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Books
Browse or search ANU Press' range of books or find out more about the publications' authors and co-publishers. Download the book for free or buy a print-on-demand copy.
Displaying results 1 to 10 of 83.
Aboriginal Population Profiles for Development Planning in the Northern East Kimberley »
Authored by: John Taylor
Publication date: March 2004
John Taylor is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University, Canberra.
The Northern East Kimberley region of Western Australia is poised at a development crossroads with decisions pending on the extension or closure of Argyle Diamond Mine, and the ever-present prospect of agricultural expansion based on Ord Stage II. This region also has a major economic development problem—half of its adult population (almost all Aboriginal) is highly dependent on welfare, mostly outside the mainstream labour market, and ill-equipped to engage it.
Aboriginal people are major stakeholders in the region as its customary owners and most permanent residents. Whatever decisions are made about future development, it is essential that they bring about improvements in Aboriginal participation, not least because of the high opportunity cost to Aboriginal people and to government of failing to do so.
This study profiles social and economic conditions in the region, focusing on the Aboriginal population. It examines demography, the labour market, income, education and training, housing and infrastructure, health status, and regional involvement in the criminal justice system. It provides a quantum to discussions of need, aspirations and regional development capacities, as well as a benchmark against which the impact of developmental actions may be assessed.
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The Contest for Aboriginal Souls »
European missionary agendas in Australia
Authored by: Regina Ganter
Publication date: May 2018
This book covers the missionary activity in Australia conducted by non-English speaking missionaries from Catholic and Protestant mission societies from its beginnings to the end of the mission era. It looks through the eyes of the missionaries and their helpers, as well as incorporating Indigenous perspectives and offering a balanced assessment of missionary endeavour in Australia, attuned to the controversies that surround mission history. It means neither to condemn nor praise, but rather to understand the various responses of Indigenous communities, the intentions of missionaries, the agendas of the mission societies and the many tensions besetting the mission endeavour. It explores a common commitment to the supernatural and the role of intermediaries like local diplomats and evangelists from the Pacific Islands and Philippines, and emphasises the strong role played by non-English speakers in the transcultural Australian mission effort.
This book is a companion to the website German Missionaries in Australia – A web-directory of intercultural encounters. The web-directory provides detailed accounts of Australian missions staffed with German speakers. The book reads laterally across the different missions and produces a completely different type of knowledge about missions. The book and its accompanying website are based on a decade of research ranging across mission archives with foreign-language sources that have not previously been accessed for a historiography of Australian missions.
‘A remarkable intellectual achievement, compelling reading.’
— Dr Niel Gunson
‘The range of knowledge on display here is very impressive indeed.’
— Professor Peter Monteath
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Aboriginal Placenames »
Naming and re-naming the Australian landscape
Edited by: Harold Koch, Luise Hercus
Publication date: October 2009
Aboriginal approaches to the naming of places across Australia differ radically from the official introduced Anglo-Australian system. However, many of these earlier names have been incorporated into contemporary nomenclature, with considerable reinterpretations of their function and form. Recently, state jurisdictions have encouraged the adoption of a greater number of Indigenous names, sometimes alongside the accepted Anglo-Australian terms, around Sydney Harbour, for example. In some cases, the use of an introduced name, such as Gove, has been contested by local Indigenous people.
The 19 studies brought together in this book present an overview of current issues involving Indigenous placenames across the whole of Australia, drawing on the disciplines of geography, linguistics, history, and anthropology. They include meticulous studies of historical records, and perspectives stemming from contemporary Indigenous communities. The book includes a wealth of documentary information on some 400 specific placenames, including those of Sydney Harbour, the Blue Mountains, Canberra, western Victoria, the Lake Eyre district, the Victoria River District, and southwestern Cape York Peninsula.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Social Indicators for Aboriginal Governance »
Insights from the Thamarrurr Region, Northern Territory
Authored by: John Taylor
Publication date: October 2004
John Taylor is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University, Canberra.
