Book Review: Music, Dance and The Archive, edited by Amanda Harris, Linda Barwick and Jakelin Troy

Abstract

The preface of this book indicates that this collection of essays originated from a project looking at creating a better record of the histories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly their practices around music and dance. Funded by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project Scheme, the project was titled Reclaiming Performance Under Assimilation in Southeastern Australia, 1935–1975. The book’s nine chapters stretch much further than this, however. As well as covering First Nations
people in Northern Territory and Western Australia, it also includes two chapters relating to Aotearoa/New Zealand, and further chapters on the Indigenous practices of Taiwan, and the Haudenosaunee in North America.