- Title
- Coolibah's story: structural violence in the twentieth century
- Creator
- Boulton, John
- Relation
- Aboriginal Children, History and Health: Beyond Social Determinants p. 136-149
- Relation
- http://www.tandfebooks.com/action/showBook?doi=10.4324%2F9781315666501&
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Most Aboriginal people of Australia had lived without contact with other peoples for tens of thousands of years before contact with Europeans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The barrier to mutual understanding through the nineteenth century was almost absolute, not only from the brutality of life at the colonial frontier but also from the colonists' belief that Aboriginal people were on the lowest rung of the ladder of human, let alone social, evolution. Thus stories of friendships across this gulf have especial poignancy as they reflect the deep connectedness between all humans. Such stories are found from every region of Australia and in every epoch, with perhaps the first being that between a traditional lawman, Mokare, and the British doctor Alexander Collie in the garrison at King George's Sound (now Albany) in Western Australia, set up early in the nineteenth century to forestall any French claims to the coast. This charming story has been immortalised in Kim Scott's (2010) historical novel That Deadman Dance. Vignettes of many deep friendships between Aboriginal and European Australians are also described by Peter Sutton (2009) and Rani Kerin (2013). These friendships were between men, between women, and between female anthropologists, such as Ursula McConnell and Judy Inglis, who had long-term (non-romantic) friendships with Aboriginal men and women. Oral histories and autobiographies of Aboriginal people who lived their lives on the frontier zone are now a popular genre, and of great importance as evidence of witness to the socio-political conditions which form the causal background to much of today's tragic situation with respect to the poor health status, lack of engagement in formal education and lack of economic independence on remote communities.
- Subject
- remote Aboriginal communities; Aboriginal health; Aboriginal education; friendship
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1344144
- Identifier
- uon:29341
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781138955240
- Language
- eng
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