AustLit

'Martin Nakata has chosen a title that is absolutely right for this book, Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the disciplines. In the nineteenth century, the Torres Strait Islanders were thought to be locked in savagery and sin and in desperate need of the civilising disciplines offered by assorted European academics, anthropologists and missionaries. In the present century it is the turn of the European disciplines to be savaged. Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander with a doctorate in Education, casts a critical eye on what assorted academics and missionariesthought that they were accomplishing as they investigated and patronised the islander communities of the Torres Strait.'  (Introduction)