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The Good Country

The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors

Bain Attwood

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English
Monash University Publishing
01 July 2023
Beyond the generalisations of national and colonial history, what can we know about how Aboriginal nations interacted with the British settlers who invaded their country, the men appointed by the imperial and colonial governments to protect them, and each other?

In The Good Country Bain Attwood makes a major contribution to our knowledge of this period by providing a superbly researched, finely grained local history of the Djadja Wurrung people of Central Victoria.

The story is a shocking one, of destruction, decimation and dispossession, but, equally powerfully, it is not one of unceasing conflict. With reference to an unusually rich historical record, concepts such as the frontier and resistance emerge as inadequate in this context. Attwood recovers 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 to remain in their own country, at least for a time.

Finally, drawing past and present together, Attwood relates the remarkable story of the revival of the Djadja Wurrung in recent times as they have sought to become their own historians.

By:  
Imprint:   Monash University Publishing
Country of Publication:   Australia
Dimensions:   Height: 210mm,  Width: 135mm, 
Weight:   300g
ISBN:   9781922979070
ISBN 10:   1922979074
Series:   Australian History
Pages:   240
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Bain Attwood is Professor of History at Monash University and has held fellowships at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University. In 2010 his book Possession: Batman’s Treaty and the Matter of History won the Ernest Scott Prize for the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia or New Zealand or colonial history. He has written many books, including the acclaimed biography William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story, about the inspirational Aboriginal leader William Cooper, and co-edited Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand and Protection and Empire: A Global History.

Reviews for The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors

Lucid, scrupulous scholarship at its best. Attwood sets high standards for historical truth-telling of a sort immediately relevant today. -- Alan Atkinson Avoiding big-picture generalisations, Bain Attwood has written a succinct and excellent close-grained study of the Djadja Wurrung people and their interactions with settlers and the Aboriginal Protectorate. -- Richard Broome This is … a deep local history that pays attention to the forces of time and place to explore how colonial relations evolved as they did in this region, and how Aboriginal people responded to the successive colonial processes of dispossession, institutionalisation, and assimilation. -- Amanda Nettlebeck Once you have this broad picture of, first, the Aboriginal nations’ territory, then the overlay of the settlers’ claims, you begin to see the land differently. -- Rosemary Sorensen Concise, focused on places and people and alert to the historiography … exemplary in every way. -- Tim Rowse It is in his attentiveness to the finer textures of frontier relations that Attwood’s book really shines. -- Russell McGregor


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