The Council of Australian Governments is trialing Indigenous Community Coordination Pilot schemes around the country aimed at fostering whole-of-government approaches to service delivery and development. A notable example is in the Thamarrurr region of the Northern Territory focused on the Aboriginal town of Wadeye and its hinterland. Under new governance arrangements the Thamarrurr Regional Council has identified a need to profile existing social and economic conditions as a basis for its current planning and future evaluation.
This study provides an innovative template for such profiling. With substantial input from local people it uncovers a region of high population growth with major challenges in areas of employment, income, education and training, housing and infrastructure, health status and criminal justice. It yields a baseline of available data to assist discussions of regional needs, aspirations and development capacities. By using population projections, it shifts government and community thinking away from reactive responses to historic need, to a more pro-active future-oriented approach to development.
The Thamarrurr people view this document as an important planning tool for their people. Their aim is to have the same access to services and opportunities as other Australians. “Give every kid a chance” is their catch cry. This study lays out what is required from governments and the community to achieve that vision.
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Māori and Aboriginal Women in the Public Eye »
Representing Difference, 1950–2000
Authored by: Karen Fox
Publication date: December 2011
From 1950, increasing numbers of Aboriginal and Māori women became nationally or internationally renowned. Few reached the heights of international fame accorded Evonne Goolagong or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and few remained household names for any length of time. But their growing numbers and visibility reflected the dramatic social, cultural and political changes taking place in Australia and New Zealand in the second half of the twentieth century.
This book is the first in-depth study of media portrayals of well-known Indigenous women in Australia and New Zealand, including Goolagong, Te Kanawa, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Dame Whina Cooper. The power of the media in shaping the lives of individuals and communities, for good or ill, is widely acknowledged. In these pages, Karen Fox examines an especially fascinating and revealing aspect of the media and its history — how prominent Māori and Aboriginal women were depicted for the readers of popular media in the past.
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Making Change Happen »
Black and White Activists talk to Kevin Cook about Aboriginal, Union and Liberation Politics
Authored by: Kevin Cook, Heather Goodall
Publication date: September 2013
This book is a unique window into a dynamic time in the politics and history of Australia. The two decades from 1970 to the Bicentennial in 1988 saw the emergence of a new landscape in Australian Indigenous politics. There were struggles, triumphs and defeats around land rights, community control of organisations, national coalitions and the international movement for Indigenous rights. The changes of these years generated new roles for Aboriginal people. Leaders had to grapple with demands to be administrators and managers as well as spokespeople and lobbyists. The challenges were personal as well as organisational, with a central one being how to retain personal integrity in the highly politicised atmosphere of the ‘Aboriginal Industry’. Kevin Cook was in the middle of many of these changes – as a unionist, educator, land rights campaigner, cultural activist and advocate for liberation movements in Southern Africa, the Pacific and around the world. But ‘Cookie’ has not wanted to tell the story of his own life in these pages. Instead, with Heather Goodall, a long time friend, he has gathered together many of the activists with whom he worked to tell their stories of this important time. Readers are invited into the frank and vivid conversations Cookie had with forty-five black and white activists about what they wanted to achieve, the plans they made, and the risks they took to make change happen.
“You never doubted Kevin Cook. His very presence made you confident because the guiding hand is always there. Equal attention is given to all. I am one of many who worked with Cookie and Judy through the Tranby days and in particular the 1988 Bicentennial March for Freedom, Justice and Hope. What days they were. I’m glad this story is being told.”
— Linda Burney, MLA New South Wales
“Kevin Cook was a giant in the post-war struggle for Aboriginal rights. His ability to connect the dots and make things happen was important in both the political and cultural resurgence of the 1970s onwards.”
— Meredith Burgmann, former MLC, New South Wales
“Kevin has had a transformative effect on the direction of my life and the lives of so many other people. This book is an important contribution to understanding not only Kevin’s life but also the broader struggles for social and economic justice, for community empowerment and of the cooperative progressive movement. It will greatly assist the ongoing campaign for full and sustainable reconciliation.”
— Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary, Maritime Union of Australia
“Cookie has made great contributions in enhancing the struggles of our people. He is a motivator, an astute strategist, and an excellent communicator with wonderful people skills. It’s a pleasure to be able to call him a mate and a brother.”
— John Ah Kit, former MLA, Northern Territory
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Black Gold »
Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870
Authored by: Fred Cahir
Publication date: September 2012
Fred Cahir tells the story about the magnitude of Aboriginal involvement on the Victorian goldfields in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first history of Aboriginal–white interaction on the Victorian goldfields, Black Gold offers new insights on one of the great epochs in Australian and world history—the gold story.
In vivid detail it describes how Aboriginal people often figured significantly in the search for gold and documents the devastating social impact of gold mining on Victorian Aboriginal communities. It reveals the complexity of their involvement from passive presence, to active discovery, to shunning the goldfields.
This detailed examination of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria provides striking evidence which demonstrates that Aboriginal people participated in gold mining and interacted with non-Aboriginal people in a range of hitherto neglected ways.
Running through this book are themes of Aboriginal empowerment, identity, integration, resistance, social disruption and communication.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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Power and Dysfunction »
The New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines 1883–1940
Authored by: Richard Egan
Publication date: October 2021
In 1883, the New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines was tasked with assisting and supporting an Aboriginal population that had been devastated by a brutal dispossession. It began its tenure with little government direction – its initial approach was cautious and reactionary. However, by the turn of the century this Board, driven by some forceful individuals, was squarely focused on a legislative agenda that sought policies to control, segregate and expel Aboriginal people. Over time it acquired extraordinary powers to control Aboriginal movement, remove children from their communities and send them into domestic service, collect wages and hold them in trust, withhold rations, expel individuals from stations and reserves, authorise medical inspections, and prevent any Aboriginal person from leaving the state.
Power and Dysfunction explores this Board and uncovers who were the major drivers of these policies, who were its most influential people, and how this body came to wield so much power. Paradoxically, despite its considerable influence, through its bravado, structural dysfunction, flawed policies and general indifference, it failed to manage core aspects of Aboriginal policy. In the 1930s, when the Board was finally challenged by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups seeking its abolition, it had become moribund, paranoid and secretive as it railed against all detractors.
When it was finally disbanded in 1940, its 57-year legacy had touched every Aboriginal community in New South Wales with lasting consequences that still resonate today.
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Dharmalan Dana »
An Australian Aboriginal man’s 73-year search for the story of his Aboriginal and Indian ancestors
Authored by: George Nelson, Robynne Nelson
Publication date: April 2014
A Yorta Yorta man’s 73-year search for the story of his Aboriginal and Indian ancestors including his Indian Grampa who, as a real mystery man, came to Yorta Yorta country in Australia, from Mauritius, in 1881 and went on to leave an incredible legacy for Aboriginal Australia. This story is written through George Nelson’s eyes, life and experiences, from the time of his earliest memory, to his marriage to his sweetheart Brenda, through to his journey to Mauritius at the age of 73, to the production of this wonderful story in the present.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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'I Succeeded Once' »
The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839–1840
Authored by: Marie Hansen Fels
Publication date: May 2011
In ‘I Succeeded Once’ – The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839-1840, Marie Fels makes the work of William Thomas accessible to anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and the descendants of the Aboriginal people he wrote about. More importantly, people who live, work, study, holiday or just have a general interest in the area from Melbourne to Point Nepean can learn about the original inhabitants who walked the land before it was cleared for agriculture and urban development. Of course, development of the Mornington Peninsula is ongoing and this book will help those involved in development or the management of Aboriginal cultural heritage to identify, document and protect Aboriginal places that may not be identifiable through archaeological investigations alone. Marie Fels supplements Thomas’s writings with other contemporary accounts and her exhaustive historical research sheds new light on critical events and the significant places of the Boon Wurrung people. Of particular importance is the critical review of information about the kidnapping of Boon Wurrung people from the Mornington Peninsula.
Winner of the Best Community Research, Register, Records at the Community History Awards by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria and the Public Record Office of Victoria in 2011.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
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