Historical Dictionary of Australian Aborigines

by Mitchell Rolls, Murray Johnson

Overview

The Aboriginal Australians first arrived on the continent at least 60,000 years ago, occupying and adapting to a range of environmental conditions—from tropical estuarine habitats, densely forested regions, open plains, and arid desert country to cold, mountainous, and often wet and snowy high country. Cultures adapted according to the different conditions and adapted again to environmental changes brought about by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age. European colonization of the island continent in 1788 not only introduced diseases to which Aborigines had no immunity but also began an enduring and at times violent conflict over land and resources. Reconciliation between Aborigines and the settler population remains unresolved.

This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Australian Aborigines contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and more than 300 cross-referenced entries on the politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture of the Aborigines. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the indigenous people of Australia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538134351
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Series:	Historical Dictionaries of Peoples and Cultures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	290
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

MITCHELL ROLLS is senior lecturer and coordinator of Aboriginal Studies in the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. His most recent monographs are Travelling Home, Walkabout Magazine and Mid-Twentieth-Century Australia (Anthem Press, 2016, co-authored with Anna Johnston), and Australian Indigenous Studies: Research and Practice (Peter Lang, 2016, co-authored with Terry Moore, Carol Pybus and David Moltow).


MURRAY JOHNSON is a Freelance Historian and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland. His most recent monographs include Australia's Ancient Aboriginal Past: A Global Perspective (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014), and Van Diemen's Land: An Aboriginal History (New South Wales University Press, 2015, co-authored with Ian McFarlane).

Editorial Reviews

This reviewer would highly recommend this dictionary from the series. It is a well-written history of the Aborigines that updates their history through 2010.

American Reference Books Annual

This accessible, alphabetically organized dictionary manages to impart a great deal of information on the Australian Aborigines in relatively short entries. Topics include significant people; places; cultural topics; and general categories as well as political and activist organizations and political acts and movements. Related entries are noted in bold within the body of the entry, with see also information in capital letters at the end of some entries. The volume begins with an informative introduction, which is followed by a note on orthography, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, and a detailed chronology. The bibliography, which rounds out the dictionary, is lengthy enough to require a table of contents and introduction. Arranged in rough subject groupings, it lists books in 4 main areas ("Reference Works," "Ethnography and Anthropology," "Thematic Works," and "Works by Indigenous Writers"), which are then further subdivided into 22 more discrete categories. This readable, informative book provides an excellent starting place for anyone seeking insight into the history of Australia's indigenous population. More introductory and less narrowly focused than The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (2000), this is a sound purchase for most college and university collections.

Booklist

This accessible, alphabetically organized dictionary manages to impart a great deal of information on the Australian Aborigines in relatively short entries. Topics include significant people; places; cultural topics; and general categories as well as political and activist organizations and political acts and movements. Related entries are noted in bold within the body of the entry, with see also information in capital letters at the end of some entries. The volume begins with an informative introduction, which is followed by a note on orthography, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, and a detailed chronology. The bibliography, which rounds out the dictionary, is lengthy enough to require a table of contents and introduction. Arranged in rough subject groupings, it lists books in 4 main areas ("Reference Works," "Ethnography and Anthropology," "Thematic Works," and "Works by Indigenous Writers"), which are then further subdivided into 22 more discrete categories. This readable, informative book provides an excellent starting place for anyone seeking insight into the history of Australia's indigenous population. More introductory and less narrowly focused than The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (2000), this is a sound purchase for most college and university collections.--Booklist

This reviewer would highly recommend this dictionary from the series. It is a well-written history of the Aborigines that updates their history through 2010.--American Reference Books Annual

From the Publisher

This accessible, alphabetically organized dictionary manages to impart a great deal of information on the Australian Aborigines in relatively short entries. Topics include significant people; places; cultural topics; and general categories as well as political and activist organizations and political acts and movements. Related entries are noted in bold within the body of the entry, with see also information in capital letters at the end of some entries. The volume begins with an informative introduction, which is followed by a note on orthography, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, and a detailed chronology. The bibliography, which rounds out the dictionary, is lengthy enough to require a table of contents and introduction. Arranged in rough subject groupings, it lists books in 4 main areas ("Reference Works," "Ethnography and Anthropology," "Thematic Works," and "Works by Indigenous Writers"), which are then further subdivided into 22 more discrete categories.
This readable, informative book provides an excellent starting place for anyone seeking insight into the history of Australia's indigenous population. More introductory and less narrowly focused than The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture (2000), this is a sound purchase for most college and university collections.

Booklist

This reviewer would highly recommend this dictionary from the series. It is a well-written history of the Aborigines that updates their history through 2010.

American Reference Books Annual (ARBA)