Passion of Private White, The (Hardcover)

AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL

From the bestselling author of The Bush, the story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a remote Aboriginal tribe: a miniature epic of human adaptation, suffering and resilience.

The story of a fifty-year relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a remote Aboriginal tribe: a miniature epic of human adaptation, suffering and resilience.

The Passion of Private White describes the meeting of two worlds: that of the intensely driven anthropologist Neville White, and the world of hunter-gatherer clans in remote northern Australia with whom he has lived and worked for half a century, mapping their culture and history in breathtaking detail. As White began to understand this ancient culture struggling between the demands of Western modernity and the equally pressing need to preserve their lands, customs, laws and language, he was also trying to transcend the mental scars inflicted on the battlefields of Vietnam. Eventually, scholarly observer crossed the line into activist, advocate and defender of the clans effort to create a safe and healthy homeland, a seat both of traditional culture and contemporary skills and education. The enterprise meant overcoming everything from insatiable mining companies and official incompetence and neglect, to customs that were fundamental in the old way of life but dysfunctional in the transition to the new. When White began taking his old platoon mates to the homeland, two wildly different groups found in each other some of the solutions and some of the therapy they both needed. Don Watson has had his own fifty-year relationship with Neville White, since meeting him as an undergraduate in Melbourne. This book is the result: moving, enlightening, devastating and inspiring, it is a towering achievement, a profound insight into both our recent and our deep history, the coloniser and colonised indeed into the human condition itself.

Notes:

• Cultural sensitivity advisory notice: Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and other First Nations people are advised that this item may contain names, images of deceased people and other content that may be culturally sensitive.
• To the people of Donydji, Approval for this book was granted by Donydji community members Joanne Yindiri Guyula, David Guyamirrlili Bidingal and Peter Wanamal Guyula.
• Permission to reproduce scenes and dialogue from Kim McKenzie’s The spear in the stone (1983) was granted by Ronin Films and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. — imprint.
• Includes bibliographical references.
• 326 pages (24 pages of plates) : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cm
• First Edition #090923