Author Description

This is a story of resistance, survival and, ultimately, of triumph. In it James Miller traces the last 200 years of his family tribal history - that of the Wonnarua people of the Hunter River Valley in New South Wales. With pride and sensitivity he illuminates the past of a people who have survived every attempt to destroy them as a separate race and culture. Their experiences, shared by the majority of Koori people throughout Australia, include the initial contact with whites, the frontier slaughter and the spread of introduced disease. More recently, the influence of Christian missionaries and the savage control of the Aborigines' Protection Board, the exclusion of Koori children from government schools and the struggle for land rights have shaped their lives. James Miller reveals racial iniquities seldom parallelled in other nations. Yet he does so not to apportion blame but to confront Australia's past and draw lessons from it. This poignant and highly personal account, which has been awarded the Angus & Robertson Writers' Fellowship, will stir every reader to a more honest appraisal of that past.