$24.95

A Story To Tell

Laurel Nannup

In A Story to Tell, Laurel Nannup brings to life a childhood in a large Aboriginal family. While her stories include a time spent at the Wandering Mission, their main focus is on memories of family life: picnics, roaming through the bush, sharing campfire tales, and events such as buying a new dress and first communion.

The collection is illustrated with Laurel’s striking woodcuts and etchings, which, together with a selection of photographs, complement the warm and affectionate humour of her narrative.

$39.95

Writing Never Arrives Naked

Penny Van Toorn

In Writing Never Arrives Naked van Toorn engages our minds and hearts. In this academically innovative book she reveals the resourceful and often poignant ways that Indigenous Australians involved themselves in the colonisers' paper culture. The author challenges the established notion that the colonists' paper culture superseded Indigenous oral cultures. She argues that these communities developed their own cultures of reading and writing, which involved a complex interplay between their own social protocols and the practices of literacy inyroduced by the British.

$28.00

Metamorphosis of a Race

Seraphim Sanz de Galdeano and Dolores Djinmora

When the true story of Australia's involvement with the far North Kimberly comes to be written, one name will stand out: that of the Spanish missionary monk, Dom Seraphim Sanz, whose profound, self-sacrificing love for the indigenous people of Kalumburu has been measured out over the course of six decades. These pages, published only after long struggle, detail the observations and reflections of a remarkable man condemned to live through dark times.

Rob Riley - An Aboriginal Leader's Quest for Justice

Quentin Beresford

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. Set against the tumultuous background of racial politics in an unreconciled nation, the book explores Rob's rise and influence as an Aboriginal activist.

$35.00

Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800-2000
Anna Haebich

There was no single stolen generation, there were many and Broken Circles is their story. This major work reveals the dark heart of history. It shows that, from the earliest times of European colonisation, Aboriginal Australians experienced the trauma of loss and separation, as their children were abducted, enslaved, institutionalised and culturally remodeled.
  

$22.00

Koorah Coolingah (Children Long Ago)

Tracie Pushman and Robyn Smith Walley

A brilliantly illustrated collection of Aboriginal paintings, linked together with text about Aboriginal history, artists and the inspirations for work and interviews with artists, critics and historians. This publication also includes the 'lost' collection of twenty rare and important drawings from the Picker Art Gallery. Contains many colourful pictures.

$34.95

The Aborigines Fourth Edition
R.M.Gibbs

This revised edition of a widely accepted book includes much material on the recent period of Aboriginal affairs, including an account of the Mabo decision, the development of new organizations concerned with Aboriginal affairs, and the process of reconciliation. The section on traditional Aboriginal society has been revised to incorporate new information about its possible origins and development.
  

$10.95

Aboriginals of Australia
D. Baglin, B. Mullins

A record of the fast-vanishing traditional way of life, featuring over 90 full-colour photographs.

$33.00

Aboriginal Art
W. Caruana

Aboriginal artists today practice in the world's longest tradition of art-and perhaps the last to be generally recognised. Widely sought after, Aboriginal art has now taken its place in the collections of the great museums and galleries. This is the first concise survey of the full range of work of Australia's indigenous artists from all parts of the continent. Building on traditions that stretch back at least 50 millennia, these artists have worked in a variety of contexts, from the sacred realm of ceremony to more public spheres, and in media that include painting, sculpture, engraving, constructions, weaving-and most recently-photography, printmaking and textile design. Present day enthusiasm for Aboriginal art testifies to its persistent dynamism and vitality.

$12.95

Desert Dreamings
D.Stokes

Art is an essential part of Aboriginal culture, telling the stories of the Dreamtime and reflecting the close association between the people and their land. This book shows how the work of the desert artists has adapted to an ever-changing world, but still keeps its links with the ancient traditions. Suitable for upper primary.

