Writing Never Arrives Naked

Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia

By: Penny Van Toorn

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Paperback | 1 July 2006

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Paperback
270 Pages

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23.0 x 15.4 x 4

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In "Writing Never Arrives Naked", Penny van Toorn engages our minds and hearts. In this academically innovative book she reveals the resourceful and often poignant ways that Indigenous Australians involved themselves in the colonisers' paper culture. The first Aboriginal readers were children stolen from the clans around Sydney Harbour. The first Aboriginal author was Bennelong -- a stolen adult. From the early years of colonisation, Aboriginal people used written texts to negotiate a changing world, to challenge their oppressors, protect country and kin, and occasionally for economic gain. Van Toorn argues that Aboriginal people were curious about books and papers, and in time began to integrate letters of the alphabet into their graphic traditions. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal people played key roles in translating the Bible, and made their political views known in community and regional newspapers. They also sent numerous letters and petitions to political figures, including Queen Victoria. Penny van Toorn challenges the established notion that the colonists' paper culture superseded Indigenous oral cultures. She argues that Indigenous communities developed their own cultures of reading and writing, which involved a complex interplay between their own social protocols and the practices of literacy introduced by the British. Many distinctive features of Aboriginal writing today were shaped by the cultural, socio-political and institutional conditions in which Aboriginal people were living in colonial times.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Language & Linguistics Language Learning & Teaching Sociology & Anthropology Anthropology Social & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography History Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature General Literary Studies Society & Culture Social Groups

Ethnic Studies Indigenous Peoples Physical Anthropology Linguistics Literacy

Introduction - Sites of writing
Encountering the alphabet
Sky gods and stolen children
Bennelong's letter
Borderlands of Aboriginal writing
Textual battlegrounds in Van Diemen's Land
Literacy, land and power: the Coranderrk petitions
Hidden transcripts at Lake Condah Mission Station
Early writings by Aboriginal women
A book by any other name...?
Conclusion - The past is not another country
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Writing Never Arrives Naked

Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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