Whitefella Comin': Aboriginal Responses to Colonialism in Northern Australia

by David Samuel Trigger

• ISBN13: 9780521131780
• ISBN10: 0521131782
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book was first published in 1992. Aboriginal people in Australia's Gulf Country had been dealing with Whites for more than one hundred years. Whitefella Comin' depicts life at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal settlement administered by Brethren missionaries from the early 1930s until 1983. Dr Trigger's portrayal of life at Doomadgee was the first to be published by an anthropologist about such a settlement in Queensland. Through detailed historical and ethnographic study, the author seeks understanding of Aboriginal responses to the intrusions of Australian society. He examines coercion and violence on the frontier, the incorporation of Aboriginal people into the pastoral industry and their reactions to both the authoritarianism and benevolent paternalism of Christian missionaries. The influence of government policies and administrative practices is examined throughout the book. In addressing the structures and processes of power relations between Aborigines and Whites, the author develops an analysis of resistance and accommodation on the part of Aboriginal people.

Table of Contents

Preface

Abbreviations and conventions

Doomadgee: the politics of colonial social relations

'Wild time': a history of coercion and resistance

Station and fringe-dwelling life

Doomadgee mission: institutionalisation and a new form of colonial struggle

Whitefella comin': power relations and the different domains

Politics and identity within the Aboriginal domain

Authority relations, the missionary staff and Aboriginal consciousness

Councillors, 'Yellafellas' and the influence of colonial ideology

Christianity, domination and resistance

Coercion, resistance and accommodation in colonial social relations

Appendices

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.