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| 1967 REFERENDUM : Race, Power & the Australian Constitution [Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus] On 27 May 1967 a remarkable event occurred. An overwhelming majority of electors voted in a national referendum to amend clauses of the Australian Constitution concerning Aboriginal people. Today it is commonly regarded as a turning point in the history of relations between Indigenous and white Australians: a historic moment when citizenship rights -- including the vote -- were granted and the Commonwealth at long last assumed responsibility for Aboriginal affairs. Yet the constitutional changes entailed in the referendum brought about none of these things. "The 1967 Referendum" explores the legal and political significance of the referendum and the long struggle by black and white Australians for constitutional change. It traces the emergence of a series of powerful narratives about the Australian Constitution and the status of Aborigines, revealing how and why the referendum campaign acquired so much significance and has since become the subject of highly charged myth in contemporary Australia. Attwood and Markus's text is complemented by personal recollections and opinions about the referendum by a range of Indigenous people, and historical documents and illustrations. { 188pp, 180x260mm, December 2007; PB, £18.99, 0855755555:9780855755553 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA WALL MAP [David Horton] ASP's best-selling publication. An attractive educational tool which aims to represent all the language groups of Australia's Indigenous people. { 840x1190mm, January 2008; MA, £13.50, 0855754966:9780855754969 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA WALL FOLDED MAP: LARGE [David Horton] ASP's best-selling publication. An attractive educational tool which aims to represent all the language groups of Australia's Indigenous people. { 840x1190mm, December 2000; MA, £13.50, 0855754923:9780855754921 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA WALL FOLDED MAP: SMALL [David Horton] ASP's best-selling publication. An attractive educational tool which aims to represent all the language groups of Australia's Indigenous people. { 420x595mm, December 2000; MA, £7.99, 0855754974:9780855754976 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL DARWIN : A Guide to Exploring Important Sites of the Past & Present [Toni Bauman] To most visitors and locals, Darwin is a vibrant, tropicaI city in the Top End. Although not always obvious to visitors, Darwin is also a living Aboriginal cultural landscape. "Aboriginal Darwin" peels back layers to show the rich heritage and complex cultures of Aboriginal people, both before and since colonisation. It includes contemporary and historical sites that range from the harbor to the beaches, monsoon forests, gardens, parks, camping places, exhibitions, cultural displays and buildings in the CBD, supplemented by information about sites not accessible to visitors. There are as many ways of seeing Aboriginal Darwin as there are Aboriginal people. This guide provides insights into the enormous economic, cultural, social and historical contributions of Aboriginal people to the city. Beautifully illustrated, "Aboriginal Darwin's" easy-to-use layout allows users to explore at their own pace. { 150pp, 180x260mm, December 2006; PB, £18.99, 085575446X:9780855754464 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL STARS OF THE TURF : Jockeys of Australian Racing History: Revised Edition [John Maynard] John Maynard comes from both Aboriginal and racing backgrounds. He knows first hand that the premise that there had been very few Aboriginal riders is far from the truth. His book celebrates the significant and exciting Aboriginal involvement in Australian racing history. Amongst the many Aboriginal jockeys highlighted in the book are Merv Maynard, Norm Rose, Frank Reys, Richard Lawrence 'Darby' McCarthy and Leigh-Anne Goodwin, Australia's first female Aboriginal jockey to ride a winner at a metropolitan track. { 144pp, 180x260mm, January 2002; PB, £10.99, 0855754516:9780855754518 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL SUICIDE IS DIFFERENT : A Portrait of Life & Self-Destruction [Colin Tatz] Every Australian's birthright includes the expectation of a healthy and possibly happy life of some longevity, assisted by all the services which a civilised society can make possible. But this is not yet within the Aboriginal (or Maori, Pacific Islander, Canadian Inuit and American Indian) grasp. That so many young Aboriginal people prefer death to life implies a rejection of what people in the broader Australian society, have on offer. It reflects a failure, as a nation, to provide sufficient incentives for young Aborigines to remain alive. This is a study of youth who have, or feel they have, no purpose in life -- or who may be seeking freedom in death. It is a portrait of life, and of self-destruction, by young Aboriginal men and women. To comprehend this relatively recent phenomenon, which occurs more outside than inside custody, one has to appreciate Aboriginal history -- the effects of which contribute more to an understanding of suicide today than do psychological or medical theories about the victim. Aboriginal youth at risk are suffering more from social than from mental disorder. Adopting a historical and anthropological approach to suicide in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand, this book documents rates of suicide that may well be the world's worst. It tries to glimpse the soul of the suicide rather than merely his or her contribution to our national statistics. { 191pp, 155x230mm, December 2007; PB, £18.99, 0855754982:9780855754983 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ABORIGINAL SYDNEY : A Guide to Important Places of the Past & Present [Melinda Hinkson] Sydney has a rich and complex Aboriginal heritage, hidden within the burgeoning, bustling city. But when you know where and how to look, the layers of a vibrant culture and turbulent history emerge. "Aboriginal Sydney" is both a guide book and an alternative social history told through 50 places of significance to the city's Indigenous people. The sites, and their accompanying stories and photographs, evoke Sydney's ancient past and celebrate the living Aboriginal culture of today. Places to visit include: rock art and middens in national parks; places of early contact and conflict around the harbour; sites of 'civilising experiments' in the west; places of protest, civil rights action and community pride in Redfern and La Perouse; cultural centres, galleries, museums and theatres. { 174pp, 180x260mm, December 2001; PB, £18.99, 0855753706:9780855753702 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ANNA THE GOANNA : & Other Poems [Jill McDougall. Illustrated by Jenny Taylor] Ages 11 to 12 years. Cheeky dogs, slippery snakes and crocodiles with big smiles join Anna in this collection of lively illustrated poems. With warmth and respect, we're taken into the children's lives as they camp under the stars, go hunting for tucker and play football in the dust. Anna the Goanna provides rare insight into the richly textured lives of contemporary Indigenous children. The poems are rhythmic and memorable, with a jaunty beat. Designed specially for school performances. { 48pp, 210x270mm, February 2008; PB, £10.99, 0855756160:9780855756161 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| APPRECIATION OF DIFFERENCE : WEH Stanner & Aboriginal Australia [Melinda Hinkson & Jeremy Beckett (eds] WEH Stanner was a public intellectual whose work reached beyond the walls of the academy, and he remains a highly significant figure in Aboriginal affairs and Australian anthropology. Educated by Radcliffe-Brown in Sydney and Malinowski in London, he undertook anthropological work in Australia, Africa and the Pacific. Stanner contributed much to public understandings of the Dreaming and the significance of Aboriginal religion. His 1968 broadcast lectures, After the Dreaming, continue to be among the most widely quoted works in the field of Aboriginal studies. He also produced some exceptionally evocative biographical portraits of Aboriginal people. Stanner's writings on post-colonial development and assimilation policy urged an appreciation of Indigenous people's distinctive world views and aspirations. Hinkson and Beckett have drawn together some of Australia's leading academics working in Aboriginal studies to provide an historical and analytical context for Stanner's work, as well as demonstrating the continuing relevance of his writings in the contested field of Aboriginal affairs. { 224pp, 140x215mm, November 2008; PB, £21.50, 0855756608:9780855756604 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BEING BLACK : Aboriginal Cultures in 'Settled' Australia [Ian Keen (ed)] It is a common belief that Aboriginal people of predominantly mixed descent, living in Australian cities, country towns and Aboriginal communities, have lost their culture. Often lacking the more obvious markers of Aboriginal Identity, such as ceremonies and the general use of an Indigenous language, they are regarded as not being 'real' Aborigines. Recent anthropological research refutes these misconceptions. Through a continuity of community, even when dispersed within large cities, Aboriginal people have maintained continuity of Identity and culture quite distinct from that of Australians of European or other ethnic origin, and with many features In common with the cultures of Aborigines living in more remote areas. This book brings together the results of research by anthropologists who have worked In urban and rural communities In 'settled' Australia: south-east Queensland, the coast and hinterland of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, the southwest of Western Australia and in Darwin in the Northern Territory. The chapters document many aspects of Aboriginal social life and its development: the bases of Identity, the extensive ties of family, the structure of community and patterns of travel; responses to domination; styles of socialisation; ways of speaking; rules of swearing and fighting; economic transactions, beliefs and feelings about country; and attitudes to the past. The volume shows in detail what makes the cultures of Aboriginal Australians so distinctive. { 273pp, 180x260mm, December 1988; PB, £16.50, 0855751851:9780855751852 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BEND IN THE YARRA : A History of the Merri Creek Protectorate Station & Merri Creek Aboriginal School 1841-1851 [Ian Clark & Toby Heydon] The historical landscape of the Yarra Bend Park marks one of the most significant post-contact Aboriginal sites in the Melbourne metropolitan area. The confluence of Merri Creek and the Yarra River was the focus of interaction between Victorian Aboriginal communities, particularly the Wurundjeri people, government officials and settlers during the early years of contact in the Port Phillip District. At this site was located the Western Port or Melbourne Protectorate District Headquarters (1842-1849), the Merri Creek Aboriginal School (1845-1851), the Native Police Corps Headquarters(1842-1843) and associated Aboriginal burials. The area is also identified with important individuals including Billibellary, an Aboriginal ngurungaeta or clan-head who died at this location in 1846, and William Thomas, Assistant Protector of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate. A place for Aboriginal community meetings, ceremonies, judicial proceedings, councils and debates for a range of Aboriginal clans, the Yarra bend was also a preferred place of residence. The location of this 'little settlement' gave Aboriginal people -- from near and