Image details
Source: Pexels Free Photos
By Alexandra Crosby, Jason De Santolo, Peter McNeil and Treena Clark, University of Technology Sydney
13 August 2019
Indigenous Australians have influenced modern Australian dress since first contact. From possum skin cloaks and booka kangaroo capes to shell necklaces in Tasmania, Europeans have been fascinated with Indigenous materials, skills and aesthetics. They have stolen, purchased, borrowed and worn them for more than 200 years.
In turn, Indigenous Australians have at times enjoyed wearing soldiers’ red jackets as battle spoils and possibly mocked the Europeans by wearing their top hats cockily in the early streets of Sydney. Later, as First Australians were dispossessed from their lands and herded into reserves and missions, clothing was imposed on them, ranging from shapeless “mother hubbard” dresses for women to shabby but respectable woollen two-piece suits for men.
Traditional dress practices, along with ceremony, language and music-making, were often banned by the colonisers. Missionaries often taught western-style leatherwork to men and needlecraft to women – yet powerful hybrids of self-determined dress also emerged, expressing subversive gestures and quiet resistance.
Read the full article at The Conversation.
Ad(dressing) Indigeneity 