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- A true story of the "stolen generation"
- The movie was Outstanding!
- M*E*G*O
- An amazing story
- As Slow Moving As the Escape Itself
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RABBIT-PROOF FENCE
Doris Pilkington
Manufacturer: Miramax
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Rabbit-Proof Fence
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My Place
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True History of the Kelly Gang
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Wise Women of the Dreamtime: Aboriginal Tales of the Ancestral Powers
ASIN: 0786887842
Release Date: 2002-11-20 |
Book Description
Following an Australian government edict in 1931, black aboriginal children and children of mixed marriages were gathered up and taken to settlements to be institutionally assimilated. In Rabbit-Proof Fence, award-wining author Doris Pilkington traces the story of her mother, Molly, one of three young girls uprooted from their community in Southwestern Australia and taken to the Moore River Native Settlement. There, Molly and her relatives Gracie and Daisy were forbidden to speak their native language, forced to abandon their heritage, and taught to be culturally white. After regular stays in solitary confinement, the three girls planned and executed a daring escape from the grim camp.
Customer Reviews:
A true story of the "stolen generation".......2007-04-14
A true account of the author's mother who was part of the "stolen generation", a group of aboriginal children who were taken by the Australian government's as part of their policy for the protection of indigenous children.
It is hard to believe that this policy was once considered the right thing to do, and not so long ago either, 1930's. But then again, Australia only granted Aboriginal people the vote in the late 1960's.
This book is about Molly, who was taken by the Australian government as a young girl and put into a settlement, and her journey back to her family.
A great story of courage and determination. Well worth a read.
The movie was Outstanding!.......2006-07-20
I visited the Amazon site after viewing the DVD "Rabbit Proof Fence." Although I have not read the book, the DVD contained a lot of landscape and many periods during the movie were what some may consider "quiet." When experiencing literature from another era or culture, I believe it helps to try to put self into the environment of the characters. The pace of "Rabbit Proof Fence" helped me be there.
I would reccomend reading the book (even though I didn't...) and highly recommend viewing the DVD. I experienced the grace and courage that exists in all of us at some level.
M*E*G*O.......2006-04-01
Sorry folks I just could not get through this book. Unanimously the "critics" said the first 50 pages were disorganized and tedious. I read up to page 10, "zzzz" I then skipped ahead to page 50 thinking "OK NOW the action will begin" nope just more of the same rambling sentences. I am keeping the book for its historical reference, and maybe someone else will read it and then convince me of the story's value.
M*E*G*O = My Eyes Glazed Over!
An amazing story.......2006-03-16
Rabbit-Proof Fence is the story of 3 young part-Aboriginal girls in Australia, the oldest only fifteen years of age. Historically, "half-caste children", (half-Aboriginal and half-Caucasian) were considered wards of the Australian government and were, therefore, forcibly removed from their families and taken to settlment schools that were little more than jails. The purpose of these schools was to prepare these Aboriginal children for their role in white society as domestics and farmworkers. This book is a true story of 3 girls who escaped from the Moore River Settlement school. Their story is nothing less than amazing. The description of the "weevily porridge" that they were served for breakfast at the school, or the sheets that were only issued when the big inspectors were coming to visit and the other hardships they faced should sadden and anger every reader. Unfortunately, there are many similarities between their story and the treatment of Native Americans in this country. It is a must read!
As Slow Moving As the Escape Itself.......2005-09-27
Even the best of countries has its dark spots. In one of the best of countries - Australia - half-white, half-aborigine children were taken from their homes in a forced assimilation into white society. RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is about three young girls who ran away from this forced assimilation and walked back to their native people across the Australian outback. Although the story is interesting, the writing is such that getting through the book, even at a slim 130 pages, is as slow and plodding as the girls' trek itself.
The first half of the book is a snapshot history of Western Australia. Although some points are interesting, it is far too disorganized and even rambling to provide a solid picture of the period. This is further complicated by the author's slant of the native people living in peace and harmony before the brutish white man came along. No doubt there is truth to this, even a large degree of truth. But as the aborigines are later described as voluntarily working for whites and describing certain employers in positive terms, it is obvious that the full story and texture of the environment is not provided.
