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Telling Tennant's Story: The Strange Career of the Great Australian Silence
Tennant Creek and Australia’s Unresolved Past
The tale of a town, and a nation
Returning after fifty years to the frontier town where he lived as a boy, Dean Ashenden finds Tennant Creek transformed, but its silence about the past still mostly intact.
Provoked by a half-hidden account, Ashenden sets out to understand how the story of ‘relations between two racial groups within a single field of life’ has been told and not told, in this town and across the nation.
In a riveting combination of memoir, reportage and political and intellectual history, Ashenden traces the strange career of the great Australian silence – from its beginnings in the first encounters of black and white, through the work of the early anthropologists, the historians and the courts in landmark cases about land rights and the Stolen Generations, to still-continuing controversy.
In a moving finale, Ashenden goes back to Tennant Creek once more to meet for the first time some of his Aboriginal contemporaries, and to ask how the truths of Australia’s story can best be told.
The tale of a town, and a nation
Returning after fifty years to the frontier town where he lived as a boy, Dean Ashenden finds Tennant Creek transformed, but its silence about the past still mostly intact.
Provoked by a half-hidden account, Ashenden sets out to understand how the story of ‘relations between two racial groups within a single field of life’ has been told and not told, in this town and across the nation.
In a riveting combination of memoir, reportage and political and intellectual history, Ashenden traces the strange career of the great Australian silence – from its beginnings in the first encounters of black and white, through the work of the early anthropologists, the historians and the courts in landmark cases about land rights and the Stolen Generations, to still-continuing controversy.
In a moving finale, Ashenden goes back to Tennant Creek once more to meet for the first time some of his Aboriginal contemporaries, and to ask how the truths of Australia’s story can best be told.
336 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2022
27 people are currently reading
195 people want to read
About the author
Dean Ashenden
6 booksDean Ashenden is a Senior Honorary Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has worked as an academic and a political adviser, and in journalism.
Ashenden was a senior adviser to Susan Ryan, Minister for Education in the Hawke government. He has consulted for education agencies and authorities at both the state and territory as well as federal levels. He was a presenter on ABC Radio National's Education Issues programme.
He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Guardian Australia, The Australian Financial Review, Inside Story, Meanjin, Crikey, and History Australia.
Ashenden was a senior adviser to Susan Ryan, Minister for Education in the Hawke government. He has consulted for education agencies and authorities at both the state and territory as well as federal levels. He was a presenter on ABC Radio National's Education Issues programme.
He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Guardian Australia, The Australian Financial Review, Inside Story, Meanjin, Crikey, and History Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 3, 2022
‘I left Tennant Creek in 1955, aged thirteen. I had never been back and never wanted to go back.’
So why return? Dean Ashenden has been a consultant and adviser to schools and school systems in every state and territory and at the national level. Part of the reason behind his return was to apply a measure taken from WEH Stannner’s ‘After The Dreaming: The 1968 Boyer Lectures’. In part, WEH Stanner said, after acknowledging that he was not an historian:
‘…but the history I would like to see written would bring into the main flow of its narrative the life and times of men like David Unaipon, Albert Namatjira, Robert Tudawali, Durmugam, Douglas Nicholls, Dexter Daniels, and many others. Not to scrape up significance for them but because they typify so vividly the other side of a story over which the great Australian silence reigns; the story of the things we were unconsciously resolved not to discuss with them or treat with them about; the story, in short, of the unacknowledged relations between two racial groups within a single field of life supposedly unified by the principle of assimilation.’
On his way to Tennant Creek, fifty years after he left, Mr Ashenden notices that most of the ‘heritage’ signposted along the way is recent. He refers to it as ‘the winners’ history’, and asks ‘where were the losers?’ This is on aspect of the silence: writing history which ignores, or glosses over, the past.
And in Tennant Creek itself? He remembers parallel realities: two groups with different histories, almost completely disconnected from each other. How did we get here, and how can we move ahead?
Mr Ashenden takes us through this great Australian silence, by looking at the first encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, the work of early anthropologists, related political history, the courts and cases about land rights, the Stolen Generations, as well as continuing controversy about recognition of Indigenous peoples in the Constitution.
