'Ah That I Could Convey a Proper Idea of this Interesting Wild Play of the Natives': Corroborees and the Rise of Indigenous Australian Cultural Tourism

Abstract

The nineteenth century Aboriginal corroboree performed for non-Indigenous settler audiences was Australia's pre-eminent prototypical Indigenous cultural tourism product. Options for the development of this product by both Aborigines and settlers were fashioned by competing and complementary strategies of various colonial interest groups. The implementation of these strategies acted directly to restrict supply of traditional corroboree performances and access to markets. Producers had to find new socially acceptable genres, such as minstrelsy and temperance entertainments in order to reproduce their product. This necessarily resulted in product transformation, but enabled continuity of a performance tradition to the present day. The Tjapukai Aboriginal Dance Theatre and the Bangarra Dance Theatre are but two modern inheritors of this tradition.

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