An action adventure, Uncivilised sees Beatrice Lynn, a successful novelist, journey into the 'unexplored' reaches of north-west Australia to research a book about an Aboriginal tribe who is believed to be ruled by a white king, Mara. On the way there she is abducted by an Afghan trader, but the strange song of the Mara echoes through the jungle. The white chieftain later buys her from the Afgani, and attempts to win her love. Meanwhile opium smugglers try to buy Mara's collection of fabulous rubies, as war breaks out between Mara and a renegade Aboriginal warrior called Moopil. Beatrice finds she is falling in love with Mara, as a great battle begins.
Further Reference:
Uncivilised
1936
single work
novel
adventure
romance
A missionary couple are lost in the desert. Their son Martin is raised by an Aboriginal tribe and becomes a 'leader' amongst them. Beatrice Lynne, a society journalist, is sent to look for him but she's captured by an Afghan camel driver, and sold to the very man she's looking for. Slowly she discovers that in fact he's far from what she regards as uncivilised.
'This article discusses the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim, for whom the word denoted the objects, practices and assumptions that sustained communal solidarity and fostered dynamic energies, whether or not they were conventionally described as ‘religious’. I then turn to the work of more recent scholars of ‘critical religion’ suggesting that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘the sacred’ derive from a predominantly western, patriarchal and colonial context, forming part of a complex network of interconnected categories that represent a distinctive and dominant discourse of power constructing a privileged identity through hostile Othering or exclusions. Arguably, in the Australian mainstream, a discourse of ‘religion’ imported largely by Christian settlers from the west over the last two hundred years has been employed to exclude Aboriginal ways of understanding the world, for example by promoting the category of ‘land’ as an exploitable, God-given human possession. Nevertheless, drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, I understand that an encounter with the Other—whether the Aboriginal or the balanda—can be viewed differently: as a zone of properly disturbing but also creative possibility. It remains very important, however, to acknowledge the power imbalances that are still embedded within such encounters, and the consequent risks to indigenous Australians, of further dislocation and dispossession. This idea is explored through a consideration of the collaborative film-making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer and, in particular, of two films: Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013).' (Publication abstract)
Featuring Australia : The Cinema of Charles Chauvel
Sydney
:
Allen and Unwin
,
1991
Z808336
1991
single work
biography
'This article discusses the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim, for whom the word denoted the objects, practices and assumptions that sustained communal solidarity and fostered dynamic energies, whether or not they were conventionally described as ‘religious’. I then turn to the work of more recent scholars of ‘critical religion’ suggesting that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘the sacred’ derive from a predominantly western, patriarchal and colonial context, forming part of a complex network of interconnected categories that represent a distinctive and dominant discourse of power constructing a privileged identity through hostile Othering or exclusions. Arguably, in the Australian mainstream, a discourse of ‘religion’ imported largely by Christian settlers from the west over the last two hundred years has been employed to exclude Aboriginal ways of understanding the world, for example by promoting the category of ‘land’ as an exploitable, God-given human possession. Nevertheless, drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, I understand that an encounter with the Other—whether the Aboriginal or the balanda—can be viewed differently: as a zone of properly disturbing but also creative possibility. It remains very important, however, to acknowledge the power imbalances that are still embedded within such encounters, and the consequent risks to indigenous Australians, of further dislocation and dispossession. This idea is explored through a consideration of the collaborative film-making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer and, in particular, of two films: Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013).' (Publication abstract)