$24.95

It Is No Secret The story of a stolen child
D.Meehan

At the age of 5, Donna Meehan was taken away from her large and loving Aboriginal family, and sent to be the only child of a white family. Tiny and vulnerable, she had to try and make sense of her strange new world and the loss of everything she had known and loved.

Despite the true and enduring love of her adoptive parents, and of her husband, her loss of her sense of belonging brought Donna close to suicide. Only when she traced her birth parents, could the healing begin.

$21.50

I, the Aboriginal
As told to Douglas Lockwood

My name is Waipuldaanya, or Wadjiri-Wadjiri. I am a full blood Aboriginal of the Alawa tribe of the Roper River in the Northern Territory.

The story of his boyhood, where he was taught to track and hunt wild animals, to live off the land, to provide for his family with the aid only of his spears and woomeras, and as a young adult, being trained as a skilled medical assistant, to becoming a citizen of both Aboriginal and whitefella worlds.

$21.50

When the Dust Come In Between Aboriginal viewpoints in the East Kimberley prior to 1982
As told to Bruce Shaw

Contains reminiscences from 18 Aboriginal men and women from the east Kimberley region of Western Australia, and has been compiled from tape-recorded conversations with the author. The book covers such topics as work on cattle stations, horses, wages, drinking, fighting, the old and the young, citizenship, traditional Law, kinship, women, marriage and the race relations.

$24.95

My Place
S. Morgan

This sad, wise and funny book is of inestimable value in comprehending the relatedness of the global community. The author's love for her own spiritual and racial roots and her struggle to uncover them reveals a new Australia9the old) and a new way to embrace the elders and the young of all our peoples.

$27.00

Through Silent Country
C.W. Dowley

A story of exile and escape. The people in this story were from a part of Western Australia that is practically on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. On the whim of the government authorities of the day, 18 Wongutha people were exiled away from their Country and their people, sent a thousand kilometres away, almost to Perth. They were seemingly powerless. They were locked up, trucked off, given inmate numbers in a government compound-their fate was sealed. And then they escaped. It was perhaps the largest escape bid in the history of the place of exile. They escaped, and walked home to their Country.

$49.95

Prehistory of Australia
J. Mulvaney, J. Kamminga

A compelling account of 40,000 years of Aboriginal cultures, languages and practise. Using recent discoveries to shed new light on controversial archaeological issues, the authors discuss topics such as the timing of the first colonisation, the mysterious extinction of many of the largest marsupials after the arrival of the first humans, and the interpretation of prehistoric rock art. The authors also address contemporary concerns, including the repatriation of human remains.

$29.95

Blood on the Wattle Expanded Edition
Massacres and maltreatments of Aboriginal Australians since 1788
B. Elder

This title seeks to achieve two things: To draw together in a single volume, most of the information about the massacres of Aboriginal people which has been recorded in books and journals: To create a broad based level of awareness of the scale of the massacres of Aboriginal people so that this dimension of Australian history can become part of the Australian consciousness. The massacre of Aboriginal people, painful and shameful as they are, should be as much a part of Australian history as the first fleet, the explorers, the gold rushes and the bushrangers.

$22.00

Broken Spears Aboriginals and Europeans in the southwest of Australia
N.Green

The author writes a history of early settlement by gauging the impact Europeans had on the Nyungar society and describing the continuing interaction of the Aboriginal and European cultural groups during the first 25 years of European colonisation.

$28.00

Aboriginal Perth Bibbulmun Biographies and Legends
D. Bates

Daisy May Bates abandoned the usual way of life of a free migrant, abandoned a husband and son, and immersed herself in the study of Aboriginal life ways. Her writings on South-West Aboriginal people stand virtually alone.

$24.95

Benang from the heart
K. Scott

A novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present, and of a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.

$19.95

Understanding Aboriginal Culture

Yvonne Malykke

Here is a legacy of untold value left by the Dreamtime heroes of the Australian Aboriginal people; a race so ancient it is reputed to be descended from the gods.

