AbstractsMedical & Health Science

'Looking back, there was a lot we missed': an examination of how settler descendants from South Australia's North-East Highland and Wirrabara districts know and understand the nineteenth-century colonial past

by Skye Krichauff




Institution: Swinburne University of Technology
Department: Faculty fo Health, Arts and Design
Degree: PhD
Year: 2014
Keywords: Memory; History; Settler-colonial; South Australia; Lived experience; Aboriginal dispossession; Historical consciousness
Record ID: 1059496
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/394816


Abstract

In her thesis ''Looking back, there was a lot we missed': an examination of how settler descendants from South Australia's North-East Highland and Wirrabara districts know and understand the nineteenth century colonial past', Skye Krichauff investigated the seeming lack of knowledge and empathy for Aboriginal people (past and present) amongst settler descendants who have grown up on land occupied by their forebears in the nineteenth century. Skye found that amongst this group, the past is most powerfully known through lived experience -through the landscape, buildings, occupation, lifestyle and stories which are reiterated through being in place. When signs of historical Aboriginal presence were made evident, many settler descendants were open to connecting their forebears' and their own lives with the Aboriginal past.