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questions (see Source 7.58 for full extract). This is the only example of Indigenous
representations in the textbook after the early colonial period. This small extract can be seen
as placing Indigenous Australians on the peripheral of Australian history, with very limited—
arguably tokenistic—content about Indigenous Australians. The irony of this seems to be lost
on the textbook authors who introduce the paragraph with “until very recent times Aborigines
were almost a forgotten and very neglected group of Australians” (Power et al., 1985, p. 231).
Interestingly, the four accompanying questions are unable to be answered by students by
reading the textbook, and further investigation is required, but no direction is provided on
where this investigation could begin.
Source 7.58. “The changing position of the Aborigines” extract from Spanning time
(Power et al., 1985, p. 231).
Another example of Indigenous Australians included on the fringe of curriculum content is
evident in The modern world emerges (Lawrence et al., 1986) where little importance is
placed on Indigenous Australians and significant historical events which impact on
Australian history. For example, there is no mention of the 1967 referendum, despite other
referenda in Australia’s history included in this textbook. The information that is provided
about Indigenous Australians is both disjointed and not part of the main historical narrative.
Rather, it is placed as dot point summaries at the end of sections. The following extract from
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