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Photographs from the Frontier: Kimberley, 1910-1911
AU$60.00 Read MoreAdd to cartKim Akerman
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2017.Taken by the first Swedish scientific expedition to Australia from prints held by the National Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, Sweden. Organised and arranged by Kim Akerman.
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Western Australian Ethnographic Papers
AU$40.00 Read MoreAdd to cartWilliam Dugald Campbell; Peter J. Bridge
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2015.“W. D. Campbell, an English geologist working in New Zealand and Australia undertook pioneering ethnographic work in the Eastern Goldfields, North West and Murchison. This collection is of rare and difficult to obtain papers that are little known to those interested in such material. The items on churingas and phallic objects are sure to ‘raise’ an interest in those so oriented.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Aboriginal Perth and Bibbulmun Biographies and Legends
AU$30.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDaisy Bates; P. J. Bridge
Perth: Hesperian Press, 1992.“A collection of her writings on the now-extinct Aboriginals of the Perth and South West areas of Western Australia. Customs, beliefs, biographies and more.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Wilgie Mia: Cave of Red Ochre and Raddled Ranters
AU$35.00 Read MoreAdd to cartPeter J. Bridge
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2018.“A history of the discovery of the cave, early mining, and the industry that grew around it. Also an examination of the Wadgela myths of the sacred cave, which are less believable than those of the Aboriginal dreamtime. Wishful thinking guides government policy resulting in closure and restriction as the home for a red elephant.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Cologne to the Kimberley: Studies of Aboriginal Life in Northwest Australia by Five German Scholars in the First Half of the 20th Century
AU$80.00 Read MoreAdd to cartMargaret Pawsey; Kim Akerman
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2015.18 translated papers by Jos. Bischofs, Ernest Worms, Helmut Petri, A. S. Schulz, and Gisela Odermann.
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Triumphs and Tragedies: Oombulgurri, An Australian Aboriginal Community
AU$35.00 Read MoreAdd to cartNeville Green
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2011.“Oombulgurri emerged from the remnants of Forrest River Mission to become one of the first independent Indigenous communities in Australia. During its 97 years its people have participated in events that captured national headlines; the search for the Southern Cross, the rescue of the crew of a German seaplane, reports of a massacre that sparked a Royal Commission, their service as guides to an elite military force preparing for the anticipated Japanese invasion of Australia and, in recent years, the community’s decline into poverty, depression and suicide. Sixty percent of the school children of 1967 are now dead. The missionaries and most of those they served are gone and so too is the lifestyle of that not so distant past, but in these pages we discover how church and government policies and failures shaped the present and the small achievements of Aboriginal people are soon lost in yet another wave of policies and practices that are presumed to be good for ‘them’. Neville Green is a Western Australian author specialising in Aboriginal history and between 1967, when he was a government teacher at Forrest River Mission, and 2006, he interviewed and corresponded with many people linked to the community to discover the heart and soul of Oombulgurri. Triumphs and Tragedies, his tenth book, is a story of lost innocence in a remote Australian community set amidst the raw beauty of the Kimberley.” (publisher’s blurb)
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On the Aborigines of Australia
AU$65.00 Read MoreAdd to cartAugustus Oldfield
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2005.“Oldfield was a botanical collector with a great interest in Aboriginals. This 1864 work with an extensive introduction by M.Helen Henderson is virtually unknown to anthropologists and is not known in most libraries. It describes the natives of the Port Gregory area at the mouth of the Murchison River in a detail that few others aspired to until the 1890s. Graphic descriptions of customs and incidents of life (and death).” (publisher’s blurb) Originally published in the Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. 3, 1865, pp. 215-298, here published for the first time with a lengthy introduction in a limited casebound edition of 250 numbered copies. This copy out of sequence.
