AustLit

'Until recently the southwest Aboriginal people, who usually speak of themselves as Nyungars, have been considered to be a people who have lost their Aboriginal spiritual heritage or whose knowledge of things of the spirit is a diluted (or worse still, made-up and inauthentic) tradition. This chapter is premised on the understanding that all people continually generate and maintain meaning. A loss of meaning and knowledge was not presumed when I first sat down with Nyungar people. Rather I simply asked them to share with me and teach me how they made sense of their existence. I have sought to show here how Nyungar people read country and see themselves in relation to their ancestors and to the land, in the context of the attempt to prevent the desecration of a small brook on the edge of the city of Perth in Western Australia.'  (Introduction)