AustLit

'These three books add to a growing scholarly literature on white peoples’ involvement in and support for Aboriginal rights and welfare in Australia. Indeed, scholarship on humanitarian whiteness in Australia is perhaps the most developed of all the settler contexts in which minority Indigenous peoples’ welfare, rights, and sovereignty are at issue. Why this might be the case is not directly addressed by any of these authors but would be worth thinking about comparatively in future studies. Further, in Australia, scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives have engaged the study of whiteness and white peoples’ involvement in Aboriginal issues. The first two books discussed in this review are histories of the mid-twentieth century, based in archival research and existing historical scholarship. The third is an ethnography drawing on the anthropologist’s own experience as a medical doctor in northern Australia in the early 2000s, and engaging with scholarship in postcolonial and critical whiteness studies. Read together, the three books suggest intriguing changes in the meaning, framing, and performance of humanitarian (or, later, anti-racist) whiteness over the course of the twentieth century in Australia.'  (Introduction)

'Historian Alison Holland charts the life and work of activist Mary Bennett and her long quest to improve the condition of Aboriginal people. Bennett was one of the leading advocates for Indigenous rights both at home and on the international stage during the twentieth century. Holland also uses the arc of Bennett’s life story to explore the development of a broader humanitarian discourse that sought to highlight the plight of Indigenous peoples in Australia.' (Introduction)

'Just Relations begins with the comment that Mary Bennett’s biography is ‘long overdue’. Australian historians are already familiar with Bennett’s Christian feminist and humanitarian activism. But the ‘delay’ has allowed Alison Holland to bring together a vast quantity of fresh research done over the last two decades on humanitarianism and Aboriginal policy in its national, imperial and international contexts. The result is a comprehensive and sophisticated study of Bennett in her ideological and political milieu and a thorough representation of the evolution of Aboriginal policy debates. It is an important contribution to Australian history that was worth the wait.'  (Introduction)