Books published by Aboriginal Studies Press

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reading Doctors Writing is a book for every Australian who reads or writes health research about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. However, its not just a story about medical progress. Medical research has been influenced by the politics of colonialism, the nationalist politics associated with Federation, and most importantly, by the politics of race, racism and anti-racism. This history of Indigenous health research fuels the suspicion felt by Indigenous people today about researchers, and research. Reading Doctors Writing invites those involved in Indigenous health research to confront rather than evade the history and politics of their work.

In 1964, a group of 20 Aboriginal women and children in the Western Desert made their first contact with European Australians -- patrol officers from the Woomera Rocket Range, clearing an area into which rockets were to be fired. They had been pursued by the patrol officers for several weeks, running from this frightening new force in the desert. This is their story told through oral history, archival research, photographs, and rare film footage.

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.

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.

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.

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.