In this superbly researched book Bain Attwood eschews the
generalisations of national and colonial history to provide a finely grained
local history of the Djadja Wurrung people of Central Victoria. Insisting on
the importance of grappling with a history that involved a relationship between
the people of this Aboriginal nation, the British settlers who invaded their
country, and men appointed by the imperial and the colonial governments to
protect the Aboriginal people, as well as a relationship between the Djadja
Wurrung and their indigenous neighbours, Attwood not only tells the shocking
story of the destruction, decimation, and dispossession of the Djadja Wurrung, he draws on an unusually rich historical record, and forgoes any reliance on
historical concepts such as the frontier and resistance, to recover a good deal
of the modus vivendi that the Djadja Wurrung reached with sympathetic
protectors, pastoralists, and gold diggers, showing how they both adopted and
adapted to these intruders and were thereby able to remain in their own
country, at least for a time.
Drawing past and present together, Attwood closes
this book with the remarkable story of the revival of the Djadja Wurrung in
recent times as they have sought to become their own historians.
