Reframing Indigenous Biography

Shino Konishi FAHA is a Yawuru historian and Associate Professor in the School of Indigenous Studies and School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012) and The Lives and Legacies of a Carceral Island: A Biographical History of Wadjemup/Rottnest Island (2023) with Ann Curthoys and Alexandra Ludewig. Malcolm Allbrook is Managing Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Editor of the Australian Journal of Biography and History, and Senior Lecturer in history at the Australian National University. His most recent book is Family History and Historians in Australia and New Zealand (with Sophie Scott‑Brown, 2021). Tom Griffiths AO FAHA is Chair of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University. His books and essays have won prizes in literature, history, science, politics, and journalism and include Hunters and Collectors (1996) and The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (2016).

1. Reframing Indigenous Biography: An Introduction

Shino Konishi, Malcolm Allbrook, and Tom Griffiths

Life Stories

Mungo Lady and Mungo Man (?-?)

Malcolm Allbrook

Part 1: Re-imagining Indigenous Biography

2. Biographies of the Dreaming

Malcolm Allbrook, Tom Griffiths and Shino Konishi

3. Lives and lands in exquisite balance; Māori biography in the “now time”

Arini Loader

4. Indigenous biographies without borders

Alice Te Punga Somerville

Life Stories

Maria Welch (1834–1909)

Mandy Paul

Ooloogan, George John Noble (c. 1840–1928)

Laurie Bamblett and Wendy Bunn

Nangar (c. 1848–1927)

Laurie Bamblett

Part 2: Reconstructing Indigenous Lives

5. Reframing the Tahitian Archipelago: Insights from the Whole Lives of Tupaia, Purea, and Hitihiti

Kate Fullagar

6. The Life and Afterlife of Yagan: A Corporeal Biography

Shino Konishi

7. Nah Doongh’s Story

Grace Karskens

8. His Walking Feet

Jill Giese

Life Stories

Tommy Chaseland (c. 1800–1869)

Lynette Russell

Undelya (Minnie) Apma (c. 1909–1990)

Kath Apma Travis Penangke

Lisa Marie Bellear (1961–2006)

Kim Kruger

Part 3: The Biographers’ Journeys

9. Re-Centring Native American History: Biography Transformed

Michael A. McDonnell

10. Finding Australia’s “Missing” Pacific Women

Katerina Teaiwa, Nicholas Hoare and Talei Luscia Mangioni

11. In conversation about Tracker: Stories of Tracker Tilmouth

Alexis Wright and Tom Griffiths

12. Collective Living-Legacies of Aunty Gladys Elphick and the Council for Aboriginal Women in South Australia

Natalie Harkin

Life Stories

The Wild Australia Show (1892-1893)

Michael Aird, Lindy Allen, Chantal Knowles, Paul Memmott, Maria Nugent, and Jonathan Richards