Professional Savages Captive Lives And Western Spectacle [Paperback]

In August 1882 the circus impresario P. T. Barnum called for examples of all the uncivilized races in existence. In response, the showman R. A. Cunningham shipped two groups of Australian Aborigines to the United States. They were displayed as cannibals in circuses, dime museums, fairgrounds, and other showplaces in America and Europe and examined and photographed by anthropologists.

Roslyn Poignant tells the fascinating and often searing story of the transformation of the Aboriginal travelers into accomplished performers, professional savages who survived at least for a short time by virtue of the strengths they drew from their own culture and their individual adaptability. Most died somewhere on tour. A century later, the mummified body of Tambo, the first to die, was discovered in the basement of a recently closed funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio. Poignant recounts how Tambos posthumous repatriation stimulated a cultural renewal within the community from which he came, exposing the roots of present social and economic injustices experienced by indigenous Australians.

Roslyn Poignantis the author, with Axel Poignant, ofEncounter at Nagalarrambaandcurator ofCaptive Lives: Looking for Tambo and His Companions,an exhibition for the National Library of Australia. She is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at University College, London, and member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.