Preface: Region, Position, and Ethics of Representation

This book is about relationships between indigenous and nonindigenous people in Australia at different points in time and especially about "differences" as detectable and active in those relationships. I take differences to be identifiable forms of being in common, together with some sense of commonly shared values, that contrast with other forms similarly held in common by "others." The aim in each following chapter is to explore kinds of difference and the extent to which difference has served as a mode or pathway of engagement or a delimiting boundary, in the first place between indigenous and nonindigenous actors but subsequently in ways that make those categories more complex and more directly contested. The book's aim is not to examine "culture/s" as if entirely separate but to examine what we understand as cultural by considering difference in indigenous-nonindigenous engagement and its implications. I have found it plausible and indeed illuminating to consider differences over long time spans, so the material in this book moves between moments of early indigenous-nonindigenous encounter and the present.