Cirrus@Austlit

'Of all the celebrated anthropological classics penned about Australian Aborigines, Carl Strehlow's Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien is probably the most paradoxical, for it is at once famous and obscure. In her preface to The Aranda's Pepa, Kenny (xv) informs us that Marcel Mauss referred to Strehlow's early volumes as ‘a kind of Australian Rig Veda’. The work was also cited by Durkheim, Lang, Lévi-Strauss, and others, and continues to be regarded as integral to the corpus of ethnographic material that any scholar of Central Australia needs to cover. Kenny describes the five volumes (seven parts) of the work, published in German between 1907 and 1920, as Strehlow's ‘magnum opus’ and as ‘a masterpiece of classical Australian anthropology’ (1), yet underlines the fact that, astonishingly, it has never been republished, either in its original German or in either of the two English translations that have sat quietly and largely immobile in Australian libraries – in one case since the 1930s, in the other since the 1990s. Hence, while many anthropologists know of Carl Strehlow's writing, few Anglophone scholars know it in the round.'  (Introduction)

'The cover title of this book is rather misleading, since Zogbaum's contribution amounts to only some half of the publication. As the inside title page reveals, the book comprises three sections: 1) Zogbaum's piece about Basedow, which is a biographically informed account of his views concerning the racial classification of Aborigines; 2) a republication of Basedow's 1935 book Knights of the Boomerang: Episodes from a Life Spent among the Native Tribes of Australia; and 3) an essay by David Kaus, 'On the Photography of Herbert Basedow'. Hence, overall, the book focuses on Basedow's general contribution to Australia's understanding of Aboriginal people, not only on the vexed question of race and eugenics. However, given the topicality of this question in Australian historiography and the fact that the book is the outcome of a 'a three-year collaboration with Prof Robert Manne on the removal of Aboriginal children from their families' (p. ix), the very high profile given to Zogbaum's contribution is perhaps less surprising.' (Introduction)

'Baz Luhrmann's Australia is here considered as a lengthy meditation on the problem of national legitimacy, particularly in relation to the Stolen Generations narrative. Using psychoanalytic and structuralist frames of reference, the article analyses the film's storyline as an unfolding resolution of that problem, represented by the bastard (fatherless) status of Nullah. It also shows how the resolution occurs through the intercession of Lady Sarah Ashley and Drover as ‘godparents’, who represent Australia as a nation defined as a specific conjunction of land and law (sovereignty). The godparenting links Nullah to his maternal grandfather, King George, whose God-like status is invoked as part of the film's extensive use of Christian imagery, thus situating the redeemed and redeeming Nullah as a kind of national Messiah. The article concludes with a reflection on how Australia, as myth, is linked to the reality of Aboriginal affairs since the beginning of the assimilation era, the time in which the film is set, considering how the film symbolically portrays not only the post-1930s assimilation policy, but also the post-1970s self-determination era and the more recent turn towards neo-paternalist calls to balance Aboriginal ‘rights’ with ‘responsibilities’.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This volume celebrates the life and work of one of Australia’s foremost anthropologists, LR Hiatt. Hiatt sought to bring the study of Aboriginal societies to the attention of both the academic world and the wider public. A scholar of Aboriginal societies, Les Hiatt is a sceptic regarding all forms of received wisdom, whether in academic anthropology or in Aboriginal affairs.' (Source: Publisher's website)

'Religion in Aboriginal Australia is a collection of nineteen papers by authors of a great many persuasions. None of the papers are new: all have been published previously, either as full articles or as sections of longer papers or books. The time-span over which the originals appeared is immense. The earliest date back to 1904, while the most recent made their appearance in 1981. Consequently, the book expresses a wide variety of viewpoints which reflect approximately eighty years of development in Aboriginal studies. Everything from nineteenth century historicism to contemporary feminism has affected the texts.' (Introduction)