far -- access to the colonial economy and European cultures, at a time when pre,-contact ways of life were increasingly frustrated and undermined by the incursion of mostly British settlers. This area continued to hold significance to Aboriginal people after the 1840s, linking pre- and post-contact histories and geographies. The place has added importance in the early twenty-first century as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians address the legacies of our contact past. This book provides an authoritative analysis of Aboriginal cultural institutions in colonial Victoria. It will interest organisations involved in Indigenous cultural tourism, and prove a valuable resource for schools teaching Victorian Indigenous history, society and geography. Above all, it is an engaging and accessible history of a popular Melbourne parkland. { 90pp, 215x280mm, January 2004; PB, £18.99, 0855754699:9780855754693 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BITTANGABEE TRIBE : An Aboriginal Story From Coastal New South Wales [Beryl Cruse, Rebecca Kirby, Liddy Stewart & Steven Thomas] Ages 4 to 8 years. This delightful story, created by Aboriginal students from the south coast of New South Wales, tells of the lives of the Bittangabee tribe. Beautifully illustrated with the help of local primary school children, the story follows Ninima and his family on their long summer journey into the mountains to collect Bogong moths, and then home again to the sea. { 28pp, 270x220mm, January 1994; HB, £12.50, 0855752564:9780855752569 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BLACK MARY / GUNJIES : Two Plays [Julie Janson] "Black Mary" is the story of Aboriginal bushranger Mary Ann and her partner, Captain Thunderbolt, roaming north-western New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. Dressed like the men, Mary Ann is one of the gang, managing to survive in the outback and to elude capture most of the time. She dreams of returning with Thunderbolt to live with her people but instead witnesses their massacre and plots revenge. The play premiered in Sydney in April 1996. A contemporary play, "Gunjies" combines family life, young love, a football match and a debutante ball with political activism, racial discrimination and uneasy relations with police (the gunjies). Janson's characters are ordinary people -- warm, funny, resilient -- who are suddenly involved in tragedy. First performed in 1993, the International Year of Indigenous People, Gunjies was highly commended by the Human Rights Commission and was also nominated for an Australian Writers Guild award. { 160pp, 140x215mm, January 1996; PB, £10.99, 0855752920:9780855752927 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BOIGU : Our History & Culture Boigu Island, the most northerly inhabited of the Torres Strait Islands, lies just six kilometres off Papua New Guinea. Its vegetation is limited mainly to mangroves and Boigu people are confined to the village of Koedal Boepur -- an area of high ground on the northern coast. The elders of this small island community have taken the initiative in writing down their own history and culture to ensure that there is a permanent record. In doing so, they have also recorded part of the story of all of the Torres Strait. However, their book Boigu, speaks to all people everywhere. In it you will find stories of brave warriors and traditional customs, of love and hope, of everyday experiences and practices, of business enterprises and industrial disputes, of friendships and religious influences. It is a lively collection of writings from the past and the present. { 156pp, 175x210mm, December 1991; PB, £10.99, 0855752297:9780855752293 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BORN A HALF CASTE [Marnie Kennedy] Marnie Kennedy, a member of the Kalkadoon people, died in 1985 shortly before the first edition of "Born a Half-Caste" was published. Here in this reprinted edition, Marnie's story lives on. Marnie's story begins with her birth in 1919 on the banks of Coppermine Creek in western Queensland. It tells of her journey to Palm Island where she grew up 'under the Act' which dominated the lives of Aboriginal people in that State. The book includes lively descriptions of her hard working life on cattle stations throughout the north and the people she encountered there. Mamie Kennedy dedicated this book to future generations of her family and her people. She wrote her story in the hope that white people would come to know and understand the plight of her people by reading of her own life as a 'half-caste'. { 68pp, 140x215mm, December 2001; PB, £7.99, 0855751606:9780855751609 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BORN OF THE CONQUERORS [Judith Wright] Judith Wright is perhaps Australia's best known poet, and she has also published numerous essays, children's books and documentary histories. When her work for he Aboriginal Treaty Committee came to an end in 1985 with the publication of "We Call for a Treaty", Judith Wright along with other committee members, made a promise to do what she could to keep the issue of justice for Aboriginal people alive. In the interim she has continued her activities in conservation and environmental organisations. "Born of the Conquerors" is a further attempt to fulfil her promise to aboriginal people and a message to us all about our need to care for the land. This collection brings together for the first time twenty-one essays, previously published in a wide variety of journals and other publications. They range from the autobiographical to political comment to literary criticism, but Judith Wright's strong concerns for the survival of Aboriginal culture and the environment run through them all. { 156pp, 180x260mm, January 1991; PB, £16.50, 0855752173:9780855752170 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| BUSH TOYS : Aboriginal Children at Play [Claudia Haagen] Claudia Haagen, says in her introduction to this book. "It is through the toys collected over time, combined with fragments of historical commentary, that we can now account for an aspect of Australian childhood that has escaped notice ... At the outset, this work was prompted by the necessity to document a collection ... The outcome here is in fact a composite record, enhancing both an understanding of the particular and at the same time indicating a continuum alive with diversity". Begun as a catalogue of the collections of the National Museum of Australia, this 'ensemble of texts' grew into a fascinating account of a little-known aspect of Australian social history, surveying material from collections all over Australia. Each section of text is accompanied by apposite quotes from a huge variety of written records from sites all over Australia. From spears, shields and throwing sticks to hockey, marbles and fireworks, this beautifully illustrated and cleverly structured book builds for the reader a composite pic-ture of the lives of Aboriginal children in the past and in the present, and adds significantly to records of Aboriginal society then and now. { 165pp, 210x270mm, January 1994; PB, £24.50, 0855752459:9780855752453 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| CAUTIOUS SILENCE : The Politics of Australian Anthropology [Geoffrey Gray] This is the first exploration of modern Australian social anthropology which examines the forces that helped shaped its formation. In his new work, Geoffrey Gray reveals the struggle to establish and consolidate anthropology in Australia as an academic discipline. He argues that to do so, anthropologists had to demonstrate that their discipline was the predominant interpreter of Indigenous life. Thus they were able, and called on, to assist government in the control, development and advancement of Indigenous peoples. Gray aims to help us understand the present organisational structures, and assist in the formulation of anthropology's future role in Australia; to provide a wider political and social context for Australian social anthropology, and to consider the importance of anthropology as a past definer of Indigenous people. Gray's work complements and adds to earlier publications: Wolfe's Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, McGregor's Imagined Destinies and Anderson's Cultivating Whiteness. { 293pp, 180x260mm, August 2007; PB, £23.99, 0855755512:9780855755515 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| COMPROMISED JURISPRUDENCE : Native Title Cases Since Mabo: 2nd Edition [Lisa Strelein] Native title has dramatically altered the law and public policy in Australia. It has had a fundamental impact on social relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and the courts have played a central role in its development, and continue to do so. Fifteen years have seen the evolution of native title from uncertain foundations to an arguably comprised jurisprudence. Strelein traces the development of the courts' thinking from the original decision Mabo v Queensland [No.2], through to the significant High Court cases in 2002, and the Federal Court's implementation in cases like De Rose, and the recent Bennell decision in 2008. Each chapter contains a discrete analysis of the most significant cases during the period. A timeline maps the key doctrines while the book's conclusion identifies the underlying themes and contradictions in the law. This is the only critical non-textbook analysis of native title law. The new edition contains an updated annotated case list, while a revised introduction and conclusion comment on recent developments. { 232pp, 140x215mm, June 2009; PB, £21.50, 0855756632:9780855756635 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| COMPROMISED JURISPRUDENCE : Native Title Cases Since Mabo [Lisa Strelein] The advent of native title twelve years ago dramaticaIly altered the law, and Australian public policy. Since its inception native title has had a fundamental impact on social relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians with the courts continuing to play a central role in its development. In this challenging new work, Strelein charts, and comments on, the evolution of native title from its uncertain foundations to an arguably flawed jurisprudence. "Compromised Jurisprudence" traces the development of the courts' thinking from the original decision in Mabo v Queensland (No 2), through to the significant High Court decisions in 2002 in Western Australia v Ward and Yorta Yorta, and the subsequent implementation of those cases by the Federal Court in cases such as De Rose Strelein provides a discrete analysis of the most significant cases, while a timeline of events lets the readers map the trajectory of the key doctrines. Strelein's lucid conclusion identifies the underlying themes and contradictions in the law. { 218pp, 155x230mm, December 2006; PB, £21.50, 0855755334:9780855755331 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| CONSERVING AUSTRALIAN ROCK ART : A Manual for Site Managers [David Lambert] Intended primarily for managers of rock art in Australia, this manual covers such areas as deterioration processes, sources of damage, visitor management and practical conservation. Examples and colour illustrations are included. { 102pp, 215x280mm, January 1989; PB, £10.99, 0855752106:9780855752101 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| CONVINCING GROUND : Learning to Fall in Love with Your Country [Bruce Pascoe] "Convincing Ground" pulses with love of country. In this powerful, lyrical and passionate new work Bruce Pascoe asks us to fully acknowledge our past and the way those actions continue to influence our nation today, both physically and intellectually. The book resonates with ongoing debates about identity, dispossession, memory and community. Pascoe draws on the past through a critical