Saturday, 21 March 2020

Betwixt and Between

Interesting paper in the Journal of Genocide Research, 1–17 (2020)  by H. Burke,  B. Barker, L. Wallis, S. Craig & M. Combo titled Betwixt and Between: Trauma, Survival and the Aboriginal Troopers of the Queensland Native Mounted Police.

The Abstract follows

Much has been written about the history of the Queensland Native
Mounted Police, mostly focussing on its development, its white
officers, how much the Colonial Government genuinely knew
about the actions of the Force, and how many people were killed
during the frontier wars. Far less attention has been given to the
Aboriginal men of the force, the nature of their recruitment, and
the long-term traumatic impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ and
communities’ psyches rather than broadscale changes to
Aboriginal culture per se. This article examines the historical and
ongoing psychological impacts of dispossession and frontier
violence on Aboriginal people. Specifically, we argue that
massacres, frontier violence, displacement, and the ultimate
dispossession of land and destruction of traditional cultural
practices resulted in both individual and collective intergenerational
trauma for Aboriginal peoples. We posit that, despite
the Australian frontier wars taking place over a century ago, their
impacts continue to reverberate today in a range of different
ways, many of which are as yet only partially understood.
 
Unfortunately the article is paywalled.

No comments:

Post a Comment