The latter part of the book describes the girls' actual journey from the southern part of Western Australia to the north, following the rabbit-proof fence which dissects the country and will lead them home. Even given the lifeless writing style, one cannot help but be impressed with the tenacity this required, especially as they had professional trackers on their trail. This book is good for someone interested in Austalia but be forwarned that the writing is not up to telling a tale such as this.
Book Description
The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it. The debate over whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J. Brown argues, a matter of identity: Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s. In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown's book shows how identity is shaped by social experience--not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.
Customer Reviews:
The Description of this book is Misleading........2006-06-25
"The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it." The Description of this book is Misleading.
United States acknowledged China's claim but do not agree with "Taiwan is a part of China". United states position is the resolution shall be peaceful.
The answers I was looking for !.......2006-05-11
If - like me - you are interested in the title's answer, Ms.Brown's is the book! Quoting some of her words: " Many events are completely unknown to us, many events are known only through extremely biased perspectives, and many events are so contradictorily reported that is difficult to reconstruct even a chronological sequence of what occurred". And - believe me! - Ms. Brown interviewed people - in Taiwan ( living there) and interviewed people - in China !!! We are talking about an Stanford University Professor. Congratulations and thanks to Amazon .
Very insightful !.......2005-09-19
I'm a Taiwanese myself. Even though the content of this book is not new to me, it still provides a fantastic read for me personally and I can imagine it'd be more fantastic for someone wishing to know more about Taiwan. Because Taiwan is so isolated in the international arena, books such as this one is highly recommended for the average person. The only aspect I did not like about this book is the first part of this book's title: "Is Taiwan Chinese?". I'd just like to inform readers that all the population in Asian countries (east, north and south east) all originated from China. So basically everyone is Chinese, so it doesn't just apply to Taiwan. It is like saying: Is Australia British? Nevertheless, a rather informative book for all.
Been Waiting For This!.......2004-02-02
At last, a book that covers an aspect of Taiwanese history and culture not often discussed until recent years: the Taiwanese people are a hybrid people. Many have some Plains Aborigine blood (traced on the maternal side). But, with cultural stigma, many Plains Aborigines and part Plains Aborigines forfeited their identity and were absorbed by "Han" identity. I've been waiting for a book in English to discuss this area and am glad Melissa Brown published this book.
Book Description
Australian aboriginal people have lived in harmony with the earth for perhaps as long as 100,000 years; in their words, since the First Day. In this absorbing work, Lawlor explores the essence of their culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer, Voices of the First Day enables us to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.
This book offers an opportunity to suspend our values, prejudices, and Eurocentrism and step into the Dreaming to discover:
• A people who rejected agriculture, architecture, writing, clothing, and the subjugation of animals
• A lifestyle of hunting and gathering that provided abundant food of unsurpassed nutritional value
• Initiatic and ritual practices that hold the origins of all esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanistic traditions
• A sexual and emotional life that afforded diversity and fluidity as well as marital and social stability
• A people who valued kinship, community, and the law of the Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions."
• Language whose richness of structure and vocabulary reveals new worlds of perception and comprehension.
• A people balanced between the Dreaming and the perceivable world, in harmony with all species and living each day as the First Day.
Voices of the First Day is illustrated throughout with more than 100 extraordinary photographs, bark paintings, line drawings and engravings. Many of these photographs are among the earliest ever made of the Aboriginal people and are shown here for the first time.Â
Customer Reviews:
Mostly the author Dreaming, not the Aborigines.......2007-10-12
Voices of the first day
I bought this book not long after it was first published in 1991. I was attracted to the book because the form and binding looked good and I didn't have any books about Australian Aborigines yet. As far as appearances go, the book looks great. Nice division in chapters, wonderful illustrations.
OK, now it gets tricky because I am going to review the contents. The author is indeed a person that can write. However the book is filled with well formulated sentences as "The landscape of Aboriginal Australia mirrored a living organism" that are vague in the extreme. The author makes a division in that everything about the Aborigines (where traditionally girls are raped at age 14) is good and everything about Western society is bad. This division might be ok in a cowboy movie, but that doesn't prevent Lawlor drawing heavily on the evil sciences of the West.
Lawlor idolizes the civilisation of Ancient Egypt and connects Aboriginal myth with theories about magnetic forces. This is done in with sentences like "Indigenous people believe..." and "some scientists have recently found evidence..." that must draw the reader into his stream of thoughts. My biggest problem is that the author is making assumptions on behalf of the Aborigines to which the working of Magnetic forces is completely foreign. The author suggests that a uniform culture existed among the natives (something I doubt it true) and refrains from telling the sad story of their history since Australia's discovery.
