Indigenous Biography and Autobiography

by Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little (Editor), Anna Haebich (Editor)

In this absorbing collection of papers Aboriginal, Maori, Dalit and western scholars discuss and analyse the difficulties they have faced in writing Indigenous biographies and autobiographies. The issues range from balancing the demands of western and non-western scholarship, through writing about a family that refuses to acknowledge its identity, to considering a community demand not to write anything at all. The collection also presents some state-of-the-art issues in teaching Indigenous Studies based on auto/biography in Austria, Spain and Italy.

190 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Peter Read is an ARC Professorial Fellow at the Department of History, University of Sydney, and Adjunct Professor, Department of History, ANU. Currently he is researching a history of Aboriginal Sydney, and is slowly building the website A History of Aboriginal Sydney.

Peter Read coined the phrase 'the stolen generation', first used by him as a title for a magazine article. In 1981 he helped create Link-up, an organisation to bring Aborigines who had been abducted back to their parents. It went on to become a major force leading to the Stolen Generation enquiry. On the way Peter wrote many influential publications, including The Lost Children (1988), Charles Perkins: A Biography and Lost Places (1997).