Indifferent Inclusion earns second history award shortlisting

 

6 November 2012

A ‘fresh and insightful’ book by Associate Professor Russell McGregor – and published by Aboriginal Studies Press – has been shortlisted for the Australian History Prize as part of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and History Awards.

The 2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards shortlist was announced by NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell in Sydney yesterday.

In Indifferent Inclusion, Associate Professor Russell McGregor offers a holistic interpretation of the complex relationship between Indigenous and settler Australians during the middle four decades of the twentieth century.

In congratulating Professor McGregor, Russell Taylor, the Principal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra, noted that this was the second literary award shortlisting for Indifferent Inclusion in 2012.

‘It highlights the quality of Associate Professor McGregor’s work in also being shortlisted Australian History Prize in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards earlier this year.’

Mr Taylor also warmly noted the work of the Aboriginal Studies Press team – the award-winning publishing arm of AIATSIS – who had worked hard to produce a quality book.

According to historian Mark McKenna, the very title of the book breaks new ground because of the questions implicit in its approach – his perspective is genuinely ‘fresh and insightful.’

McGregor is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Aboriginal history and his focus is on the quest for Aboriginal inclusion in the Australia nation; a task which dominated the Aboriginal agenda at the time.

Because McGregor challenges existing scholarship and assumptions, particularly around assimilation, he provides an understanding of why assimilation once held the approval of many reformers, including Indigenous activists.

Speaking at the launch of Indifferent Inclusion in 2011, Professor Sandra Harding, Vice Chancellor of James Cook University, noted that Professor McGregor’s hope is that tracking ‘the tentative steps of the past’ will encourage settler Australians to be more willing to consider, perhaps even embrace, the full inclusion of Aboriginal people in the Australian nation.

If that does not happen, it won’t be for wont of putting in place an eminently readable account of the history of Aboriginal inclusion during the middle twentieth century.

‘Russell’s beautifully weighted work ends with an appeal — to do much better than continue to consider issues of the national inclusion of Aboriginal Australians as polarized polemic,’ she said.

The winner of the History Award, worth $15,000, will be announced on 30 November 2012.