Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian nation

Description

McGregor offers a holistic interpretation of the complex relationship between Indigenous and settler Australians during the midle four decades of the twentieth century. Combining the perspectives of political, social and cultural history in a coherent narrative, he provides a cogent analysis of how the relationship changed, and the impediments to change. McGregor's focus is on the quest for Aboriginal inclusion in the Australia nation; a task which dominated the Aboriginal agenda at the time. McGregor challenges existing scholarship and assumptions, particularly around assimilation. In doing so he provides an understanding of why assimilation once held the approval of many reformers, including Indigenous activists. He reveals that the inclusion of Aboriginal people in the Australian nation was not a function of political lobbying and parliamentary decision-making. Rather, it depended at least as much on Aboriginal people's public profile, and the way their demonstrated abilities partially wore down the apathy and indifference of settler Australians.

Russell McGregor is Associate Professor of history at James Cook University in Townsville. He has published extensively on the history of settler Australian attitudes toward Aboriginal people. His other research interests are in Australian nationalism and environmental history.

Russell McGregor is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Aboriginal history. The very title of the book breaks new ground because of the questions implicit in its approach . . . his perspective is genuinely fresh and insightful. --Mark McKenna, history professor, University of Sydney