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'Born of an Aboriginal mother, and a white father, Ella was raised by her Aboriginal grandparents. Her grandmother, Kundaibark was a Christian and through her Ella grew up a Christian. In the year of her birth, Ella's grandfather moved his family, together with several other Aboriginal families from the crowded and depressed fringe camp at Taree to a new site further out of town. They constructed their own homes, and a UAM missionary was appointed to work there. A church and school were built, the beginnings of the Purfleet Mission. Ella attended the mission school, and then, in the 1920s, went to Sydney to work as a domestic.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication:
This book is dedicated to my grandmother, who taught me about being both Aboriginal and Christian and who cared so much for all people; and to my father for his honesty with the people he knew he had wronged. It has been made possible through my faith in God who enables me to love.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording and braille.
Works about this Work
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Remediating Australia’s Cultural Memory : Aboriginal Memoir as Social Activism
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 32 no. 1 2018; (p. 42-51)'During the 1980s Aboriginal Australians experienced setbacks in their quest for the restoration of their land rights. Neoliberal politics reframed such demands as special interests seeking to gain a material advantage at the expense of the general community and as a threat to the economic security of the nation. As a consequence, politicians failed to pass legislation that would formalize the national land rights system that would guarantee Aboriginal economic self-sufficiency. This paper argues that it was in this context that Aboriginal memoir emerged to prompt social action by recounting experiences of discrimination and exploitation erased by official history and by challenging the imposed racist stereotypes used to marginalize Aboriginal claims. These memoirs prompted sympathy and understanding among a broad readership, which enabled the formation of a political solidarity over the recognition of Aboriginal land rights. These memoirs also expressed a commonality of Aboriginal experience that served to unite an increasingly frayed Aboriginal activist movement eroded by neoliberal policies.' (Publication abstract)
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Assimilation Discourses and The Production of Ella Simon's Through My Eyes
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , January vol. 36 no. 2012; (p. 1-20)In this essay the author examines transcripts of Ella Simon's original oral recordings to demonstrate how the 'lack of cultural literacy amongst her non-Aboriginal collaborators led to the prioritisation of monocultural understanding of assimiliation to the detriment of Simon's more pluralist views.' (Source: Jones 2012)
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White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
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Black Chicks Talking : Indigenous Women's Writing in JSNWL's Collection
2011
single work
column
— Appears in: Jessie Street National Women's Library Newsletter , May vol. 22 no. 2 2011; (p. 6-7) 'The library has a small but growing collection of Aboriginal material in the form of books, posters, audio-visual items and the few journals. This article overviews these holdings and makes a plea for more donations in this area.' (p. 6)
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Perpetuating White Australia : Aboriginal Self-Representation, White Editing and Preferred Stereotypes
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Creating White Australia 2009; (p. 156-172)
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Untitled
1987
single work
review
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , vol. 31 no. 4 1987; (p. 67-68)
— Review of Through My Eyes 1978 single work life story -
Kin-fused Reconciliation : Bringing Them Home, Bringing Us Home
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , August no. 42 2007; 'Fiona Probyn-Rapsey discusses the biopolitical management of Indigenous people within the contemporary nation through an analysis of white liberal discourse on Reconciliation. She looks specifically at the image of the nation as family and the pedagogic nationalist argument for extending the "white" family to include Aboriginal kin and to "bind Aboriginality to whiteness". She analyses how a wide range of Indigenous life narratives (including those by Morgan, Russell, Pilkington-Garimara, Lalor, Scott and Brown, Kinnane, Simon and Randall) describe familial relations between white and Indigenous family members. She argues, in her formulation of the phrase "kin-fused Reconciliation", that a liberal "extended family" model of the Nation is potentially assimilationist' (Anne Brewster and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, Introduction). -
Differents regards sur l'autobiographie d'Ella Simon
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: France and Australia Face to Face 2008; (p. 109-125) The essay compares the 1978 preface to Simon's book, by Professor A.P. Elkin, with the 1987 preface, by Les Murray. -
When the Object Speaks, A Postcolonial Encounter : Anthropological Representations and Aboriginal Women's Self-Presentations
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Discourse : Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education , December vol. 19 no. 3 1998; (p. 275-289) -
Too Obvious To See : Aboriginal Sprituality and Cosmology
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues , December vol. 2 no. 4 1999; (p. 5-12) -
Black Chicks Talking : Indigenous Women's Writing in JSNWL's Collection
2011
single work
column
— Appears in: Jessie Street National Women's Library Newsletter , May vol. 22 no. 2 2011; (p. 6-7) 'The library has a small but growing collection of Aboriginal material in the form of books, posters, audio-visual items and the few journals. This article overviews these holdings and makes a plea for more donations in this area.' (p. 6)
- Taree, Taree area, Greater Taree, Mid North Coast, New South Wales,
- Purfleet Mission, Purfleet, Tinonee - Old Bar area, Greater Taree, Mid North Coast, New South Wales,