An Aboriginal Moomba: remaking history

Abstract

the better part of this century it has been possible to erase the evidence of a dynamic Aboriginal presence in southeast Australia. Decimated by a long and intense history of colonization, Aborigines were subsequently erased from narratives of national identity, rendered invisible through policies of integration and assimilation. Yet despite their liminal position on the margins of white Australia, Aboriginal people in the southeast never ceased to act as historical agents and to engage in cultural representations that were at once an affirmation of cultural identity and difference and a means of entering into dialogue with mainstream Australians.