September 25, 2012
Maori convict inspires book
The experience of Maori prisoners in Australia has inspired a new book across the Tasman.
Dr Kristyn Harman says Aboriginal Convicts was based on her PhD thesis which was inspired after seeing the headstone of Hohepa Te Umuroa on Tasmania’s Maria Island in 1994.
The Masterton-born Hobart University lecturer says she also discovered that Australian Aboriginal and Khoi-san or Bushmen from South Africa had also ended up in the Australian penal colonies, often for resistance to white settlement.
Aboriginal Convicts is published by the University of New South Wales Press.