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Blackfellas Whitefellas and Hidden Injuries of Race
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by Gillian Cowlishaw
Blackwell Publishers
Due/Published
February 2004, 272 pages,
paper
ISBN
1405114045
In December 1997, in a small town in rural Australia, a fight broke out among local Aborigines that turned into a full-blown riot when police intervened in force. In Blackfellas, Whitefellas, and the Hidden Injuries of Race, anthropologist Gillian Cowlishaw uses this incident as a means of launching a larger discussion about race, identity, and racialized violence. In this ethnography, Cowlishaw brings indigenous Australians into the contemporary global race discourse Ð a discourse largely dominated to date by discussions of African Americans and American Indians in the United States. Cowlishaw's work broadens and enriches discussions of the dramas of a racialized world. "This is an unusually important book for anyone concerned with understanding race relations in settler colonies--not only Australia, but also Canada and the United States. What can 'multiculturalism' mean when it comes to indigenous peoples and white majorities? A talented ethnographer and relentlessly critical thinker, Gillian Cowlishaw examines these matters with theoretical sophistication and compelling ethnographic description. She brilliantly helps the reader to understand how and why local people identify and act in racialized ways, and she demonstrates both the psychic gains and the personal injuries that inevitably inhere to race. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Cowlishaw's book is the nuanced weaving together of a performative analysis of racial agency;Éthis is as much about the production of national white privilege as it is about local-level race-making. The reader---whether a racial minority or a member of a national racial majority---will inevitably see herself implicated in this penetrating description of race. This is the best kind of anthropology." -- Tom Biolsi, Portland State University Contents Prologue: Riotous Tales
1. Introductions: the signs of social life
2. Stigma and Complaint
3. Injury and Agency
4. Performance
5. Boundaries
6. Violence
7. Citizenship
8. Our History
9. Trials and Transformations
Bibliography
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