A Cautious Silence
Book Launch, Sydney
The latest book from AIATSIS Visiting Research Fellow, Geoff Gray, A Cautious Silence, was launched at Gleebooks in Sydney on Friday 30 November.

Professor Diane Bell launched the book in a spirited speech which concluded with these words:
Although some of the materials have appeared in print, and may have been accessible to researchers, this is the first attempt to integrate the documents into a coherent, compelling account of the political history of anthropology in Australia. I hope A Cautious Silence is read and reviewed by a broad sector of the population at home and abroad. I hope the book will open the door for further debate, research, articles and monographs by a range of parties. Geoff has an important story to tell of the politics of anthropology in the Australian context in the period from 1920 to the 1960s. It is, I think, a sign of maturity of the discipline that such a book be published and discussed rigorously. As Gray argues, the silencing of researchers has not served us well and knowing that history could guide us in the future. Let the stories be told.

White Christ Black Cross
Book launch, Townsville
Professor Noel Loos’s book, White Christ Black Cross, was launched by Professor Vice Chancellor Janet Greeley at James Cook University on Wednesday 14 November at 5.30pm.

Convincing Ground
Book launch, Melbourne
Convincing Ground by Bruce Pascoe was launched by Ms Doris Paton at the Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne at 6pm on Monday 16 July.

Bruce Pascoe addressed the Rationalist Society of Australia (http://www.rationalist.com.au/home.htm) about Convincing Ground at the Victorian Trades Hall Old Building in Melbourne on 20 June.

Bruce Pascoe, author of the hard-hitting new book, Convincing Ground, was the keynote speaker at the Eltharn Past Matters conference, 29-30 April in Melbourne: an exploration of Indigenous writing.

Excerpt from reviews of Convincing Ground
Bruce Pascoe

Barry Dickins, Overland 189, Summer 2007
...It gives its reader the rare chance to understand hundreds of years of harm and a million longings...Here the sense of place is real and convincing as well as refreshingly penned. It feels that the creator of this healing work of gorgeous words in several languages no longer languishes between Heaven and Hell, but as a Wathaurong man is the first poet of his people.

Paul Burns, Reviews in Australian Studies, Vol 2, No 7, 2007
...This beautifully written book, with its fierce determination to recognise and right the wrongs of history, is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where Aboriginal people are coming from. Some passages may unduly perturb university-trained historians like myself, or mightily disturb the general reader. That is partly the author’s intention. But it is sometimes a good thing to have one’s ideas so shaken up that one is forced to rethink them.

Sydney Morning Herald, July 17, 2007
...Pascoe insists it is not another black armband version of Australian history. It is simply an attempt "to fall in love with your country" by looking with hardedged honesty, at the way the Aboriginal people (specifically the Kulin clans around Port Phillip and western Port) were treated by early settlers and then using that as a stepping stone to abroader understanding of what it actually means to be an Australian.

Excerpt from reviews of Aboriginal Darwin
Toni Bauman

Genevieve Swart, Sun Herald, March 18, 2007
Bauman has produced an insightful and sensitive guide to Aboriginal culture, with a section on responsible travel including rules on visiting communities. For visitors wanting to open the door to indigenous culture in the Top End's tropical city, this book is a key.

Nicolas Rothwell, The Australian, February 2007
Aboriginal Darwin.. .goes some way to uncovering the indigenous experience of recent decades. It is a poignant, disturbing book, much concerned with absences and erasures of evidence.

Excerpt of reviews of Trustees on Trial
Ros Kidd

Alan Gold, Good Reading, February 2007
...It is a scandal of breathtaking proportions. Kidd is to be congratulated for demanding that our governments must be held to the same depth of accountability as they would demand of any financial institution taking and dealing with public funds.

Helen Burrows, Indigenous Law Bulletin, February 2007
Dr Kidd’s assertions are cogent and compelling. With the support documentary evidence she references, lawyers would be able to put forward a persuasive case against governments…Trustees on Trial: Recovering the Stolen Wages is a harrowing account of Australia’s enduring past, painstakingly and courageously researched and engagingly written by one of Australia’s most informed authorities.

