Double Oppressions of Racism and Sexism: Australian Indigenous Women in Prichard's Fiction about the Aborigines

In her fictional writing about the Australian Aborigines, Katharine Susannah Prichard uniquely attempts to free herself from racial prejudice and expresses her sympathy, understanding and respect towards the Aborigines in general. As a woman writer, she also concerns with Indigenous women's disadvantaged living status. This renders her novels and other works characteristically anti-racist and anti-sexist. In the study of Coonardoo and her three other works, this paper examines the double oppressions of racism and sexism imposed upon Indigenous women in colonial Australia in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.