Date
(Aboriginal Studies Press book shortlisted for PM ’s Prize for Australian History)
Please join us to hear Russell McGregor speak as part of the Indigenous Lecture Series at Manning Clark House.
A clear and measured account of assimilation which deepens our understanding of this still-misunderstood policy ideal has been shortlisted in the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Russell McGregor’s Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian Nation is a powerful holistic interpretation of complex relations between Indigenous and settler Australians in the crucial middle four decades of the twentieth century and comes at a time when assimilation still has its advocates in public debate.
Published last year by Aboriginal Studies Press — Indifferent Inclusion was one of five finalists announced last week in the newly incorporated Prize for Australian History.
McGregor — an Associate Professor of history at James Cook University in Townsville — has published extensively on the history of settler Australian attitudes toward Aboriginal people.
Author Russell McGregor highlights that Indifferent Inclusion explores the ideals which impelled the quest for Aboriginal inclusion as well as the public apathy on which that quest frequently stumbled.
“It provides new perspectives on policies of assimilation,” he said. “Indifferent Inclusion explores issues ranging from victory in the 1967 referendum to demonstrations of Aboriginal prowess on the sports-field; from Aboriginal efforts to lever citizenship from their military service to the use of Aboriginal motifs in domestic decoration and home ware.
“It also illuminates continuities between Indigenous agendas then and now, showing for instance how today’s ideas of mutual obligations were anticipated in earlier Aboriginal advocacy of their need to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship. “The legacy this book traces is an ambiguous one. Over the middle decades of the twentieth century, Aboriginal people were incrementally but incompletely included in the national community,” he noted.
Associate Professor Russell McGregor is available for media interviews.
To arrange an interview – or for more information – please contact: Rhonda Black 0417424429
Cost $20, $15 for members and $7 for students (refreshments will be available).
Bookings essential – please RSVP to Jade by phone on 6295 1808 or Judith on 6295 9433 or email.