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Tiffany Shellam Tiffany Shellam i(A150494 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

In 2012 Tiffany Shellam was teaching History at Deakin University in Melbourne. Her research and writing interests include encounters between Aboriginal people and outsiders in the early nineteenth century, particularly in the context of Australian exploration, urban settlements and mission stations in the southwest of Western Australia.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Meeting the Waylo : Aboriginal Encounters in the Archipelago Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2020 18448531 2020 multi chapter work criticism

'This book explores the experiences of Indigenous Australians who participated in Australian exploration enterprises in the early nineteenth century. These Indigenous travellers, often referred to as ‘guide’s’, ‘native aides’, or ‘intermediaries’ have already been cast in a variety of ways by historians: earlier historiographies represented them as passive side-players in European heroic efforts of Discovery, while scholarship in the 1980s, led by Henry Reynolds, re-cast these individuals as ‘black pioneers’. Historians now acknowledge that Aborigines ‘provided information about the customs and languages of contiguous tribes, and acted as diplomats and couriers arranging in advance for the safe passage of European parties’. 

'More recently, Indigenous scholars Keith Vincent Smith and Lynnette Russell describe such Aboriginal travellers as being entrepreneurial ‘agents of their own destiny’. 

'While historiography has made up some ground in this area Aboriginal motivations in exploring parties, while difficult to discern, are often obscured or ignored under the title ‘guide’ or ‘intermediary’. Despite the different ways in which they have been cast, the mobility of these travellers, their motivations for travel and experience of it have not been thoroughly analysed. 

'Some recent studies have begun to open up this narrative, revealing instead the ways in which colonisation enabled and encouraged entrepreneurial mobility, bringing about ‘new patterns of mobility for colonised peoples’.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards The Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History
Last amended 27 Mar 2013 14:39:15
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