Excerpt from reviews of Rob Riley
Quentin Beresford

Paul Kraus, Weekender, July 29, 2006
Of the many books that have been published in recent years on Aboriginal society and people, this biography must surely rank as one of the finest... more

Warren Brewer, The Mercury Magazine, Saturday June 17, 2006
This is an account of a modern tragedy and it weighs heavily...more

Stephen Saunders, The Canberra Times: Panorama, Saturday June 15, 2006
Going deeper, maybe some real positives emerge from Riley’s chequered career. In my view, Beresford largely lives up to his credo of balancing natural sympathy and professional detachment...more

Excerpt from review of A Man of all Tribes
Richard Broome & Corrine Manning

Philip J Morrissey, Australian Journal of Indigenous Education
In a fine passage Broome and Manning write that for Alick life ‘was a journey to oneness’... A Man of All Tribes is a timely production that provides us with more generous perspectives for thinking about the nature of identity and what it means to be Australian.

Excerpt of reviews of Compromised Jurisprudence
Lisa Strelein

Jean Zorn, Florida International University, USA, Pacific Affairs,
Vol. 80, No.1 - Spring 2007
Compromised Jurisprudence is a compact and well sign-posted roadmap, tracing a logical pathway through what might otherwise seem a plethora of unrelated or even contraryjudicial decisions....others will surely provide those, and, in the meantime, this handy little volume provides an excellent. reference and starting point.

National Indigenous Times, July 27, 2006
Lisa is an internationally recognised expert on native title whose work has been adopted by judges and has influenced legal practitioners. Her book provides an overview of each of the key native title decisions with balanced analysis and identification of some of the key themes and trends...more

Excerpt from reviews of Cleared Out
Sue Davenport, Peter Johnson & Yuwali

Sydney Morning Herald, 2006
This book has many things going for it - the superb maps and pictures, the clarity of narrative and the admirable restraint in apportioning blame or making moral judgements...more

The Weekend Australia, November 2005
Hence, for the authors of Cleared Out, the need for an ‘honourable dialogue’ in which the dominant society discards its sense of social and cultural sovereignty. Their meticulously...more

Sydney Morning Herald, November 2005
Try to image, for a minute, the scene. You’re 17 and the 20th century has just come rolling into your world, the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. Metal does not exist; your tools are made of wood or stone...more

Excerpt from reviews of Uncommon Ground
Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins & Fiona Paisley (eds.)

The Canberra Times, Saturday August 20, 2005
An edited collection of biographical essays, written in the main by academics, both black and white, male and female, it responds to a professional curiosity as to what white women contributed, if anything, to the struggle of Aboriginal rights in the early decades of the 20th century...more

Anette Bremer, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, API Review of Books, April 2006
This is an extraordinarily refreshing collection of essays, each contribution teasing out different aspects of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations…more

Extract of review of Seeking Racial Justice
Jack Horner

CHOICE, Vol.42, No.10, June, 2005
Horner’s personal memoir traces the development of the Australian “whitefella” side of the movement for Aboriginal advancement from roughly 1938 to 1978. The most notable organisation is the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, or FCAATSI. The growth and demise of FCAATSI is the focus, though the narrative and the elements of Horner’s story extend to other bodies of white reformist involvement.
The book organises the decades into three periods...more

Extract of review of Thinking Black
Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus

Richard Broome, History Australia, Vol.2, No.2, 2005
William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta man, is well known with the Aboriginal community of south eastern Australia, despite passing away over two generations ago in 1941. However,...more

Extract of review of Reading Doctors' Writing
David Piers Thomas

Shaun Ewen, VicHealth Koori Health, Research & Community Development Unit
'This book is a welcome addition to the Indigenous health literature, particularly the relationship between health and history...more

Excerpt from review of Woven Histories, Dancing Lives
Richard Davis (ed.)

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2005
…these essays, covering a range of topics and emanating from a variety of disciplinary traditions,...more

Review of Paddy’s Road
Kevin Keeffe

Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald, September 2003
The title Paddy’s Road is a cleaver and accurate description of the rich historical journey that underpins this biography of the Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson. Rather than just recounting Dodson’s life,...more