Shayne Breen
I am an interdisciplinary historian in the field of Deep Aboriginal History. My primary focus is Tasmania. I was a lecturer in Aboriginal Studies at the University of Tasmania from 1990-2009. From 2010-2020, I was a consultant historian with Aboriginal Education Services, in the Tasmanian State Education Department, working on a major revision of the Aboriginal Studies curriculum in Tasmanian schools. I have a PhD in History from the University of Tasmania, and I have been a member of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies since 1995.
My new book, First Tasmanians: A Deep History, will be published in August 2025 by Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing. The research undertaken for the book was informed by regular consultations with senior First Tasmanians and the writing was shaped by my 35-year engagement with Aboriginal educators, students, activists and community members. Written across the last 15 years, the book is the first interdisciplinary account of Tasmania's deep Aboriginal history. It ranges across 40,000 years of Aboriginal presence in Tasmania, and is arranged into three parts: the deep hunter-gatherer past, the collective life at the time of the British invasion, and the recent past.
The deep past chapters (1-4) trace the history of Aboriginal exploration, land settlement, hunting practices, and controlled burning across 40,000 years. During recent decades specialist researchers have told aspects of that story in academic journals that rarely come to public notice. These chapters draw on that research to show that the ancient Tasmanians were resilient, resourceful, and organized people who successfully negotiated opportunities and constraints posed by momentous environmental changes.
The collective life chapters (5-19) offer a detailed portrait of the Aboriginal people, culture, economy, social organisation and ritual life encountered by Europeans in the late 18th century. The sources used were generated by colonial observers, often with information provided by Aboriginal people. These chapters expose as fallacy the long-standing Western view that the Tasmanians were an isolated, maladaptive people with a simple technology, a disorganised society and a depauperate ritual life. Rather, the sources show the collective life was highly organized, deeply spiritual, and culturally rich, and it shared much in common with that of Australian Aboriginal peoples.
The recent past chapters (20-24) are organised around four decolonising narratives that feature in the work of contemporary Aboriginal scholars, writers, artists, activists and performers: two centuries of colonial genocide; generations of Aboriginal resistance and activism; the devastating impacts of historical, intergenerational and race trauma; and the commitment of recent generations of First Tasmanian communities to defending, rebuilding and revitalising their collective lives.
[email protected]
Phone: 061 0407 731 514
Address: Hobart, Australia 7015
My new book, First Tasmanians: A Deep History, will be published in August 2025 by Miegunyah Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing. The research undertaken for the book was informed by regular consultations with senior First Tasmanians and the writing was shaped by my 35-year engagement with Aboriginal educators, students, activists and community members. Written across the last 15 years, the book is the first interdisciplinary account of Tasmania's deep Aboriginal history. It ranges across 40,000 years of Aboriginal presence in Tasmania, and is arranged into three parts: the deep hunter-gatherer past, the collective life at the time of the British invasion, and the recent past.
The deep past chapters (1-4) trace the history of Aboriginal exploration, land settlement, hunting practices, and controlled burning across 40,000 years. During recent decades specialist researchers have told aspects of that story in academic journals that rarely come to public notice. These chapters draw on that research to show that the ancient Tasmanians were resilient, resourceful, and organized people who successfully negotiated opportunities and constraints posed by momentous environmental changes.
The collective life chapters (5-19) offer a detailed portrait of the Aboriginal people, culture, economy, social organisation and ritual life encountered by Europeans in the late 18th century. The sources used were generated by colonial observers, often with information provided by Aboriginal people. These chapters expose as fallacy the long-standing Western view that the Tasmanians were an isolated, maladaptive people with a simple technology, a disorganised society and a depauperate ritual life. Rather, the sources show the collective life was highly organized, deeply spiritual, and culturally rich, and it shared much in common with that of Australian Aboriginal peoples.
The recent past chapters (20-24) are organised around four decolonising narratives that feature in the work of contemporary Aboriginal scholars, writers, artists, activists and performers: two centuries of colonial genocide; generations of Aboriginal resistance and activism; the devastating impacts of historical, intergenerational and race trauma; and the commitment of recent generations of First Tasmanian communities to defending, rebuilding and revitalising their collective lives.
[email protected]
Phone: 061 0407 731 514
Address: Hobart, Australia 7015
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (10)
Uploads
Books by Shayne Breen
antiquity. It was and remains an Aboriginal place. Two
hundred years of British colonisation have obscured but not
erased the Aboriginal past. That past will always be there
because it is etched onto the land. The traditional owners of the site of Launceston and the Tamar Valley were the Letteremairrener people. Their country was a place for ceremony, for hunting and gathering, for story-telling around the glow of family camp-fires. In 1804, British colonisers arrived at Port Dalrymple; by 1806 they had moved up-stream to found Launceston. The Tamar and its environs became a place of violent conflict. By the 1830s it was the site of a genocide. Aboriginal survivors were exiled to islands in Bass Strait, where they formed a new
community based on mutton-birding, and from where they conducted trade with merchants based in Launceston. In the 1920s and 30s, the Aboriginal Islanders became objects of scientific curiosity for scientists based at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum. In the 1930s and 40s
many Aborigines returned from the Islands to Launceston, and from the early 1970s they created a political and cultural renaissance of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and society. The book provides a portrait of Launceston told with edited extracts drawn from interviews with 20 Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
Book Chapters by Shayne Breen
Papers by Shayne Breen
memoir by Shayne Breen
Book Reviews by Shayne Breen
antiquity. It was and remains an Aboriginal place. Two
hundred years of British colonisation have obscured but not
erased the Aboriginal past. That past will always be there
because it is etched onto the land. The traditional owners of the site of Launceston and the Tamar Valley were the Letteremairrener people. Their country was a place for ceremony, for hunting and gathering, for story-telling around the glow of family camp-fires. In 1804, British colonisers arrived at Port Dalrymple; by 1806 they had moved up-stream to found Launceston. The Tamar and its environs became a place of violent conflict. By the 1830s it was the site of a genocide. Aboriginal survivors were exiled to islands in Bass Strait, where they formed a new
community based on mutton-birding, and from where they conducted trade with merchants based in Launceston. In the 1920s and 30s, the Aboriginal Islanders became objects of scientific curiosity for scientists based at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum. In the 1930s and 40s
many Aborigines returned from the Islands to Launceston, and from the early 1970s they created a political and cultural renaissance of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and society. The book provides a portrait of Launceston told with edited extracts drawn from interviews with 20 Tasmanian Aboriginal people.