The records left by the wisemen of the Aborigines tell of the creation myth, how Baiame the Supreme Intelligence of the universe, created all living things and how extrasensory perception was used as a means of gaining knowledge of the past and future. There are laws for living on earth and laws for living in the multi dimensions beyond earth. Theirs is a powerful philosophy, one which has meaning and cannot be changed by time or circumstances.

$28.00

Black and White and Inbetween - Arthur Dimer and the Nullarbor

Peter Gifford

Arthur Dimer's life has been that of a bushman- horse and camel breaker, sheperd, shearer, boundary rider and overseer, and later underground mine worker at Norseman, then Shire and Main Roads plant operator. Yet as a man whose grandmothers were full-descent women of the Ngadju and Mirning peoples- the traditional inhabitants of the south-west Nullabor region- he is also an integral part of a much older system of law and land ownership which has been  damaged but not destroyed by the advent there since the 1870's of Europeans including his own grandfathers. It is this wider pattern of change incorporating Arthur's own story which he and Peter Gifford evoke in this singular narrative-part biography, part social history iinvolving historical figures such as Daisy Bates and A. O. Neville.

$66.00

Nyoongar People of Australia Perspectives on Racism and Multiculturalism

Rosemary van den Berg

This text is about the indigenous Nyoongar people of the south-west of Western Australia and their perspectives on racism, which has had a devastating effect on their lives and culture since colonisation. It is about the multi-cutural policies that are effective in Australia.

The author, and those Nyoongars interviewed, give valuable insight into Aboriginal lives. Their comments reveal how Nyoongar people survived the onslaught of colonialism, cultural genocide, the horrendous state government policies under which they were forced to exist, the Stolen Generations of children and the loss of their land, identity, culture, and purpose in their lives. Presently, they are fighting for equality and for recognition as being part of the oldest living culture in the world, that of the Australian Aborigines.

$19.95

Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence

Doris Pilkington/ Nugi Garimara

This is the true account of Doris Pilkington Garimara's mother Molly, made legendary by the film " Rabbit Proof Fence".

In 1931 Molly led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. Aged 8, 11 and 14, they escaped the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions of maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it would lead them home.

$39.95

Piercing the Ground

Christine Watson

With its sense that the stunning paintings from the Western Desert bear more than meets the eye, this title stands as a highly original and ground-breaking elucidation of Kutjungka painting and a significant addition to what is known as "the anthropology of art". A fitting tribute to her indigenous mentors, this book should change the way people regard contemporary acrylic painting. Watson insists we understand this image making not only in its own cosmological terms as a kind of "marking", but in all of its radical difference from representational practices familiar to western world views.

$45.00

Pila Nguru - The Spinifex People

Scott Cane

The People of the Sun and Shadow are the Spinifex People. The duality reflects their association with the land, defines their kinship and is the backbone of their religion. That association with the land, law and people continued, cocooned within the spinifex plains of the Western Desert, for hundreds of generations until the Spinifex People were shaken from their nomadic solitude by the atomic shock of Maralinga. It was 1952 and the Spinifex People were about to meet white Australia.

$39.95

Out of the Desert Stories from the Walmajarri Exodus

By the Walmajarri Storytellers

This title reveals the stories behind the historic exodus of the Walmajarri people from the Great Sandy Desert. Within one generation an entire people moved away from its country to face station life and a world far beyond the sandhills.

Storytellers include:

Honey Bulagardie, John Charles, Mona Chuguna, David Downs, Mary-Anne Downs, Olive Knight, Limerick Malyapuks, Nora Nguwayir, Ivy Nixon, Jimmy Pike, Pompey Siddon, Peter Skipper, Emily Sullivan, Amy Vanbee, Adeline Wanangarra, Honeychild Budgie Yankarr and Boxer Yankarr.

