Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Hannah McGlade bravely addresses the complex issue of Aboriginal child abuse, arguing that Aboriginal child sexual assault has been formed within the entrenched societal forces of racism, colonisation and patriarchy, yet cast in the Australian public domain as an Aboriginal ‘problem’. She believes that we should be guided by Indigenous human rights concepts and international Indigenous responses. In doing so she believes that we can help to stem the harm to our future generations.

A book by Bruce Elder which has become widely used in teaching Aboriginal history at both secondary and tertiary levels. Bruce's account of the atrocities committed as white settlers pushed into the rich grazing lands is handled with a journalistic objectivity. One gruesome event at Myall Creek, Elder skillfully juxtaposes the harmonious relationships between the Aboriginal people and the farmhands, with a renegade gang determined to seek retribution on any Aboriginal people that happen to cross their path.

Book Review: 'True Light and Shade' by Worimi man, Professor John Maynard, is filled with beautiful images by convict artist Joseph Lycett that powerfully capture in intimate detail Aboriginal life, a rare record of Aboriginal people within the vicinity of Newcastle and how they adapted to European settlement before cultural destruction impacted on these groups. John Maynard writes an engaging short biography of Lycett and his life in Australia and follows this with a detailed commentary on each of the 20 images in the album.

The book argues the idea that the first Australians were hunter gatherers has been invented to undermine Aboriginal people.

"My message to my own people," he says, "is the rest of the country's not going to change if we don't stick up for our culture; and our culture was one where we had an agricultural economy. If we stick up for our culture, it'll be useful not just for us but for the whole of Australia, because some of those crops that our people were growing are going to be useful in the future."

by Robert Foster and Amanda Nettelbeck,
with extensive footnotes, index and photographs.

...Regardless of all the nice talks, policies and promises in England during the 1830s, South Australia was invaded in 1836. The British government called it settled instead and pursued a new approach to the treatment of Aboriginal people that would hopefully avoid the horrific violence that had been part of earlier Australian settlement. From now on any acts of violence or injustice towards Aborigines would be punished 'with exemplary severity'.

FORMALLY CONSIDERED FOR UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE

Far from being hunters and gatherers, the first Australians may have managed the biggest

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farming estate on Earth, writes Tony Stephens.

The still common assumption is that Aboriginal Australians in 1788 were simple hunter-gatherers who relied on chance for survival and moulded their lives to the country where they lived. Historian Bill Gammage might have driven the last nail into the coffin of this notion.

Gammage draws striking conclusions from more than a decade's research.

Stanford University Report, July 12, 2012

Hunting with fire appears to benefit Australia's small-mammal populations, say Stanford researchers

Western Australia's Martu people set small fires as a matter of course while hunting lizards. But the technique may also buffer the landscape against two extremes – overgrown brush and widespread lightning fires – that hurt Australia's endangered small mammals.

BY MAX MCCLURE