news | action | information | events | contact | search | news | action | information | events | contact | search |
key indigenous australian issues
| home | actionBook page
|
 |
photo courtesy UNSW Press |
By Chris Healy
Forgetting Aborigines explores a central paradox in Australian history: Aborigines are often remembered as absent in the face of a continuing and actual indigenous historical presence. Chris Healy argues that in the ways we remember our history, Aborigines keep disappearing. They are present and central at certain moments but then fade from memory. Aboriginal issues can be on the front page for weeks prompting white Australians to ask questions like ‘why weren’t we told?’ and then recede again. The book examines ways in which we can stop this dishonest and destructive cycle.
Source: UNSW Press - The image is courteous of UNSW Press.
Also available from Waterstone (UK)
Books available from the publishersIf you would like a book featured on this page - that is relevant to Europeans - please email info@eniar.org
publishing houses Indigenous media Previous book features |
photo courtesy Jeff Waters |
By Jeff Waters
"Happily drunk and singing, Mulrunji, a popular member of Palm Island's Aboriginal community, was picked up by the police. Between the paddy wagon and the cells, there was an altercation with the arresting officer, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley and an hour later Mulrunji was dead, alone in his cell. The autopsy reports sparked riots on the island that left the police station, barracks and court house in ruins. Queensland's acting State Coroner found that Mulrunji died as a result of the actions of the Senior Sergeant Hurley, who was later at trial acquitted of manslaughter.
This death in custody sparked not just the riots on Palm Island but a wave of protest across Queensland with hundreds, even thousands, marching in Brisbane and Townsville.
Senior correspondent Jeff Waters brings years of experience in investigative journalism to bear to examine what happened between Mulrunji's arrest and Senior Sergeant Hurley's acquittal. Along the way he discovered a problematic investigation and a community still reeling from yet another blow in a long line of injustices which stem from the time that dislocated Aboriginal people were taken to Palm Island from their native lands."
Source: Allen and Unwin
related links
 |
By Alexis Wright
"When “Carpentaria,” Alexis Wright’s epic novel about Aboriginal life, appeared last year, readers in Australia were slow to warm to its magisterial yet colloquial voice, which transformed the oral tradition of the country’s indigenous people into a swirling narrative spiked with burlesque humor and featuring a huge cast of eccentric characters."
Source: Aboriginal Lit - The New York Times"This is epic, biblical stuff. The serpent creates "mighty bending rivers" across what is now northern Australia. It "spurns human endeavour in one dramatic gesture". The port town of Desperance, built in colonial triumph, is stranded when the river suddenly changes course. Human enterprise stands for nothing amid these vast and ancient natural forces. That's a given in the Aboriginal Law handed down through the ages, but to the whitefellas of Uptown, and to modern British readers, it all comes as a bit of a shock."
Source: Carpentaria, by Alexis Wright- Independent UK
related links
Guerriers pour la paix : La condition politique des Aborigènes vue de Palm Island, Montpellier, Indigène Editions (col. « Indigène esprit »), 2008By Barbara Glowczewski avec une contribution de Lex Wotton
«En Australie, les effets cumulés sur deux siècles du choc colonial, de l’injustice sociale et du racisme quotidien ont produit statistiquement et émotionnellement l’équivalent d’un désastre de guerre sur les Aborigènes », écrit Barbara Glowczewski. Ici, l’anthropologue fouille dans le désastre à la manière d’un Truman Capote, auscultant la mort brutale, pendant une garde à vue en 2004, de Mulrunji, un Aborigène de Palm Island, ancienne réserve au large de Townsville, dans le Queensland. Cette fois, les Aborigènes et notamment Lex Wotton qui a apporté sa contribution au livre, se sont dressés pour la justice sociale et la paix. Le policier au coeur du drame, grâce à une longue campagne et deux années d’enquête, a été déclaré responsable de cette mort. Mais, au terme des événements que Barbara Glowczewski reconstitue, témoignage après témoignage, image vidéo après image, le policier sera finalement relaxé par un jury entièrement blanc. Lex Wotton, pour avoir participé au mouvement d’indignation, risque, lui, la prison a vie...
related links
The Grand Experiment  |
By Anouk Ride
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (Grollo Ruzzene Foundation Prize for Writing about Italians in Australia)
Longlisted for the Vogel Literary Awards.
'Two boys travel three continents to follow one monk's dream, in this untold story from Australia's colonial history.
In 1848, the Spanish missionary Rosendo Salvado, founder of New Norcia Monastery in Western Australia, had an idea. He would prove that Aboriginal people could be educated and 'civilised', by taking two Nyungar boys to be schooled in Europe.
And so it was that Conaci, aged seven, and Dirimera, aged ten, left their tribe to travel by sea to the racially-divided colony of South Africa, Ireland at the beginning of their nationalist uprising, the United Kingdom in the midst of its industrial revolution, France ravaged by civil war and finally entered a monastery in Naples.
The Grand Experiment is a remarkable - and timely - book. It is a colourful detective story of research through libraries and archives across the world, and very much a beginning of the 'stolen generations' story'. Source: anoukride.com
related links
 |
By Alec Kruger and Gerard Waterford
Winner of the 2007 Human Rights Arts Non-Fiction Award
'In the late 1920s Alec Kruger was stolen from his family and country into the institutions of Kahlin, Pine Creek and the Bungalow in Alice Springs. From there he was taken again, to the cattle stations of Central Australia, where he was expected to display all the independence and ingenuity of someone much older. In isolation, Alec faced possible death, until the arrival of Old People from country saved him, taught him and culturally made him strong. Alec spent years droving and roaming throughout the Territory and Queensland, finally finding a sense of belonging and somewhere to call home through having his own family and with the emergence of groups such as the Central Australian Stolen Generations and Families Aboriginal Corporation engaged in the struggle for recognition, reconciliation and recompense. Alec was in the vanguard of claimants who first took their need for recognition to the High Court, testing the legality of the assimilation legislation that allowed authorities to forcibly remove Aboriginal children from their families throughout the 20th century.'
Source: IAD Media Release
related links
visitors to Australia
support and experience Aboriginal tourism
for information links and guides in
|
