Liz Conor. Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women.

Abstract

Subtitle from cover. "Skin Deep looks at the preoccupations of European-Australians in their encounters with Aboriginal women and the tropes, types and perceptions that seeped into everyday settler-colonial thinking. Early erroneous and uninformed accounts of Aboriginal women and culture were repeated throughout various print forms and imagery, both in Australia and in Europe, with names, dates and locations erased so that individual women came to be anonymised as 'gins' and 'lubras'."--Page 3 of cover. Acknowledgements -- Introduction: 'Her mind was vacant' -- 'A full account of the inhabitants': name-dropping in early encounters -- 'A species of rough gallantry': impressions of gender status -- 'If they be facts': infanticide and maternity -- Footfall over thresholds: in and out of settler-colonial domicile -- 'Black velvet' and 'purple indignation': sexuality and 'poaching'. -- 'Absolute frights': appearance and elders -- conclusion: The anatomy of racism and misogyny -- Appendix: Journal publications dedicated to Australian Aboriginal women until 1959.