examination of major historical works and witness accounts and finds uncanny parallels between the techniques and language used there to today's national political stage. He has written the book for all Australians, as an antidote to the great Australian inability to deal respectfully with the nation's constructed Indigenous past. For Pascoe, the Australian character was not forged at Gallipoli, Eureka and the back of Bourke, but in the furnace of Murdering Flat, Convincing Ground and Werribee. He knows we can't reverse the past, but believes we can bring in our soul from the fog of delusion. Pascoe proposes a way forward, beyond shady intellectual argument and immature nationalism, with our strengths enhanced and our weaknesses acknowledged and addressed. { 302pp, 155x230mm, April 2007; PB, £21.50, 0855755490:9780855755492 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| DHUULUU-YALA TO TALK STRAIGHT [Anita M Heiss] Dhuuluu-Yala is a Wiradjuri phrase meaning 'to talk straight' and this book is straight talk about publishing Indigenous literature in Australia. It also includes broader issues that writers need to consider: engaging with readers and reviewers. The book covers the period up to the mid-1900s, though some references are included up to 2000. Changes have been made since that date, however the issues identified in "Dhuuluu-Yala" remain current and to a large extent unresolved. The history of defining Aboriginality in Australia and the experience of ‘being Aboriginal’ have both impacted on the production of Aboriginal writing today. These twin themes are the major focus of the book. The pioneering roles of Aboriginal writers who have gone before and created a space has allowed for the growth of an Indigenous publishing industry. Indeed, a literary and publishing culture have developed also because of the increasing desire and need for an authentic Indigenous voice in Australian literature. Although funding and other mechanisms are in place and possibilities afforded Indigenous writers have improved, opportunities are still limited, leading to some authors choosing to self-publish. { 318pp, 155x230mm, January 2003; PB, £18.99, 0855754443:9780855754440 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| DISCIPLINING THE SAVAGES, SAVAGING THE DISCIPLINES [Martin Nakata] Martin Nakata's book, Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the Disciplines represents the most focussed and sustained Indigenous critique of anthropological knowledge yet published. It is impressive, rigorous, and sometimes poignant: a must-read for anyone concerned with the troubled interplay of Indigenous issues and academic institutions in Australia today. The book provides an alternative reading for those struggling at the contradictor and, ambiguous intersections of academia and Indigenous experience. In doing so it moves beyond the usual, criticisms of the disciplines which construct the way we have come to know and understand indigenous peoples. Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander academic, casts a critical gaze on the research conducted by the Cambridge Expedition in the late 1890s. Meticulously analysing the linguistic, physiological, psychological and anthropological testing conducted he offers an astute critique of the researchers' methodologies and interpretations.. He uses these insights to reveal the similar workings of recent knowledge production in Torres Strait education. In systematically deconstructing these knowledges, Nakata draws eloquently on both the Torres Strait Islander struggle and his own personal struggle to break free from imposed definitions, and reminds us that such intellectual journeys are highly personal and political. Nakata argues for the recognition of the complexity of the space Indigenous people now live in -- the cultural interface -- and proposes an alternative theoretical standpoint to account for Indigenous experience of this space. { 247pp, 155x230mm, March 2007; PB, £24.50, 0855755482:9780855755485 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| DJET & NAK NAK [Johnny Wunungmurra] A dreaming story from the Saltwater Country, Lake Evalla in Arnhem Land. { 32pp, 210x150mm, January 2003; PB, £5.50, 0855753986:9780855753986 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| DON'T ASK FOR STORIES : The Women from Ernabella & Their Art [Ute Eickelkamp] This collection of histories, in both written and illustrative form, from the women and men of Ernabella, in northern South Australia, tells the story of the interaction between white and black women that led to the establishment and development of a significant school of Australian art, Ernabella Arts Inc, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. From 'first missionary coming', through the terror of the nearby atomic bomb tests in the 1950s, to the commercial and artistic successes of the 1990s, the stories speak of great losses and regrets, but also of remarkable achievements, and of the skill and strength of the individuals whose voices we hear. At Ernabella Arts, all the artistic output is produced by women and this, one of the oldest centres of contemporary Aboriginal art in the country, is best known for its distinctive design and its use of new and innovative media, such as those used in textile art. The beautiful batiks produced at Ernabella have been exhibited around the world and the artists are sought after as teachers all over Australia, and internationally. These artists, when asked to explain their designs by those who are unaware of their non-representational nature, say 'don't ask for stories'. We are lucky, however, that they have chosen to record their stories in other ways, and in the process have given their readers a striking insight into their lives and work. { 88pp, 215x280mm, January 1999; PB, £21.50, 0855753102:9780855753108 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| DOREEN KARTINYERI : My Ngarrindjeri Calling [Doreen Kartinyeri & Sue Anderson] 'Lies, Lies, Lies', shouted the newspaper headlines following the Royal Commission decision into building the Hindmarsh Island Bridge. Doreen Kartinyeri, key Ngarrindjeri spokeswoman, was devastated. How could whitefella law fail to protect Aboriginal women's sites? Against a backdrop of abuse, threats and ill-health, Doreen fought back. In 2001 the federal court of Australia vindicated the women. Aged 10 years, Doreen suffered the loss of her mother, her sister's removal and her own placement in Fullarton Girls Home, 100 kms from home. Doreen later learnt cultural knowledge from her Aunty Rosie and other elders with whom she spent time. She had nine children of her own and fostered 23 others. Although poorly schooled in formal terms, Doreen was a tenacious researcher. Her sharp memory allowed her to piece together histories and genealogies and she helped reunite members of the Stolen Generations. Doreen was a female warrior, dedicated to upholding and protecting Ngarrindjeri law. In "My Ngarrindjeri Calling" Doreen Kartinyeri reveals a deep-set desire for social justice, fuelled by passionate love and anger. Her wit and humour abound, while her integrity and sense of justice are inspirational. See over for snippets of eulogies. Doreen Kartinyeri established the Aboriginal Family History Unit at the SA Museum, was awarded an honorary doctorate and published several books of genealogy. She passed away in December 2007. Sue Anderson has worked as a cultural heritage consultant and oral historian for many years, producing many articles and publications. { 256pp, 155x235mm, April 2008; PB, £18.99, 0855756594:9780855756598 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| FIGHT FOR LIBERTY & FREEDOM : The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism [John Maynard] Opposition to the British colonisation of Australia did not spring from the Mabo decision or the Native Title Act, nor was it born in the vibrant 1960s, which culminated in the famous tent embassy in 1972. Rather, the first politically organised and united all-Aboriginal activist group was the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), begun in 1924 under the leadership of Frederick Maynard. For the first time Aboriginal people voiced their disapproval in public in a well-organised way. They opened offices in Sydney, held street rallies. conducted public meetings, gained newspaper coverage, wrote letters and petitions to Government at all levels, and collaborated with the international black labor movement. The AAPA's demands resonate today. They centred on Aboriginal rights to land, stopping Aboriginal children being taken from their families, the acquisition of citizenship rights, and defending a distinct Aboriginal cultural identity. This form of resistance and organised action has now endured for more than seventy years and through a detailed exploration of the life of his grandfather, John Maynard reveals the AAPA's invaluable legacy. { 186pp, 155x230mm, November 2007; PB, £21.50, 0855755504:9780855755508 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| FIGHTERS FROM THE FRINGE : Aborigines & Torres Strait Islanders Recall the Second World War [Robert A Hall] Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people served their country during the Second World War and this book focuses on the experiences of six: Oodgeroo Noonuccal was a wireless operator whose brothers were prisoners of war; Reg Saunders served in Greece and New Guinea, as the first Aboriginal officer in the Australian Army, and later in Korea; Leonard Waters trained and served as the first Aboriginal fighter pilot; Charles Mene, a Torres Strait Islander, served throughout the war and was awarded the Military Medal in the Korean War; Saulo Waia, a pearl fisher, defended the Strait with fellow soldiers while non-indigenous people were evacuated; Other Islanders like Tom Lowah gave years of service and received lower pay than white servicemen. { 218pp, 180x260mm, December 1995; PB, £18.99, 0855752866:9780855752866 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| GEEBUNGS & SNAKE WHISTLES : Koori People & Plants of Wreck Bay [Wreck Bay Community & Cath Renwick] This guide to plants of Wreck Bay on the NSW south coast is based on the knowledge and stories of the local Koories. For them plants are important traditionally and in their everyday life. Wreck Bay community members reminisce about their lives and provide practical information about how local plants can be used for food, games, medicines and tools. { 57pp, 140x215mm, January 2000; PB, £10.99, 0855753625:9780855753627 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| GLOW WORM CAVE [Anne Morgan] Ages 6 to 10 years. Nothing exciting ever happens around here ... nothing has happened since the Glow Worm People walked out of the cave ... and never came back... Inside the cave an old creature sits, stares, swoops and sighs. He follows the river of dreams as he has done for thousands of years ... but not through the cave's last tunnel... { 31pp, 215x280mm, January 1999; PB, £12.50, 0855753439:9780855753436 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| GONG-WAPITJA : Women & Art from Yirrkala [Gillian Hutcherson] Contemporary women artists of the Yirrkala community in Northeast Arnhem Land create a wide variety of art and craft, from feathered string for ceremonies to large-scale murals for public buildings. Their works are represented in many public and private collections. The gon-wapitja or digging stick represents the role of women and their knowledge of and relationship to the land. It also stands for the sacred digging sticks carried by the Djan'kawu Sisters, the ancestral creators who used them to give life to all things in the world. { 114pp, 210x270mm, December 1998; PB, £24.50, 0855753153:9780855753153 