AustLit

'In this important and amazing book, Gammage contends that Australia was ‘governed by a single religious philosophy…the Dreaming made the continent a single estate’ (p.xix and repeatedly) and that the original Australian people did this through their ‘knowledge of how to sustain Australia’ (p.323). Thus they ‘put the mark of humanity firmly on every place’ (p.323). He brings forward a mass of evidence to support his contention that Europeans entering and exploring the mainland and Tasmania observed and described those altered landscapes, without realising, or being unwilling to admit, that these rich landscapes of open forest, beautiful grassland and sheltering bush were other than natural. He uses a vast build-up of evidence to show that ‘even in arid country [around Ayers Rock] 1788’s unnatural patterns recur’. But although the bulk of the book is concerned to validate and exemplify the technology and results of land management, largely through burning, we should not lose sight of Gammage’s primary aim, which is to persuade us of the spiritual stature and technological skills of Aboriginal people. We should see them as masters of their terrain, managing the entire continent with detailed local and regional knowledge and skill, to yield an abundance of resources and leisure. This enables them to focus on the social, ritual and artistic aspects of life; participating in ceremony, dance, song, storytelling, decoration of the body, the ground, the rock; gathering to exchange knowledge of the myths impressed on the landscape and the mathematical intricacies of finding marriage partners correctly placed in kinship patterns. They could live life to the full, rather than merely struggle to stay alive.' (Introduction)

'The interview material described and excerpted here grew out of the National Library of Australia’s Bringing Them Home Oral History Project from 1998 onwards. This created:

a comprehensive public record based on first-hand testimony [of] Australian Indigenous children being removed from their homes and placed in non-family care.

'The full record is accessible through the National Library.'  (Introduction)

'The author has bravely and thoroughly tackled a group of very embarrassing and difficult topics. Embarrassing, because we do not like to admit that Australians could ever have been as non-egalitarian, nor as racist, as she shows them to be. Difficult, because most of the evidence must come from official documents, which reflect official, that is, ‘settler’ attitudes, rather than the painful experiences of the young kin, servants and ‘slaves’ who had no opportunity to recount their own tales. Rarely can we detect the authentic voices of the little ten-year-olds who scrubbed and dug and weeded and washed under guise of being taught to become useful members of society.' (Introduction)