Aboriginal oral tradition

Van Toorn traces the development of European book culture and indigenous communication and writing in Australia.

Jackie Kay's country is Scotland but she can be demonised within it because she is black. The poem's narrator has to assert her right to the land which does not itself erect barriers (the river shakes hands with the sea)…

The past and history have been foregrounded in Aboriginal consciousness as issues that demand attention whereas the history of white Australia has often been taken for granted. Because they are a minority group Aboriginal people's history was, until the 1960s…