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| GREAT FORGETTING [Geoff Page & Bevan Hayward (Pooaraar)] This is the forgotten story of Australia in the last 200 years, the story of the interaction of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. It is about brutality, arrogance, honest misunderstandings, occasional decencies and continuing unresolved problems. In this creative contribution towards. national reconciliation, poet Geoff Page and artist Pooaraar combine their significant talents in an effort to end 'the great forgetting'. { 160pp, 160x215mm, January 1996; PB, £18.99, 0855752904:9780855752903 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| HEAVY METAL : The Social Meaning of Petrol Sniffing in Australia [Maggie Brady] In an attempt to go beyond current explanations of Aboriginal drug abuse, which stereotype these people as 'victims', Brady focuses on understanding the users' subjective decisions to engage in this behaviour. She provides an overview of the use of drugs among Aboriginal people and surveys the extant international literature. She also gives detailed descriptions of the interaction between the setting and the users, examines the substance itself, and canvasses a range of possible intervention programs. { 223pp, 155x230mm, January 1992; PB, £13.50, 0855752157:9780855752156 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| HIDDEN HISTORIES : Black Stories From Victoria River Downs, Humbert River & Wave Hill Stations [Deborah Bird Rose] Death and denial constituted two critical moments in the colonisation the north of Australia. Denial persists today and engenders a complicity with all that has gone before. Whether denial takes the form of stride refusal or the more subtle form of blank indifference, the result is the same: the past is concealed, and the living become accomplices in the continuation of injustice. This book unleashes that past and its concealment. You will find stories of massacres and murders, of working life on cattle stations, of friendships and foes, of bureaucratic machinations and the individual struggled of Aboriginal Australians. There are elements to these stories which project them across time and space, culture and experience. They speak of exploitation and cruelty, but they also contain a message of hope. It is an Aboriginal message -- that we should manage our differences to our mutual benefit rather than to our destruction. { 268pp, 175x240mm, December 1991; PB, £16.50, 0855752246:9780855752248 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| HOLDING MEN : Kanyirninpa & the Health of Young Aboriginal Men [Brian F McCoy] This is an easily readable book that explores how Indigenous men understand their lives, their health and their culture. Using conversations, stories and art, the author shows how Kimberley desert communities have a cultural value and relationship described as kanyirninpa or holding. The author uses examples from Australian Rules football, petrol sniffing and imprisonment to reveal the possibilities for lasting improvements to men's health based on kanyirninpa's expression of deep and enduring cultural values and relationships. While young Indigenous men's lives remains vulnerable in a rapidly changing world, the author believes that an understanding of kanyirninpa (one of the key values that has sustained Aboriginal desert life for centuries) may provide the hope of change and better health for all. It also offers insights for all who wish to 'grow up' their young people. { 278pp, 155x230mm, May 2008; PB, £18.99, 0855756586:9780855756581 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| KAMILAROI & KURNAI [Lorimer Fison, MA & A W Howitt, FGS] This reprint is of particular relevance to Koories of Kurnai descent and to all students of Aboriginal anthropology and the history of ideas. It was already a classic in 1899, when Spencer and Gillen dedicated The Native Tribes of Central Australia, to Howitt and Fison, 'who laid the foundation of our knowledge of Australian anthropology'. Professor AP Elkin told the 1961 conference inaugurating the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, that 'the publication of Kamilaroi and Kurnai in 1880 was a landmark in Australian anthropology'. Indeed, this was the first major analysis of Aboriginal social structure, adopting a model today termed 'social Darwinist' theory. This evolutionist approach is now rejected, but it exerted tremendous influence on European attitudes for decades. It is an important sourcebook for such ideas. Lewis Henry Morgan, who wrote the preface, was a founding father of American anthropology. His Ancient Society, which drew upon his correspondence with Fison and Howitt, influenced the Marxist classic The Origin of the Family, by Frederick Engels. Although Fison's chapters are theoretical and general, Howitt's are packed with rich detail, such as the names of his informants and localities. This lifts his section beyond the realm of abstract and outmoded theory, although it includes material which today would be classed as secret. { 372pp, 140x215mm, December 1991; PB, £16.50, 085575222X:9780855752224 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| KANGKUSHOT : The Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin [Jolly Read & Peter Coppin] A powerful and moving history in which Peter Coppin, or Kangkushot, remembers his life in Western Australia's Pilbara region, and his involvement in the first strike of Aboriginal workers in the nation’s history in 1946. { 200pp, 180x260mm, December 1999; PB, £18.99, 0855753412:9780855753412 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| KING PLATES : A History of Aboriginal Gorgets [Jakelin Troy] In the early days of colonial Australia the governors and the land holders saw advantage in singling out certain Aboriginal people as leaders and distinguishing them in some way, so as to ensure their cooperation in the Europeans' efforts to open up the land. A type of mili-tary gorget was chosen as a suitable badge of office. It had already been used in North America for the same purpose. In Australia these became known as 'king' or 'brass plates'. They were presented not only to perceived 'chiefs' but to faithful servants and to the specially courageous -- to anyone, in fact, who helped in some way to ease the white people's progress in the new land. They were presented from the earliest times through to the first decades of the twentieth century. The main purpose of this book is to describe and illustrate the large collection of Aboriginal gorgets held by the National Museum of Australia. But the author, Jakelin Troy, has produced far more than a mere catalogue. She gives a comprehensive history of king plates, describes other gorgets not in the collection, and provides a list of references to pictures of Aboriginal people wearing gorgets. She also includes a useful bibliography. "King Plates" provides not only encouragement to scholars to engage in research in an area that has had little attention, but to Aboriginal people seeking information about their forebears. { 151pp, 180x260mm, December 1993; PB, £16.50, 0855752475:9780855752477 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LANDSCAPES OF INDIGENOUS PERFORMANCE : Music, Song & Dance of the Torres Strait & Arnhem Land [Fiona Magowan & Karl Neuenfeldt] This book brings together a wide range of contemporary explorations of Indigenous music and dance in the Torres Strait and the tropical regions of the Northern Territory. This collection shows how traditional music and dance have responded to colonial control in the past and more recently to other external forces beyond local control. It looks at musical pasts and presents as a continuum of creativity; at contemporary cultural performance as a contested domain; and at cross-cultural issues of recording and teaching music and dance as experienced by Indigenous leaders and educators, and non-Indigenous researchers and scholars. Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors demonstrate how local music and dance genres have been subject to missionary, institutional, popular and global influences. They offer an understanding of the cultural background and history of Torres Strait music; discuss how contemporary Christian music and dance in Arnhem Land incorporate traditional ritual; unpack the complex form and structure of an Australian Aboriginal song series; and examine the transformation of a nineteenth-century American popular song into a 'traditional' anthem of the Torres Strait. The book also examines the interface between Aboriginal ritual, movement and the environment as portrayed on film, and explores the issues raised by the presence of Aboriginal performers in the non-Indigenous university classroom. The book is of critical importance for those involved in the fields of music, dance and performance in general. { 171pp, 155x230mm, December 2005; PB, £21.50, 0855754931:9780855754938 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LANGUAGE & CULTURE IN ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA [Michael Walsh & Colin Yallop (eds)] What are the Australian Aboriginal languages like? How many are there? Where are they spoken? Are there dictionaries of Aboriginal languages? What kinds of new language have emerged in the last two hundred years? What is the connection between land, people and language in Aboriginal Australia? How does the use of English disadvantage Aboriginal people? This book offers answers these questions by providing a series of studies of aspects of language and culture in different parts of Aboriginal Australia. Chapters deal with subjects including why a young Aboriginal woman in rural Australia might end up pleading guilty to a crime she didn't commit; the picture of 'language ownership' which can be drawn from recent research on land rights; what we know of the first white settlers' attempts to learn the language of the Sydney region; the first dictionaries compiled in South Australia; and how Aboriginal languages are now being used in the media and education. Each study contributes to a composite Australia-wide picture of language and culture in Aboriginal Australia, accessible to anyone with an interest in the area. The book is of particular use to teachers and students involved in Aboriginal studies in the upper secondary years and at introductory levels in universities. Its value as an educational resource is enhanced by bibliographical reference, maps, and questions for further discussion at the end of each chapter. { 226pp, 180x260mm, October 2005; PB, £20.99, 0855752416:9780855752415 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LEARNING THE ROPES : The Life Story of a 'King of the Knockouts' [Keith B Saunders] In 1956, when Keith Saunders dropped 'knockout specialist' Dave King in a fight at Wollongong, the referee administering the count was startled, when he reached five, to hear King say from the canvas "I'm okay... but I'm staying here. This bastard hits too hard." From the lean and terrifying days of the Depression in rural New South Wales to the exhilaration and excess of Australian boxing in the sixties and after, the life of boxer Keith Saunders has been extraordinary. As a young Aboriginal man already embittered by his experience of racism, Saunders saw his involve-ment in sport as a way of becoming 'a somebody' and maintaining his self-respect in the face of exploitation and injustice. At sixteen he fought in the New South Wales state boxing finals, along with Jimmy Carruthers (later Australian and world bantamweight champion), and by the time he was twenty-one he had boxed with 'some of the best fighters in the world'. In this fast-paced, funny autobiography that includes some electrifying first-hand accounts of great Australian fights, we glimpse a little of the indulgent world that opened