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On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read out. This clear and urgent call for reform to the community from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples asked for the establishment of a First Nations Voice to Parliament protected in the constitution and a process of agreement-making and truth-telling. Voice. Treaty. Truth. What was the journey to this point? What do Australians need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart? And how can these reforms be achieved?
Australia is set to vote on a referendum to enshrine a First Nations voice in the constitution as a result of the 2022 federal election. In this book, Thomas focuses on the stories of First Nations People, including some new voices, looking at the truth of our past and present, and hopes for a better future. Importantly, he shares with you – the Australian public – how we all have the power to make change. The campaign for Voice Treaty Truth, starting with a referendum, is an opportunity to right some of the wrongs, give First Nations People a seat at the table, and to recognise that we are a nation with over 60,000 years of continuous culture.
Songlines are an archive for powerful knowledges that ensured Australia's many Indigenous cultures flourished for over 60,000 years. Much more than a navigational path in the cartographic sense, these vast and robust stores of information are encoded through song, story, dance, art and ceremony, rather than simply recorded in writing. Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, Songlines: The Power and Promise offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they could help all peoples thrive into the future. This book invites readers to understand a remarkable way for storing knowledge in memory by adapting song, art, and most importantly, Country, into their lives.
What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true. For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of technologies. Managed through fire and selective harvesting and replanting, the longevity and intricacy of these partnerships are testament to the ingenuity and depth of Indigenous first knowledges
The story of an urban-based high achieving Wiradyuri woman working to break down stereotypes and build bridges between black and white Australia. I'm Aboriginal. I'm just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be. What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss gives a firsthand account of her experiences as a woman with a Wiradyuri mother and Austrian father. Anita explains the development of her activist consciousness, how she strives to be happy and healthy, and the work she undertakes every day to ensure the world she leaves behind will be more equitable and understanding than it is today.
Australia is dotted with memorials to soldiers who fought in wars overseas, but there are no official commemorations of the battles fought on Australian soil between Aborigines and white colonists. Delving into why it is more controversial to talk about the frontier war now than it was 100 years ago, Forgotten War continues the story told in Henry Reynolds; seminal book The Other Side of the Frontier, which argues that the settlement of Australia had a high level of violence and conflict that people chose to ignore. That book prompted a flowering of research and fieldwork that Reynolds draws on here to give a thorough and systematic account of what caused the frontier wars, how many people died, and whether the colonists themselves saw frontier conflict as a form of warfare. This powerful book makes it clear that there can be no reconciliation in Australia without acknowledging the wars fought on its own soil.
Written at the request of the Aboriginal healers Holz worked with, this book reveals the beliefs and principles of the 60,000-year-old healing system of the Aborigines of Australia, the world's oldest continuous culture. Chronicling the step-by-step process that led to his miraculous recovery, he explains the role played by thought in the creation of health or disease and details the five essential steps in the Aboriginal healing process. He explores the use of dreamtime, spirit guides, and telepathy to discover and reprogram the subconscious motivations behind illness--a process that enacts healing at the cellular and the soul level, where the root of physical illness is found.
Talking to my country' is Stan Grant's very personal meditation on race, identity and history. It is that rare and special book that talks to every Australian about their country - what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?
In the near future Australia is about to experience colonisation once more. What have we learned from our past? A daring debut novel from the winner of the 2016 black&write! writing fellowship. Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running.'The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to have a nation of peace, and to bring the savages into line. Families are torn apart, reeducation is enforced. This rich land will provide for all.This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history. This TERRA NULLIUS is something new, but all too familiar.
Tongerlongeter is an epic story of resistance, sorrow and survival. Leader of the Oyster Bay nation of south-east Tasmania in the 1820s and '30s, Tongerlongeter and his allies prosecuted the most effective frontier resistance ever mounted on Australian soil, inflicting some 354 casualties. His brilliant campaign inspired terror throughout the colony, forcing Govenor George Arthur to counter with a massive military operation in 1830. Tongerlongeter escaped by the cumulative losses had taken their toll. On New Year's Eve 1831, having lost his arm, his country, and all but 25 of his people, the chief agreed to an armistace. In exile on Flinders Island, Tongerlongeter united remnant tribes and came the settlement's 'King' - a beacon of hope in a hopeless situation.
