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Why Warriors lie down and die Book Reviews Now, you can understand Reprinted from Crosslight, Newspaper of the Uniting Church of Victoria, No.95 November 2000 Richard Trudgen’s Why Warriors Lie Down and Die has been welcomed by both indigenous and non-indigenous people as a book that will help people’s understanding. Dr Evelyn Scott, who chairs the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, said the book “will make a major contribution to cross-cultural understanding in Australia”. The Rev. Dr Robert Johnson, general secretary of the Uniting Church in Victoria, described it as “the single most helpful step I have experienced in understanding Aboriginal culture, and a great step towards reconciliation”. And Dr Phillip Carson, director of general surgery at Royal Darwin Hospital, says: Why Warriors clearly explains why so many well-meaning ‘programs’ continue to fail – failure that leads to a total breakdown in effective communication, health care, community governance, the rule of law, education and other essential areas of personal and community life.” Speaking at the book’s launch in Darwin last month, Dr Scott said she had found two aspects of Why Warriors Lie Down and Die to be especially powerful. One was its treatment of the state of warfare that existed on and off for 50 years after the white authorities, unbeknown to the Yolgnu (Aboriginal people), divided Arnhem Land into 11 pastoral leases in the 1880s. “I’d venture to say that the vast majority of Australians don’t even know that these wars took place, let alone their extent, or their tragic consequences for many Yolgnu clans,” she said. The other was its “eloquent demonstration of the links between the present crisis in Yolgnu communities and the injustices and misguided policies of the past”. “Here we move well beyond the original dispossessions and massacres,” she said. “Even the quite recent policies directed at self-determination … are exposed in Why Warriors as actually contributing to the current crises in health, education and continuing welfare dependency.” According to author Richard Trudgen, this failure is largely due to the way the policies were implemented, rather than the intent of the policies themselves. “In its essence, I think it’s a refusal to accept the validity of indigenous cultures,” said Dr Scott. “Richard illustrates the point many times, most notably in his excellent analysis of the importance of language in the interface between Yolgnu and Balanda [white Australian] cultures. “His heartfelt demand – ‘Take the language seriously’ – tells it all,” she said. Indigenous people were being denied human rights because other Australians did not accept the importance of fundamental cultural factors such as language. “The fact that this is still an issue in the year 2000 is really totally unacceptable. It’s an issue for reconciliation, because it’s an issue of indigenous rights,” she said. “There is still time. The errors of the past and present can be corrected, and the Yolgnu people can be re-empowered before their great cultures are lost forever.” |
$29.95 AUD |
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