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narratives of so-named British exploration and, arguably, included to make the story more
interesting and appealing for students (as can be read through the creative language
selection), but not as a substantial part of the historical events.
Overall, impersonal attributes of Indigenous Australians are presented to the reader. For
example, descriptions include “friendly natives” (Department of Education, 1959/1962/1966,
p. 59); “friendly people” (Dunlop & Pike, 1963, p. 74); “Kindly Natives” (Department of
Education, 1959/1962/1966, p. 64); and “they were angry” (Department of Education,
1959/1962/1966, p. 79). By representing Indigenous Australians in this way, textbooks
provided a (non-overt) message to school students that Indigenous people are only capable of
expressing basic emotions like happiness (in the case of being described as friendly) and
anger. On the other hand non-Indigenous people such as the explorers are capable of more
complex human emotions, as seen, for example in Source 6.4.
Source 6.4. John Oxley exploration extract from Social Studies for grade
5 (Department of Education, 1959/1962/1966, p. 23).
6.4.1 Discourses of violence.
Visual representations of interactions between Indigenous Australians and explorers are used
throughout textbooks in this era; see for example Source 6.5, which is typical of
representations found in textbooks during this era. As an aside, this image was also used in a
textbook from earlier in the twentieth century A story of the Australian people (Cramp, 1927).
As it is not used as a primary source document for students to deconstruct and question in
either the Social Studies for Queensland Schools grade 5 or A story of the Australian people,
this demonstrates the static nature of curriculum content. The image appears in the textbook
in black and white, reproduced from a colour oil painting. The picture is of four explorers
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