to a few successful boxers, the frustration felt by those Australians who endure racial indignities, and also some of the horror and tragedy of the boxing ring. { 234pp, 180x260mm, December 1992; PB, £10.99, 0855752378:9780855752378 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LIFE B'LONG ALI DRUMMOND : A Life in the Torres Strait [Samantha Faulkner] Family is one of the most important things in Sam Faulkner's life. Ali Drummond is Sam Faulkner's grandfather, and this is his story. Ali Drummond has had an extraordinary life, by any standards. Orphaned when young, Ali took to a life at sea aged just fourteen. Originally taken on as an apprentice, Ali applied himself to learning the skills he needed to survive and prosper in a sometimes dangerous life seeking pearl shells, trochus and bêche de mer. Alert to the knowledge of Japanese divers, Ali learnt well from them and went on to become an expert diver and skipper himself. After years on the mainland, cutting cane, roadworking and supporting his growing family, Ali returned to his beloved Torres Strait. He has been a strong community supporter, has enjoyed playing lawn bowls competitively and has provided advice about the maritime environment he knows so well -- knowledge now keenly sought by scientists and others. Now 90, Ali is one of a handful of elders able to share these stories first-hand. Two themes emerge strongly: the importance of Ali's wife Carmen and their family, and the desire to be out on the water, fishing. Sam Faulkner has rendered Ali Drummond's life with affection, skilfully weaving together Ali's stories with colourful reminiscences from his family. Samantha Faulkner's passion is to share the stories from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia with other Australians and the international community. { 90pp, 140x215mm, July 2007; PB, £13.50, 0855755563:9780855755560 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LITTLE PLATYPUS & THE FIRE SPIRIT [Mundara Koorang] Ages 6 to 10 years. The duck-billed, web-footed, paddle-tailed fur-covered platypus didn't used to look so peculiar. The platypus used to play in the bush, chasing bugs and butterflies, nipping the emus' long, skinny legs, and running up and down the tails of the kangaroos. One day the little platypus watched a yellow duck playing at a billabong. The little platypus longed to be a little duck with yellow feathers, bobbing and paddling around in circles on the water. Learn how the little platypus, with the help of a fire spirit, became the curious creature we know today, that is found diving, swimming and floating in the billabongs and rivers of the bush. { 32pp, 240x195mm, December 2005; HB, £13.50, 085575494X:9780855754945 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LITTLE RED YELLOW BLACK BOOK : An introduction to Indigenous Australia [Bruce Pascoe for Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Is lander Studies (AIATSIS)] This new edition is a superbly priced introduction to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; their history and their cultures. Conveniently pocket-sized, its attractive design, lucid writing and beautiful illustrations provide a wide-ranging but accessible introduction to Indigenous Australia. { 128pp, 130x195mm, September 2008; PB, £8.99, 0855756152:9780855756154 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| LOVE AGAINST THE LAW : The Autobiographies of Tex & Nelly Camfoo [Gillian Cowishaw] During his life, Tex Camfoo has been classified as Aboriginal, half-caste and European. As a half-caste he could not legally associate with or marry an Aboriginal woman. As an Aboriginal, he was not allowed to visit the pub with his European work mates. Nelly Camfoo was always considered Aboriginal. From childhood she has taken part in ceremonial life. She finds white people both frustrating and foolish -- 'they can't understand because they can't listen'. The stories of Tex and Nelly Camfoo intermingle to highlight the ambiguous social position of Aboriginals living in the Northern Territory during this century. They provide insight into race relations, the contradictory attitudes of missionaries and police, they reflect morality and religion as well as recent political developments. { 120pp, 170x240mm, December 2000; PB, £16.50, 085575348X:9780855753481 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| MAGGIE JACKSON'S KID [G K Saunders] Jacksons son was born fourteen rears ago on a convict ship. His mother, unable to stand the harshness and brutality of life in Sydney in the 1820s, died when the boy was six. Hating the white establishment, he ran away and lived happily with a group of Aboriginal people for the next eight years. When he returned to Sydney he found himself an outcast, an object of contempt, humiliation and even hatred ... until a single act of kindness by the son of newly-arrived settlers starts an exciting chain of events. This changes the lives of others, black and white, who the boys encounter in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales and some in high places on the other side of the world. { 207pp, 140x215mm, December 1998; PB, £9.50, 0855753188:9780855753184 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| MAN OF ALL TRIBES : The Life of Alick Jackomos [Richard Broome & Corinne Manning] The son of Greek migrant parents, Jackomos was born in Collingwood and grew up in the Great Depression, mixing with people from a range of backgrounds. He was at different times a welfare worker and activist, a public servant in Aboriginal affairs, an historian archivist and genealogist. Loved by many, Jackomos's life was not without controversy as he was a non-Aboriginal man, with an Aboriginal family, living and moving in an Aboriginal world and working for Aboriginal causes. He maintained strong connections with his Greek heritage and the RSL, of which he was a loyal member, and visited Brunei so often that it became his second spiritual home. { 298pp, 155x230mm, December 2006; PB, £21.50, 0855755016:9780855755010 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| MELBOURNE DREAMING : A Guide to Aboriginal Places of Melbourne [Meyer Eidelson] This guide describes Melbourne's Aboriginal places so that people using it can gain easy access to and a greater knowledge of them. Important historical events occurred at some of these places. Others are archaeological sites where there are still physical remains of Aboriginal activity before settlement. There are also modern places such as Aboriginal plant trails and cultural places. Locations have been mapped onto cycling and walking maps for easy exploring. Places featured in this book are located in many of Melbourne's finest landscapes. The guide offers a unique way of exploring the best of Melbourne. { 162pp, 140x215mm, December 1997; PB, £13.50, 0855753064:9780855753061 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| MUTTON FISH : The Surviving Culture of Aboriginal People & Abalone on the South Coast of New South Wales [Beryl Cruse, Liddy Stewart & Sue Norman] They used to gather mutton fish and trade with Chinese people ... it would really be a family gathering, where men would be diving, gathering the mutton fish, bringing it to share and women and kids would be lighting the fires. So our people started trading way back then. This is the story of the Aboriginal people of the south coast of New South Wales. Mutton fish, or abalone, is a subsistence food -- easy to find and harvest, extremely rich in energy, and accessible for as long as the beaches are freely open to all. The people of the south coast of NSW have a long and complex relationship with the coastal environment; one that has nurtured them for thousands of years. Mutton Fish, unique in its breadth and accessibility, seeks to tell of this relationship and what has happened to the south coast people as their access to the coastal resources has been progressively restricted by European competition. The authors present a thoroughly researched history which includes interviews with Koori people who have participated in the traditional as well as the modern fishing practices in the south coast of NSW. Mutton Fish also introduces the current issues of Indigenous cultural practice versus white law, and the story of how it has come about. { 118pp, 155x230mm, April 2005; PB, £13.50, 0855754826:9780855754822 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| NO ORDINARY JUDGMENT [Nonie Sharp] This is the inside story of the Mabo case, a unique court drama where rights and interests previously unknown to Anglo-Australian law came to be recognised by the High Court of Australia. In far north-east Australia lie the homelands of the Meriam, a dynamic seafaring, fishing and gardening people. They explained in court, often eloquently, how their 'cultural way' retains a fidelity to distinctive principles while also accommodating new ideas and techniques. In the name of Meriam law they also defended their right to land passed between generations by the spoken word. Their right to land carries with it a moral and practical responsibility to other Meriam and to the land itself. Meriam culture, often diminished in the hearing of evidence, has an original contribution to make to future Meriam, to the rest of Australia and to the world. In exploring the role of native title in the reshaping of Australian identity, some of the deeper questions of cultural diversity and self-determination are identified. { 290pp, 180x260mm, January 1996; PB, £18.99, 0855752874:9780855752873 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| PADDY'S ROAD : Life Stories of Patrick Dodson [Kevin Keeffe] While Patrick Dodson's bearded image is well known, the remarkable history of this outstanding Aboriginal leader has never before been told. In "Paddy's Road", Kevin Keeffe brings us stories of Dodson's life woven from interviews, government archives and family stories. This source material and Keeffe's political, cultural and spiritual beliefs of Australia's first Aboriginal Catholic priest, land rights activist, Royal Commissioner and founder of Australia's reconciliation movement. "Paddy's Road" shares the story of Patrick Dodson's life and extraordinary family history. From the moment of colonisation in the Kimberleys to the era of native title, from pearling to pastoralism, through missions and institutions, this Aboriginal family has survived an uncaring and intrusive state system. Dodson's grandparents were denied their inheritance, his mother forcibly relocated, his father imprisoned and his siblings detained. His family was forced to flee from the laws and systems set up to control their lives, to the Northern Territory, only to meet tragedy and loss. Along the road, Patrick and his family have` maintained relationships with non-Aboriginal Australians of goodwill and compassion who have shared their journey, affirming what they had in common, rather than what set them apart. This background shaped an outstanding life and a commitment to reconciliation. This book offers the history of one Press family, the biography of one man and a powerful story of an Australian life. { 387pp, 180x260mm, January 2003; HB, £26.99, 0855754486:9780855754488 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| PAINT ME BLACK : Memories of Croker Island & Other Journeys [Claire Henty-Gebert] Claire Henty-Gebert's life is remarkable and inspiring. Born in the late 1930s, the daughter of a white settler and an Alyawarra woman, Claire was four years old when she was taken to the Bungalow mission in Alice Springs. Much of her young life was spent on the newly formed Croker Island mission and she recalls happy days in the care of compassionate missionaries. Sent south to escape the threat from Japanese fighters during World War Two, Claire later returned to Croker