I read about the history of the frontier and the impact of colonisation on the Warumungu people. One example will stay with me: the story of a rock that was part of the Kunjarra sacred site, on a women’s Dreaming track. In the early 1980s, when the first land claims in the region were being made under the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the mining company Peko lifted this rock onto a low loader and brought it into town, where it was to form a plinth for a plaque celebrating the company’s contribution to the economy and life of the region. Warumungu people protested. While the rock was eventually returned to Kunjarra, not all the town’s inhabitants appreciated its significance to the Warumungu.
Mr Ashenden met and spoke with some of the local Indigenous people of his own generation, people he may have glimpsed as a child but with whom he had few shared memories. He heard, through discussions with local Elders, of their lives working on local stations, the accounts handed to them of history, of brushes with child removal.
‘But equality of rights hadn’t brought equality in employment, housing, health or education, …’
I finished this book hoping that the new federal government’s commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart will herald the beginning of a new (and better) relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
So why return? Dean Ashenden has been a consultant and adviser to schools and school systems in every state and territory and at the national level. Part of the reason behind his return was to apply a measure taken from WEH Stannner’s ‘After The Dreaming: The 1968 Boyer Lectures’. In part, WEH Stanner said, after acknowledging that he was not an historian:
‘…but the history I would like to see written would bring into the main flow of its narrative the life and times of men like David Unaipon, Albert Namatjira, Robert Tudawali, Durmugam, Douglas Nicholls, Dexter Daniels, and many others. Not to scrape up significance for them but because they typify so vividly the other side of a story over which the great Australian silence reigns; the story of the things we were unconsciously resolved not to discuss with them or treat with them about; the story, in short, of the unacknowledged relations between two racial groups within a single field of life supposedly unified by the principle of assimilation.’
On his way to Tennant Creek, fifty years after he left, Mr Ashenden notices that most of the ‘heritage’ signposted along the way is recent. He refers to it as ‘the winners’ history’, and asks ‘where were the losers?’ This is on aspect of the silence: writing history which ignores, or glosses over, the past.
And in Tennant Creek itself? He remembers parallel realities: two groups with different histories, almost completely disconnected from each other. How did we get here, and how can we move ahead?
Mr Ashenden takes us through this great Australian silence, by looking at the first encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, the work of early anthropologists, related political history, the courts and cases about land rights, the Stolen Generations, as well as continuing controversy about recognition of Indigenous peoples in the Constitution.
I read about the history of the frontier and the impact of colonisation on the Warumungu people. One example will stay with me: the story of a rock that was part of the Kunjarra sacred site, on a women’s Dreaming track. In the early 1980s, when the first land claims in the region were being made under the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the mining company Peko lifted this rock onto a low loader and brought it into town, where it was to form a plinth for a plaque celebrating the company’s contribution to the economy and life of the region. Warumungu people protested. While the rock was eventually returned to Kunjarra, not all the town’s inhabitants appreciated its significance to the Warumungu.
Mr Ashenden met and spoke with some of the local Indigenous people of his own generation, people he may have glimpsed as a child but with whom he had few shared memories. He heard, through discussions with local Elders, of their lives working on local stations, the accounts handed to them of history, of brushes with child removal.
‘But equality of rights hadn’t brought equality in employment, housing, health or education, …’
I finished this book hoping that the new federal government’s commitment to the Uluru Statement from the Heart will herald the beginning of a new (and better) relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
November 28, 2022
NOVEMBER
by Dean Ashenden (no photo)Finish date: November 2022
Genre: novel (354 pg)
Rating: B++
Review: Telling Tennant's Story (ISBN: 9781760641757)
Good news: This impressive phrase is the core message of the book: "...a silence that reigned largely unchallenged from the late 19th C to the 1960s." (pg 57). There was no room for Aborigines in the physical world (NT, Tennant Creek)..that had been theirs. This book attempts to reveal through the eyes of the narrator (D. Ashenden) the muffled silence he experienced in his childhood home of Tennant Creek. He delves into the need for a new perspective. Australia needed an anthropologist’s sensitivity...and that man was Bill Stanner (1905-1981) who dared confront Australian bureaucracy.
