Margaret Susan Brock
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Margaret Susan Brock (known as Peggy Brock) (born 1948) is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at
Edith Cowan University Edith Cowan University (ECU) is a public university in Western Australia. It is named in honour of the first woman to be elected to an Parliaments of the Australian states and territories, Australian parliament, Edith Cowan, and is the only Aust ...
in
Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
, Western Australia. Her major areas of interest have been colonial and indigenous history in Australia, the Pacific and parts of Canada and Africa, with particular interest in Australian Aboriginal women. Her work continues to be cited in national and international debates over indigenous policy.Roberts, Brian
"A Debate Remote from Reason"
''Quadrant'', 2015-06-06


Career

Born in Adelaide, Brock studied at the University of Adelaide where she was awarded a B.A.(Hons) in 1969 and a PhD in 1992. Brock began her academic career at Edith Cowan University in 1991, gaining successive promotions leading ultimately to a professorial position there in 2007. She was elected a Fellow of the
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) is an independent, non-governmental organisation devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It has its origins in the Social Science Research Council of Austr ...
in 2005, and has held Visiting Fellowships at the University of Basel, Switzerland (2003) and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London University (2005). From 1982 to 1989, she was employed as an historian at the Aboriginal Heritage Branch of the Department of Environment and Planning in South Australia. Out of this came her first major publication, ''Women Rites & Sites. Aboriginal Women's Cultural Knowledge,'' an edited collection of referenced essays based on original reports to the Aboriginal Heritage Unit by herself and seven other non-Aboriginal women expert in this area (
Catherine Berndt Catherine Helen Berndt, ''née'' Webb (8 May 1918 – 12 May 1994), born in Auckland, was an Australian anthropologist known for her research in Australia and Papua New Guinea. She was awarded in 1950 the Percy Smith Medal from the University o ...
, Catherine J Ellis &
Linda Barwick Linda Mary Barwick (born 1954) is an Australian musicologist and professor emerita at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Barwick has focused on researching Australian Indigenous music and the music of immigrant communities. She also works in ...
, Helen Payne, Jen Gibson, Jane M Jacobs, and
Luise Hercus Luise Anna Hercus , , (16 January 1926 – 15 April 2018) was a German-born linguist who lived in Australia from 1954. After significant early work on Middle Indo-Aryan dialects (Prakrits) she had specialised in Australian Aboriginal languages si ...
), with an additional concluding chapter on the southern region of South Australia written by
Fay Gale Fay Gale AO (13 June 1932 – 3 May 2008) was an Australian cultural geographer and an emeritus professor. She was an advocate of equal opportunity for women and for Aboriginal people. Background She was born Gwendoline Fay Gilding in Balak ...
, a long-established academic researcher of Aboriginal people, to complete an overview of the whole State. The aim of ''Women Rites & Sites'' was to demonstrate and correct the cultural bias and gender blindness of previous research on Aboriginal cultural life. It is an early example of new understandings of Australian indigenous history and culture that began to emerge in the 1980s following Henry Reynolds’ '' The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia'' (1981), a controversial history of relations between Aboriginal Australians and European settlers, which has been marked as the beginning of the
History Wars The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to th ...
. Soon after, Brock contributed to the ''Historical Background to the South Australian Report'' of the ''Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody'' (1990), and native title claims in South Australia have often cited her research. Her second and third books (''Poonindie: The Rise and Destruction of an Aboriginal Agricultural Community'' and ''Outback Ghettoes. A History of Aboriginal Institutionalisation and Survival'') also focused on South Australia, while the next (''Words and Silences. Aboriginal Women, Politics and Land'') continued her focus on indigenous women but in the wider Australian context. Her next and three most recent books (''Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change'', ''The Many Voyages of Arthur Wellington Clah'' and ''Indigenous Evangelist and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750-1940)'' go beyond the Australian context. In the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours Brock was appointed a
Member of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...
for "significant service to tertiary education, and to Indigenous history".


Major publications


''Women Rites & Sites. Aboriginal women's cultural knowledge'' (1989)
* with Kartinyeri, D.
''Poonindie: The Rise and Destruction of an Aboriginal Agricultural Community'' (1989)

''Outback Ghettos. A History of Aboriginal Institutionalisation and Survival'' (1993)

''Words and Silences. Aboriginal Women, politics and land'' (2001, 2003)

''Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change'' (2005)

''The Many Voyages of Arthur Wellington Clah: A Tsimshian Man on the Pacific Northwest Coast, Vancouver'' (2011)
* with Etherington, N., Griffiths, G., & Van Gent, J.,
Indigenous Evangelists and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750-1940 (2015)
'


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brock, Margaret Susan 20th-century Australian historians Australian women historians Edith Cowan University faculty Members of the Order of Australia Fellows of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia University of Adelaide alumni 21st-century Australian historians Living people People from Adelaide 1948 births 20th-century Australian women 21st-century Australian women writers