TY  - BOOK
AU  - Stevens,Leonie
TI  - 'Me write myself': the free Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land at Wybalenna, 1832-47 
SN  - 9781925495638
U1  - 305.89915 23
PY  - 2017///
CY  - Clayton, Victoria
PB  - Monash University Publishing
KW  - Aboriginal Australians
KW  - Tasmania
KW  - Wybalenna
KW  - Social conditions
KW  - 19th century
KW  - Flinders Island
KW  - History
KW  - Aboriginal Tasmanians
KW  - Correspondence
KW  - Removal
KW  - Flinders Island (Tas.)
KW  - Wybalenna (Tas.)
KW  - Australian
KW  - Indigenous Heritage
KW  - Adult Non fiction
KW  - Print
N1  - Contains biographical information; Includes bibliographical references (pages [332]-342) and index
N2  - Exiles, lost souls, remnants of a dying race ... The fate of the First Nations peoples of Van Diemen?s Land is one of the most infamous chapters in Australian, and world, history. The men, women and children exiled to Flinders Island in the 1830s and 40s have often been written about, but never allowed to speak for themselves. This book changes that.  Penned by the exiles during their fifteen years at the settlement called Wybalenna, items in the Flinders Island Chronicle, sermons, letters and petitions offer a compelling corrective to traditional portrayals of a hopeless, dispossessed, illiterate people?s final days. The exiles did not see themselves as prisoners, but as a Free People. Seen through their own writing, the community at Wybalenna was vibrant, complex and evolving. Rather than a depressed people simply waiting for death, their own words reveal a politically astute community engaged in a fifteen-year campaign for their own freedom: one which was ultimately successful.    ?Me Write Myself? is a compelling story that will profoundly affect understandings of Tasmanian and Australian history
ER  -