Reading list

Twenty chapters making the case that Australia is more than Anzac - and always has been. Includes Eualeyai-Kamillaroi historian Larissa Behrendt on ‘Settlement or invasion? The coloniser’s quandary’ and journalist and author Paul Daley on ‘Our most important war: The legacy of frontier conflict’

Fictionalised account of punitive expeditions against Walbiri people led by Constable W.G. Murray and Nugget Morton; criticism of the affair by missionary Athol McGregor and Anne Locke; Darwin trial; recent interviews with Walbiri survivors by M. Hartwig, P. Read and P. Wafer.

Benjamin Duterrau and his National picture project are at the core of this publication because he was the colonial artist most interested in Tasmania's Aboriginal people, and the only artist who chose to depict, on a substantial scale, their conciliation or pacification by George Augustus Robinson. Tasmanian officials tried to use paintings to show to Aboriginal people 'the cause of the present warfare' and the 'real wishes of the government': 'the desired termination of hostility'.

Tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime to the first contact between Europeans and Indigenous Australians, through to the Uluru Statement, it offers an insight into the life and experiences of the world's oldest surviving culture. The resilience and adaptability of Aboriginal people over millennia is one of the great human stories of all time.

Drawing from documentary and oral evidence, the book describes the ways in which Aborigines responded to the arrival of Europeans. Henry Reynolds' argument that the Aborigines resisted fiercely was highly original when it was first published (1981) and is no less challenging today.

The race on the fringe of the continent has been there about a hundred years, and stands for Civilization; the race in the interior has been there no man knows how long, and stands for Barbarism. Between them a woman has lived in a little white tent for more than twenty years, watching over these people for the sake of the Flag, a woman alone, the solitary spectator of a vanishing race. She is Daisy Bates, one of the least known and one of the most romantic figures in the British Empire. (from the blurb to the 1944 edition)

The story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and an isolated clan in north-east Arnhem Land—a unique window into Australia’s deep past and precarious present, by one of our master storytellers.
The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: that of the intensely driven anthropologist Neville White, and the world of hunter-gatherer clans in remote northern Australia with whom he has lived and worked for half a century, mapping their culture and history in breathtaking detail.

The Queen is Dead is a full-throated, impassioned argument on the necessity for an end to monarchy in Australia, the need for a Republic, and what needs to be done - through the Voice to Parliament and beyond - to address and redress the pain and sorrow and humiliations of the past. Momentous and timely, The Queen is Dead carries an urgent, undeniable and righteous demand for justice, for a reckoning, and a just settlement with First Nations people. Grant is the author of a number of other books, including Australia Day, Tears of Strangers, and Talking to My Country.

Three articles originally written in 1973, 1977 and 1981, and republished by permission of the author in Honest History. McQueen’s 1973 research used the resources of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).

The history of the British army in Australia; from the arrival of the First Fleet to 1870 when the various Australian colonies started to take over their own defence.

Native Police detachments - mounted Aboriginal troopers led by white officers - would surround Aboriginal camps and fire into them at dawn, killing men, women and children. The bodies were often burned to destroy the evidence. Richards argues that the Native Police were a key part of a 'divide and rule' colonising tactic, that the force's actions were given the implicit approval of government and public servants, and that their killings were covered up and files ‘lost’.

What Can Statistics Tell Us about Frontier Violence? What Estimates have been made about Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Violent Deaths and How Satisfactory are the Methodologies? Do Statistics Provide an Adequate Indication of the Extent of Frontier Conflict? Is it better to ignore them?