This is my first issue as General Editor, taking the place of Eric Willmot who, as most readers of the journal will know, left the Institute in August and moved to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
In this issue we introduce a new feature called 'Resources', the aim of which is to bring to your attention some of the materials held in the Institute's collections. Each item will also, we hope, be of interest in its own right. The first is an unpublished manuscript by Robert Etheridge. We would like to have your reactions to this feature—in particular, we need suggestions as to material which might be included in future issues. If you know of interesting manuscript, photographic or sound material which we hold and which could be useful if published, please let us know.' (Editorial introduction)
'In a review titled 'Language and Dignity' Nancy Keesing (1983:16-18) claimed that the two books of Aboriginal Australian narratives, Banggaiyerri: the story of Jack Sullivan as told to Bruce Shaw (Shaw 1983a) and Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley (Roe and Muecke [ed.] 1983) were, in brief, clumsy, pretentious and stripped the dignity from the original storytellers. She is not quite as direct as this in her phrasing but her meaning is clear: '... Jack Sullivan is marginally less clumsy ... if I could read his story with any pleasure as to language, it would equal unpretentious works like ... I, as a general reader, feel strongly that whereas Nisa loses no dignity, nor immediacy in Marjorie Shostak's method ... Paddy Roe and Jack Sullivan have been deprived of their wide audience rights by the utmost but perhaps debatable goodwill of up-to-the-minute scholarship' (Keesing 1983:18).' (Publication abstract)
'This is Allen and Unwin's fourth book in 'The Australian Experience' series. It aims to overcome the distortion and marginality of Aborigines in white Australia's history and psyche. It is, Broome states, 'an attempt by an Australian of European descent to help put the record straight'. It recognises that most Australians are appallingly ignorant, not only about Aborigines but also about their own history and society.' (Introduction)
'This is a study of persons who were labelled rebels and radicals in their own time. The first two of the twelve essays are about Aborigines. Christine Wise, from the Australian National University, has written a very short piece on Mosquito, who was classed as a renegade and murderer in Tasmania and hung in February 1825. Bruce Shaw, from Darwin Community College, writes on Major who fought the settlers in the Ord River district of Western Australia until he was shot down by police in 1908.' (Introduction)
