'For those who see the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies as an unchanging institution in a changing environment, a consideration of the role of the Institute in Aboriginal health research provides informed evidence to the contrary. I arrived at the Institute in 1974—an editor's privilege to reminisce—to work as an osteologist, later palaeoecologist. This position, seen as complementary to a position in human osteology funded at the University of Queensland, had been proposed to Council by the Human Biology Committee.' (Editorial introduction)
Contents indexed selectively.
'Making Australia's past available to the general public is an important, and all-too-often overlooked task of archaeologists. Gary Presland's book is one of the most ambitious attempts to write such a prehistory of one of Australia's largest cties—Melbourne. It is an attempt which has been partially successful.' (Introduction)
'Colin Johnson, now writing full-time in Western Australia, was the first Aboriginal to publish a novel (WILDCAT FALLING, Sydney 1965). Since then, his further novels, LONG LIVE SANDAWARA (1979) and DOCTOR WOOREDDY' S PRESCRIPTION FOR ENDURING THE ENDING OF THE WORLD (1985) have consolidated his claim to be a highly important contributor not only to Aboriginal literature but, more widely, to that of the writing of indigenous colonized peoples everywhere. His new book proves him to be a poet, as well as a novelist, of his people, and a significant, energetic, and impassioned channel for the expression of their sorrow and rebellion.' (Introduction)
