'Around August 1988 the long awaited South Australian Sesquicentenary (1986) publication Survival in Our Own Land appeared on the shelves of Adelaide's bookshops. This jubilee ISC volume is important in Aboriginal studies for a number of reasons. It is to my knowledge the second only of its kind to make a state-wide overview of Aboriginal history and affairs. The other book of similar proportions was edited by R. and C. Berndt as part of a series of volumes commemorating the Western Australian Sesquicentennial, Aborigines of the West (Berndt and Berndt, 1979). The Western Australian volume was compiled through the work of a large number of contributors who were chiefly white Australians from academic disciplines. There were very few contributors of Aboriginal descent, a lack of representativeness which did not go unnoticed and was at the time a point of criticism.' (Introduction)