CONTESTED GROUND - WHAT IS ABORIGINAL HISTORY

What is aboriginal history? the history of aborigenes, or history made or written by aborigenes? This article examines the approaches of earlier historians, before concentrating on the historiography of the question since 1970. The writing of aboriginal history today is a highly-politicised field, and must be seen in the context of unequal race relations in contemporary Australian society. A gulf remains between non-Aboriginal researchers and Aboriginal writers. This article argues against an exclusively conflictual model of this history of race relations, and in favour of a history of cultural interchange.