First Knowledges Songlines


Book Description

Let this series begin the discussion.' - Bruce Pascoe 'An act of intellectual reconciliation.' - Lynette Russell Songlines are an archive for powerful knowledges that ensured Australia's many Indigenous cultures flourished for over 60,000 years. Much more than a navigational path in the cartographic sense, these vast and robust stores of information are encoded through song, story, dance, art and ceremony, rather than simply recorded in writing. Weaving deeply personal storytelling with extensive research on mnemonics, Songlines: The Power and Promise offers unique insights into Indigenous traditional knowledges, how they apply today and how they could help all peoples thrive into the future. This book invites readers to understand a remarkable way for storing knowledge in memory by adapting song, art, and most importantly, Country, into their lives. About the series: The First Knowledges books are co-authored by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers; the series is edited by Margo Neale, senior Indigenous curator at the National Museum of Australia. Forthcoming titles include: Design by Alison Page & Paul Memmott (2021); Country by Bill Gammage & Bruce Pascoe (2021); Healing, Medicine & Plants (2022); Astronomy (2022); Innovation (2023).




Songspirals


Book Description

Joint winner of the 2020 Prime Minister's Award for Non-Fiction. Shortlisted for the 2020 Victorian Premier's Award for Non-Fiction. 'We want you to come with us on our journey, our journey of songspirals. Songspirals are the essence of people in this land, the essence of every clan. We belong to the land and it belongs to us. We sing to the land, sing about the land. We are that land. It sings to us.' Aboriginal Australian cultures are the oldest living cultures on earth and at the heart of Aboriginal cultures is song. These ancient narratives of landscape have often been described as a means of navigating across vast distances without a map, but they are much, much more than this. Songspirals are sung by Aboriginal people to awaken Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place. Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape. For Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, women and men play different roles in bringing songlines to life, yet the vast majority of what has been published is about men's place in songlines. Songspirals is a rare opportunity for outsiders to experience Aboriginal women's role in crying the songlines in a very authentic and direct form. 'Songspirals are Life. These are cultural words from wise women. As an Aboriginal woman this is profound to learn. As a human being Songspirals is an absolute privilege to read.' - Ali Cobby Eckermann, Yankunytjatjara poet 'To read Songspirals is to change the way you see, think and feel this country.' - Clare Wright, award-winning historian and author 'A rare and intimate window into traditional women's cultural life and their visceral connection to Country. A generous invitation for the rest of us.' - Kerry O'Brien, Walkley Award-winning journalist




Songlines


Book Description

This stunning companion to the National Museum of Australia's blockbuster Indigenous-led exhibition, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, explores the history and meaning of songlines, the Dreaming or creation tracks that crisscross the Australian continent, of which the Seven Sisters songline is one of the most extensive. Through stunning artworks (many created especially for the exhibition), story, and in-depth analysis, the book will provide the definitive resource for those interested in finding out more about these complex pathways of spiritual, ecological, economic, cultural, and ontological knowledge - the stories `written in the land'.




Songlines of the Soul


Book Description

The title for this book comes from the ancient Aboriginal concept of “song lines” —pathways to another world reached through dreamtime and visionary insight, and encounters with the unknown realm of experience. Veronica Goodchild addresses how dreams, synchronicities, UFO/ET encounters, Crop Circle mysteries, and NDEs all point to the new unfolding vision of reality. She draws on ancient mystery traditions to explore how this metamorphosis is already reflected cross-culturally in Hopi, Aztec, Mayan, Hindu, Tibetan, Maori, Zulu, Dogon, and Egyptian cultures. Songlines of the Soul proposes a new paradigm of reality, a new worldview. The signatures of this new reality are arising both in our own experiences and all around us if only we can stretch wide our stubbornly held perceptions of what is “reality.” As we stand at a crucial turning point in our human history, this book offers hope, a call to awaken and expand our perceptions of the fundamental principles that orchestrate reality. In an age when the answers offered by governments and traditional religion are no longer sufficient, the quest for meaning must—as it always has in the past—arise first through visions, dreams, and journeys to other dimensions of consciousness.




Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines


Book Description

In this ground-breaking book, Judy Atkinson skilfully and sensitively takes readers into the depths of sadness and despair and, at the same time, raises us to the heights of celebration and hope. She presents a disturbing account of the trauma suffered by Australia's Indigenous people and the resultant geographic and generational 'trauma trails' spread throughout the Country. Then, through the use of a culturally appropriate research approach called Dadirri: Listening to one another, Judy presents and analyses the stories of a number of Indigenous people. From her analysis of these 'stories of pain, stories of healing', she is able to point both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous readers in the direction of change and healing.




Songlines and Dreamings


Book Description

The art of the Australian Aborigines is widely recognised as being the oldest art form in the world, preceding that of the Americas and Europe by many centuries. For thousands of years, however, the only art forms practised by the Aborigines were rock painting and carving, bark painting, sand painting and body painting using natural ochres, wild desert cotton, charcoal and birds' down, often carried out as part of ceremonial activities. It was not until 1971 that the Aborigines of the Papunya Tula settlement in the deserts of the Northern Territory were introduced to methods of painting on canvas and board using modern materials. This book commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Papunya Tula painting movement - the birthplace of contemporary Aboriginal painting. The work of eighty Papunya Tula artists, including some of the best known Aboriginal painters - Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri - is illustrated in this book in two hundred full-colour reproductions which demonstrates the vibrancy and sophistication of the art. Patrick Corbally Stourton's introductory text examines the events which led to the birth of this extraordinary painting movement, and illuminates the mythology of Dreamings which lies behind every Aboriginal painting.




Singing Saltwater Country


Book Description

John Bradley's compelling account of three decades living with the Yanyuwa people of the Gulf of Carpentaria and of how the elders revealed to him the ancient songlines of their Dreaming.




Songlines: First Knowledges for younger readers


Book Description

Our Laws are forever present and provide the pathways for all Australians to truly learn how to belong to this continent.' - June Oscar 'No other current work has been able to so comprehensively explain the significance of traditional law in all its manifestations.' - Henry Reynolds Law is culture, and culture is law. Given by the ancestors and cultivated over millennia, Indigenous law defines what it is to be human. Complex and evolving, law holds the keys to resilient, caring communities and a life in balance with nature. Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn show how Indigenous law has enabled people to survive and thrive in Australia for more than 2000 generations. Nurturing people and places, law is the foundation of all Indigenous societies in Australia, giving them the tools to respond and adapt to major environmental and social changes. But law is not a thing of the past. These living, sophisticated systems are as powerful now as they have ever been, if not more so. Law: The Way of the Ancestors challenges readers to consider how Indigenous law can inspire new ways forward for us all in the face of global crises.




Cooee Mittigar


Book Description

Age range 5 to 12 'Warami mittigar. Hello friend. We welcome you to Darug Country.' Cooee Mittigar, meaning Come Here Friend, is an invitation to yana (walk), on Darug Country. In this stunning picture book, Darug creators Jasmine Seymour and Leanne Mulgo Watson tell a story on Darug Songlines, introducing children and adults-alike to Darug Nura (Country) and language. Greeted by Mulgo, the black swan, readers are welcomed to Nura. Journeying through the seasons, Mulgo describes the land, skyscape, birds, animals and totems. It is a gentle guide to how Darug people read the seasons, knowing when it is time to hunt and time to rest. It is also an appeal to remember, off ering new ways of seeing and reading the lands of the surrounding Sydney region. With Darug language interspersed with English and an extensive glossary throughout, Cooee Mittigar presents an important tool for learning, told as a tender story with exquisite illustrations. It is Jasmine and Leanne's wish that with this book, everyone will know that the Darug mob are still here and still strong. Cooee mittigar. Tread softly on our lands. Know that this dreaming was here. Is still here. Will be forever.




In Patagonia


Book Description

The masterpiece of travel writing that revolutionized the genre and made its author famous overnight An exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land, Bruce Chatwin’s exquisite account of his journey through Patagonia teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes. Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through “the uttermost part of the earth”—that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome—in search of almost-forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.