no. 4 2015; (p. 567-570)
— Review of Ngapartji Ngapartji, in Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia 2014 selected work criticism essay ; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity 2014 single work criticism