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Invasion to Embassy challenges the conventional view of Aboriginal politics to present a bold new account of Aboriginal responses to invasion and dispossession in New South Wales. At the core of these responses has been land: as a concrete goal, but also as a rallying cry, a call for justice and a focal point for identity.
This rich story is told through the words and memories of many of the key activists who were involved in the struggles on the lands and in the towns of New South Wales. By exploring interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people over land, this book enables us to understand our history through the reality of the conflicts, tensions, negotiations and cooperation which make up our experience of colonialism.
Invasion to Embassy is unique in presenting NSW Aboriginal history as a history of activism, rather than a saga of passivity and victimisation. In telling this engrossing story, Heather Goodall reveals much about white Australians - not only as oppressors, but as allies and as newcomers who must in turn sort out their relations to the land.
About the author
Heather Goodall grew up at Padstow near Salt Pan Creek on the Georges
River and has worked closely with Aboriginal people in numerous innovative
social histories. She is the author of Invasion to Embassy: Land in
Aboriginal Politics in NSW, which won the NSW Premier's Prize for Australian
History in 1997 and, with Isabel Flick, a senior Aboriginal activist
from north-western NSW, Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary
Aboriginal Woman, which was awarded the Magarey Medal for Australian
women's biography in 2005. Heather is co-editor of two international
volumes on environmental history: Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global
Memories of Environmental Injustice (2006) and Waters, Sovereignty and
Borders in Asia and Oceania (2008). She is currently Professor of History at
UTS where she is researching the relations between Australia's people and
environments with those around the Indian Ocean region.
