AustLit

'This book provides a valuable insight into the corpus of Jeremy Beckett's thinking and writing about Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander forms of self-hood, representation, citizenship, and expressions of ‘indigeneity’ from the late 1950s into the 21st century. The papers are not presented chronologically, although there is an obvious sequence. The first half of the book concerns his work with Aboriginal people in western NSW, and the second half contains his main writings on Torres Strait Island people. The final two chapters bring us full circle in their exploration of Aboriginal citizenship, and finally, of the constructions and practices of indigeneity on the global stage. This last chapter nicely book-ends the text, complementing Beckett's Introduction at the beginning.' (Introduction)

This paper considers the significance of the novel Drums of Mer (1941) in contemporary Torres Strait Islanders' lives. Its use as narrative by many Islanders today constitutes one means by which men especially have come to know themselves, white others, and their past. In particular, I explore the ways in which this story appeals to and is appealed to by Yam Island people. Contrary to literary deconstructions of Idriess's representations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, my paper argues that in seriously attending to Torres Strait readings of Drums of Mer we can see that for contemporary Islander readers, it is not themselves who are other but rather the white protagonists. I employ Said's (1994) notion of 'cultural overlap' and de Certeau's (1988) understandings of reading and writing as 'everyday practices' to frame my analysis of the differing impacts of the historical novel, Drums of Mer, and the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. It is through story telling that Yam Island selves are placed in the past and the present, and in Idriess's memorable story a similar effect is achieved. In his novel approach, the past becomes his-story, a romanticised refraction of the Reports. Unlike the Reports, this novel is a sensual rendering of a Torres Strait past, and at this level it operates as a mnemonic device for Yam Island people, triggering memories and the imagination through the senses. This Torres Strait Islander detour by way of a past via a story, can be understood as a means by which Yam Island people continue to actively produce powerful images of themselves, for both themselves and for others. (Author's Abstract)

'Stars of Tagai: The Torres Strait Islanders contains an excellent coverage of Torres Strait Island responses and initiatives to various moments and phases of the colonial process, yet it is also a particularly difficult book which in its initial stages resists the reader. It is uneven in its construction and analysis, and this may be partly what Sharp is referring to when she speaks of the 'written project' as being 'asymmetrical' (p 15). Because Parts II—IV easily stand alone from Part I, a reader who wants ready access to the beautifully grounded Torres Strait Island narratives can skip Part I without losing access to Torres Strait Island people's own senses of themselves. The inclusion of large extracts of uninterrupted Torres Strait Island narratives, especially in Part III, is the highlight of the book. It is here that selected Torres Strait Island speakers eloquently elaborate their world views, and this works well (Chapters 4 to 6). Her linking of 'two circles of understanding' (hers and that of the 'stars'—creative Torres Strait individuals) is achieved only when she sufficiently situates her discussion in 'thick description' (Geertz 1973). At other times, the text (particularly in Part I) reads like a private flight of fancy, unconvincing and often unreadable.' (Introduction)

'Sam Watson's novel, The Kadaitcha Sung: A Seductive Tale of Sorcery, Eroticism and Corruption, is outstanding in a number of ways. Watson skilfully moves between temporal and spatial dimensions, weaving his brutal tale of a sorcerer avenging two related expressions of a major catastrophe: the interruption of Aboriginal cosmology by a rogue Kadaitcha and the British colonisation of Australia. It is a confronting text, in which homicidal and sexual violence erupts or bubbles just below the surface. The challenge of Watson's novel is that it assaults the reader with the undiluted hatred Tommy Gubba and his warriors have for and express towards whites, and towards blacks who have joined forces with whites. It is a black representation of the continuing colonial interface, particularly exploring the strategies employed by southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales blacks in managing their relations with whites and with other blacks, especially through the adoption of 'Jack-Jacky roles', the exercise of sorcery, employment of supernatural forces and the use of violence. Watson clearly locates the Native Mounted Police in Brisbane, during the present and past. It is in his collapsing of time that the atrocities can be graphically portrayed as one continuous and contemporary flow of violence, not interrupted by the spaces of time or place. This serves to magnify the episodes and overwhelms the reader, allowing her or him no escape.' (Introduction)