- Title
- 'I suppose this will end in our having to live like the blacks for a few months': reinterpreting the history of Burke and Wills'
- Creator
- Cahir, David (Fred); Clark, Ian
- Date
- 2013
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/71095
- Identifier
- vital:6700
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780643108080
- Abstract
- The Aboriginal story of the Burke and Wills Expedition and relief expeditions is at once multi-faceted and complex with many interconnected threads that have rarely been teased out in historical analyses. In many respects the Aboriginal story has been overshadowed by the tragedy and misfortune of the expedition in which seven men, including Burke and Wills, died. Yet the exclusion of Aboriginal perspectives is a structural matter, as epitomised in Moorehead’s analysis. The description of central Australia as a ‘ghastly blank’ (Moorehead 1963, p. 1) where the land was ‘absolutely untouched and unknown, and except for the blacks, the most retarded people on earth, there was no sign of any previous civilization whatever’, is representative of the exclusion of Aboriginal people from the narrative and if Aboriginal people are discussed, it is often in racist tones. As Allen (2011, p. 245) rightly pointed out:
- Publisher
- CSIRO Publishing
- Relation
- The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten Narratives p. 301-303
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Rights
- Culturally sensitive
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