Cirrus@Austlit

'This is an exceptional little book. Its humorous tone, brevity and limited distribution (Adelaide only) can easily deter from the fact that here is a valuable insider’s account of the formative period of a remote Aboriginal settlement. Former mission schoolteacher and twice Pitjantjatjara translator of Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Sheppard tells a story about and across colonial divides. She spent nine years (1955 to 1964) on what is now Anangu Pitjantjatjara lands in north-western South Australia and has maintained lifelong bonds with her former workmates and friends. Neither anecdotal nor scholarly, yet more than a personal memoir, this perceptive portrayal of daily life on the former Presbyterian mission station of Ernabella and the first two years of the Fregon settlement is a welcome contribution to the social history of the region and Australian colonial history. Poignant depictions of the physical environment, the station and especially the classroom are interspersed with thought-provoking arguments about literacy, language learning and bi-cultural education, notes on parent–teacher interaction and excursions, stolen children, patterns of work and resource distribution, illness, diseases and accidents, intellectual challenges faced as a former evangelist, sexual abuse, nuclear tests. All are presented as life experiences through the lens of encounters with remarkable individuals, black and white.' (Introduction)

'What a woman! Reading an amazing story such as Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman is a humbling experience. One is overwhelmed by the sheer number and diversity of experiences that filled Isabel’s life; but in sharing her stories Isabel reminds us of all the unacknowledged Aboriginal women who, like her, have refused to give up hope, who have persisted in their struggle to achieve human rights for their people. Isabel’s story reveals a woman who is warm, caring and sensitive, who like so many Aboriginal women must draw constantly on her own strength to overcome continual obstacles, to pursue her dream and achieve her goals. In my opinion, Isabel Flick, in this account of her life, personifies all those women who give their lives to the Aboriginal cause, and we, individually and collectively, need to value and acknowledge their contribution.'  (Introduction)

'Geraldine Byrne’s carefully researched social history tells the story of the overland cattle drives across northern Australia to the Kimberley in the 1880s, and of the establishment and development of Rosewood pastoral station, through the lens of station owners Tom Kilfoyle and his son Jack. The Irish Australian Tom Kilfoyle was a great cattleman of exceptional endurance and skill, and his son Jack an independently minded northern Australian character born and bred in the Kimberley pastoral industry. The magnitude of Tom Kilfoyle’s task, droving a herd of cattle for two years over 4000 kilometres, and the nature of pastoral life itself, are encapsulated in their being ‘held up for six months waiting for rain’ (p. 54).'  (Introduction)

'In 1971, when I was teaching at St Mary’s School in Broome, the principal decided to set up after-school clubs for the children—all part of a process of keeping them out of mischief. As part of that venture, I established a club called Aboriginal Heroes. From memory, only a few children joined since most of the other clubs focused on sport and art. We met once a week and set out to make contact with these Indigenous leaders through writing to them and following their exploits in the press. I had just heard of Patrick Dodson. He was at the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart seminary at the time so the children had to take my word that he was indeed a hero, given that my criteria were based simply on the fact that he intended to be Australian’s first Indigenous priest. My criteria may have been narrow in conception, but my prediction that he would make a significant contribution to Indigenous affairs was not. This contribution is set out in Kevin Keeffe’s' Paddy’s road, published by Aboriginal Studies Press.' (Introduction)

'Ephraim began the linguistics part of his career with his collaboration with Terry Klokeid in 1970. This resulted in a series of papers in a volume co-edited by Bani and Klokeid (1971; Bani 1971a–d; Bani & Paipai 1971), which comprised the first linguistically informed descriptive treatment of Western Torres Strait Island Language (Kala Lagaw Ya), and the first treatment of an indigenous language of Australia by a native speaker, involving the creation of terms in Kala Lagaw Ya for the concepts involved in grammatical analysis. Ephraim continued this work with a paper for the 1974 conference of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (Bani 1976); other papers resulting from his collaboration with Klokeid appeared in 1977, 1979, and 1981. Later in 1974, Ephraim enrolled as a student (later a teacher) at the nascent School of Australian Linguistics in Darwin (later Batchelor). At that time he developed the beginnings of his analyses of grammatical gender and of adverbials of space in Kala Lagaw Ya. These were published later as ‘Garka a ipika’ (1987) and ‘The morphodirectional sphere’ (2001). The former was the first, and is to date the only, treatment of grammar and semantics of an indigenous Australian language written in that language and published in a refereed journal.' (Introduction)

'Born in 1909 in Hannover, Germany, Carl Georg Christoph von Brandenstein began recording Australian languages in the 1960s in the Pilbara. Over the next 30 years he also recorded information about Ngadjumaya from the south-east of Western Australia and Noongar in the south-west. After high school (Gymnasium) in Gera and Weimar, Carl went to study at Berlin University (1928–34) where he trained as an orientalist and historian of religion. He then studied at Leipzig (1938–39), where his doctorate, granted in 1940, was a study of the iconography of Hittite gods (Brandenstein 1943). He worked at the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin from 1934 to 1938 and continued to publish in this area.' (Introduction)

'Alice Marshall Moyle (nee Brown), one of the seminal figures in Australian ethnomusicology and a founding member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) passed away in Sydney on 9 April 2005.' (Introduction)

'Percy Trezise was a remarkable Australian whose contributions in the fields of aviation, art, writing and Australian studies were recognised in his Order of Australia awarded in 1996.'  (Introduction)

'Again we hear that another old Ngarinyin lawman— the senior munnumburra1 for Morrorronggo country2 —has passed away. His whitefella name of Paddy Wamma will survive right there in black and white as a principal claimant on the Wanjina Wunggurr Wilinggin native title claim published at Mt Barnett in August 2004.' (Introduction)