$49.95

The World of the First Australians Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present

Ronald M. & Catherine H. Berndt

A comprehensive reference book, covering a wide range of the many traditional societies and cultures that have existed on the Australian continent. It draws together the threads of Aboriginal belief and practice in general terms. Here is a panoramic view of the unique background that gives Aborigines a special identity and quality which distinguishes them from other Australians.

$35.00

Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh: Sam Woolagoodja and the Enduring Power of Lalai

Valda Blundell & Donny Woolagoodja

The story of the people of the Wanjinas and their unbroken living cosmology of Lalai-the Dreaming-manifest most memorably in the dazzling giant Wanjina designed by Donny Woolagoodja for the opening of the Sydney Olympics.

It is also the story of Sam Woolagoodja, who was responsible for repainting the sacred Wanjinas in many of the rock shelters that dot the Kimberley landscape, and was among the first to paint the sacred stories on bark and board for Worrorra children living far from their homelands. Keeping the Wanjinas Fresh traces the journey that brought Donny to rekindling the tradition of freshening the Wanjinas. Thirty-two full colour plates feature Sam's and Donny's paintings and the work of other major Mowanjum artists.

$45.00

Cleared Out - First Contact in the Western Desert

Sue Davenport, Peter Johnson and Yuwali

In 1964, an empty piece of desert - known as the 'dump zone' - was selected to be a firing range to test the new 'Blue Streak' rockets - despite the fact that it was inhabited by a family of Aboriginal people. This book details the extraordinary events that occurred during this time in Australian history. Not only is this a story about the clearing of the desert, it is also about it's people, how bureaucrats decisions can affect thousands of lives and the debate about how ethical decisions are made in unethical circumstances. A gripping book about Australia's past and future.

Home to Mother

Doris Pilkingston Garimara

A young reader's version of Doris Pilkington's amazing true story of courage and love. A journey that will take three sisters 1,600km to walk through a country as beautiful as it is harsh. Knowing that the only way home is to follow the 'rabbit proof fence'. (a story from our stolen generation).

Lost World of the Kimberley

Ian Wilson

Australia's Kimberley was the cultural hub of the Ice Age world. Today it holds within its bounds the world's largest collection of Ice Age figurative art, giving us vital clues to the origins of other cultures and civilisations right across the world.

Aboriginal Australian String Figures

D.S. Davidson

D.S Davidson collected string figures during the 1930's of this native art form.  The book includes 112 illustrated figures.

Lola Young: Medicine Woman and Teacher

Lola Young with Anna Vitenbergs

Born in Australia's Pilbara region, Lola Young has been teaching Aboriginal culture, bush medicine and bush tucker to black and white since she established the Wakathuni ('laughing kangaroo') community in 1990. The book includes a beautifully illustrated section showcasing 60 plants and their uses - and is interspersed with charming asides and anecdotes.

Also included is a CD of six songs as sung to Lola by the spirit of her ancestors.

$54.95

Mixed Relations

Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia

Regina Ganter

Long before any white settlement, the Macassan trepangers had made contact with the Aboriginal people along the northern coastline, weaving trading networks that extended from China to the Kimberley and the Torres Strait.

Part conventional history and part oral history, Mixed Relations explores the successive phases of contact in Australia's north, and the impact of a range of circumstances - political, legal and economic, on members of the polyethnic communities.

$29.95

Painting the Land Story

Edited by Luke Taylor

A National Museum of Australia publication on their collection of works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait islands. For many Indigenous Australians, the act of painting is a kind of personal religious communion between the artist and the ancestral creation beings that made the country.

Also included is essays on art from eastern and Western Arnhem Land, the Kimberley, women on the mission settlement of Ernabella, the Boomalli Co-operative in Sydney and Torres Strait Islander communities.

$34.95

Papunya Painting

Edited by Vivien Johnson

Unique among the various hodings of Papunya Tula and other desert art in public institutions, the National Museum of Australia's collection covers the period from the early 1970's to the early 1980's: the momentous first decade of Western Desert art. Most of these paintings ahve never been seen by Australian audiences in the three decades since they have been painted. Papunya Painting situates these artworks in place and time - it provides readers with a unique insight into the Papunya artist's lives and cultures, and how these were expressed and mediated through their art.