Good news While reading this book I looked up a photo of Bill Stanner (1930s)...my goodness, he was so handsome! Looked like somebody out of central casting! But all kidding aside...Mr Stanner had been a tireless critic of the treatment of Aboriginal people since the 1930s, and of the policy of assimilation that dominated in Australian in the 1940s. He advocated for the proper recognition of an Aboriginal identity, culture, and land rights.
Personal: There is a lot to unpack in this book....especially for someone who does NOT live in Australia! If you are interested in the Great Australian Silence (Australian govenment vs the rights for Indigenous people) ...this is a good place to start. Don't be discouraged if your eyes glaze over (...as mine did) while reading the chapters about the courts in landmark cases for Aboriginal land rights...just absorb what you can and push on to the last part of the book. Mr. Ashenden gives a summary what still has gone wrong in Tennant Creek.
December 20, 2024
For an Englishwoman this was a deep dive into the long hard road to write the indigenous population into the history books , not as Noble Savages or as dissolute drunkards but as herogenous , inventive and self sufficient original custodians of this great landmass .
A mix of anthropology , politics and the law and a constant of dogged determination over a couple of centuries have wrestled fragments and only fragments of the rich society obliterated by generations of settlers
A mix of anthropology , politics and the law and a constant of dogged determination over a couple of centuries have wrestled fragments and only fragments of the rich society obliterated by generations of settlers
August 18, 2022
A very interesting history and analysis of Tennant Creek and the frontier wars. I feel like the story of Tennant Creeks colonial settlers, local indigenous nations, and the fraught history of their interactions is a small scale example of the same story nationwide. Compassionately researched and written.
January 30, 2023
Focusing on Tennant Creek, the author explores the last 250 years of the 'Australian Silence', the manufactured community ignorance of our Indigenous people, their existence, culture and dispossession.
The book looks at both the creation of the 'Silence' and the more recent attempts to escape it.
It's an important contribution to the important work of finally dismantling the 'Silence'.
Some of my favourite moments:
p.31 historical context of the 1st fleet: a decade after American independence (we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal) and the year before the Bastille (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) and at the rise of the British anti-slavery movement [the instruction given to Phillip to treat the natives with ‘amity and kindness’]
p.37 The telegraph station in Tennant Creek was built right next to the local people's most sacred site and took their best water supply (this illustrates how our history has traditional told the stories of heroic exploration rather than the the corresponding dispossession of indigenous ownership
p.52 the appropriation of 'churinga' compared to the theft of sacramental wafers from a Catholic Church
p.155 perspectives on land rights cases: indigenous demand for dignity vs white defence of entitlement
p.162 Henry Reynolds says that the struggle to dismantle the great silence about indigenous ownership of the land required emotional as well as intellectual work
The book looks at both the creation of the 'Silence' and the more recent attempts to escape it.
It's an important contribution to the important work of finally dismantling the 'Silence'.
Some of my favourite moments:
p.31 historical context of the 1st fleet: a decade after American independence (we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal) and the year before the Bastille (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) and at the rise of the British anti-slavery movement [the instruction given to Phillip to treat the natives with ‘amity and kindness’]
p.37 The telegraph station in Tennant Creek was built right next to the local people's most sacred site and took their best water supply (this illustrates how our history has traditional told the stories of heroic exploration rather than the the corresponding dispossession of indigenous ownership
p.52 the appropriation of 'churinga' compared to the theft of sacramental wafers from a Catholic Church
p.155 perspectives on land rights cases: indigenous demand for dignity vs white defence of entitlement
p.162 Henry Reynolds says that the struggle to dismantle the great silence about indigenous ownership of the land required emotional as well as intellectual work
May 28, 2024
I listened to the audiobook version and was intrigued, shocked and educated about Australia’s confronting history. This history has been shaped by a cult of forgetfulness throughout academia and society, where for most of the 1900’s Australia was quite content with erasing the heritage of First Nations Australians under the guise of ‘assimilation’.
Whether it be from the frontier wars, to assimilation policies, to the stolen generation, its time for Australia to listen, acknowledge and learn from these events, rather than ask for more information and stories about them. The stories are out there, it’s about whether the ‘lucky’ country wants to truly address its dark past or not.
Why don’t we start with acknowledging the Frontier wars and the tens of thousands of First Nations deaths at the National War Memorial in Canberra? We are happy to acknowledge WW1 and 2, but not the Frontier conflicts?