What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole continent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that 'peaceful settlement' was a fiction? Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from legal and historical assumptions in a book that's about the present as much as the past. This book shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.
This stunning book is a biography and a generous sharing of Yorna's Culture and traditional beliefs. Explore the meaning of Country, Lalai ('Creation'), Wandjina, Woongudd (the 'Snake'), in the author's Country in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Full of extraordinary images of the landscape, rock art, stone arrangements and the artist's paintings, Yornadaiyn Woolagoodja is a feast for anyone interested in this rich Cultural heritage. Special feature boxes on Joonba ('Corroborree'), Dambimangari community Native Title, Permisson and Respect, Sugarbag, Ancestors' Bones, Collecting Turtle and many more.
Our eyes have been drawn away from the skies to our screens. We no longer look to the stars to forecast the weather, predict the seasons or plant our gardens. Most of us cannot even see the Milky Way. But First Nations Elders around the world still maintain this knowledge, and there is much we can learn from them.
Guided by six First Nations Elders, Duane Hamacher takes us on a journey across space and time to reveal the wisdom of the first astronomers. These living systems of knowledge challenge conventional ideas about the nature of science and the longevity of oral tradition. Indigenous science is dynamic, adapting to changes in the skies and on Earth, pointing the way for a world facing the profound disruptions of climate change.
True Tracks is a ground-breaking work that paves the way for the respectful and ethical engagement with Indigenous knowledges and cultures. Combining real-world cases and personal stories, award-winning Meriam/Wuthathi lawyer Dr Terri Janke draws on twenty years of professional experience to inform and inspire leaders across many industries; from art and architecture, to film and publishing, dance, science and tourism.
How will your project affect and involve Indigenous communities? What Indigenous materials and knowledge are you using? Who owns Indigenous languages? True Tracks helps answer these questions and many more, and provides invaluable guidelines that enable Indigenous peoples to actively practise, manage and strengthen their cultural life and empower future generations.
The Little Red Yellow Black Book has established itself as the perfect starting point for those who want to learn about the rich cultures and histories of Australia's First Peoples. Written from an Indigenous perspective, this highly illustrated and accessible introduction covers various topics from history, culture and the Arts, through to activism and reconciliation.
Readers will learn about the significant contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made, and continue to make, to the Australian nation. Common stereotypes will be challenged, and the many struggles and triumphs that we've experienced as we've navigated through our shared histories will be revealed. Readers will also learn about some of the key concepts that underpin Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldviews, including concepts such as the Dreaming, the significance of Ancestral Heroes and Country.
The Torres Strait Islanders are Australia's 'other' indigenous minority. Their experience of colonialism and reaction to their position in Australian society provides a striking counterpoint to that of the Aborigines. The author applies many years of study and work among the Torres Strait Islanders to provide a new account of their changing world in the islands and their changing role in Australia.
A Melanesian people, the Torres Strait Islanders' cultural affinities originally lay with the Papuans to the north rather than the Aborigines to the south. But by the logic of European colonialism, they were made a part of the State of Queensland. The pearling industry has exploited their labour, but left them in occupation of their islands. The Queensland government has allowed them a degree of autonomy in local affairs which many would contrast with its approach to Aborigines.
"Pormpuraaw Stories, Art, Language" is a self published 170 page manuscript written by the Pormpuraaw community. Locals contributed 117 stories. Stories that describe everything from dream time, personal experiences, drover days and much more. It has a section describing our art practice and venues. It describes totems and gives our 3 local language names for each of them. It is a priceless legacy for the future of our community and a unique insight into Pormpuraaw culture.
A tiny outpost of colonial administration is planted on the desolate mudflats of King Sound, at Derby. Leases are marked on a map covering huge areas, and the push into the north begins. Vast herds of cattle and sheep move across the land and with it, a new future. In the remote Kimberley, in the late nineteenth century, on the ancient lands of the Bunuba, the last stages of an invasion are about to be played out. Amidst the ensuing chaos and turmoil, extraordinary relationships grow.
