Peter Read (historian)
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2023}}
{{Short description|Australian historian (born 1945}}
Peter John Read {{Post-nominals|country=AUS|AM|FASSA}} (born 1945){{Cite web |title=Australian Honours Search Facility |url=https://honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/awards/2004492 |access-date=27 June 2023 |website=Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet}} is an Australian historian specialising in the history of Indigenous Australians. Read worked as a teacher and civil servant before co-founding Link-Up. Link-Up was an organisation that reunited Aboriginal families who had undergone forcible separation of children from their families through government intervention. Read coined the term "Stolen Generations" to refer to the children subject to these interventions in a 1981 study. After graduating with a doctorate, Read worked as an academic for the rest of his career, primarily working on Australian Indigenous history. He has also published work on the relationship between non-indigenous Australians and the land. In 2019, Read was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his work on Indigenous history.
Life and career
Read was born in Sydney in 1945. He attended Knox Grammar School before studying at the Australian National University (ANU), University of Toronto and University of Bristol.{{Cite web |date=2008 |title=Read Collection |url=https://www.nla.gov.au/collections/guide-selected-collections/read-collection |access-date=26 June 2023 |website=National Library of Australia |language=en}} Read taught in Canberra and London before becoming a curriculum research officer for the Northern Territory Department of Education from 1976 to 1978.
With Coral Edwards, Read founded the organisation Link-Up in 1980. Link-Up reconnected Aboriginal families who had children forcibly separated from them by the government via adoption and state wardship. Read was the first to employ the term "Stolen Generations" to describe these practices in a 1981 study titled "The Stolen Generations: The removal of Aboriginal children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969".{{cite book |last=Manne |first=Robert |url=https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2001/04/in-denial/extract |title=Quarterly Essay 1: In Denial |date=2001 |publisher=Black Inc. |isbn=978-1-86395-107-4 |page= |language=en |url-access=subscription}}{{Cite book |last=Rowse |first=Time |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195515039.001.0001/acref-9780195515039-e-1386 |title=The Oxford Companion to Australian History |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2001 |language=en |chapter=Stolen Generations |isbn=978-0-19-551503-9 |access-date=27 June 2023 |url-access=subscription |via=Oxford Reference}} Link-Up eventually opened offices in every state.{{Cite book |last=Armitage |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED403094 |title=Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand |publisher=UBC Press |year=1995 |isbn=0774804599 |location=Vancouver |pages=77 |language=en |url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}} A documentary called Link-Up Diary was filmed by David MacDougall in 1986 and captured the work of Read and Edwards reuniting Aboriginal families.{{Cite news |date=28 July 1988 |title=Aboriginal children taken from homes |pages=31 |work=The Canberra Times |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article102035071 |via=Trove}} Link-Up's work played an important role in a wider campaign that led to the Bringing Them Home inquiry.{{Cite news |last=Heinrichs |first=Paul |date=9 April 2000 |title=No question about generations: historian |pages=3 |work=The Age |url= |url-access= |via=}}
Following the completion of his doctoral studies in 1984, Read worked as an academic at ANU's School of Social Sciences. In 1995, Read, with Jackie Huggins, started the "Seven Years On' project which interviewed the same ten people at seven-year intervals like the UK documentary Seven Up.{{Cite news |last=Nicholls |first=Ruth |date=June 2003 |title=The potentialities of oral history: the 'Seven Years On' project' |volume=13 |pages=12–14 |work=National Library of Australia News |issue=9 |url=http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jun03/article4.html |via=Trove}} He has edited the journal Aboriginal History, and from 2005 to 2006, he served as the Deputy Director at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies. He later held the position of Research Professor in the Department of History at the University of Sydney.
Research and writing
Read is known for his work in the field of Australian Indigenous history.{{Cite book |last=Sukovic |first=Suzana |title=Transliteracy in complex information environments |date=2016 |publisher=Chandos Publishing |isbn=978-0-08-100875-1 |series= |location=Oxford |pages=21}} Read conducts his work through researching government archives and through the oral accounts of Aboriginal people, a practice he started in 1977. In an interview, he said he always travels with a tape recorder.{{Cite news |last=Warden |first=Ian |date=16 April 2000 |title=Pain of losing places, people |work=Canberra Times |jstor=24046770 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24046770 |url-status= }}
In his research, Read initially estimated that 5,625 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families in New South Wales, before revising that figure up to around 10,000 in his book A Rape of the Soul so Profound.{{Cite book |last=Egan |first=Richard |title=Power and Dysfunction: The New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines 1883–1940 |publisher=ANU Press |year=2021 |location=Canberra |pages=191–194 |language=en |chapter=The girls return |doi=10.2307/j.ctv23hcdwf.13}} Historian Keith Windschuttle has challenged Read's work on the Stolen Generations and his interpretation of government files.{{Cite news |last=Murray |first=Robert |date=20 March 2010 |title=Windschuttle challenges Stolen Generation's claim to lost culture |work=The Weekend Australian |url= |url-access= |via=}}{{Cite news |last=Salusinszky |first=Imre |date=9 February 2008 |title='Genocide' claim denied – Windschuttle attacks Stolen Generations report |pages=21 |work=The Weekend Australian |url= |url-access= |via=}}{{Cite news |last=Rowse |first=Tim |date=20 March 2010 |title=Salutary scepticism but Windschuttle fails to |pages=16 |work=The Canberra Times}} Read refuted Windschuttle's reading of the files and historian Stuart Macintyre called Windschuttle's view "absurd".
