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'Connors lays down the hard truth. Not all our warriors were Anzacs. Not all our wars were just.' - John Birmingham, author and columnist In the 1840s, white settlement in the north was under attack. European settlers were in awe of Aboriginal physical fitness and fighting prowess, and a series of deadly raids on homesteads made even the townspeople of Brisbane anxious. Young warrior Dundalli was renowned for his size and strength, and his elders gave him the task of leading the resistance against the Europeans' ever increasing incursions on their traditional lands. Their response was embedded in Aboriginal law and Dundalli became one of their greatest lawmen. With his band of warriors, he h...
This book traces the environment movement in Australia from the first visionaries who pressed for preservation of native fauna and for sanitation in cities to a mass social movement that challenges the most powerful interests in society. It covers the major environmental issues that have been at the forefront of Australian politics since the 1960s.
This book examines the deep connection Australians have with their climate to understand contemporary views on human-induced climate change. It is the first study of the Australian relationship with La Niña and it explains how fundamental this relationship is to the climate change debate both locally and globally. While unease with the Australian environment was a hallmark of early settler relations with a new continent, this book argues that the climate itself quickly became a source of hope and linked to progress. Once observed, weather patterns coalesced into recognizable cycles of wet and dry years and Australians adopted a belief in the certainty of good seasons. It was this optimistic response to climate linked to La Niña that laid the groundwork for this relationship with the Australian environment. This book will appeal to scholars and students of the environmental humanities, history and science as well as anyone concerned about climate change.
Double Vision serves as a prequel to Among Australian Pioneers, which highlighted the experience of Chinese indentured laborers on the northern frontier from 1848 to 1880—a time of intense conflict. With this latest book, historian Margaret Slocomb responds to a call for more regional histories of early contact relations, so we can understand their complexity as well as the diversity of reactions and responses that followed. The author observes that encounters at the margins of settlement between new societies seeking profits and traditional owners defending their land are bruising, brutal affairs conducted beyond the reach of regular norms and conventions, and contested within a framework...
The Enchantment of English is a study of the teaching of English in Australian universities, from its beginnings in the second half of the 19th century through to the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which universities proliferated and diversified. Written from the belief that every discipline is enhanced by understanding the arguments made for its existence and the conditions in which it was established, the author aims to help students and colleagues to think critically about the impact of institutional location in forming our habits of mind. Amidst these stories of politics, critical debates, scrambling for appointments in specific areas and disputes about the need to satisfy the demands of students and the public for 'usefulness', this history reveals something intangible but durable: the power of the literary text over the imagination, and the power of the idea of England and its writers as a basis and motive for reading and study - hence, The Enchantment of English.
Publisher description
In this collection of incidents of racism in Australian sports, the author is honest in his condemnation of the offenders, sporting administrators and government officials who continue to deny that there is a problem of racism in sport.
'There is an Australian dream that is collective. It goes to the roots of what it means to be Australian, since it's imprinted in Australia's history, the collective acts of its peoples, their attitudes, their gestures, what and how they eat, how they spend their leisure time, and the way such things reflect upon and derive from who they are.' In The Land of Plenty, Mark Davis argues that this dream has been forsaken. Over the past few decades Australians have felt the ground shift beneath their feet. Many people are asking why Australia is no longer the egalitarian place it once was. While the airwaves sing and newspaper front pages burst with news of how prosperous Australians are, many people wonder why they are working harder and longer, for so little, while important social agendas have fallen by the wayside. The Land of Plenty is at once a devastating record of the changes that have taken place in Australian society since the 1980s, and a goldmine of ideas for change. Insightful, provocative and thoroughly original, The Land of Plenty is a manifesto for our times.
This collection brings methods and questions from humanities, law and social sciences disciplines to examine different instances of lawmaking. Contributors explore the problematic of past law in present historical analysis across indigenous Australia and New Zealand, from post-Franco Spain to current international law and maritime regulation, from settler colonial humanitarian debates to efforts to end cruelty to children and animals. They highlight problems both national and international in their implication. From different disciplines and theoretical positions, they illustrate the diverse and complex study of law’s history.