Belonging
Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership

This book, published in 2000, explores the feelings of non-Aboriginal Australians as they articulate their sense of belonging to the land.

Peter Read (Author)

9780521773546, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 2000

258 pages, 5 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.6 cm, 0.54 kg

This extraordinary book, published in 2000, explores the feelings of non-Aboriginal Australians as they articulate their sense of belonging to the land. Always acting as a counterpoint is the prior occupation and ownership by Aboriginal people and their spiritual attachment. Peter Read asks the pivotal questions: what is the meaning of places important to non-Aboriginal Australians from which the indigenous people have already been dispossessed? How are contemporary Australians thinking through the problem of knowing that their places of attachment are also the places which Aboriginals loved - and lost? And are the sites of all our deep affections to be contested, articulated, shared, foregone or possessed absolutely? The book cleverly interweaves Read's analysis (and personal quest for belonging) with the voices of poets, musicians, artists, historians, young people, Asian Australians, farmers and seventh generation Australians.

Acknowledgements
Map
Introduction
1. Deep in the sandstone gorges
2. Voices in the river: the poetry of belonging
3. Growing
4. Men's business
5. Singing the native-born
6. Women's business
7. Four historians
8. In search of the proper country
Notes
Works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH], Cultural studies [JFC], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]