The thrilling story of the great warrior, Jandamarra, who turned from police assistant to resistance fighter. Thought to be unstoppable, he led the Bunuba against the forces invading their land. A legend, forever etched into the history of the Kimberley, Jandamarra's courage and fighting spirit made him one of the region's most wanted men.
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 languages 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'; 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.
This is my knowledge. It has been handed down to me from my grandmothers and grandfathers, my mothers and my fathers. I am sharing it with you because I want people to know about my life.’
Ninu Grandmothers’ Law is a definitive account of a traditional lifestyle and way of thinking. Accompanied by exceptional archival photographs, it is an evocative, compelling chronicle and cultural philosophy of a time almost forgotten. Part biography, part customs manual and food guide, part traditional social history and women’s customs and governance, Ninu Grandmothers’ Law is a rare testament to one woman’s advocacy for her family, people and culture.
Traditional Healers of the Central Desert contains unique stories and imagery and primary source material: the ngangkari speak directly to the reader. Ngangkari are senior Aboriginal people authorised to speak publicly about Anangu (Western Desert language speaking Aboriginal people) culture and practices. It is accurate, authorised information about their work, in their own words.
The practice of traditional healing is still very much a part of contemporary Aboriginal society. The ngangkari currently employed at NPY Women's Council deliver treatments to people across a tri-state region of about 350,000 sq km, in more than 25 communities in SA, WA, and NT. Acknowledged, respected, and accepted, these ngangkari work collaboratively with hospitals and health professionals even beyond this region, working hand-in-hand with Western medical practitioners.
1787 takes a deep dive into the history of Australia before the arrival of the First Fleet. In 1787 the peoples of Australia were not simply living in a timeless ‘Dreamtime’, following the seasons, and waiting for colonisation by Britain in 1788.
By charting the encounters with Australia and its original people by several major groups of visitors, primarily the Portuguese, Dutch, Malay, French, and British from the late Middle Ages, 1787 reveals the stories of first encounters between Indigenous Australians and foreigners, placing Indigenous Australians back into our known history rather than a timeless pre-historical one. It’s a fascinating story that shifts focus away from post-colonial history and engages the reader in the eventful and lively stories of Australia as a vast and active land participating in a global history.
Soon we will all decide if and how Indigenous Australians will be recognised in the Constitution. In this essential book, several leading writers and thinkers provide a road map to recognition.
Starting with the Uluru Statement from the Heart, these eloquent essays show what constitutional recognition means, and what it could make possible- a political voice, a fairer relationship and a renewed appreciation of an ancient culture. With remarkable clarity and power, they traverse law, history and culture to map the path to change.
For generations, Indigenous Australians have possessed extensive knowledge about sustainable hunting and harvesting, seasonal changes in flora and fauna, predator-prey relationships, and fire management. Unfortunately, their expertise has often gone unrecognized and unappreciated by non-Aboriginal colonists, particularly in the south-east of Australia where Aboriginal culture was severely disrupted.
Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-eastern Australia, sheds light on historical records from early colonists who interacted with south-eastern Australian Aboriginal communities and documented their deep understanding of the environment, natural resources like water and plant and animal foods, medicine, and other aspects of their material world.
This text explores how the first inhabitants reached Australia over 50,000 years ago. Using archaelogical evidence and aboriginal oral traditions, the book tells the history of these people. It examines the ways in which the Aborigines adapted to and modified their environment, and how their art and culture developed. This revised edition incorporates information on recent archaelogical discoveries. It features a revision of the chapters on Pleistocene rock art and the extinction of the megafauna.
For perhaps fifty thousand years the Aboriginal people have lived, and lived well, in Australia. They have developed a unique knowledge of native plants and a deep understanding of the value of many animal products.
Bush Food is an exploration of these traditional skills and a compendium of the kinds of foods eaten by Aborigines. It indicates how food is caught or gathered, hunted or picked, how it is prepared and cooked, and what nutritional value it has. It considers, too, the use of natural products in traditional Aboriginal herbal medicine.