Ashenden confronts his own role in the situation from growing up in Tennant Creek and certainly taught me substantially about the untold and unacknowledged violent history of this country.
Whether it be from the frontier wars, to assimilation policies, to the stolen generation, its time for Australia to listen, acknowledge and learn from these events, rather than ask for more information and stories about them. The stories are out there, it’s about whether the ‘lucky’ country wants to truly address its dark past or not.
Why don’t we start with acknowledging the Frontier wars and the tens of thousands of First Nations deaths at the National War Memorial in Canberra? We are happy to acknowledge WW1 and 2, but not the Frontier conflicts?
Ashenden confronts his own role in the situation from growing up in Tennant Creek and certainly taught me substantially about the untold and unacknowledged violent history of this country.
November 18, 2022
The Whole Truth of Tennant Creek - No FlinchingDean Ashenden
Dean Ashenden’s childhood memories of living in the 1950s in Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory draw him back as he endeavours to make sense of that time. The search spills over into an examination of the true story of the invasion and theft of country by the British from 1788 and worse. Till he reaches publication readiness just before the last Federal election six months ago - when the whole mood for Voice, Treaty and Truth was altered for the better from the previous decade when the deniers were in power. This is as comprehensive an overview of First Nations history since the arrival of the British as any I have read. Footnotes are impressive and must be read - all of them. A very important addition to the Story of Modern Australia.
Dean Ashenden’s childhood memories of living in the 1950s in Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory draw him back as he endeavours to make sense of that time. The search spills over into an examination of the true story of the invasion and theft of country by the British from 1788 and worse. Till he reaches publication readiness just before the last Federal election six months ago - when the whole mood for Voice, Treaty and Truth was altered for the better from the previous decade when the deniers were in power. This is as comprehensive an overview of First Nations history since the arrival of the British as any I have read. Footnotes are impressive and must be read - all of them. A very important addition to the Story of Modern Australia.
December 27, 2022
A very valuable contribution to the story of white/aboriginal relatons through history concentrating on the Warumungu tribe at Tennant's Creek. Also gets personal when the author revisits Tennant's Creek 50 years after he left the area and tries to reconnect with the local tribe that he was aware of when he was growing up but through very different eyes.
The heart of the book is the great silence which has prevailed throughout Australian history regarding the treatment of aborigines and their determined resistance to the white domination of their lands and the huge number of aborigines who were killed by white settlers/police (more than the number of Australian soldiers killed in either WW1 or WW2. In recent years there have been some attempts to confront the great silence. This book is a welcome contribution to this effort.
The heart of the book is the great silence which has prevailed throughout Australian history regarding the treatment of aborigines and their determined resistance to the white domination of their lands and the huge number of aborigines who were killed by white settlers/police (more than the number of Australian soldiers killed in either WW1 or WW2. In recent years there have been some attempts to confront the great silence. This book is a welcome contribution to this effort.
March 21, 2022
Taking his own experience growing up as a white kid in Tennant Creek Dean Ashenden traces the struggles of the Waramanga people over two centuries but also introduces readers to the anthropological, historical, political and legal debates that have raged over this time in Australia. He focusses on the great Australian silence. I found it to be a moving and fascinating read. I learned a lot.
October 9, 2022
This is an interesting analysis of Tennant Creek’s history. My only issue was the narrator of the audiobook incorrectly pronounced some aboriginal group and skin names. Wouldn’t have taken much time or effort to get them right, especially since they appear so frequently in the book. 3.5 stars, rounded up
January 24, 2023
Amazing tale of personal growth from personal experience of the 'Silence' in Tennant Creek in the 50's. Enjoyed the history lessons, the first person's accounts and the perspectives provided in such detail. I think I need to read it again it was so good
Read
December 17, 2023An interesting presentation of Aus history and race relations through the lens of personal knowledge and location. We’ll written and structured. It adds to long overdue truth telling and hopefully understanding of the veiled past.
December 29, 2022
Highly recommend for those wanting to know more about "the great Australian silence" regarding First Nations People since colonisation
May 24, 2023
Something it feels like all Australians should read to get an idea of how race relations came to be the big silence of Stanners speech.
