Customer Reviews (1)

A good childrens look up book on aborigines
I find this book both pictorially good and written well it is imformative and intresting it compells you to learn more about the indigenous peoples of australia Angie L ... Read more

Book Description
This short essay on the Aborigines of Western Australia is primarily useful as a historical document. Even at the time this was written there were few Aborigines remaining in this area, and so even scraps of information like this are important. The text is particularly revealing as to Victorian attitudes towards Aborigines. Every paragraph of this piece needs to be read with a careful eye for underlying racist assumptions.

That said, the author was well intentioned. Calvert, who lists literally dozens of academic affiliations on the title page, does criticize his contemporaries for their treatment of Aborigines as subhumans. Throughout the essay he attempts to demonstrate that the native Australians have a complete cultural inventory. He notes that many of the Aboriginal beliefs and practices which seem strange to Europeans are not that different than some listed in the Bible. He ends with a plea for protection of the Aborigines. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A master sylist
The first thing that grips me is that Greenway is a true master of English style, on every level, a melding of H.L. Mencken and an enraged bulldozer. Second is the insights he gives (sometime too freely) into himself.

He displays a wonderful and commendable arrogance because he probably does know what he's talking about better than almost anyone else. At times that can be wearing - his utmost certainty that he's right about the world and its functioning. But under the hardheadedness is a love for even those he castigates among both the aborigines and the white Aussies.

A romantic pragmatist-conservative, if you can imagine such a thing, he goes far, far beyond the usual academic study to probe the personal and cultural reasons that motivate both individuals and groups. There's a certain sadness, too, in his search for a home, which he has found in the Australian bush, but which can never be truly his.

Greenway has an immense, almost frightening intellect combined with a tough-love humanity that he hides under a roiling run of billingsgate. There was no one else like him that I'm aware of, and not likely there will be.

Eyewitness at the close of 'the Australian frontier'
I agree with the earlier positive reviews of this book. This is travelogue from a master story teller, and a folklorist to boot.

Greenway worked with Norman Tindale in his later decades. Tindale was probably Australia's first archaeologist, but he had polymath interests. Tindale during World War Two played a major role in detecting the origin point of the Japanese Fu-Gu firebomb balloons used as part of a vain attempt to saboutage the US / Canadian war effort in the Pacific North West. Tindale, then a RAAF intelligence officer, analysed the sand used for the ballast and thus helped locate their point of origin. Greenway tells us what it was like to work with thinkers like this. Another of Tindale's many accomplishments was mapping the tribal areas of virtually all the Australian Aboriginal tribal groups.

Greenway gives us a feel for pioneering work in anthropology in outback Australia during the final decades of the close of the Australian frontier. The last tribal group to have 'first contact' with Europeans was contacted about 1967.

Greenway's style is anecdotal but displays the depth of his specialist knowledge, down to earth common sense and impatience with the pretentious and fraudulent.

A combination travelogue, biography and history.

John Greenway
I read this book a couple of times long many moons ago but still must concur with those who say it's a great book.The author, John Greenway, enflamed the passions of students at his university and he claimed he was, by their lights, the campus reactionary.Alack!The students did not know that in a review of one of his early books, American Folksongs of Protest, he was described by the Soviet Appartchik reviewer as "America's most progressive folklorist."Gotta love the dichotomy!Greenway was also chummy with Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson and a folksinger in his own right.In fine, Dylan himself even pilfered one of his songs.

Great Sleeper Book on Australia and Culture!
The author, John Greenway, was my professor.This book is without doubt his masterpiece, his magnum opus.It takes the reader on a profound journey into the heart of Australia, explaining and teaching about Culture itself, the great driving engine of all human social organization.His chapter on religion is succinct and potent, and perceptive students will be indelibly changed by its insights.Dr. Greenway spent 15 years in the desert among the aborigines.His amusing tales of the characters he met and studied are almost mythic as described, a testimony to Greenway's powerful literary style (he was a student of Anglo-Saxon literature and folksongs, and studied under the great MacEdward Leach at the University of Pennsylvania).His storytelling ability is his strongest asset.But more important, the reader will be lifted above his own culture to see why people act as they do.I predict that this book will be republished some day and become a recognized text in cultural anthropology.Dr. Greeenway was a pioneer, and far ahead of his time. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Oceania, published by University of Sydney on June 1, 1997. The length of the article is 785 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Arguments About Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology. (book reviews)
Author: John Morton
Publication: Oceania (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 1997
Publisher: University of Sydney
Volume: v67Issue: n4Page: p335(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description
This book focuses on the colonial practice of rationing goods to Aboriginal people, arguing that much of the colonial experience in Central Australia can be understood by seeing rationing as a fundamental, though flexible, instrument of colonial government. Rationing was the material basis for a variety of colonial ventures: scientific, evangelical, pastoral and the postwar program of "assimilation." Combining history and anthropology in a cultural study of rationing, this book develops a new narrative of the colonization of Central Australia. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

First rate history
Rowse traces the history of Aboriginal contact withwhite settlers by examining the economic rewards offered to the indigenous people by pastoralists and missionaries, from the first distribution of foodstuffs through the integration of Aboriginal people into a cash economy in the last 50 years.This is a book that wil suprise you with insights and connections, make even statistics live, and demonstrate how comlicated the skein of relationships between black and white in Australia hav ebeen and continue to be.Each transaction seems to offer good and bad, and although Rowse never attempts to speak for the Aboriginal people, but only examines the voices of whitefellas through their leavings in the historical record, he manages to pressent a balanced and nuanced understanding of both sides of the frontier. ... Read more