登入
選單
返回
Google圖書搜尋
A World that was
Ronald Murray Berndt
Catherine Helen Berndt
John E. Stanton
其他書名
The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia
出版
UBC Press
, 1993
主題
History / Australia & New Zealand
Social Science / Anthropology / General
Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
Social Science / Anthropology / Physical
Social Science / Customs & Traditions
Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Australian & Oceanian Studies
Social Science / Sociology / General
ISBN
0774804785
9780774804783
URL
http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=gYhQnj6cWh8C&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBook
SAMPLE
註釋
This extraordinary book, written from material gathered over half a century ago, will almost certainly be the last fine-grained account of traditional Aboriginal life in settled south-eastern Australia. It recreates the world of the Yaraldi group of the Kukabrak or Narrinyeri people of the Lower Murray and Lakes region of South Australia. In 1939 Albert Karloan, a Yaraldi man, urged a young ethnologist, Ronald Berndt, to set up camp at Murray Bridge and to record the story of his people. Karloan and Pinkie Mack, a Yaraldi woman, possessed through personal experience, not merely through hearsay, an all but complete knowledge of traditional life. They were virtually the last custodians of that knowledge and they felt the burden of their unique situation. This book represents their concerted efforts to pass on the story to future generations. For Ronald and Catherine Berndt, this was their first fieldwork together in an illustrious joint career of almost fifty years. During long periods, principally until 1943, they laboured with pencil and paper to put it all down - a far cry from the recording techniques of today's oral historians. Their fieldnotes were worked into a rough draft of what would become, but not until recently, the finished manuscript. The book's range is encyclopaedic and engrossing - sometimes dramatic. It encompasses relations between and among individuals and clan groups, land tenure, kinship, the subsistence economy, trade, ceremony, councils, fighting and warfare, rites of passage from conception to death, myths, and beliefs and practices concerning healing and the supernatural. Not least, it is a record of the dramatic changes following European colonization. A World That Was is a unique contribution to Australia's cultural history. There is simply no comparable body of work, nor is there ever likely to be.