Arrernte Present, Arrernte Past : Invasion, Violence, and Imagination in Indigenous Central Australia

by Austin-Broos, Diane

• ISBN13: 9780226032641
• ISBN10: 0226032647
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The Arrernte people of Central Australia first encountered Europeans in the 1860s as groups of explorers, pastoralists, missionaries, and laborers invaded their land. During that time the Arrernte were the subject of intense curiosity, and the earliest accounts of their lives, beliefs, and traditions were a seminal influence on European notions of the primitive. The first study to address the Arrernte's contemporary situation,Arrernte Present, Arrernte Pastalso documents the immense sociocultural changes they have experienced over the past hundred years. Employing ethnographic and archival research, Diane Austin-Broos traces the history of the Arrernte as they have transitioned from a society of hunter-gatherers to members of the Hermannsburg Mission community to their present, marginalized position in the modern Australian economy. While she concludes that these wrenching structural shifts led to the violence that now marks Arrernte communities, she also brings to light the powerful acts of imagination that have sustained a continuing sense of Arrernte identity.

Author Biography

Diane Austin-Broos is professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney and the author of Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Order, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Maps and Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Note on Orthography	p. xiii
Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Remembering the Mission
Encounter at Ntaria	p. 27
Kaporilya, a Big Place	p. 51
The Meaning of Pepe	p. 77
Life as a Standing Fight
Home and Away: The Dislocation of Identity	p. 105
Living with Kin	p. 130
Honey Ants and Relatedness	p. 154
Outstations and Being Remote
Factionalism (or, The Secret Life of an Outstation Movement)	p. 179
When Imaginaries Collide	p. 205
A Very Remote Emergency	p. 238
Conclusion	p. 259
Kaporilya Song	p. 271
Glossary of Western Arrernte Terms	p. 273
Notes	p. 279
References	p. 299
Index	p. 317
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.