Being Black

This volume brings together results of research by anthropologists, linguists and historians on the social life of people who used to be labelled 'part-Aborigines' or 'urban Aborigines'.

Issues discussed include bases of identity, ties of family, structure of community, ways of speaking, beliefs and feelings about country, and attitudes to the past.

Production Details

• Paperback
• 240mm x 170mm x 20mm
• 288pp
• Released January 1991
• ISBN 9780925302402

Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword by Marie Reay
Contributors
Introduction
Chapter 1: Aborigines of Victoria
Chapter 2: Dhan-gadi resistance to assimilation
Chapter 3: 'Am I too black to go with you?'
Chapter 4: Ambiguity, style and kinship in Adelaide Aboriginal identity
Chapter 5: They don't speak an Aboriginal language, or do they?
Chapter 6: Kinship, mobility and community in rural New South Wales
Chapter 7: All one family
Chapter 8: A grammar of exchange
Chapter 9: A Wiradjuri fight story
Chapter 10: Medicine Square
Chapter 11: A litany for land
Chapter 12: Myth as history, history as myth
Index

About The Author

After training and working in the visual arts, Ian Keen gained a BSc in anthropology at University College London (1973) and a PhD in anthropology at The Australian National University (1979). He has conducted anthropological fieldwork in northeast Arnhem Land, the Alligator Rivers region, and McLaren Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia, and in Gippsland, Victoria. He is the author of Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion (Clarendon Press 1994), and Aboriginal Economy and Society (Oxford 2004) as well as many articles in journals and edited books, and he edited Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia and other collections of essays. His research interests have included Yolngu kinship and religion, Aboriginal land rights, Aboriginal economy, and language and culture. His current research includes the diversity and typology of Australian Aboriginal kinship systems as part of the Austkin project, and the language of property. He has lectured and supervised postgraduate students at the University of Queensland and The Australian National University, where he is now a Visiting Fellow.

About The Cover

Front cover: Painting by Willie Gudubi, Alawa. Southwest Arnhemland, NT, born c. 1917.

Alawa sacred sites at Llangabun. 1987

Synthetic ploymer paint on canvas, 840mm, 320mm.

Collection Australian- National Gallery, Canberra