Reframing Indigenous biography: An introduction

This chapter introduces the volume Reframing Indigenous Biography, which explores the history, practice, and possibilities of writing the lives of First Nations’ peoples. Biography emerges as a significant way to address and ameliorate the destructive trajectories of colonialism, yet the craft itself has been shaped and constrained by western scholarly conventions which have excluded or marginalised Indigenous lives. For almost seven decades the Australian Dictionary of Biography has wrestled with this historiographical legacy, at first featuring just a handful of Aboriginal subjects, but now embarked upon a major programme to include Indigenous biographies commissioned by First Nation communities and often written by First Nation authors. In this Introduction the editors identify some of the ways that biographers might free themselves from the stereotypes and power of settler colonial narratives. They also suggest that writing about Indigenous lives poses a radical challenge to the craft of biography itself.