Event: book launch and discussion

Sarah is a friend of a friend of mine and her work is thoughtful and contemporary. Recommend this event, the launch of her new book.

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Sarah Maddison
Black Politics: Inside the complexity of Aboriginal Political Culture
Published by: Allen & Unwin
In conversation with Tom Calma

Thursday, March 12, 2009 / 6.30 for 7pm
Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
Cost: $10/$7 conc. gleeclub welcome

Drawing on extensive interviews with activists and politicians, Black
Politics explains the dynamics of Aboriginal politics. It reveals the
challenges and tensions that have shaped community, regional and
national relations over the past 25 years.

Why do Aboriginal communities struggle so hard to be heard in
mainstream politics? How do remote and urban communities respond to
frequent dramatic shifts in federal and state Aboriginal policies?

Since the early 1990s Aboriginal Australia has experienced profound
political changes with very real and lasting implications, from the
Mabo land rights case in 1992, to the abolition of the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005, to more recent
attempts to reduce the autonomy of remote communities. Sarah Maddison
identifies the tensions that lie at the heart of all Aboriginal
politics, arguing that until Australian governments come to grips with
this complexity they will continue to make bad policy with disastrous
consequences for Aboriginal people.

Based on original interviews with influential Aboriginal leaders
including Mick Dodson, Tom Calma, Alison Anderson, Jackie Huggins,
Warren Mundine and Larissa Behrendt, Black Politics seeks to
understand why Aboriginal communities find it so difficult to be
heard, get support, and organise internally. It also offers some
suggestions for the future, based on the collective wisdom of
political players at all levels of Aboriginal politics.

'Sarah Maddison has brought together a formidable range of Indigenous
voices and sources and placed their narratives within an analysis to
show the depth and complexity of Indigenous cultural and political
expression.' - From the foreword by Pat Dodson

Sarah Maddison is Senior Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences at the University of NSW. She is coeditor of Silencing
Dissent and coauthor of Activist Wisdom.

Mr Tom Calma is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner

Mr Calma is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a
member of the Iwaidja tribal group whose traditional lands are south
west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula in Northern Territory,
respectively. He has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local,
community, state, national and international level and worked in the
public sector for over 35 years.

Mr Calma has broad experience in public administration, particularly
in Indigenous education programs and in developing employment and
training programs for Indigenous people from both a national policy
and program perspective.

Judging a book by

This cafe was in Port Douglas, near Cairns* and had one half bookshop (new - lots of coffee table books, as well as fiction), and one half cafe (nice coffee, good open frontage to let breeze in). I quite liked the coffee and the timber and slightly down at heel but colourful furnishings.

What I also liked about it was that it had a display of 'book cover art' - little handmade posters with text and images stuck on it, telling the story of famous books, and who designed and created their covers. I think this is a really interesting element of books, that we often don't know about. I can barely name one single book cover illustrator, and yet we are drawn to the art of books, when remember a book we sometimes remember the image of the cover. Very interesting.

* (in Qld, Australia)

To market to market

Gleebooks is having a sale- on for the rest of the week I think. This book shop is a must-visit if you’re Sydney, not only is it big, and has a great ‘literary fiction’, crime, graphic novel, art book and non-fiction philosophy/social science/psychology sections, but it has an unpretentious, lived-in feel, with wooden bookshelves going up to a very high ceiling. It stacks books in piles on tables and on the floor, you have to walk through sideways sometimes if you have a big shoulder bag and don’t want to take out some fellow browser. The atmosphere is all the nice stuff about a crammed full second hand book shop, but less crammed and not dusty, all the nice stuff about a new bookshop, without all the dross you never want to buy anyway or the giant cheesy advertising material invading your view around the store, staff who actually read, and are cool but not quite as young, trying hard and shiny as those in some of the ‘I’m a cool bookstore’ stores around town. It feels comfortable, well-read, expansive and welcoming. Aaah.

Anyway, book sale. Upstairs, neatly arranged in tightly clustered rows, spine up, trestle tables, lovely, higgledy piggledy lack of order (think ‘blogging for your church’ sitting next to ‘sex and development’, ‘Jung as a writer’, sitting next to ‘imagination games for people working with children’ sitting next to ‘the complete gluten and dairy free cookbook’). The sale has been on for a while so I may be seeing the less popular remains, but there still seems to be some great stuff – especially in the sociology/ psychology/ theology/art book domains. There are novels on sale too, but I think the sale range is no better than a second hand bookstore for that, the best savings seem to be on the non-fiction stuff, where you can get current and interesting reference materials for half to a third of their RRP. Oh and some cards and postcards too, but I browsed very slowly and the store closed before I had a chance to look!