Micro-histories and things that matter: opening spaces of possibility in Ngarrindjeri country

At the intersection of biography and micro-history, this paper explores patterns of cross-cultural absence and presence in the testimonies of Indigenous and settler-descended women born around Lake Alexandrina, South Australia, in the period immediately following Australian federation of 1901. When placed in dialogue with one another, new cross-culturally nuanced narratives emerge from within the women's domestic spaces and everyday lives that exhibit agency and negotiation; producing an historical understanding that is localised, embodied, and very often oppositional to federation's imperative to create a nation based on cultural pillars of whiteness.