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Indigenous histories in either an historical or contemporary context. Rather than using this as
an example of any inadequacy on Cowie’s part, this provides an example of the inadequacy
of the curriculum (as set by the Syllabus) to properly respond to important events occurring
in society. Cowie would have closely followed the syllabus in writing this textbook, as
textbooks written by him in later years do include substantial Indigenous Australian content.
Therefore, it is evident that for this era, Indigenous people were not considered sufficiently
important to include in the core curriculum.
However, despite this, it can be seen that Cowie recognised the importance of studying
Indigenous Australian histories from both an historical and contemporary perspective (even if
the syllabus did not). Cowie includes a Further Reading list at the end of his book, which
among the nineteen books he recommends, seven are directly related to Indigenous
Australians, some written by people considered radical (for example H. Reynolds, 1972;
McQueen, 1974). The list includes the following books: The Aborigines (Gibbs, 1974); I, the
Aboriginal (Lockwood, 1962); We, the Aborigines (Lockwood, 1963); Aborigines race and
racism (McQueen, 1974); Goodbye Dreamtime (McNally, 1971); Aborigines and settlers:
The Australian experience 1788-1939 (H. Reynolds, 1972); and The destruction of
Aboriginal society (Rowley, 1970). Finally, this list can be seen almost as a resistant reading
to the core curriculum, whereby Cowie includes texts that are not yet part of the official
knowledge as designated by the syllabus, although in later years, post the era under analysis
here, this changed considerably.
6.7.2 Discourses of Indigenous Australians as savages/primitive.
Although the discourse of primitive culture is not the largest in terms of quantity of narrative
content, it does represent the most widespread discourse with nine out of the twenty-two
textbooks identified as containing content that positions Indigenous Australians as primitive.
This is achieved through explicit language use of the term primitive to describe Indigenous
Australians as individuals, as a collective and in reference to their culture, lifestyle and
development. Discourses of primitivism are evident in primary through to secondary
textbooks, and the following analysis provides a sample of how this discourse is presented in
the curriculum.
For the primary school grades, Social Studies for Queensland schools grade 7 contains one
representation of Indigenous people as primitive. Within a section that covers early
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