Reviews of Holding Men: Kanyirninpa and the health of Aboriginal men

Barry Judd, Paciic Affairs, March 2010
With a sensitivity and compassion that is uncommon in Australian writings, McCoy shows how these shared experiences contain both positive and negative health outcomes for Aboriginal men. Above all, Holding Men is written as an urgent reminder to Western biomedicine that Aboriginal concepts of health and well-being remain intact despite decades of colonial interference.

John White, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, September 2009
Holding Men call for a complementary approach in which local models of sickness and health are recognised and used in unison with kartiya biomedical health care. In providing a basis for this appeal to be made, McCoy has entirely succeeded in this insightful and emotive book. This book will be relevant for anthropologists interested in Indigenous expressions of masculinity, the legacy of colonialism and localised negotiations over identity.

Sylvie Poirier, Anthropological Forum, July 2009
Holding Men is a thoughtful analysis and a work of great ethnographic sensitivity on
Western Desert men’s conceptions of health (and ill-health) and well-being, and, more broadly, on contemporary Australian Aboriginal manhood and values of masculinity…Written in a most accessible style, the book will be of interest to a wide range of readers: students in social sciences, health researchers and workers, anthropologists and psychologists.

Province Express, Jesuit newsletter, January 2009
In a new book, Holding Men: Kanyirninpa and the health of Aboriginal men, Fr McCoy argues that understanding the cultural values and relationships of indigenous men may provide the key to making lasting improvements to Indigenous men's health.

The book is the result of PhD research work from 2001 to 2004, and concentrates on the specific experiences of Kimberley desert men. Fr McCoy first went to work in this area in 1973, and so had 35 years to build relationships and understanding with the men involved.

Chris Laming, Eureka, November 2008
This is an important book, written in a lucid thoughtful way that leads us step by step through what is, for most of us, foreign land on Australian soil. In particular Holding Men lets us feel the plight of Indigenous boys and young men, no longer being held by the land, by their elders, more and more autonomous and in physical and psychological peril, adrift from their traditions, lands and culture.

Martin Flanagan, The Age, July 2008
McCoy says the essence of Holding Men was listening to people's stories. The book contains transcripts of some of the conversations. In one, he finally arrives at the reason for a 32-year-old man's indifference to returning to prison — he has no children.

The book also contains eight colour prints of paintings done in the traditional manner by people interviewed for the book. Four concern the role of the maparn — the traditional healer. Another, called Cross Roads, was painted by four young man and reveals the various paths available to them. One leads to the cemetery. In a statement accompanying the text, the artists say: ‘Some of the young men and women find themselves at the crossroads of their lives too early.’

In the end, says McCoy, ‘desert people strongly maintain their own health belief system ... this is not to deny the importance of Western medical health care but to stress that it is inadequate to address the well-being of desert people by itself’.