The Dreaming And Other Essays

One of Australia’s finest essayists, the first to cut through ‘the great Australian silence’ to convey the richness and uniqueness of Aboriginal culture to settler Australians ‘The most literate and persuasive of all contributions on Australia’s Indigenous people’ —Marcia Langton W.E.H. Stanner's words changed Australia. In his 1968 Boyer Lectures he exposed a ‘cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale’, regarding the fate of First Nations people, for which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. And in his essay ‘Durmugam’ he provided an unforgettable portrait of a warrior's attempt to hold back cultural change. The pieces collected here span Stanner’s career as well as the history of Australian race relations. They reveal the extraordinary scholarship, humanity and vision of one of Australia’s finest essayists. Stanner’s writings remain relevant in a time of reckoning with white Australia’s injustices against Aboriginal people and the path to reconciliation. With an introduction by Robert Manne ‘Bill Stanner was a superb essayist with a wonderful turn of phrase and ever fresh prose. He always had important things to say, which have not lost their relevance. It is wonderful that they will now be available to a new and larger audience.’ —Henry Reynolds ‘Stanner’s essays still hold their own among this country’s finest writings on matters black and white.’ —Noel Pearson

W.E.H. Stanner's words changed Australia. Without condescension and without sentimentality, in essays such as 'the Dreaming' Stanner conveyed the richness and uniqueness of Aboriginal culture. In his Boyer Lectures he exposed a 'cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale,' regarding the fate of the Aborigines, for which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian silence'. And in his essay 'Durmugam' he provided an unforgettable portrait of a warrior's attempt to hold back cultural change. 'He was such a man,' Stanner wrote. 'I thought I would like to make the reading world see and feel him as I did.' The pieces collected here span the career of W.E.H. Stanner as well as the history of Australian race relations. They reveal the extraordinary scholarship, humanity and vision of one of Australia's finest essayists. Their revival is a significant event. With an introductory essay by Robert Manne.

This is a collection of work by W.E.H. Stanner, one of Australia's finest essayists. A superb anthropologist, he was both perceptive and prophetic about the Aboriginal people he knew; yet his work has been out of print and astonishingly hard to find for many years. The revival of these essays, selected and introduced by Robert Manne, is a significant event. 'Bill Stanner was a superb essayist with a wonderful turn of phrase and ever fresh prose. He always had important things to say, which have not lost their relevance. It is wonderful that they will now be available to a new and larger audience.' -Henry Reynolds

This book looks at 'the Aboriginal problem' from an unusual viewpoint - that of the Aborigines themselves, for whom 'the Aboriginal problem' is the white Australian. The essays deal with all those features of traditional Aboriginal life that made it so deeply satisfying to the original Australians: religion, attachment to land, imaginative culture, and the whole ethos on which the impact of Europeans and their way of life has been destructive. The Aborigines have been dispossessed, exploited, rejected and on occasions reviled. What we now offer them is, from an Aboriginal point of view, neither true reconciliation nor equality. The author argues that race relations will deteriorate even farther than the neuralgic point to which our ethnocentric insensibility has already brought them unless white Australians make an effort to comprehend the Aboriginal truths of life.

W.E.H. Stanner's words changed Australia. Without condescension and without sentimentality, in essays such as 'The Dreaming' Stanner conveyed the richness and uniqueness of Aboriginal culture. In his Boyer Lectures he exposed a 'cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale, ' regarding the fate of the Aborigines, for which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian silence'. And in his essay 'Durmugam' he provided an unforgettable portrait of a warrior's attempt to hold back cultural change. 'He was such a man, ' Stanner wrote. 'I thought I would like to make the reading world see and feel him as I did.' The pieces collected here span the career of W.E.H. Stanner as well as the history of Australian race relations. They reveal the extraordinary scholarship, humanity and vision of one of Australia's finest essayists. Their revival is a significant event. With an introductory essay by Robert Mann

New edition of the author's 1968 Boyer Lectures. Two decades later, these essays on Aboriginals, their society and their vision of the world still inform and stimulate. This edition includes a foreword by H. C. Coombes. Other books by the author include 'An Aboriginal Religion' and 'White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-73'.