Migrant Lives on First Nation Land

Abstract

Via ethnographic and oral history methods and transcultural memory work, this article presents the complex, ambiguous and at times contradictory relationship between a Greek family and an Aboriginal community, including the traditional landowners, in Central Australia in the 1960s. Within a commonplace narrative of colonists and pastoralists buying, owning and selling First People’s land, ownership by Greek migrants and the historical presence of Aboriginal people provides an entry point into a microhistory that illustrates and reveals under-acknowledged, fraught and fragmented facets of transcultural life in 1960s rural Australia, and the place of ethnic-settler-colonisers in Australia’s history of settler-colonialism, dispossession, and pastoralism. Through this case study, we argue the importance of uncovering, recovering and reclaiming the history of Mediterranean migrants’ transcultural relationships with First Nations people. Show more