'A vision through the smoky haze' : viewing corroboree in selected Australian novels

Fiction portraying the experience of Australian Indigenous people often contains depictions of the ‘corroboree’. This representation commonly conveys a scenario in which Indigenous people dance while being watched by white spectators. This establishes a relationship between seeing and knowing that locates power in the hands of the white observers. Later in this century, both non-Indigenous, then more typically Indigenous authors, deconstruct the power structures at work in these portrayals.