Up From the Mission: Selected Writings by Noel Pearson

Many of the pieces included have been hard to find until now. Gathered together in a cohesive, broad ranging book, they show a key Australian thinker coming into being.Pearson evokes his early life in Hope Vale, Queensland. He includes sections of his epoch-making essay Our Right to Take Responsibility, which exposed the trap of 'passive welfare' and proposed new ways forward. There are pieces on the apology; on Barack Obama and black leadership; on Australian party politics - Keating, Howard and Rudd; and on alcoholism, despair and what can be done to mend Aboriginal communities that have fallen apart. (back cover)