Kate Fullagar will be in conversation with John Paul Janke on her new book Bennelong and Phillip. A History Unravelled, the first joint biography of Bennelong and Governor Arthur Phillip, two pivotal figures in Australian history – the colonised and coloniser – and a bold and innovative new portrait of both.

Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their two sides in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenous Australians, Phillip the colony’s first governor, and Bennelong the Yiyura leader. The pair have come to represent the conflict that flared and has never settled.

Fullagar’s account is also the first full biography of Bennelong of any kind and it challenges many misconceptions, among them that he became alienated from his people and that Phillip was a paragon of Enlightenment benevolence. It tells the story of the men’s marriages, including Bennelong’s best-known wife, Barangaroo, and Phillip’s unusual domestic arrangements, and places the period in the context of the Aboriginal world and the demands of empire.

To present this history afresh, Bennelong & Phillip relates events in reverse, moving beyond the limitations of typical Western ways of writing about the past, which have long privileged the coloniser over the colonised. Bennelong’s world was hardly linear at all, and in Fullagar’s approach his and Phillip’s histories now share an equally unfamiliar framing.

Kate Fullagar has achieved something astonishing … This is reconciled history at its very best.’ Lynette Russell; ‘With insight and empathy, Kate Fullagar adds new depth and meaning to this old story of nation-building and imperial dispossession’, Bill Gammage .

ANU alumna, Kate Fullagar is currently professor of history at the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, in the Australian Catholic University, and co-editor of the journal History Australia. Her book The Warrior, The Voyager and the Artist won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2021 NSW Premier’s Awards.

John Paul Janke is Wuthathi from Cape York Peninsula and Meriam from Murray (Mer) Island in the Torres Strait. John is currently Co-Chair of the National NAIDOC Committee, and Deputy Chair of Indigenous Reference Group at the National Museum of Australia. He is currently the co-host of NITV’s flagship Indigenous news and current affairs show The Point,

The vote of thanks will be given by award-winning historian, Professor Mark McKenna.

This event is in association with Harry Hartog Bookshop. Books will be available for purchase on the evening in the Cultural Centre foyer. Pre-event book signings will be available from 5.30pm, and available again after the event.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

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A podcast will be made available after the event.

Symposium by University House Wine bar (Shop 13, 152 University Avenue, Acton, which is just next to the Kambri cultural centre) will now be open for dining after meet the author events. Food and wine details at https://unihouse.anu.edu.au/eat/symposium/. No bookings necessary.

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