HYM4110

Australian Aboriginal histories

Bain Attwood

8 or 12 points -One 2-hour seminar per week -First semester -Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this course should acquire a good level of understanding of the pattern of relations between indigenes and Europeans in Australia and the epistemological and political issues and problems evident in the study of Australian Aboriginal history.

Synopsis This subject will investigate a range of epistemological and methodological questions which are generally associated with the discipline of history but which are of particular significance in what has come to be called 'Aboriginal history'. What do we mean by 'history'? Is it a discourse peculiar to modern European societies? Did 'Aborigines' have history before 1788, and, if not, how did they conceive of the relationship between the past and the present? What role did history play in European colonisation and the dispossession of Aborigines, and in the forging of the Australian nation-state? Why was 'Aboriginal history' not written until the late 1960s? What have been the uses of this history in recent decades? Why has the Aboriginal past become so central to 'national heritage'? If Europeans write and read Aboriginal history, what might our intent and purposes be? What problems are there for historians seeking to reconstruct the Aboriginal past from an indigenous perspective? Is this European history-writing 'Aboriginal history'? Who should write Aboriginal history? Should Aborigines be the owners or custodians of their past? How do histories written or told by Aborigines differ from non-Aboriginal ones? Are oral and written histories fundamentally different in nature? What are the purposes of contemporary Aboriginal histories? What are the implications for the construction of Aboriginality if Aborigines historicise themselves? What role has history played in Aboriginal political movements?

Assessment (8 points) Seminar paper (2000 words): 30% -Essay (4000 words): 70%
Assessment (12 points) Two seminar papers (2000 words each): 40% -Essay (5000 words): 60%

Prescribed texts

Attwood B (ed.) In the Age of Mabo Allen and Unwin, 1996

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