Island and married. Inspired by others, Claire traced her Aboriginal family, however; she was never to meet her mother. Claire's reminiscences and a wide selection of photos combine here with conventional documentary sources, cultural knowledge and people’s memories. { 72pp, 140x215mm, December 2005; PB, £16.50, 0855753994:9780855753993 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| POWER OF KNOWLEDGE : The Resonance of Tradition [Luke Taylor, Graeme K Ward, Graham Henderson, Richard Davis & Lynley A Wallis] This book offers a ground-breaking critique of the concept of 'tradition' as it has been applied in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context. The authors offer a refreshing new style of analysis. In writing that is rich in detail, strong in analysis and informed by their research experience, they argue for a deeper appreciation of the creativity inherent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social life, and the way that knowledge is constructed and deployed in complex intercultural contexts in contemporary Australia. Each chapter draws on detailed local inter-cultural information which include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land and sea ownership and management, native title processes, service delivery arrangements for health and outstation management, and representations in art, song and broadcasting. In each arena there are multiple engagements with broad global processes. The advent of Native Title legislation has led Indigenous communities across the country being required to demonstrate their 'traditional' connections to country. For many, their experiences of these processes are increasingly at odds with the complex inter-cultural realities of their lives. They feel the constraining effect of outmoded frameworks of 'tradition' in legislation and policy where social and cultural innovation are characterised as inauthentic. The book draws together key scholars in Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander social research. The authors provide productive ways of characterising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social life and develop a multi-disciplinary theoretical critique to the concept of tradition. { 246pp, 140x215mm, December 2005; PB, £18.99, 0855754842:9780855754846 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| RAIN FLOWER [Mary Duroux] Ages 6 to 10 years. The night and day bush animals live happily together in a beautiful valley of sweet grass and cool water. But one spring the rain didn't come and their waterhole dried up. This is a delightful adventure story about the journey the animals make to find the Rain Flower that will fill the rivers and waterholes of the bush. A read-aloud and first reader. { 22pp, 150x210mm, October 2005; PB, £7.99, 0855754672:9780855754679 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| REACHING BACK : Queensland Aboriginal People Recall Early Days at Tarrabah Mission [Judy Thomson (ed)] Taking us back to Yarrabah Mission, two generations of Aboriginal people relive the days in Queensland under the Act. They recall dormitory and school life, marriage and work at the mission, the struggle for survival during the Depression years and the loss of their language and culture. { 136pp, 170x240mm, January 1989; PB, £10.99, 0855752076:9780855752071 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| READING DOCTORS' WRITING : Race, Politics & Power in Indigenous Health Research 1870-1969 [David Piers Thomas] This is an important book for every Australian who reads or writes health research about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The way researchers write about Indigenous peoples in medical journals matters. These representations have influenced the way all Australians -- indigenous and non-Indigenous -- think about Indigenous peoples and their health and illnesses. Repeatedly labelled as an inferior race, many Indigenous peoples' lives have been diminished. Access to good health care was considered only minimally important because most doctors read, wrote and believed that the demise of the Aboriginal race was inevitable. Medical representations of Indigenous people as passive, powerless victims facilitated the denial of their chance to have a say in their own future. The book is not just a story about medical progress. Medical research was influenced by the politics of colonialism -- the nationalist politics associated Federation; and most importantly by the politics of race, racism and anti-racism. This social and political colonial context rendered these past representations of Indigenous people plausible to earlier medical readers but not inevitable. This history of Indigenous health research fuels the suspicion of researchers and research felt by Indigenous people today. The book invites those involved in health research about Indigenous people to confront rather than evade the history and politics of their work. Although not easy, this should lead, ultimately, to better Indigenous health research. { 209pp, 205x270mm, December 2004; PB, £16.50, 0855754583:9780855754587 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| REJECTING COLONIALISM : Ongoing struggles in the Torres Strait [Elizabeth Osborne] Osborne focuses on the Torres Strait Islander peoples' evolving struggles for recognition of their unique Indigenous island identities. She foregrounds the voices of the Torres Strait Islanders themselves as views were rarely sought nor recorded from the arrival of outside intervention in the 1840s up to the 1970s. Osborne records the peoples' collective passive resistance as well as the successful Border No Change protest. In more recent years the Islanders have refined their skills in dealing with political leaders and have used the media to reach a wider audience. The local newspaper and radio station are now platforms for lively discussion. As governmental policies became less dismissive of Indigenous aspirations and concern for Indigenous welfare increased, Osborne explores the debates centring on the Islanders' struggle to recover their rights to their land, sea, fish resources, and decision making for their own wellbeing. { 272pp, 155x235mm, March 2009; PB, £21.50, 0855756624:9780855756628 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| RETURN TO PALM ISLAND [Bill Rosser] In 1976, Bill Rosser visited friends on Palm Island and was shocked at the restrictions the Aboriginal people living there were forced to endure. He recorded their lives and stories in his first book, "This is Palm Island". In the 1980s, Rosser went back to Palm Island and this book is an account of his experiences and the changes he saw in both the people and the place. { 147pp, 140x215mm, January 1995; PB, £13.50, 0855752440:9780855752446 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ROAD TO AUSTRALIA : Memoirs [Vladimir Kabo] The road to Australia was a very long one indeed for Russian ethnographer -- Vladimir Kabo whose lifetime passion has been the study of this comment's Aboriginal people. Continually denied permission to travel abroad for over 30 years, I dreamed of seeing Australia with my own eyes. At last, in 1990, came the opportunity -- and the vital passport. This eventful memoir records Vladimir Kabo's early years and education, his time at the front in the Second World War and his banishment to a labour camp during which period he began to formulate his theories about early human society. After 'rehabilitation' he was finally able to begin his life's work in the St Petersburg museum among its artefact treasures from Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. Perestroika in the late 1980s brought Australian visitors, like Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), and also the possibility of a new life in the country he had studied for so many years. An afterward by archaeologist Rhys Jones provides an appreciation of Vladimir Kabo 's scholarly work within the context of Soviet anthropological theory and Australian Aboriginal ethnography. { 326pp, 150x210mm, January 1998; PB, £18.99, 0855753129:9780855753122 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| ROB RILEY : An Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice [Quentin Beresford] Widely regarded as one of the great Aboriginal leaders of the modern era, Rob Riley was at the centre of debates that have polarised views on race relations in Australia: national land rights, the treaty, deaths in custody, self-determination, the justice system, native title and the Stolen Generations. He tragically took his own life in 1996, weighed down by the unresolved traumas of his exposure to institutionalisation, segregation and racism, and his sense of betrayal by the Australian political system to deliver justice to Aboriginal people. His death shocked community leaders and ordinary citizens alike. Set against the tumultuous background of racial politics in an unreconciled nation, the book explores Rob's rise and influence as an Aboriginal activist. Drawing on perspectives from history, politics and psychology, this work explores Rob's life as a 'moral protester' and the challenges he confronted in trying to change the destiny of a nation. Rob Riley's belief that he had failed in this quest raises profound questions about the legacy of past racial policies, the extent of institutionalised racism in Australia and the reluctance of Australia’s politicians to show leadership on race. Much of Riley's life was a triumph of the human spirit against great adversity, and this legacy remains. { 374pp, 155x230mm, January 2006; PB, £21.50, 0855755024:9780855755027 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| SETTLEMENT : A History of Australian Indigenous Housing [Peter Read (ed)] What were houses like for Indigenous people living in rural Western Australia in the 1960s, Redfern and Launceston in the 1970s, in Central Australia in the 1980s, in outback New South Wales in the 1990s? This timely book encompasses the whole history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing -- from the multiplicity of shelters used in pre-invasion times to. the extraordinary cottages built by Victorian missionaries, through the dreaded children's dormitory to the compound and its terrors of disease and overcrowding. Modern themes are also explored -- gendered housing, family-friendly prisons, self-built houses, government programs, and advanced. designs for health and durability. { 284pp, 215x280mm, January 2000; PB, £18.99, 0855753633:9780855753634 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| SOMETHING SPECIAL : The Inside Story of the Katherine West Health Board [Katherine West] This story that shows the Aboriginal people of the Katherine West Region knew their own health needs best, and had the ability to make the best decisions about these needs. This story tells of the courage of the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments in committing substantial sums of money, normally provided through their own bureaucracies, to an experimental model of health servicing. t tells of the absolute commitment of the Katherine West Health Board and its staff to finding the best possible mix of services for the communities they served -- integrating their responses to immediate and practical concerns with equal regard to the legacies of a complex history. This is a story of success achieved through innovation and cooperation, and above all a story of something very special. { 132pp, 180x260mm, August 2003; SB, £12.50, 0855754451:9780855754457 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| SONGS OF DOUGIE YOUNG CD A collection of songs by the late Aboriginal singer Dougie Young, who began writing and performing around Wilcannia and western New South Wales in the 1950s and '60s. His songs tell of the