After reading through 391 pages the reader is left with little concrete information about the Australian Aborigines, some interesting viewpoints, and a lot of information about the earth's magnetism, Carl Jung, etc.
My conclusion is that this book falls short of its mark. It's more about the Dreaming of the author than the Dreaming of the Aborigines.
Voices of Bulldust.......2007-10-08
One of Australia's greatest anthropologists, William Stanner, urged people who are inspired by indigenous cultures to "...avoid banal projection and subjectivism. ("White Man Got No Dreaming", 1979). Lawlor does both and more. He is an armchair anthropologist who has never lived among indigenous Australians and spins a tale that has little bearing on the real world of indigenous culture. "Bulldust" is the Australian epithet for such radical departures from the truth. If you want to really grapple with indigenous Australian spirituality there are better texts by scholars who have actually lived with aborigines. Amazon readers should try Zohl De Istar's "Holding Yawalwu" as a case in point. It provides an account of her subject that combines insights into the "law" (spirituality) with the mostly rugged and raw day-to-day lives of indigenous Australians.
flawed, but informative.......2006-08-08
I'm in debate as to the true value of this book. On one hand, it discusses in a some depth the culture and issues of the Australian Aboriginal people. It's quite well researched and informative.
On the other hand, mixed throughout is a lot of distracting pseudoscience and adhesion to some minority theories of first peoples. The author also clearly doesn't understand human evolution - or choses not to. He writes very intelligently until he delves into some of these arenas. This really spoiles the book and will surely confuse a less knowledgable reader.
Additionally, the author preaches a bit much against modern civilization. These points have merit, of course, but he dwells far too long on them and becomes a bit preachy. Again, he makes good points and a solid arguement for the failings of modern civilization that are, for the most part, well respected stances/criticisms, but... this book really isn't the place for that pulpit IMHO. Make the point, but in less of a preachy way, and then move on. That would be my editorial advice to the author.
Once you pull out the pseudo-science, flawed evolutionary descriptions/criticisms, and preachiness, you are left with a book that should be 1/2 (or maybe even 1/3rd) the length - but filled with extremely valuable material that treats the Aboriginal culture(s) with great respect and understanding.
So, in summary: this book has tons of great incite and valuable information, but if you are not well versed on evolutionary biology, economics, anthropology and physics, I would steer clear. You need that background/education to pull the good from the bad information contained within. Which is unfortunate since the good information is very good.
I recommend a different book.
Twaddle!.......2005-10-28
Early on (p.137 is a good example) Lawlor clearly unveils his "extreme Green" biases. Obviously, he'd like several BILLION human beings to just evaporate (and take their cultural artifacts with them, thank you very much) so that his "dream of regeneration" could come to pass ... with Humanity reverting to "spiritually connected" neo-stone-age hunter-gatherer bands. It's hard to take an anthropological essay seriously if the author repeatedly throws Luddite tantrums, which are a notable "feature" of this book!
At Least it Gets You in the Door.......2004-07-08
Mr. Lawlor did a lot of research in preparing his book. He manages to extract a lot of anthropological data and present it in an interesting, readable fashion, particularly in the second section of his book on Aboriginal folkways. Perhaps the data is out of date, as some other reviewers have indicated; I really can't say, but the parts of the book dealing with this at least seem reasonable.
Unfortunately, once Mr. Lawlor departs from the straight and narrow you'll find yourself in a world of truly bizarre speculations on the nature of dreamtime, Aboriginal sensitivity to the magnetic field of the earth, the continent of Mu and all other sorts of lunatic New Age stuff, all of which pull the rug out on whatever parts of this book are arguably informative.
At best, one can say that books like this serve some purpose in that they inspire a new generation to go into anthropological research, rather like the old "Flash Gordon" serial no doubt inspired some people to go into nuclear physics. For this reason I'll give the book two stars. It could've been worse, as readers of "Mutant Message" would know.
Customer Reviews:
Well written and superbly illustrated - great for children!.......1999-11-06
It is nice to discover a book that both entertains children and informs its' adult readers. Perhaps if we let ourselves hear (and I dare say even believe) such stories more often, our daily lives could not only be enriched, but have a whole lot more meaning to them...
