A History of the Pilbara Aboriginal Strike as Event, Experience and Myth

This ambitious project will produce the first major study of one of the most significant phenomena in Australia's post-war history, the Pilbara Aboriginal pastoral workers' strike. It will investigate how and why this event occurred, examine the nature of the experience for its principal actors, and consider how this event has been remembered in mythic narratives. More broadly, it will shed light on the complex and dynamic processes of cultural, social and political brokering and accommodation involved in the cross-cultural encounter between indigenous people and settlers, which historians often overlook. In doing so, this study will reveal how new indigenous meanings, practices and ways of being are forged in the context of colonialism.