life of Aboriginal people in Wilcannia -- and also explore Aboriginality in a way that was quite original for the time, touching on oppression, racism and land rights. Approximate running time: 35 minutes. { January 2007; CD, £7.99, 0855756551:9780855756550 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| STARS OF TAGAI : The Torres Strait Islanders [Nonie Sharp] "Stars of Tagai" creates a picture of a unique sea culture rich in meanings and custom. The author's observations of Islander life over the past fourteen years join with the life stories of Islanders so giving depth to the book's theme: how conservation of cultural tradition underlies a process of renewal. The rhythm of Islanders' lives follows the movement of the constellation Tagai, a mythical hero who stands in a canoe; his left hand, the Southern Cross, holds a fish spear. The stars of Tagai usher in seasonal changes and are a guide to voyaging and cultivating throughout the Torres Strait. The book explores four meanings of the Tagai myth in the life of the Islanders since the mid-nineteenth century. Its main focus is a growing identity and self-awareness. This is the first book to examine the social issues involved in the historic Mabo case and to give a picture of the fabric of life of the Mariam people of the Murray Islands, a subgroup of the Torres Strait Islanders. It considers local historical precedents for current moves for political autonomy, examines the various reasons behind moves for sovereignty in the 1980s, and considers future options. { 321pp, 180x260mm, January 1993; PB, £16.50, 0855752386:9780855752385 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| SWINGING THE BILLY : Indigenous & Other Styles of Australian Bush Cooking [Kingsley Palmer] A cookbook with a difference! This explores in fascinating detail Australian Indigenous methods of food preparation and cooking with a down to earth practical guide on how to prepare more conventional recipes. Of great interest to a wide range of readers, particularly those wishing to extend their knowledge of Australian Indigenous culture or in travelling or exploring the outback. { 79pp, 175x210mm, January 1999; PB, £13.50, 085575317X:9780855753177 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TAKE THIS CHILD... : From Kahlin Compound to the Retta Dixon Children's Home [Barbara Cummings] This book describes the impact of institutionalisation on part-Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. It focuses on a section of Kahlin Compound to which Aboriginal people were brought from all over the Top End, as a result of the 'selected breeding program' initiated by the Commonwealth under the Aborigines Act of 1911. Kahlin Compound was later transferred to Bagot Reserve, a portion of which was set aside as the Retta Dixon Children's Home. The Home, run by the Aborigines Inland Mission, operated until 1980 and had severe consequences for the young people forced to live there. This book provides an account of the views of some of those who grew up under the dormitory system. It also includes detailed analysis of the social and political forces which resulted in the displacement of part-Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. This is the first time that such an investigation, which combines the personal and the political, has been undertaken. { 139pp, 170x245mm, January 1990; PB, £11.99, 0855752084:9780855752088 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TEN HOURS IN A LIFETIME : Nancy de Vries' Journey Home [Nancy de Vries, Gaynor Macdonald, Jane Mears & Anna Nettheim] Nancy de Vries succeeded against all odds. Taken from her mother as a baby she was placed in state care. Defying the authorities' expectations, she became a pioneering Indigenous academic, a leader in Aboriginal health services, and was chosen to address the NSW Parliament on behalf of the stolen generations. Aged 55 she met her mother, Ruby: 'It may have been 10 hours in a lifetime, but it was 10 hours they never wanted me to have with her'. "Ten Hours in a Lifetime" documents a history of trauma and oppression through both personal and institutional lenses. Much more than a biography, this book takes the reader on a journey that makes it impossible to think about people of the Stolen Generations in the same way again. Through a unique collaboration, de Vries and her non-Indigenous authors' challenge readers to consider what it means to bear witness. They confront us with both the difficulty and necessity of our own response. { 256pp, 155x235mm, June 2009; PB, £18.99, 0855755474:9780855755478 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| THINKING BLACK : William Cooper & the Australian Aborigines' League [Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus] Most non-Indigenous Australians know of Charles Perkins. Many are familiar with a few other Aboriginal leaders. Yet few have heard of William Cooper, one of the most important Aboriginal leaders in Australia's history. "Thinking Black" tells the story of Cooper and the Australian Aborigines' League, and their campaign for Aboriginal people's rights. Through petitions to government, letters to other campaigners and organisations, and entreaties to friends and well-wishers, the book reveals their passionate struggle against dispossession and displacement, the denial of rights, and their fight to be citizens in their own country. Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus document the circumstances behind the most significant moments in Cooper's political career -- his famous 1933 petition to King George V, his call for a 'Day of Mourning' in 1938, the walk-off from Cummeragunja in 1939 and his opposition to an Aboriginal regiment in 1939. It explores the principles Cooper drew on in his campaigning, not least his 'Letter from an Educated Black', surely one of the most intriguing political testaments by an Australian leader. "Thinking Black" sheds new light on the history of what it has meant to be Aboriginal in modern Australia. It reveals the rich and varied cultural traditions, both Aboriginal and British, religious and secular, that have informed Aboriginal people's battle for justice, and their vision of equality in Australia of two peoples: equal yet distinct. { 144pp, 140x215mm, December 2004; PB, £18.99, 0855754591:9780855754594 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER WOMEN & THE PACIFIC WAR [Dr Elizabeth Osborne] Between 1942 and 1945, Torres Strait Islander women experienced the fears and uncertainties of living virtually on Australia's front line during the Pacific War. Some were forcibly evacuated with their children to the mainland, where they found themselves still restricted as to where and how they could live. Others were left on their tiny islands, deserted in the end by government and church, despite the constant threat of Japanese advance through the Torres Strait. Many of the women remember here that traumatic time: hiding from the bombers and watching the dogfights overhead, struggling to feed and clothe their families, and praying continually for the safe return of their men-folk and for peace again in their beloved island homes. { 270pp, 180x260mm, January 1997; PB, £18.99, 0855753137:9780855753139 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF THE TORRES STRAIT CD [Jeremy Beckett] This varied recording offers examples of some songs whose melodies have remained virtually the same since they were first recorded in 1898. Dance songs and funeral chants from Murray Island with drum accompaniment and other instrumental demonstrations, music from other islands of the Torres Strait as well as some Papuan material are included. { January 2007; CD, £7.99, 085575656X:9780855756567 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TREATY -- LET'S GET IT RIGHT! : A Collection of Essays from Atsic's Treaty Think-Tank & Aiatsis This lively collection of essays from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissions treaty think tank and authors commissioned by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies was written to stimulate discussion and debate about a treaty. The publication reflects the complexity of the issues needing to be resolved on the road to a treaty and emanates from a reconciliation convention attended by Aboriginal leaders in Melbourne in May 2000. In the past three years promotional material has been widely distributed, workshops held and public lectures and forums convened. The campaign is ongoing, and governments, industry, schools, universities and others have had the chance to engage and contribute. Subjects covered include: sovereignty constitutional law relevance of a treaty in the Torres Strait perspective's from Indigenous youth and concepts of citizenry and identity. { 222pp, 180x260mm, December 2004; PB, £10.99, 0855754338:9780855754334 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| TRUSTEES ON TRIAL : Recovering the Stolen Wages [Rosalind Kidd] In her startling book, Rosalind Kidd uses official correspondence to reveal the extraordinary extent of government controls over Aboriginal wages, savings, endowments and pensions in twentieth century Queensland. In a disturbing indictment of the government's $4000 reparations offer, Kidd unpicks official dealings on the huge trust funds compiled from private income and community endeavours, showing how governments used these finances to their advantage, while families and communises struggled in poverty. Casting the evidence in terms of national and international litigation, particularly cases relating to government accountability for Indigenous interests, Kidd makes a powerful case that the Queensland government should be held to the same standards of accountability and redress as any major financial institution. "Trustees on Trial" is a timely warning for all other Australian jurisdictions to consider their liability for Aboriginal money taken in trust. { 212pp, 155x230mm, September 2006; PB, £21.50, 0855755466:9780855755461 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| UNCOMMON GROUND : White Women in Aboriginal History [Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins & Fiona Paisley (eds)] "Uncommon Ground" is a unique exploration of the complex roles played by white women in Australian Indigenous histories. It showcases some of the latest and most interesting work in Australia on gender and cross-cultural history. Within a particular historical context, each chapter highlights the work of a woman involved in Aboriginal issues, and with Aboriginal people. Well-known as well as less prominent public figures, are included. There's a mixture of activists, writers, and workers in missionary groups and administration as well as Pearl Gibbs, the leading Aboriginal woman activist who worked closely with contemporary white feminists. Four thematic parts include: 'The Home Front' which highlights the prominence of the 'home' as institution as well as a refuge in such cross-cultural relationships; 'Shared Struggle' which explores collaborative relationships; 'Public Lives' which addresses white women who took on public roles with regard to Aboriginal issues; and 'Knowing the Aborigines' which covers the ambiguous roles played by white women who claimed the knowledge to represent Aboriginal people and issues, and who have had various impacts upon Aboriginal histories as a result. These lively and critical biographical studies trace the motivations, actions and impact of these women. The Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors, both women and men, engage with some difficult yet fascinating questions of race, gender and identity in Aboriginal history. { 279pp, 155x230mm, December 2005; PB, £18.99, 0855754850:9780855754853 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| UNFINISHED CONSTITUTIONAL