Holding Men
Kanyirninpa and the health of Aboriginal men
Brian F McCoy

Availability: Print

Brian McCoy is to be congratulated for his thoughtful and illuminating exploration of the ways in which Western Desert men themselves understand and engage with health and well-being.  I read this book with great interest for its ethnographic sensitivity and depth of engagement.

Fred Myers, Silver Professor of Anthropology,
New York University

It is rare for an academic work to so sensitively and poignantly capture the social realities for Aboriginal men growing up in contemporary desert communities.

Ian Anderson, Cooperative Research
Centre for Aboriginal Health

This is a very important, unique scholarly work. It adds much to our limited understanding of the social determinants Aboriginal men’s health.

Dr Graham Henderson, Visiting Research Fellow,
AIATSIS

This is an easily readable book that explores how Indigenous men understand their lives, their health and their culture.

Using conversations, stories and art, the author shows how Kimberley desert communities have a cultural value and relationship described as kanyirninpa or holding.

The author uses examples from Australian Rules football, petrol sniffing and imprisonment to reveal the possibilities for lasting improvements to men’s health based on kanyirninpa’s expression of deep and enduring cultural values and relationships.

While young Indigenous men’s lives remains vulnerable in a rapidly changing world, the author believes that an understanding of kanyirninpa (one of the key values that has sustained Aboriginal desert life for centuries) may provide the hope of change and better health for all. It also offers insights for all who wish to ‘grow up’ their young people.


Brian McCoy is an ordained Jesuit priest who has spent nearly four decades living and working in Indigenous communities in Australia and overseas. He has been priest, football coach, health researcher, ambulance officer, detention centre chaplain and adult educator and was a Research Officer in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Previously published Living and Working Cross-Culturally (1992), currently being republished, with Pat Dodson.