Through white eyes

One of the most striking changes in Australia's cultural landscape in the last two decades has been the entry of the Aborigines as an issue and, increasingly, as individuals into virtually every field of enquiry. How has this come about and what has it meant to one discipline, history, a field of enquiry of considerable popular impact in the wake of the Bicentenary? Thirty years ago, when John Mulvaney wrote the first essay in this edited collection, he was virtually the only scholar in history who seemed to have any awareness of the Aboriginal dimension of Australia's past. Most, until the 1970s, continued to regard the original Australians as a 'melancholy footnote' to the nation's past, of marginal significance to a national saga of growth and fulfillment. The next essay in this collection was written in the immediate aftermath of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra. In it, Peter Corris took up the challenge presented by the Embassy and carried forward the 'project' mapped out by Mulvaney. The remaining essays chronicle the movement which was to give Aboriginal Australians their rightful place in their country's past. This is a movement which will, and must continue: no explorer of this nation's past will ever be able to ignore the Aboriginal people again. The collection ends with two new essays. In the first, John Mulvaney reflects on the passage of 30 years in the writing of Australian history and the changing picture of the Aborigines which is presented in that history. In the second a young Aboriginal historian considers the preconceptions, prejudices and concerns which white historians have brought to the study of the Aboriginal people, and asks some pointed questions about whites attempting to portray black realities.