The Positioning of Indigenous People in Australian History: A Historiography of the 1868 Aboriginal Cricket Tour of England

Abstract

The first international tour by an Australian sports team was the 1868 tour of England undertaken by a group of Aboriginal cricketers. In the following 148 years there have been many histories of the tour written. This paper undertakes a historiographical examination of the tour, contextualizing the writings and their place in Australian society. In doing so, it uncovers the phases of reporting, forgetting, rediscovery, exploiting, ambivalent times, and self-determination that representations of the tour go through. It is argued that these phases provide an analogy for the positioning of Indigenous people and Indigenous history in Australian society.