AustLit

Author's abstract : In The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Keneally rewrites the story of the Jimmy Governor murders and manhunt, a significant episode in white/Aboriginal race relations in Australia that took place at the turn of the twentieth century. In his narrative Keneally attempts to eliminate the colonial discourse which underlay contemporary press accounts of the story and to retell it 'objectively', from the enlightened perspective of the 1970s, when white attitudes to Aborigines began to change radically. This article examines and attempts to explain his successes and failures in this under taking.