AustLit

'The Gurindji people of the Victoria River District in the Northern Territory are best known throughout Australia for the Gurindji Walk-Off, the landmark event of 1966 which precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. Gurindji history before the 1960s is less well known and is the subject of this book. For the Gurindji people, history is divided into Puwarraja, the Dreamtime, and Yijami, true stories. A number of accounts of Yijami come from historians,' political activists) police journals) and (auto)biographies of cattlemen and other local identities) Yet Gurindji voices are often understated in these versions of events, if they are present at all. Other anthropological description& and Gurindji-told stories capture the Gurindji perspective, but these first-hand accounts are often rendered in broken English and are limited in their scope of expression. As a result, these stories are often halting and fragmented, and require intense interrogation to understand.'