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Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law

Zohl dé Ishtar

1-876756-57-8

Mapping inter-cultural relationships as they are played out in a remote Aboriginal settlement in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert, this book challenges White Australians to reconsider their relationship with Indigenous peoples. Unpacking White cultural practices, it explores the extraordinary difficulties which Indigenous women face when they attempt to maintain and pass their cultural knowledge, customs and skills on to their children and youth.

From 1999 to 2001, Zohl dé Ishtar lived and worked intimately with a group of thirteen women elders to establish a vibrant intergenerational cultural knowledge transmission program: the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre. Through this profound experience Zohl identified ‘Living Culture’, the cultural energy which is created when individuals live their culture to its fullest expression enabling them to transform their worlds even when to do so seems impossible. Her profound radical feminist analysis of the socio-cultural context surrounding this Indigenous women’s initiative challenges White attitudes and behaviours and offers a deeper comprehension to those who aspire to be involved in collaborative projects with Indigenous peoples. A lyrical and passionate book.

Zohl dé Ishtar is the author of Daughters of the Pacific and Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Queensland.
‘I believe this book has great relevance to all of Australia as well supporting our struggle to find ways in which we can live together.’ —Judy Atkinson, Professor of Indigenous Studies, Gnibi - College of Indigenous Australian Peoples

ISBN 1876756578
pb
Territories:World
All rights:Spinifex

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