Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler History: Understanding Australians’ Consciousness of the Colonial Past

Taking the absence of Aboriginal people in South Australian settler descendants’ historical consciousness as a starting point, Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler History combines the methodologies and theories of historical enquiry, anthropology, and memory studies to investigate the multitudinous and intertwined ways the colonial past is known, represented, and understood by current generations.

Informed by interviews and fieldwork conducted with settler and Aboriginal descendants, oral histories, site visits, and personal experience, Skye Krichauff closely examines the diverse but interconnected processes through which the past is understood and narrated. Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler History demonstrates how it is possible to unsettle settler descendants’ consciousness of the colonial past in ways that enable a tentative connection with Aboriginal people and their experiences.