Description
This study of the ideological and political context of marriages between white women and indigenous men uncovers striking differences between the policies of assimilation endorsed by Australia and those encouraged by the USA. White Australians emphasized biological absorption, through which indigenous identity would be dissolved through interracial relationships, even as white Americans promoted cultural assimilation, making an attempt to alter the lifestyles of indigenous people fairly than their physical appearance. This disparity led, in turn, to differing emphases on humanitarian reforms, education policies, and social mobility, which affected the social status of the white women and indigenous men who married each and every other.
Shifting from the personal to the local to the transnational, Taking Assimilation to Heart extends our figuring out of the ways through which individual lives have been a part of the culture of colonialism.