Citation

Konishi S. Aust. Hist. Stud. 2008; 39(3): 356-372.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Dept. of History, University of Melbourne)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Louis Nowra's recently published Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal Men's Violence Against Women and Children (2007) includes an ethno-historical study of gender relations in Aboriginal `traditional' society, drawing on early explorers' observations and anthropological accounts. Inga Clendinnen likewise included a chapter on Aboriginal sexual politics in Dancing with Strangers (2003). This paper critiques their conclusions and methods, and closely analyses the same terrain-late eighteenth-century European representations of Aboriginal sexual relations. My aim is not to deny that there were instances of violence in the sexual conduct of eighteenth-century Aboriginal societies. Instead, this paper demonstrates that Nowra and Clendinnen's ethno-histories fail to present a holistic account of the myriad descriptions of Indigenous gender dynamics that permeate the European explorers' accounts.