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Given that this textbook was published only four years after the Queensland government
abolished Aboriginal reserves, the overtly articulated perspective of criticising the
government is unusual for a textbook, where usually criticisms of decisions are made when
they are in the distant past (see, for example, the difference in reporting on WWI from the
period immediately following the conflict compared with representations 60 to 70 years later
as analysed in Chapter 5: Before and Immediately After WWI and the analysis covering
British heritages further in this chapter).
7.7.2 Discourses of Indigenous Australians as anonymous or token
representation.
Source 7.34 provides an example from a textbook that positions Indigenous Australians as an
anonymous and token representation. The image, a black and white photograph, is
completely out of place in this textbook. Although the image is of an Indigenous man outside
Parliament House, and the text around the image covers its opening, there is no reference to
Indigenous Australians in the written text (or indeed during any other part of early 20 th
century Australian history). Additionally, the caption does not fit the photograph. The
Indigenous Australian (who remains un-named) appears to be a swag-man, itinerant worker
(not uncommon for Indigenous and non-Indigenous men during this era), and accompanied
by his dogs does not seem interested in any way with the opening of Parliament House,
sitting some distance from the official event and facing the opposite direction. The
photograph of the man is almost as a spectacle ‘Other’, a token representation of Indigenous
Australians, being the only example of an image of Indigenous Australians in this textbook,
and not linked in any way to the text around it.
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