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emerging respect for different knowledges and profiling of well-known Indigenous
Australians.
Finally, After the first hundred years (Palmer and MacLeod, 1969), represents Indigenous
Australians separately from other aspects of Australian history. For example, whilst there are
five consecutive pages of content focusing solely on Indigenous Australians, it is included out
of context to any other part of Australian history, despite the remainder of the book being
structured by chronology, rather than themes.
Foundations (Hendy et al., 1976), a textbook written for first year high school students,
includes the following small example of Indigenous Australians within a chapter focusing on
bushrangers. Their inclusion as the role of trackers is legitimised as a result of assisting
police looking for bushrangers. The extract reads:
Even with the help of the ‘black trackers’, the mounted police had a hard time of it
when looking for bushrangers. The black trackers were Aborigines. Mostly from
Queensland, they could track the bushrangers when there seemed to be no trail.
Hated and feared by the bushrangers, Ned Kelly called them ‘the black-devils’.
Public support, help and information could have made the trackers’ work easier.
(Hendy et al., 1976, p. 127)
The perceived expertise of the trackers is reinforced by Ned Kelly (arguably Australia’s most
infamous and well known bushranger) calling them “the black-devils” (Hendy et al., 1976, p.
127) due to his fear of being caught as a result of their work. This small example firmly
places Indigenous Australians on the peripheral of Australian national history, given less
importance than narratives of criminals.
To conclude this section, an interesting example of Indigenous Australians represented on the
fringe of History curriculum content, comes from H.R. Cowie’s seminal textbook
publication, Frankfurt to Fra Mauro (1975). This textbook looks at modern history largely in
the western world from 1848 through to the early 1970s. There is a section on Australia as
well as a section on “Imperialism and Race Relations” (Cowie, 1975, pp. 471-523). However,
although there is a substantial section on Australia, there are no examples of Indigenous
representations. The fact that Indigenous issues were so prominent at the time, speaks
volumes about the little importance and value placed on teaching high school students
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