February 2021 Academic & Specialist Anthem Press

Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture

Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country Catherine Kevin

Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture

Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country
Catherine Kevin


Hardback | Aug 2020 | Anthem Press | 9781785273506 | 130pp | 228x152mm | RFB | AUD$79.95, NZD$110.00

A personal account of coming to terms with a history of dispossession and colonial power relations.

Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) brings together a history of race relations, pastoral boom and film-making. It is a personal account of coming to terms with a history of dispossession and colonial power relations in a place that has offered the author a strong sense of belonging and settler-colonial family heritage.

'This book brilliantly evokes two intersecting histories – the making of Jedda, a remarkable film set in Australia's north, and the nature of race relations in faraway Ngunnawal country, where those who financed Jedda made their fortunes. In its intimate exploration of the legacies and paradoxes of settler colonialism, it illuminates not only the times it portrays but also our own.' — Ann Curthoys, professor emerita, Australian National University

'A remarkable and unexpected story. In Catherine Kevin's telling, Jedda becomes much more than a landmark in Australian film history. The book also brings together the history of her own settler family, who were members of the pastoral elite that financed Jedda, and the larger history of what Whites did to Indigenous people in taking possession of the continent. Jedda is a tragic tale of the spectacular remote outback, but it is also entangled in surprising ways with the dispossession and marginalisation of Aboriginal people in country much closer to the places most white Australians call home.' — Frank Bongiorno, professor of history, Australian National University