The Queensland frontier was more violent than any other Australian colony. From the first penal settlement at Moreton Bay in 1824, as white pastoralists moved into new parts of country, violence invariably followed. Tens of thousands of Aboriginals were killed on the Queensland frontier alone. The cover up began from the start: the authorities in Sydney and Brisbane didn't want to know, the Native Police did their deadly work without hindrance, and the pastoralists had every reason to keep it to themselves. Even today, what we know about the killing times is swept aside repeatedly in favour of the pioneer myth.
Following in the tracks of the pastoralists as they moved into new lands across the state in the 19th century, Timothy Bottoms identifies massacres, poisonings and other incidents, including many that no-one has documented in print before.
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing — behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
Deep Time Dreaming is about a slow shift in national consciousness. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and identity. It brings to life the deep time dreaming that has changed the way many Australians relate to their continent and its enduring, dynamic human history.
‘When John Mulvaney began his fieldwork in January 1956, it was widely believed that the first Australians had arrived on this continent only a few thousand years earlier. In the decades since, Australian history has been pushed back into the dizzying expanse of deep time. The human presence here has been revealed to be more ancient than that of Europe, and the Australian landscape, far from being terra nullius, is now recognised to be cultural as much as natural, imprinted with stories and law and shaped by the hands and firesticks of thousands of generations of Indigenous men and women.
In Discovering Aboriginal Plant Use, Clarke dips into his field journals to provide a rich account of journeys, as both anthropologist and ethnobotanist, that span the temperate, arid and tropical zones of Australia and neighbouring landmasses. He describes the cultural and natural heritage of each region, on the plants used by Aboriginal people that contribute to their distinctiveness.
There are many ways to explore a culture other than your own, and Clarke chose ethnobotany as the 'window' through which to gain insights into Aboriginal Australia. Ethnobotany is a diverse field that is concerned with investigating the relationships between human cultures and the flora. In the past, it was mainly used by scholars who studied the societies of hunter-gatherers and non-Western horticulturalists. Today, it is increasingly being used to document aspects of the lives of Indigenous peoples in a postcolonial world.
Here, largely in his own words, is the incredible story of Edward Koiki Mabo, from his childhood on the Island of Mer through to his struggle within the union cause and the black rights movement. Tragically, Mabo died just months before the historic High Court native-title decision that destroyed the concept of terra nullius forever.
Originally published by UQP in 1996, this new edition has been updated by Mabo's long-time friend historian Noel Loos. New photographs and a preface by esteemed film director Rachel Perkins give this book the new life it deserves. 'He was in the best sense a fighter for equal rights, a rebel, a free-thinker, a restless spirit, a reformer who saw far into the future and far into the past.' Dr Bryan Keon-Cohen AM QC
Delving deep into the Australian landscape and the environmental challenges we face, Fire Country is a powerful account from Indigenous land management expert Victor Steffensen on how the revival of Indigenous fire practices, including improved ’reading’ of country and undertaking ’cool burns’, could help to restore our nation.
Victor developed a passion for traditional cultural and ecological knowledge from a young age, but it was after leaving high school that Victor met two Elders who became his mentors, particularly to revive cultural burning. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire – with burning done in a controlled manner – for land care and healing.
First Footprints tells the epic story of Australia's Aboriginal people. It is a story of ancient life on the driest continent on earth through the greatest environmental changes experienced in human history: ice ages, extreme drought and inundating seas. It is chronicled through astonishing archaeological discoveries, ancient oral histories and the largest and oldest art galleries on earth.
Australia's first inhabitants were the first people to believe in an afterlife, cremate their dead, engrave representations of the human face, and depict human sound and emotion. They created new technologies, designed ornamentation, engaged in trade, and crafted the earliest documents of war. Ultimately, they developed a sustainable society based on shared religious tradition and far-reaching social networks across the length and breadth of Australia.
The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal families at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth. Here Aboriginal children were instructed in the ways of white society and forbidden to speak their native tongue. The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - escaped the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by Native Police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
Robbie knows bad things happen in Walgaree. But it's nothing to do with him. That's just the way the Aborigines have always been treated. In the summer of 1965 racial tensions in the town are at boiling point, and something headed Walgaree's way will blow things apart. It's time for Robbie to take a stand. Nothing will ever be the same.
