AustLit

In the editorial for this issue, Clare Bradford gives a critical reading of the picture used on the front cover which is reproduced from an anutobiographical work by Conni Nungulla McDonald (with Jill Finnane) entitled When You Grow Up. Discussing texts which cross the boundaries between adolescent readers and a more general readership, Bradford draws attention to ways in which photographs of Aboriginal subjects relate to the 'cultural and institutional settings in which they were taken' (3). Aboriginals were often depicted in photographs 'dressed entirly in European attire' and/or placed against bush landscapes or blank settings which represent Aboriginal people as noble savages or belonging to a 'dying race' (4). Bradford argues that the reworked picture of Connie Nungulla McDonald resists any unitary or straightforward interpretations and instead, implies a striking departure from traditional racist representations of Aboriginality by reiterating that 'the Aboriginal traditions which link identity with a particular country have survived the dispossession over the last two centuries' (4).