Dennis Foley and Peter Read
What the Colonists Never Knew: A History of Aboriginal Sydney
National Museum of Australia Press, 2020
This book takes readers into Foley’s lived experience of growing up Aboriginal in Sydney. His family’s story and his memories of Gai-mariagal country are interwoven with historian Read’s exploration of Aboriginal Sydney. It paints a vivid picture of Foley’s emotional personal journey.
‘This is a mesmerising read. It flows from rich anecdotal remembrance loaded with song and lore to incisive commentary about legislation and then slips seamlessly into detailed evocation of pre-colonial life. I have always loved Foley’s ability to bring a story to life and Read’s measured but uncompromising analysis … I love this bloody book’. — Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture.
‘There has never been a book like this before. Dazzling, revelatory, unheralded’. — Melissa Lucashenko, author of Mullumbimby and Too Much Lip.
‘Come into this book to find a Sydney that many of us have never seen. This is a Sydney which to this day belongs to a network of vivid, tenacious, funny and courageous Aboriginal people. Dennis and Peter are both master storytellers and they bring to us the rich and moving stories of people who lived on and travelled around the paths and waterways of the city, to keep close to the people and country they cared about’. — Heather Goodall, author of Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 and co-author of Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s Georges River.
About the Authors
Professor Dennis Foley is a Fulbright scholar, a dual Endeavour Fellow, and a member of the Business Government and Law Faculty at the University of Canberra. His main research focus is towards the emerging discipline of Indigenous enterprise and entrepreneurship. His publications focus on social inclusion and cross disciples such as Indigenous Literature, Indigenous History, Indigenous Studies, Business Management (Entrepreneurship) and Indigenous Epistemology and Pedagogy. Dennis’ matrilineal connection is Gai-mariagal of Northern Sydney, and his patrilineal connection is to the Wiradjuri people of the Turon River region. He is active within the Indigenous community and Indigenous business associations. He has also received several ministerial appointments to state and federal Advisory Committees and currently researches in Canada, Ireland and across Aboriginal Australia.
A finalist in the Australian of the Year Award, Professor Peter Read lectured for over 30 years in Aboriginal History at the Australian National University. The author of many innovative studies, he remains an Adjunct Professor at the ANU and is affiliated to the Australian Centre for Indigenous History. Professor Read first coined the term, ‘The Stolen Generation’. In 1980, he co founded Link-Up, a service that traces and reunites Indigenous families separated by past government policies
