by Tania Plunkett
While studying the subject, “The Invention of Africa,” which was based on V.Y. Mudimbe’s book of the same name, I was struck by the parallels I see in my own country, Australia, regarding the historical and present-day perceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI). During my school years through the 1980s and 90s, schools taught Australian colonial history as “Australian history” and painted colonists largely as explorers and heroes. Indigenous histories were mostly excluded or simplified, and ATSI perspectives almost never included.