$120.00

One Sun One Moon

Aboriginal Art in Australia

This book brings together many of the finest Aboriginal artists of our time, who share a marvellously diverse heritage as Indigenous people. Through their work, held in three major Australian collections - the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the Holmes a Court Collectyions Heytesbury, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales - these artists honour their inheritance and lay the cultural foundations for future generations. The extrordinary opportunity to collaborate and celebrate the treasures from within three distinguished and complimentary collections has offered unparalled access in scoping the phenomenom of Indigenous art in Australia.

$24.95

Wrapped In A Possum Skin Cloak

The Tooloyn Koortakay Collection in the National Museum of Australia

Amanda Jane Reynolds

This collection comprises pastel drawings, lino cuts, etchings, possum skin dance ornaments, a selection of tools, and two magnificent possum skin cloaks, both reproductions of historic cloaks. All items are made since 1999, yet this collection is deeply historical - it reaches back to the centuries-old traditions and customs of the communities of south-eartern Australia, where every person proudly wore their own possum skin cloak.

$38.95

Contested Country

A History of the Northcliffe Area, Western Australia

Patricia Crawford and Ian Crawford

Whose country is it? And who decides how the land should be managed? In exploring such fundamental questions, involving divergent views on Aboriginal land rights, environmental issues, and in particular, the future of our forests, the Crawfords argue that the differing attitudes to the land may underlie many of the current divisions between Aborigoinal and European, city and country. Contested Country focuses on the area surrounding the small south western town of Northcliffe, but it is presented as a microcosm of Australian society.

Nyungah Land

Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829 - 1850

Bevan Carter

In an address to the Legaslative Council in June 1837, Governor James Stirling referred, on two occasions, to "invading' the Swan River region.

This book covers the discovery by many early colonists that the land was owned by the Aboriginal people and was forcibly being taken from them. Their reactions to this and the records of disruption to the lives of the original landowners fills the pages.

$45.00

Bushfires and Bushtucker

Aboriginal Plant Use In Central Australia

Peter Latz

This title explains how the land's first inhabitants have not been passive figures in the landscape, but have actively worked and changed their environment, often by means of fire. Their management of the country has allowed them to survive and prosper, to live through the worst droughts and reap the benefits of good times. This title claims to be the most comprehensive survey ever published of desert plants and plant use.

The Grand Experiment

Anouk Ride

In 1848, the Spanish missionary Rosendo Salvado, founder of New Norcia Monastery in western Australia, had an idea. He would prove that Aboriginal people could be educated and 'civilised', by taking two Nyungar boys to be schooled in Europe.

And so it was that Conaci, aged seven, and Dirimera, aged ten, left their tribe to travel by sea to South Africa, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France and finally enetered a monastery in Naples. This book is a colourful detective story of research through libraries and archives across the world, and very much a beginning of the 'stolen generations' story.

Donald Thomson In Arnhem Land

Donald Thomson

The book that inspired Rolf de Heer's groundbreaking film Ten Canoes.

Donald Thomson: "I had lived and hunted with these people, accompanied them on their nomadic wanderings and learned their customs and their languages with the result that I understood and believed in them and resented the injustices under which they had suffered for so long at the hands of the white man and other invaders of their territory".

Rold de Heer: "Dr Donald Thomson went to the area in 1937 when it was still deeply, deeply traditional and had never been conquered by white people. He lived there and learnt the languages and took 4000 photographs on glass plates. How he did that I don't know."

$35.00

Treading Lightly

Karl-Erik Sveiby & Tex Skuthorpe

Treading Lightly takes us on a unique journey into traditional Aboriginal life and culture, and offers a powerful and original model for building sustainable organisations, communities and ecologies. It is a compelling message for today's world.