Connection & Disconnection

Connection & Disconnection: Encounters between Settlers and Indigenous People in the Northern Territory

Edited by Tony Austin and Suzanne Parry

'Connection and Disconnection' brings together twelve historians with an interest in encounters between Indigenous people and settlers in the Northern Territory. More than just a narrative of conflict and dispossession, the volume is concerned to reconceptualise the present through the past, rather than just understand the past itself.

Chapters deal with a range of encounters which bring new light to bear on the relationships between people on the northern frontier - some of them positive. The volume includes new interpretations of sites of dispossession and war, together with accounts of the sometimes successful struggle by settlers to develop an understanding of Aboriginal people and cultures; well-meaning but frequently misguided attempts to provide for the welfare of Aboriginal people; and usually unsuccessful efforts by authorities to divest the people of their Aboriginality.

The book will be of interest to all readers seeking to understand the circumstances that have made reconciliation such a key issue in our national identity as we approach the new millennium.