Customer Reviews:
excellent introduction to Bony and Australian bush folklore.......1999-05-24
Death of a Swagman was written in the mid point of Arthur Upfields career and shows in his attention to detail and his ability to capture the feling of Australian country towns in the early part of our century. The story is a good detective novel in its own right with plenty of plots and action and red herrings. Bony's relationship with Rose Marie is used as a strong pivot point throughout the novel giving a useful viewpoint of the running of the town from a child's perspective. The advantage of this book over other bony novels is the character development of the subjects. This gives a depth and humanity which remains after the story is finished. The narrative of the swagmans lifestyle and its mythology is addressed here with great detail and provides a refreshing glimpse of a bygone era.
Average customer rating:
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Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in An Australian Aboriginal Culture
Deborah Bird Rose
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521794846 |
Book Description
This original ethnography brings indigenous people’s stories into conversations around troubling questions of social justice and environmental care. Deborah Bird Rose lived for two years with the Yarralin community in the Northern Territory’s remote Victoria River Valley. Her engagement with the people’s stories and their action in the world leads her to this analysis of a multi-centred poetics of life and land. The book speaks to issues that are of immediate and broad concern today: traditional ecological knowledge, kinship between humans and other living things, colonising history, environmental history, and sacred geography. Now in paperback, this award-winning exploration of the Yarralin people is available to a whole new readership. The boldly direct and personal approach will be illuminating and accessible to general readers, while also of great value to experienced anthropologists.
Customer Reviews:
Best of breed.......1998-09-14
There are very few writers who have been able to respectfully penetrate the aboriginal culture and still preserve what is sacred. Rose's book immerses the reader into another reality, and she does so without superficial glorification or gratuitous pandering. Much better known in Australia than in the US (where the number of the books available about aboriginals is limited), this book is the best I've found. I recommend it to the reader who wants to get past the tour guide/New Age fare and into a much more authentic point of view.
Average customer rating:
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Material culture of the Formosan aborigines
Chi-lu Chen
Manufacturer: Taiwan Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B0006C3ZJK |
Average customer rating:
- Making sense of Aboriginal culture and religion
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Mysteries of the Dream-Time: The Spiritual Life of Australian Aborigines
James Cowan
Manufacturer: Prism Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1853270776 |
Book Description
Whether making a Dream Journey in search of his ancestral roots or painting his body in order to recreate his culture heroes, the Aborigine participates in an intense spiritual reality that can only be expressed and experienced in the Dreaming-an event of luminous beauty that has given his life purpose and meaning for over 50000 years. James Cowan brings the tradition to life in this exploration of the Dreaming Country where the Aborigine is always close to his ancestors his Sky Heroes and his totemic birthplace.
Customer Reviews:
Making sense of Aboriginal culture and religion.......2003-01-27
As a white Australian I have known Aboriginal people, seen Aboriginal dances and gained a vague recognition that there was something quite spiritual about their culture, however primitive it seemed. Counterbalancing this, in my culture, are many negative stereotypes about the Aboriginal people. Mr Cowan tells a compelling and very different story and therefore I highly recommend this book to all non-Aboriginal Australians, and indeed others from monotheistic and westernised cultures, as a starting point for making sense of Aboriginal culture.
James Cowan's book provides an eye-opening description of the intertwined nature of Aboriginal culture, religion, habitat and personal identity. Reading this you will understand why Land Rights is such a significant issue for the Aboriginal.
The Aboriginal concept of religion and spirituality is so different from the major world religions that the concepts presented are necessarily complex (to my mind anyway) and so this book is not an easy read. However, the author gives numerous examples and provides much testimony from Aboriginals, as well as reiterating important points as the book progresses. By the end of the book, the important values and beliefs have been communicated well.
The one issue probably not covered sufficiently is the woman's role in Aboriginal spirituality, leaving half of the race under-represented. Mr Cowan also makes an attempt to talk about ways to reconcile the mainstream Australian culture with the Aboriginal one, however I think these ideas could do with much more development - perhaps a topic for a whole other book.
For the Australian reader, this book will help cut through and explain some of the common stereotypes of the Aboriginal. Mostly it will rebutt the myth of Aboriginal culture as something primitive and paganistic, instead revealing a highly mature and, until recently, highly successful approach to spiritual wellbeing.
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