AustLit

'This reviewer was privileged to have examined the thesis from which this book derives. Now in printed form, it is a wonderful work, not least because of the superb production by the University of Western Australia Publishing.' (Introduction)

'These two excellent volumes fortuitously have appeared together, and can be read consecutively. Yikarni is a collection of historical narratives, mainly told in Gurindji, with an English translation on the opposite page. Charlie Ward, in A Handful of Sand, after a prolegomena that effectively takes up half the book, covers the declining fortunes of the Gurindji since Whitlam’s epic handful of sand.' (Introduction)

'Alana speaks about her family; parenting; being an urban Aboriginal; working at AIATSIS and its future.'  (Publication summary)

'Bob Waterer of Sydney’s northern beaches, and now in his 80s, rediscovered his Aboriginal descent in 2004 after examining the birth, death and marriage certificates of his parents. As has happened so many times in southern Australia, he and his sister Joan had lived their lives under the sometimes unspoken stricture, as Waterer puts it, that ‘it was not wise to investigate our heritage too far back as there might be Aboriginal ancestors’ (p.5). Further consultation revealed the family’s connection to an Aboriginal woman well known on the Hawkesbury River in the nineteenth century, Biddy Lewis. Biddy was the daughter (or possibly the granddaughter) of Matora, first wife of the famous Bungaree, friend of Macquarie.' (Introduction)