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Indigenous Australians is linked with treating the group as a novelty or childlike,
manipulating behaviour through offering gifts or unneeded and unrequested services.
6.4.3 Discourses of anonymity and subjugation.
Within Social Studies for Queensland schools grade 5 (Department of Education, 1959/
1962/1966) a narrative within the broader topic of explorers primarily focuses on John Oxley
and Alan Cunningham’s early exploration of the Brisbane and Ipswich area (major cities of
Queensland). This narrative centres on interactions between the local Indigenous population
and the two explorers; rather than treating Indigenous people as peripheral players in
historical narratives as occurs throughout the remainder of this textbook. Like the grade 4
textbook in this same series, Oxley and Cunningham’s exploration is written to students as an
adventure style genre, most likely to engage and sustain their attention and interest. The
direct quotes included throughout the textbook narrative and quoted here, expressed through
Oxley’s voice, are from his diary entries.
Throughout the textbook, the Indigenous peoples Oxley and Cunningham come in contact
with are not referred to by either name or tribal group, sustaining the anonymity and silencing
of Indigenous Australians from the exploration era of the nation’s history. Whilst it could be
reasonably assumed that the early explorers did not form relationships with the Indigenous
people sufficient to get to know their names or tribal affiliations, information at least about
the tribal affiliations of those they came into contact with would be known by the 1960s,
enabling the gaps of historical recounts to be filled. However, this does not occur, and the
anonymity is maintained in a way that places little importance on Indigenous Australian
histories. For, although the Indigenous people are at the cornerstone of this narrative, it is told
solely from the perspective of the explorer, Oxley, with no mediation of meaning provided by
the textbook authors to students. Instead, the information presented is treated as ‘the truth’
with no space provided for alternative perspectives.
Traits and characteristics attributed to Indigenous people include, for example, “ ‘We had
scarce pitched the tents,’ wrote Oxley, ‘when we were visited by a party of natives, some of
whom were very troublesome, endeavouring to steal everything they could lay their fingers
on” (Department of Education, 1959/1962/1966, p. 22). This, a representative statement from
the narrative, positions Indigenous Australians as annoyances and petty thieves. The
descriptions of behaviour underpins a general (albeit unspoken) ideology of racial inferiority.
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