August 13, 2024
This is a really thorough and still easily digestible account of Australia's history that we rarely even acknowledge, let alone talk about. Highly recommend it!
October 10, 2024
Essential reading for every Australian.
July 6, 2025
Sobering and informative..against the backdrop of the authors return to his childhood but he is much more aware..I cannot say that I enjoyed it but it really made me think..learned a lot..he writes in an easy manner..highly recommended
March 26, 2023
Growing up in country Western Australia and in Perth, I had no indigenous acquaintances. There were aborigines in schools I attended, but they were never in the classes for the academically inclined (and I never asked myself why). At 15 years of age in 1967, not a word about the referendum ever impinged itself on my consciousness. As a young adult my first frequent encounters with ‘blackfellas’ were in the pubs of Port Hedland – not a good milieu. At about that time I read Frank Hardy’s account of the Gurindji land claim, The Unlucky Australians. I was full of goodwill, but knew next to nothing about the people I actually met. Down the years I’ve kept an eye on the news about aboriginal matters, but between inattention and incomprehension I’ve missed much. I’m sure I’m in no way unique.
Well, this book will go some way to bringing Australians such as myself up to speed. I think it’s fair to call it a cultural history – white settlers and administrators did unspeakable things to Australian first peoples, then there was a tacit understanding that we would never speak of it, and that’s our Australian culture; but it’s changing. I’ve never done any anthropology, so all the stuff in the book about that is new and interesting: Tindale’s map, Gillen and Spencer, and Bill Stanner, who married anthropology with history and drew attention to ‘the great silence’. I remember a time when ‘assimilation’ was still the orthodoxy; the sainted Paul Hasluck, I learned, was the chief advocate for that misguided policy. Ashenden relates the long procession of legal cases that have gradually established standing and rights for indigenous peoples. The so-called ‘history wars’, which I never really understood before, are well explained. Now I know who was talking to John Howard, that he so doggedly resisted an apology for stolen children and called research into Australia’s frontier wars ‘a black armband view of history’: it was Geoffrey Blainey and Noel Pearson.
This is very well written and tells a very important story. There is pathos aplenty, and much to elicit justifiable anger, but it is never strident. Recommended.
Well, this book will go some way to bringing Australians such as myself up to speed. I think it’s fair to call it a cultural history – white settlers and administrators did unspeakable things to Australian first peoples, then there was a tacit understanding that we would never speak of it, and that’s our Australian culture; but it’s changing. I’ve never done any anthropology, so all the stuff in the book about that is new and interesting: Tindale’s map, Gillen and Spencer, and Bill Stanner, who married anthropology with history and drew attention to ‘the great silence’. I remember a time when ‘assimilation’ was still the orthodoxy; the sainted Paul Hasluck, I learned, was the chief advocate for that misguided policy. Ashenden relates the long procession of legal cases that have gradually established standing and rights for indigenous peoples. The so-called ‘history wars’, which I never really understood before, are well explained. Now I know who was talking to John Howard, that he so doggedly resisted an apology for stolen children and called research into Australia’s frontier wars ‘a black armband view of history’: it was Geoffrey Blainey and Noel Pearson.
This is very well written and tells a very important story. There is pathos aplenty, and much to elicit justifiable anger, but it is never strident. Recommended.
July 8, 2023
This account of life in Tennant Creek acknowledged the attempted genocide of the traditional owners of country. I applaud the truth telling of the shameful and arrogant behaviour which unfolded without justice. Aboriginal voices were heard in this book and their words condemn white Australia.
Selfish pursuits and political agendas have prevented Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people from receiving their treaty.
It took 220 years for our First Nations People’s to hear the word “sorry”. That apology was the beginning of acknowledging traditional owners of country, recognising continued connection to the land and respecting one of the oldest cultures in the world.
My rating is low due to the tedious nature of this account which is ultimately just another white mans’ perspective of history.
Selfish pursuits and political agendas have prevented Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people from receiving their treaty.
It took 220 years for our First Nations People’s to hear the word “sorry”. That apology was the beginning of acknowledging traditional owners of country, recognising continued connection to the land and respecting one of the oldest cultures in the world.
My rating is low due to the tedious nature of this account which is ultimately just another white mans’ perspective of history.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews