Shauna Bostock

BOSTOCK_Shauna web

Shauna Bostock is Indigenous Australian Research Editor in the National Centre of Biography at ANU. For her PhD thesis she traced her four Aboriginal grandparents’ family lines as far back as possible in the historical written record. Her thesis was published as Reaching Through Time: Finding My Family’s Stories by Allen & Unwin and won the Community and Regional History Prize at the 2024 NSW Premier’s History Awards.

Articles

Home as a weapon of cultural destruction

Non-fictionIt was simply expected that Aboriginal people would accept the values and behaviour of the dominant European culture. The Welfare Board insisted that Aboriginal people not only earn an independent living but show the Board they could save money in a bank account. They had to demonstrate that they were avoiding contact with other Aboriginal people and refusing to participate in community-oriented activities, such as sharing resources with kinsfolk and travelling to visit their relatives and home Country. Over and over again, the Board’s reports criticised Aboriginal people for being among their own kind and clinging together in groups. To achieve their assimilation aims, the Welfare Board implemented a crude ‘carrot and stick’ incentive in an attempt to modify Aboriginal behaviour: if Aboriginal people could convince the Welfare Officers that they had cut themselves off entirely from their culture, family and land, they would be rewarded with an ‘Exemption Certificate’.

At that time in history

EssayYVONNE DE CARLO was a Canadian-born, American movie actor. The famous beauty was at the height of her film career in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1956 she won a leading role in Cecil B De Mille's epic movie...

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