- Title
- Beyond complicity: questions and issues for white women in Aboriginal history
- Creator
- Haskins, Victoria
- Relation
- Australian Humanities Review Vol. 39-40
- Relation
- http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-September-2006/haskins.html
- Publisher
- La Trobe University Library
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2006
- Description
- When I embarked on my postgraduate studies, with an enthusiasm for finding out more about the history of white and Aboriginal women's relationships, the issue of white women and complicity became very personally pointed. I was enthusiastically attending all sorts of Aboriginal protest rallies and meetings, getting active in an Aboriginal neighbourhood centre, and talking politics with Kooris at the pub. Meanwhile, in my studies I was digesting a tremendous amount of literature about the position and role of white women in colonization – all with a growing sense of confusion. My own position as a privileged white woman seemed to invalidate any attempt by me to write this history. Writing from such a perspective, it seemed, constituted little more than an exercise in redemptive apologia at best and, at worst, it was a reiteration of colonial domination. As my sense of disconnection intensified, I went back to the town where I had lived as a child in the East Kimberley, accompanied by my childhood friend, an Aboriginal woman, who had also moved away as an adult. But my return visit in her company did not achieve my hoped-for sense of purpose. I became only more uneasy – 'unsettled' if you like – as I realised this was her place and her history, so much more than mine. I decided then to defer my studies, and headed up the Far North Coast of New South Wales to live with my aunt and grandmother. While I was there, reluctantly promising to 'do' some family history for my Gran, I uncovered the remarkable story of my great-grandmother Joan Kingsley-Strack, and it changed my outlook on Australian history, on women's history, and on history in general.
- Subject
- women's relationships; Aboriginal people; white women; family history
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/34893
- Identifier
- uon:3743
- Identifier
- ISSN:1325-8338
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Hits: 1101
- Visitors: 1429
- Downloads: 367
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Publisher version (open access) | 93 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |