'In the mid-1950's my requests of a number of bookshops for publications on matters Aboriginal yielded but one: A.O. Neville's Australia's Coloured Minority (1947), the analysis and prescriptions of a retired Western Australian Commissioner of Native Affairs. This was the era of 'The Great Australian Silence' of W.E.H. Stanner's 1968 Boyer Lectures. That silence has since been broken; and these two books make a welcome further contribution. They also serve as reminders that the tasks of getting the story together, sorting out the terms of reference, and relating the past to the present, are still in their early days.' (Introduction)
'In the mid-1950's my requests of a number of bookshops for publications on matters Aboriginal yielded but one: A.O. Neville's Australia's Coloured Minority (1947), the analysis and prescriptions of a retired Western Australian Commissioner of Native Affairs. This was the era of 'The Great Australian Silence' of W.E.H. Stanner's 1968 Boyer Lectures. That silence has since been broken; and these two books make a welcome further contribution. They also serve as reminders that the tasks of getting the story together, sorting out the terms of reference, and relating the past to the present, are still in their early days.' (Introduction)
