Pila Nguru The Spinifex People

by Cane, Scott

• ISBN13: 9781863683487
• ISBN10: 1863683488
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-01
• Publisher: Fremantle Press

Summary

The People of the Sun and Shadow, the Spinifex People, were cocooned within the Spinifex plains of the Western Desert for hundreds of generations until shaken from their nomadic solitude by the atomic shock of Maralinga. When they returned to their homelands in the 1980s, after their displacement, they found the southern third of their country had been converted into a nature reserve, the northern third leased to Aboriginal people in the north and the center deemed vacant crown land. This is a detailed account, in words and artworks, of the culture and history of the Spinifex People, an almost invisible people in modern Australia.

Author Biography

Scott Cane works as a consultant and is the coauthor of Land Use and Resources in Desert Homelands. He has written more than 90 reports and 25 published papers about Aboriginal cultural heritage, community life, and relations to land.

Table of Contents

Introduction	9	(12)
Spiritual Journey	21	(30)
A Place in the Sun	51	(30)
Tjukurrpa	81	(34)
Terra Nullius and Ngura Tjantu	115	(42)
The Past in the Present	157	(46)
Living in Spinifex	203	(42)
Epilogue---A Blue Tarp and a White Parchment	245	(5)
Endnotes	250	(4)
Bibliography	254