A Zoom presentation by Dean Ashenden

2 November 2023, 4.00-5.00 pm

 

Telling Tennant’s Story began as a curiosity about the town where I lived in the early 1950s but ended as a story about relations between black and white; local, national and sometimes international, over 200 or more years. It is the story of how that story has been told and not told, the story of ‘the great Australian silence’. The book combines memoir and reportage with intellectual and political history. Research was done on and off over a period of 20 years and included return to Tennant Creek for the first time in 50 years; interviews (some with Warumungu contemporaries), archival and library-based work. It was less a process of documenting or ‘finding out’ than a long struggle to understand.

 

Dean Ashenden has worked as an academic, teacher, and political adviser and consultant, and in journalism, He has contributed to all major print outlets, and was presenter of ABC Radio National’s Education Issues program. HisTelling Tennant’s Story (Black Inc, 2022) was Australian Political Book of the Year, long-listed for the NIB award for literature, and Highly Commended in the Northern Territory History Awards.

 If you are interested in participating, please contact the following email for the Zoom link closer to the date: