My Country of the Pelican Dreaming: The Life of an Australian Aborigine of the Gadjerong, Grant Ngabidj, 1904-1977 as told to Bruce Shaw

Book Description

Secondhand. Fair condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Foxing to inside covers, preliminary and endpages. Marks on covers and foredges.

Through Grant Ngabidj's account of his life, we learn what it was like to be a second-generation Aboriginal man living in a social order increasingly under the sway of Anglo-Australian society.

Ngabidj's narrative begins with the physical and economic setting of his people, the Gadjerong, who traditionally lived on the coast and its hinterland north of the Ord River in the Kimberley Region. This is followed by a short, compelling description of how Ningbing Station was taken up in the area, literally on the bones of Ngabidj's people.

From the new world of the stock camp, the focus shifts to the old world of East Kimberley Aboriginal society under cultural siege but maintaining its integrity - initiation, the law and kinship, violence, travel and European justice, magic, and mythology.

Later, we return to Ningbing Station, razed to the ground and abandoned during WWII; to the founding and growth of Kununurra and the abandonment of Ngabidj and his people; to the culture and the land to which it belongs, sullied by the influx of city settlers. (back cover)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers, please note that this book may contain descriptions and/or images of people who have passed away.