Four Angles

The Aborigines From Four Angles

It’s getting to the stage in the Australian publishing world where a month is not allowed to go by without a new book about the aborigines. In the pre-Christmas rush of books they appeared in an uninterrupted stream.

iI7E selected four as a cross sec- I* tion, two of them in a more erious vain designed to prove a oint, and two others by professional writers and apparently designed more or the Christmas trade than anything Ise.

We, The Aborigines, by Darwin ewspaperman, Douglas Lockwood, is beautiful production which the pub shers obviously hope you will buy Dr your friends overseas. Lockwood sleets dozens of photographs of borigines, some well-known such as le artist, the late Albert Namatjira, nd film star Ngarla Kunoth, and thers, such as Sugarbag Jack and Charcoal”, selected at random.

He writes a page or two on each, i bright and breezy fashion, and in le first person. The words he has hem use are obviously not their 'ords but the device is legitimate in ockwood’s hands. Australians who ave never been closer to an abori inal than a Namatjira painting at le art gallery are treated to a pain ;ss lesson on aboriginal life and Die. lon Idriess doesn’t need any intro uction; his list of books is almost mg enough to require a second page n the flyleaf. In Our Living Stone \ge, this year’s contribution, he lets imself wander over the years, jotting own bits and pieces as his interest ancies.

Words pour out of lon, and even i his explanatory preface he finds imself. typically, having to cut off hort (after four pages) “to prevent lyself running off into another ook”.

But it’s a good book, as easy to sad as any of lon’s, and with plenty f photographs.

Namatjira, Wanderer Between Two Vorlds, is by an Adelaide woman, oyce Batty. It’s not a book full of an, like the others, but it’s a factual, workmanlike account of the main oints in the life of the artist.

It surveys his rise, his fight to live i two worlds and to get on with his rt in peace, and the arguments, rtistic and social, which raged round him from time to time. The ook would have been more useful

with an index, or even chapter head ings.

No Dying Race, by Charles Du guid, is an argument appealing for a fair go for the aborigines.

Every Australian, he says, has the right to expect the satisfaction of his basic human needs —food, shelter, work, and acceptance. But not yet have all these been accorded to the aborigines, and “even at this late date there are many people in Australia who can see nothing good in our aborigines.”

Dr. Duguid feels that the Federal Government must be allowed to assume responsibility for aborigines in all States as well as those in the Northern Territory, for their future is a national responsibility.

But he agrees that no amount of legislative progress will compensate for “the saddest obstacle to that hap pier future—the refusal of a majority of white Australians to recognise the work of the aborigines and to accept them”.—Sl. fWE, THE ABORIGINES. Cassell. 50 -. OUR LIVING STONE AGE. Angus and Robertson. 42/-. NAMATJIRA.

Hodder and Stoughton. 27 6. NO DYING RACE. Rigby Ltd. 35/-.)