What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, attempts to showcase as many diverse voices, experiences and stories as possible in order to answer that question. Each account reveals, to some degree, the impacts of invasion and colonisation – on language, on country, on ways of life, and on how people are treated daily in the community, the education system, the workplace and friendship groups.
Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside newly discovered voices of all ages, with experiences spanning coastal and desert regions, cities and remote communities. All of them speak to the heart – sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, and always demanding respect.
An atlas can represent - in graphic form - a pattern of human activities in space and time. This second edition of the award-winning Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia opens a window onto the landscape of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives, from over 60 000 years ago to the present time.
Each chapter has been extensively revised and updated by one or more experts in the field, under the general editorship of Bill Arthur and Frances Morphy of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. The maps, which form the book's core, are supplemented by explanatory text and numerous diagrams, photographs and illustrations, including Indigenous artworks.
Until recently, Aboriginal people have been subjected to mainly top-down development, which has proven damaging to communities. Mia Mia Aboriginal Community Development offers an alternative to such approaches, promoting cultural security in order to empower Aboriginal people to strengthen their own communities.
The authors take a multidisciplinary approach to the topics of Aboriginal community development, Aboriginal history, cultural security and community studies. This book includes chapters examining historical and contemporary Aboriginal conceptions of community development, and the effects of post-structuralism, post-modernism, globalisation and digital technology. As well as comprehensive analysis of community development in Aboriginal communities, it presents practical strategies and tools for improvement.
Recounting experiences from travels back to her grandmother's birthplace, this classic of Australian literature documents what started out as a tentative search for information about the author's family--and turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. Unearthing political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture, this moving account of a search for truth--into which a whole family is gradually drawn--results in the freeing of tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, finally allowing them to tell their own stories.
The extraordinary life of Big Bill Neidjie, one of Australia’s most respected elders and traditional land owners, is recounted in Old Man's Story. Despite being the last surviving speaker of the Gaagudju language, Neidjie was dedicated to sharing his story with future generations and educating the wider community about Aboriginal culture, even breaking with tradition to do so.
Over a two-year period, Neidjie granted photographer Mark Lang the rare opportunity to capture his thoughts on culture, family, community, and country, and the resulting stories are beautifully nuanced and told in his own words and rhythms. Lang's stunning landscape photographs of the places that Neidjie speaks about accompany the stories. Organized according to the seasons, Old Man's Story provides insight into the annual transformation of the landscape that was so integral to Neidjie's life.
This book fills an important gap in understanding the psychological impact of colonization on Indigenous Australians. Using cultural competence as a theoretical framework, it explores the nature of culture and worldviews, which permeates and integrates the book. It provides a convincing explanation of how colonization has affected Indigenous Australians, the role of psychology in this process, and ways forward to redress Indigenous disadvantage. A key emphasis is on ‘doing our own work', the essential role of critical reflection in trans-cultural communication.
The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Myall Creek was not the last time the colonial administration sought to apply the law equally to Aboriginal people and settlers, but it was the last time perpetrators of a massacre were convicted and hanged.
Marking its 180th anniversary, this book explores the significance of one of the most horrifying events of Australian colonialism. Thoughtful and fearless, it challenges us to look at our history without flinching as an act of remembrance and reconciliation.
A collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, showcasing his shimmering genius across a lifetime of work.
Bruce Pascoe has been described as a ‘living national treasure’ and his work as ‘revelatory’. This volume of his best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, ranges across his long career, and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture, land management and history. Featuring new and previously unpublished fiction alongside his most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction – including extracts from his modern classic Dark Emu – this collection is perfect for Pascoe fans and new readers alike. It’s time all Australians saw the range and depth of this most marvellous of local writers.
What happens when global systems are viewed from an Indigenous perspective? How does it affect the way we see history, money, power and learning? Could it change the world? This remarkable book covers everything from echidnas to evolution, cosmology to cooking, sex and science and spirits.
Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective. He asks how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? Sand Talk provides a template for living. It's about how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everybody and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things.
Aboriginal Australian cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape.
For Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, women and men play different roles in bringing songlines to life, yet the vast majority of what has been published is about men's place in songlines. Songspirals is a rare opportunity for outsiders to experience Aboriginal women's role in crying the songlines in a very authentic and direct form.
"Stars of Tagai" is a captivating book about the cultural heritage of Torres Strait Islanders and their connection to the Tagai constellation. 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.
The author's observations and personal narratives provide insight into the Islanders' way of life, with a focus on identity and self-awareness. The book also explores the historic Mabo case and efforts towards political autonomy and sovereignty.
Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than we have ever realised.
For over a decade, Gammage has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. We know Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and now we know how they did it.
'The rabbits came many grandparents ago.
They built houses, made roads, had children.
They cut down trees.
A whole continent of rabbits...'
THE RABBITS offers a rich and immensely valuable perspective on the effect of man on his environment. Visually loaded and told with a passion for truth and understanding, THE RABBITS aims to promote cultural awareness and a sense of caring for the natural world.
After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. But among the convicts there is a whisper that freedom can be bought, an opportunity to start afresh.
As Thornhill stakes his claim on a patch of ground by the Hawkesbury River, the battle lines between the old and new inhabitants are drawn. The critics agree, The Secret River is a masterpiece; a spellbinding Australian classic about ownership, belonging and identity with universal themes.
The Torres Strait Islands celebrates the art, culture and history of Torres Strait Islanders and the outstanding related collections and performance programs of the major arts organisations located at South Bank, Brisbane. A testament to the ongoing significance of Torres Strait Islander culture, this beautifully illustrated book features objects, paintings, photographs and documentary materials drawn from the collections of the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, the State Library of Queensland and the Queensland Museum, as well as from the programs of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
Thorough and dynamic, this chronicle focuses on the people of Australia's Torres Strait Island and their evolving struggles for recognition. Underscoring the voices of the Torres Strait Islanders themselves, this account explores the indigenous response to colonization and outlines two decades' worth of clashes with governments and other entities who exploited the islanders' seabed resources.
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.
This account unveils the fears and uncertainties experienced by Torres Strait Islander women who lived on Australia's front line during the Pacific War from 1942 to 1945. Some were forcefully evacuated to the mainland with their children and found themselves still restricted as to where and how they could live. Others were abandoned on their small islands, left to fend for themselves despite the constant threat of Japanese advancement through the Torres Strait.
The history also chronicles the traumatic experiences of many women, such as hiding from bombers, witnessing overhead dogfights, struggling to provide for their families, and praying for the safe return of their men-folk and for peace to return to their beloved island homes.
For nearly seven decades, Truganini lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than we can imagine. But her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy. Now Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness accounts to write Truganini's extraordinary story in full.
Hardly more than a child, Truganini managed to survive the devastation of the 1820s, when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but extinguished. She spent five years on a journey around Tasmania, across rugged highlands and through barely penetrable forests, with George Augustus Robinson, the self-styled missionary who was collecting the survivors to send them into exile on Flinders Island. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy - the so-called extinction of the original people of Tasmania.
Stories of Aboriginal people & culture, including Albert Namatjira. Tribes represented: Aranda , Djumindjung, Wailbri , Pitjentjarra Nongomeri , Iwaija , Jabu and Moola Boola. Douglas Lockwood began writing books based on his own knowledge and experiences with the Aborigines of northern and central Australia in the late 1950s.
Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for reconsidering the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the reader to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived -- a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and an understanding of the environment and its natural resources that supported thriving villages across the continent. Young Dark Emu -- A Truer History asks young readers to consider a different version of Australia's history pre-European colonisation.
A collection of writings on women and Aboriginal identity from 14 senior Indigenous academics and community leaders. The collection engages with questions such as: What makes Aboriginal women strong? Why are grandmothers so important (even ones never met)? How is the connection to country different for Aboriginal people compared to non-Aboriginal people's love of nature or sense of belonging to an area? What is Aboriginal spirituality?
These writings are generous, inclusive and considerate of the non-Aboriginal reader's feelings. They are hopeful for the future, with an emphasis on acknowledging, joining with, collaborating and caring.
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