Read argues that the retelling of history encompasses "central truths" and "smaller truths".{{Cite journal |last=Silverstein |first=Ben |date=2006 |title=Contesting Assimilation |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A155919830/AONE?u=monash&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=bcb2261f |journal=Melbourne Historical Journal |volume=34 |pages=117 |url-access=subscription |via=Gale Academic OneFile}}{{Cite journal |last=Read |first=Peter |date=2002 |title=Clio or Janus? Historians and the stolen generations |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314610208596179 |journal=Australian Historical Studies |language=en |volume=33 |issue=118 |pages=54–60 |doi=10.1080/10314610208596179 |s2cid=161308774 |issn=1031-461X|url-access=subscription }} Central truths are larger historical facts such as that Aboriginal children were forcibly separated from their families or that Aboriginal people suffered violent dispossession of their lands. Smaller truths, such as Aboriginal interclan violence or compassion shown to Aboriginal people by government officials, supplement and add complexity to the central truth but do not refute it. In 1995, Read felt the central truth of the Stolen Generations had been established and hoped to focus his work on the smaller truths. However, Read contends that it is not feasible to tell small truths when the central truth is perpetually questioned. According to Read, rather than being able to work in new areas that could be more impactful for Indigenous Australians, historians are often forced to rehash established facts.
Starting in 1996 with his book Returning to Nothing, Read began to focus on the way non-indigenous Australians connect to the land.{{Cite journal |last=Potter |first=Emily |date=2005 |title=The Anxiety of Place: Peter Read. Haunted Earth. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. |url=https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/The_Anxiety_of_Place_Peter_Read_Haunted_Earth_Sydney_UNSW_Press_2003_Review_essay_/4955603 |journal=Colloquy: Text Theory Critique |volume=9 |pages=124–129}}
Honours
In 2003, Read was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He was a recipient of the Member of the Order of Australi
Publications
- A Hundred Years War: The Wiradjuri people and the state (1988)
- Charles Perkins; a biography (1990)
- Long Time, Olden Time: Aboriginal accounts of Northern Territory history, co-author Jay Read (1991)
- Returning to Nothing; The meaning of lost places (1996)
- A Rape of the Soul So Profound; The return of the stolen generations (1999)
- Belonging; Australians, place and Aboriginal ownership (2000)
- Haunted Earth (2003)
- Narrow But Endlessly Deep: The struggle for memorialisation in Chile since the transition to democracy (2016){{Cite web |title=Peter Read |url=https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/authors-editors/peter-read |access-date=26 June 2023 |website=ANU Press}}
- What the Colonists Never Knew: A History of Aboriginal Sydney, co-author Dennis Foley (2020){{Cite web |last= |first= |title=National Museum of Australia – What the Colonists Never Knew: A History of Aboriginal Sydney |url=https://www.nma.gov.au/about/publications/what-the-colonists-never-knew |access-date=26 June 2023 |website=National Museum Australia |language=en}}
Edited by Read
- The Lost Children, editors Coral Edwards and Peter Read (1989){{Cite journal |last=Duncan |first=Pearl |date=1990 |title=Review of The lost children; Reaching back. Queensland Aboriginal people recall early days at Yarrabah Mission |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045784 |journal=Aboriginal History |volume=14 |issue=1/2 |pages=237–239 |jstor=24045784 |issn=0314-8769}}
- What Good Condition? Reflections on an Australian Aboriginal Treaty 1986–2006, editors Peter Read, Gary Meyers and Bob Reece (2006)
- Indigenous Biography and Autobiography, editors Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little and Anna Haebich (2008)
References
{{reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite web |last=Gelder |first=Ken |date=1 September 2000 |title=The Imaginary Eco-(Pre-)Historian: Peter Read's Belonging as a Postcolonial 'Symptom' |url=https://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2000/09/01/the-imaginary-eco-pre-historian-peter-reads-belongingas-a-postcolonial-symptom/ |access-date=27 June 2023 |website=Australian Humanities Review}}
- {{cite journal | last=Miller | first=Linn | title=Longing For Belonging: A Critical Essay on Peter Read's Belonging | journal=The Australian Journal of Anthropology | publisher=Wiley | volume=14 | issue=3 | year=2003 | issn=1035-8811 | doi=10.1111/j.1835-9310.2003.tb00245.x | pages=406–417}}
External links
- [https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/videos/australian-journey-episode-07-stolen-generations-interview Interview with Peter Read for the National Museum Australia]
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Category:Historians of Australia
Category:Members of the Order of Australia
Category:Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Category:Australian National University alumni
Category:Australian National University people
Category:History of Indigenous Australians