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Australian Aboriginal Tracking, Water Finding and Smoke Signaling
AU$30.00 Read MoreAdd to cartAlexander Thomas Magarey
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2015.“Magarey was a South Australian explorer with a keen interest in Aboriginal customs. These papers are the result of his investigations among South Australian Aboriginals and are some of the best on the subjects covered, and in the case of smoke signalling, the only detailed description available.” (publisher’s blurb)
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Wanjina: Notes on Some Iconic Ancestral Beings of the Northern Kimberley
AU$80.00 Read MoreAdd to cartKim Akerman
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2016.“Wanjina Beings — among the most distinctive of all the Aboriginal Ancestral Beings depicted in Australian rock art — have been a topic of conjecture among Western scholars since their discovery by the explorer George Grey in the northwest Kimberley Region of Australia, in 1838. Their origins have at various times been ascribed to travellers from other continents and even extraterrestrial sources. This essay presents a brief history of past research into the Wanjina cult of the Kimberley: and examines some of the core mythology that embraces the country of the Wanjina and which links people, from the coasts lapping the Timor Sea, to the fastness of the Kimberley Plateau. Drawing together a range of ethnographic data this essay shows that the Wanjinas have played an integral role in underpinning the identity of the Worrorra, Wunambal and Ngarinyin peoples. This cultural connection stretches back for many millenia and continues today, through both oral traditions and the visual arts, playing a major role in defining the bond that holds these three groups of Indigenous Australians together.” (publisher’s blurb)
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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 Australian String Figures
AU$30.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDaniel Sutherland Davidson
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2006.Davidson collected these figures, mainly in WA, in the 1930s. Some 112 are illustrated and their creation described. This is a native art form now lost due to the inroads of TV- videos etc. a microcosm of our own cultural losses. Facsimile edition of Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 84, No. 6, 1941.
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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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The Queensland Aborigines (3 Volumes)
AU$240.00 Read MoreAdd to cartWalter E. Roth
Perth: Hesperian Press, 1984.3 volumes collecting in facsimile various works of Walter Edmund Roth (1861-1933), 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. Volume 1 contains Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, and includes the ethno-pornographical plate reproduced in colour. Volume 2 contains Bulletins 1-8 of North Queensland Ethnography from The Home Secretary’s Department, Brisbane, 1901-1908. Volume 3 contains Bulletins 9-18 of North Queensland Ethnography, Records of the Australian Museum Sydney, 1907-1910. In total, over 1,500 photographs, line drawings, and maps in three volumes.
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Pearls and Pearling Life
AU$135.00 Read MoreAdd to cartEdwin W. Streeter
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2006.Early Western Australian pearling. First published in 1886.
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Ethnological Notes and Phallic Rites of the Aboriginal Tribes of Western and South Australia
AU$40.00 Read MoreAdd to cartR. H. Matthews
Perth: Hesperian Press, 2020.