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'The Aboriginal stockman in cowboy hat, brightly coloured shirt, jeans and riding boots, is a familiar sight in much of outback Australia. Yet, white Australia has largely excluded Aborigines - men and women - from its national legends.
'Born in the Cattle tells the story of Aboriginal involvement in the northern cattle industry. It shows how the Aboriginal people excelled at this 'no shame job', how they incorporated it into their world, how they used it to stay on their own land with their kin. Combining new skills with old, they shaped a unique Aboriginal cattle country - and thereby made a major contribution to the economy of Australia's north.
'Using oral evidence which enables Aboriginal perspectives to emerge in a way not previously possible, Born in the Cattle is a major work of social history, the first to describe the texture of everyday life and work in the outback north before World War II. The story begins with the battle for the waterholes, describes the skills the Aboriginal people brought to work with cattle, reveals for the first time the important role of Aboriginal women, and explores in a new way the complex pattern of relationships between white and black in the outback.
'To protect their country and its people, Aborigines had to teach station whites many things. Aborigines worked the stations; they managed the land in new ways, though following old principles. They have made the cattle industry their own; they are still the majority of those living on northern pastoral stations, and their dynamic culture leaves a distinctive mark on bush life...'' (Publication summary)
Contents
- Oral History and Writing About Aborigines, single work criticism (p. 176-178)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
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Expulsion, Exodus and Exile in White Australian Historical Mythology
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 61 1999; (p. 1-18) Ann Curthoys examines 'how notions of exile and exodus permeate some key figures in Australian history, the convicts and pioneers' (3). She draws on historical works as well as fiction and film. In the second half of her essay she argues that the Mabo decision has reawakened non-Indigenous Australian's fear of homelessness. -
[Review Essay] 'Born in the Cattle' : Aborigines in Cattle Country
1989
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 1989; (p. 80-83)'Historians looking at Aborigines in the pastoral industry are generally obliged to opt, in their final analyses, for one of two positions. Stated simply, one emphasizes the external relations of brute colonialism under which Aborigines were exploited, ill-treated and powerless, reluctantly maintained on the stations at minimal standards by employers dependent on their labour but contemptuous of them. The other emphasizes the world that station blacks constructed for themselves within this introduced regime, at once achieving a new self-esteem as indispensable and skilled workers, and maintaining a protected space of traditional continuities. Born in the Cattle is the most thorough exposition yet of the latter view.' (Introduction)
-
Expulsion, Exodus and Exile in White Australian Historical Mythology
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 61 1999; (p. 1-18) Ann Curthoys examines 'how notions of exile and exodus permeate some key figures in Australian history, the convicts and pioneers' (3). She draws on historical works as well as fiction and film. In the second half of her essay she argues that the Mabo decision has reawakened non-Indigenous Australian's fear of homelessness. -
White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
-
[Review Essay] 'Born in the Cattle' : Aborigines in Cattle Country
1989
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 1989; (p. 80-83)'Historians looking at Aborigines in the pastoral industry are generally obliged to opt, in their final analyses, for one of two positions. Stated simply, one emphasizes the external relations of brute colonialism under which Aborigines were exploited, ill-treated and powerless, reluctantly maintained on the stations at minimal standards by employers dependent on their labour but contemptuous of them. The other emphasizes the world that station blacks constructed for themselves within this introduced regime, at once achieving a new self-esteem as indispensable and skilled workers, and maintaining a protected space of traditional continuities. Born in the Cattle is the most thorough exposition yet of the latter view.' (Introduction)
