White Flour, White Power : From Rations to Citizenship in Central Australia

Rating:
Summary: First rate history
Review: Rowse traces the history of Aboriginal contact with white settlers by examining the economic rewards offered to the indigenous people by pastoralists and missionaries, from the first distribution of foodstuffs through the integration of Aboriginal people into a cash economy in the last 50 years. This is a book that wil suprise you with insights and connections, make even statistics live, and demonstrate how comlicated the skein of relationships between black and white in Australia hav ebeen and continue to be. Each transaction seems to offer good and bad, and although Rowse never attempts to speak for the Aboriginal people, but only examines the voices of whitefellas through their leavings in the historical record, he manages to pressent a balanced and nuanced understanding of both sides of the frontier.