Rewriting political history: letters from Aboriginal people in Victoria, 1886–1919

During the Protection era, Aboriginal people in Victoria frequently corresponded with colonial and state authorities. Aboriginal letter writers sometimes supported and sometimes opposed the Aboriginal Protection Board and station managers, in the process formulating a variety of demands for differently conceived rights — to reunion with family members, land, employment and freedom. This article suggests that this correspondence constituted an important tradition of political activism and asks whether gendered definitions of politics have led historians of Aboriginal political struggle to ignore most of the correspondence Aboriginal people sent to the Board and other authorities. By acknowledging the letter writers’ strategies of accommodation, as well as the resistance that has been more widely acknowledged, this article suggests the necessity for some revision of the accepted genealogy of Aboriginal political struggle, and a reconceptualisation of the categories upon which it is based. This article has been peer-reviewed.