AustLit

'To the layperson, the shifts and variations in government policy and its effects on Aboriginal lives can be bewildering, even during the past decade. Tim Rowse has done a great service by analysing more than a century of this tangled history, locating its patterns and its driving forces and making sense of it. He has produced a humane and convincing account of the demographic and social recovery of an Aboriginal population as it absorbed and accommodated the effects of intrusive social policies. At one level, Indigenous and Other Australians since 1901 provides a coherent account of the origins, implications, and outcomes of Aboriginal policy formation since Federation, ranging deftly across state and territory jurisdictions, decade by decade.' (Introduction)

'This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, one of the most influential books about Australia to reach an international audience. It appeared just months after The Fatal Shore (1986) by Robert Hughes, and a year before the first major international exhibition of Aboriginal art, Dreamings, opened in New York City, at the Asia Society. The Songlines was a best-seller internationally and sold well in Australia too; it has been in print continuously since 1987. Chatwin died barely eighteen months after the book’s release. Indeed, the book’s deviations from its own plot in its second half, and its rather fractured recourse to journal entries reflected Chatwin’s sudden intimation of mortality.' (Introduction)

'The Yuendumu Doors are among the freshest, most remarkable documents of Aboriginal art. Painted thirty years ago at a remote desert school by artists steeped in ritual knowledge, the Doors survived against the odds. After near-obliteration by desert winds, sun, and children's graffiti, the Doors have been conserved and their powerful designs restored. Behind the Doors tells the story of these remarkable visual chronicles of Warlpiri country and Dreaming.' (Source: Publishers website)

 'On his first major field trip after being appointed assistant entomologist at the South Australian Museum in 1918, Norman Tindale sketched the tribal Aboriginal boundaries in the Groote Eylandt and Roper River area of the Northern Territory. His map was edited before publication and the boundaries removed, on the basis that Aborigines were wanderers with no fixed attachments to land.'  (Introduction)