HSY2260

Australian Aboriginal history

Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton
* Requisites/corequisites: Any first-year sequence in history and Koorie studies
* Prohibitions: 1994 - HSY2760/HSY3760; 1993 - HSY2760/HSY3760 and HSY2750/HSY3750 (Caulfield); 1992 - HSY2760/HSY3760; 1991 - HSY3750; 1990 - HSY3750

Objectives Students will be expected to acquire an understanding of the pattern of relations between indigenes and Europeans in Australia, and the theoretical and political issues and problems evident in the study of Australian Aboriginal history.

Synopsis This subject will consider relations between indigenous peoples and Europeans in Australia since 1770. The main topics will include the legal basis of British sovereignty; the nature of frontier contact including conflict and accommodation; European violence and the dispossession of the indigenes; Aboriginal depopulation; indigenous responses to colonialism including resistance and their relationship to the capitalist economy; European representations of Aborigines; government policy and practice, from segregation to assimilation; and Aboriginal political movements. The subject will simultaneously examine the political and theoretical dimensions associated with representing the Australian/Aboriginal past and, in particular, the relationship between power and knowledge in the discourse of history

Assessment Tutorial participation: 10%
* Written work, including document exercise (1500 words), essay (2500 words) 60%
* Examination (2 hours): 30%

Prescribed texts

Broome R Aboriginal Australians 2nd edn, Allen and Unwin, 1994
Reynolds H (comp.) Dispossession Allen and Unwin, 1989

Recommended texts

Attwood B (ed.) In the age of Mabo Allen and Unwin, 1995
Markus A Governing savages Allen and Unwin, 1990
Mulvaney D J and White J P (eds) Australians to 1788 Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, 1987
Reynolds H Frontier Allen and Unwin, 1987
Reynolds H The other side of the frontier Penguin, 1982
Reynolds H With the white people Penguin, 1990