Creating A Nation

Whether in giving birth to babies, or in refusing to do so, in sustaining families and multicultural communities. creating wealth, shaping a maternalist welfare state or inscribing the meanings of our experience in culture, women have clearly been major actors in the colonial and national dramas.

Nationbuilding has traditionally been seen as men’s business. The authors of Creating A Nation challenge this view of history by asserting the agency and creativity of women, as well as men, in the process of national generation: politically, economically and culturally.
The welding of diverse peoples into one nation, with one way of lie, one law and one language, is also necessarily repressive. Creating A Nation explores the repression as well as the generation involved in making Australia.

While the Aboriginal experience is told alongside that of other players, such as those from non-British backgrounds, three separate chapters have also been devoted to the highly specific Aboriginal experience of British colonisation and Australian nationbuilding.