Rosendo Salvado and the Australian Aboriginal World Published by © CONSELLO DA CULTURA GALEGA, 2016 Pazo de Raxoi · 2º andar · Praza do Obradoiro 15705 · Santiago de Compostela T 981 957 202 · F 981 957 205
[email protected] www.consellodacultura.gal Translation and linguistic review Cristina Río López Begoña Tajes Marcote Cover image Vista de Nova Nursia, 1860 / View of New Norcia, 1860 Layout Lugami Artes Gráficas Doi:10.17075/rsmaa.2016.en RAMÓN MÁIZ TIFFANY SHELLAM EDITORS Rosendo Salvado and the Australian Aboriginal World actas Presentation 6 he Council for Galician Culture has been promoting different activities around the figure of Rosendo Salvado for more than a decade. Our aim is to rescue the immense work of this illustrious Galician man who settled in Australia and to shed some light on a man of his time, who was against his time but also well above Tof the time when he lived. An individual who carried out pioneering work that established a dialogue with a particular place in faraway Oceania in which he tried to find a synthesis between the Western civilisation he carried with him and a different, allegedly inferior Aboriginal culture he found upon his arrival in Australia. Rosendo Salvado was not, however, very well-known in Galicia. But from 1999 his figure was gradually integrated into Galician culture thanks to several exhibitions, conferences and publications that showed the special dimensions of his personality, marked by cultural pluralism that was innovative for his day. He demonstrated a spirit of understanding of different cultures, of the relationships between the Western world and the Aboriginal world, which he discovered from 1845 on, after his first trip to New Norcia.