BUSINESS? : Rethinking Indigenous Self-Determination [Barbara Ann Hocking (ed)] Indigenous self-determination is the recognised right of all peoples to freely determine their political status, and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. "Unfinished Constitutional Business" offers fresh insights into the ways Indigenous peoples can chart their own course and realise self-determination. The right to self-determination remains the most hotly contested issue in the UN Working Group's Draft Declaration: because the history of colonisation is emotionally charged, the issue has been clouded by a rhetoric that has sometimes obstructed analysis. This book provides a comprehensive international exploration of Indigenous self-determination. It argues that patterns are emerging that point to effective strategies that will allow Indigenous peoples to realise their goals. The UN Working Group's definition of Indigenous peoples has been influenced by these different experiences of colonisation. Diverse jurisdictions are examined as it surveys both common law and civil law systems: from the Saami Parliaments of Scandinavia, to the Maori seats in the New Zealand Parliament, of the Australian Indigenous peoples struggle for native title and self-governance, to the Canadian experience in territorial governance. A selection of international authors challenge readers to (re)consider the meanings of self-determination and their implic-ations for Indigenous peoples in different contexts. { 293pp, 155x230mm, September 2005; PB, £21.50, 0855754664:9780855754662 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| UNWRITTEN HISTORIES [Craig Cormick] In this witty and satirical revisiting of Australia's heroic past, Craig Cormick rediscovers the contributions of indigenous Australians that have always remained unrecorded and unacknowledged, Australia's unwritten histories. Drawing on original records of the time, he has turned the spotlight away from its traditional focus to illuminate those whom history had forgotten. Great explorers, teachers, warriors and dreamers, who were there when Banks first saw a banksia or when Burke and Wills staggered on from Coopers Creek, but have vanished simply because their stories were unrecorded, 'now repopulate these short stories. The old heroes confess their darkest secrets, facing their own culpability in the destruction of societies and cultures, or blindly march towards their own fame, stamping firmly on law, conscience, and their own better judgement in the process. Make way for a new history of Australia, in w hich Cook fancies an ice-cream, Kennedy is mobbed by the press, and Windradvne and landamarra. Wooredy and Trugernanna. Jacket' Jacket' and Johnny Mullagh act out the real past. The combination of delicious humour and fantasy, and the true horror that must arise from any reading of our indigenous history, makes this collection at once playful and mordant, funny and frightening, and an exciting new work of Australian fiction. { 188pp, 140x215mm, January 1998; PB, £13.50, 0855753161:9780855753160 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| VERY BIG JOURNEY : My Life as I Remember It [Hilda Jarman Muir] When that good old horse took me away from Borroloola on the long journey to Darwin, it changed my life forever ... I stopped being an Aboriginal girl and became a half-caste girl. From someone who had had so much, I was now some -had nothing, with no past and an unknown future. Hilda Muir was born on the very frontier of modern Australia near the outback town of Borroloola in the about 1920. Her early life was spent roaming the Gulf Country hunting and gathering with her family. Her mother was a Yanyuwa person, and so was Hilda. Known to the clan as Jarman, it mattered little that her father was an unknown white man. This small girl had a name, a loving family, and a secure Aboriginal identity. This book tells of Hilda's bush childhood, and her force dremoval from a loving family to the rigours of life in the Kahlin Home for half-caste children. Hilda grew up to marry the love of her life, Billy Muir, and then had to learn to deal with the demands -of a growing family and evacuation to Brisbane during the Second World War. Back in Darwin -- and after the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, Hilda struggled to find her place in the world again. In 1995, Hilda Muir was one of those chosen to present a writ to the High Court on behalf of her fellow stolen-generation, asserting that the removals were illegal as well as immoral. In 1997 the writ was rejected by the High Court. In 2000 Hilda finally travelled back to her Yanyuwa land and v was recognised as an owner and custodian of that country. Today Hilda Muir. her Aboriginal children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are living reminders that governments cannot always shape human lives in ways they might wish. { 156pp, 140x215mm, January 2004; PB, £16.50, 0855753978:9780855753979 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| WHITE CHRIST, BLACK CROSS : The Emergence of a Black Church [Noel Loos] Arthur Malcolm, a stocky Aboriginal man in a maroon Fairmont, was in tears as the cavalcade drove towards Yarrabah Aboriginal community. It was October 1985 and the Yarrabah people were cheering him as he returned to the community as their new bishop, the first Aboriginal bishop in the Anglican Church. In "White Christ, Black Cross" Noel Loos interweaves his own more than twenty years' personal experience with Yarrabah and other Queensland Aboriginal communities along with the voices of Aboriginal people, missionaries, and those who sat in the pews and on subcommittees and Boards in the cities, removed from the reality of the missions. Loos embeds the historical influences and impacts of the missions in shaping Christianity in Aboriginal Australia in the reality of frontier violence, government control, segregation and neglect. Aboriginal people on the missions responded to white Christianity as part of their enforced cultural change. As control diminished, Aboriginal people responded more overtly and autonomously: some regarding Christianity as irrelevant, others adopting it in culturally satisfying ways. Through the Australian Board of Missions, the Church of England sought to convert Aboriginal people into a Europeanised compliant sub-caste, with the separation of children from their families the first step. However, increasingly the Church found itself embroiled in emerging broader social issues and changing government policies. Loos believes its support of Ernest Gribble's exposure of the 1926 Forrest River massacres indirectly set off the current `history wars'. Nowadays, Yarrabah, one of the old mission communities, has become a centre of Christian revival, expressing an Aboriginal understanding and spirituality. { 216pp, 155x230mm, October 2007; PB, £21.50, 0855755539:9780855755539 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| WHITENING RACE : Essays in Social & Cultural Criticism [Aileen Moreton-Robinson (ed)] "Whitening Race" comes to fruition at a time in world history and global politics when questions about race require critical investigation and engagement. Since the 1990s international scholars have developed a powerful cultural critique by making whiteness an analytical object of research. Whiteness has become the invisible norm against which other races are judged in the construction of identity, representation, subjectivity, nationalism and the law. With its focus on Australia, the book engages with relations between migration, Indigenous dispossession and whiteness. It creates a new intellectual space that investigates the nature of racialised conditions and their role in reproducing colonising relations in Australia. Aileen Moreton-Robinson has brought together scholars from a range of disciplines: philosophy, cultural and gender studies, education, social work, sociology and literary studies. All engage critically with the location of the social and discursive construction of whiteness. { 303pp, 140x215mm, December 2004; PB, £18.99, 0855754656:9780855754655 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| WRITING NEVER ARRIVES NAKED : Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia [Penny van Toorn] In "Writing Never Arrives Naked", Penny van Toorn engages our minds and hearts. In this academically innovative book she reveals the resourceful and often poignant ways that Indigenous Australians involved themselves in the colonisers' paper culture. The first Aboriginal readers were children stolen from the clans around Sydney Harbour. The first Aboriginal author was Bennelong -- a stolen adult. From the early years of colonisation, Aboriginal people used written texts to negotiate a changing world, to challenge their oppressors, protect country and kin, and occasionally for economic gain. Van Toorn argues that Aboriginal people were curious about books and papers, and in time began to integrate letters of the alphabet into their graphic traditions. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Aboriginal people played key roles in translating the Bible, and made their political views known in community and regional newspapers. They also sent numerous letters and petitions to political figures, including Queen Victoria. Penny van Toorn challenges the established notion that the colonists' paper culture superseded Indigenous oral cultures. She argues that Indigenous communities developed their own cultures of reading and writing, which involved a complex interplay between their own social protocols and the practices of literacy introduced by the British. Many distinctive features of Aboriginal writing today were shaped by the cultural, socio-political and institutional conditions in which Aboriginal people were living in colonial times. { 270pp, 155x230mm, July 2006; PB, £21.50, 085575544X:9780855755447 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| WUNAMBI : The Water Snake [May L O'Brien] Ages 4 to 8 years. Yelling and shouting, the children chased each other in and out of the water... They didn't realise that they were sharing the water with a tired old Wunambi. Find out what happens when his rest is disturbed. Wunambi the water snake roamed the land when the earth was young creating big tracks that became the rivers and creeks. He is still an important part of Aboriginal life today. { 29pp, 210x215mm, January 1991; PB, £12.50, 0855755008:9780855755003 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |
| YUENDUMU EVERYDAY : Intimacy, immediacy & mobility in a remote Aboriginal settlement [Yasmine Musharbash] This book explores intimacy, immediacy and mobility as the core principles underpinning contemporary everyday life in a central Australian Aboriginal settlement. It analyses an everyday shaped through the interplay between a not so distant hunter-gatherer past and the realities of living in a first world nation-state by considering such apparently mundane matters as: What is a camp? How does that relate to houses? Who sleeps where, and next to whom? Why does this constantly change? What and where are the public/private boundaries? And most importantly: How do Indigenous people relate to each other? Employing a refreshingly readable writing style, Musharbash includes rich vignettes, including narrative portraits of five Warlpiri women. Musharbash's descriptions and analyses of their actions and the situations they find themselves in, transcend the general and illuminate the personal. She invites readers to ponder the questions raised by the book, not just at an abstract level, but as they relate to people's actual lives. In doing so, it expands our understandings of Indigenous Australia. { 272pp, 140x215mm, December 2008; PB, £18.99, 0855756616:9780855756611 , Aboriginal Studies Press } |