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Aboriginal Australian and Tasmanian Rock Carvings and Paintings with a Preliminary Consideration of Aboriginal Australian Decorative Art
AU$120.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDaniel Sutherland Davidson
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2011.Originally published in 1937 and 1937 in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. “Davidson was the most important ethnographer of his time and his reputation for the quality and quantity of work produced is unmatched. In 1937 F.D. McCarthy described the 1936 volume as “the first monograph of aboriginal rock carvings and paintings”. All subsequent students of Aboriginal Art owe a debt to Davidson’s work. Not only do the volumes extensively cover the rock engravings and paintings but discuss in detail techniques and styles of decoration, on weapons, baskets and containers, pearl shells, baobab nuts, tree carvings, grave posts, bullroarers, churingas, waningas and many others objects. The symbolism and distribution of design elements and originating areas are also discussed. This is an essential volume for anyone with an interest, scientific, aesthetic, or commercial, in Aboriginal art and artifacts.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Among Wild Animals and People in Australia
AU$120.00 Read MoreAdd to cartEric Mjoberg
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2012.Originally published in Swedish in 1915 as ‘Bland vilda djur och folk i Australien’. Here translated into English for the first time by Margareta Luotsinen and Kim Akerman. “From October 1910 to August 1911 biologist Erik Mjoberg and his seven man Swedish team travelled by bullock wagon through the West Kimberley collecting invertebrates, birds, mammals, and ethnographic research material. Their ten month journey took them from Derby, along the Fitzroy River upstream to Mount Anderson Station. Some members then went on to Noonkanbah, the St George Ranges and Fitzroy Crossing, while others went south to Mowla Bluff. After the return to Derby two members went to Sunday Island and then followed the stock route across the Leopold Ranges to Mount Barnett. Extensive collections were also made around Derby and Meda Station. Finally the expedition re-convened in Broome where side trips included a coastal trip by pearling lugger collecting marine specimens and another trip to Beagle Bay, collecting birds. Eric Mjöbergs idiosyncratic text remained in the Swedish language until this long-awaited English translation. Now, for the first time, this unique perspective on biota and people is brought to a new generation of readers with an interest in Kimberley history and geography.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Amongst Stone Age People in the Queensland Wilderness
AU$135.00 Read MoreAdd to cartEric Mjoberg
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2015.Published in Swedish in 1918 as ‘Bland Stenaldersmanniskor i Queensland’s Vildmarker’, and now available for the first time in English translated by S. M. Fryer and edited by Asa Ferrier and Rod Ritche. A magnificent book on Eric Mjoberg’s North Queensland anthropological and natural history collecting expedition. 31 plates. 226 captioned figures and 2 maps, showing rarely seen photographs of North Queensland Aboriginals, ethnographic items, tropical rainforests and their endemic animals.
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Aboriginal Ethnographica
AU$110.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDaniel Sutherland Davidson
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2011.Reproduces the majority of Davidsons Australian ethnographic papers from 1933 to 1953 in facsimile. Topics covered include Aboriginal Axes, Spears, Clubs, Canoes, Baskets, Boomerangs, Petroglyphs, Key Designs, Waningas, Churingas, Fire, Footwear and Death.
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Aboriginal Sign Language
AU$25.00 Read MoreAdd to cartWalter E. Roth
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2020.An enlarged facsimile of the chapter ‘The Expression of Ideas by Manual Signs: A Sign Language’ and 9 related plates from Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines. Walter Edmund Roth (1861-1933) was a physician, anthropologist, and the first Northern Protector of Aboriginals. As an administrator Roth worked tirelessly for the betterment of aboriginal rights against colonial and political forces, though controversy, including “payment” to take photographs of sexual positions for anthropological reasons, hounded him to resignation.
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Ethno-Pornography: Male and Female Aboriginal Initiation and Customs
AU$25.00 Read MoreAdd to cartWalter E. Roth
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2020.An enlarged facsimile of the ethno-pornography chapter and plate from Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines. Walter Edmund Roth (1861-1933) was a physician, anthropologist, and the first Northern Protector of Aboriginals. As an administrator Roth worked tirelessly for the betterment of aboriginal rights against colonial and political forces, though controversy, including “payment” to take photographs of sexual positions for anthropological reasons, hounded him to resignation.
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Djanggawul: An Aboriginal Religious Cult of North-Eastern Arnhem Land
AU$100.00 Read MoreAdd to cartRonald M. Berndt
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. -


Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands
AU$300.00 Read MoreAdd to cartJames Edge-Partington; Charles Heape
Bangkok: SDI Publications, 1996.Originally published as An Album of the Weapons, Tools, Ornaments, Articles of Dress of Natives of the Pacific Islands. Second Edition expanded and edited by Bruce L. Miller with additional maps and portraits of Pacific Island natives. One of 999 unnumbered copies.
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An Album of the Weapons, Tools, Ornaments, Articles of Dress of the Natives of the Pacific Islands
AU$500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartJames Edge-Partington; Charles Heape
London: The Holland Press, 1969.Drawn and Described from examples in public & private collections in Australasia by James Edge-Partington. Facsimile Edition of the complete Three Series of the very limited edition published by Edge-Partington and Heape 1890-98.
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Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands, Third Series: An Album of the Weapons, Tools, Ornaments, Articles of Dress &c., of the Natives of the Pacific Islands.
AU$5,500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartJames Edge-Partington; Charles Heape
Manchester: Lithographed by Palmer Howe & Co., 1898.Drawn and Described from examples in public & private collections in Australasia by James Edge-Partington. One of 175 numbered copies initialed by Edge-Partington and Heape. This copy with the 7 leaves of additional notes for all 3 parts.
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Cape York: The Savage Frontier
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartRodney Liddell
Dubbo: Rodney Liddell, 1991.The self published first edition telling the stories of the castaway Barbara Thompson, the lost expedition of Edmund Kennedy, and the settling of Cape York by Frank Jardine, without many of the controversial chapters of the later editions. This copy inscribed by the author to Margaret Lawrie, collector of stories and mythologies of the Torres Strait, also with a 1996 postcard from the author addressed to Lawrie laid in.
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The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia (2 Volumes)
AU$100.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDavid Horton
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994. -

The Wrightson List: of Aboriginal Folk Figures
AU$200.00 Read MoreAdd to cartPatricia Wrightson; Peter Wrightson
Sydney: Random House, 1998.Reference work on the sources of the characters and mythology Wrightson used in her children’s stories.