The bitter tragedies of Bennelong and Grant: colonial cryptoplots

This paper examines how the selective application of particular narrative structures and plot details has influenced the telling of two Australian Indigenous historical biographies. In particular, it describes how colonial agendas and perspectives have been mobilised through these biographies and continue to exert on the present. Specifically, this paper investigates popular historical biographies concerning the Indigenous men Woollarawarre Bennelong (c.1764–1813) and Douglas Grant (c.1885–1951) and reflects on connections between the ways they have been narratively constructed. This paper also notes that the biographies of these two men have been emplotted and encrypted in sociopolitically motivated ways. I use the term ‘cryptoplot’ to describe how these processes and motivations are narratively configured and disguised and to acknowledge how forms of encrypted plot are experienced as having ‘truth’ value.