REVIEWER: Graham Seal

Simplicity and power are key words to describe this collection of oral and photographic records from Indigenous Australia. In content and design, Elders is an appealing and accessible sampling of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lore, legend and commentary on recent and past events.

The book's chapter headings provide an overview of the approach taken: Healing, The Land, Hunting, Gathering, Family, Lore, Law, Spirit. The Sea, Ceremony & Song. These categories are addressed by indigenous speakers from around the country, including people from the desert, from Torres Strait and from the forests.

Elders includes information about men's and women's initiation and other business, about hunting, fishing and gathering techniques, bush medicine, navigation, ritual, song, dance, story and belief.

The distinctive tone of Indigenous Australian speech comes through clearly on every page and quotable quotes tumble from every second page. Mandawuy Yunupingu sets the standard in one of the two Forewords by himself and Lowitja O'Donoghue. He addresses the book and its messages directly to white Australia: So now, we write to you in your language with our timeless wisdom. Learn from us as we have had to learn from you.

Speaking of her Grandmother's dreamtime traditions, Emily Munyungka Austin of the Kupa Piti Kungku Tjilpi Tjuta (The Coober Pedy Women Senior Elders) says: she's got her stories in the heart, not on the paper.

Noongar Wonidgie (Speaker of the Dead), Wayne Webb observes: The earth is our Mother and we always come back to her.

These and many similar observations made by the speakers in this book reflect the power of the land and environment in the Indigenous past, present and future.

An insistence on the spiritual value of that power and profound doubts about the materialism of white society also come through many of the accounts. Sometimes this is explicit, as in Emily Munyungka Austin's comment on the land-grabbing greed of Captain Cook.

Sometimes it is implicit as in Yolngu man Nungki Yunupingu's description of the spear-throwing implement, the woomera.

A woomera can be a throwing stick to make spear go faster, can be used as a clap stick, it can be a weapon and it can be a digging stick. It's a universal tool, you can dig a ground oven for kangaroo with a woomera, use as a weapon, a club too.

The three practical functions and one artistic use of the woomera are a metaphor of the links between culture and environment that condition all Indigenous culture. It is a metaphor of basic but appropriate technology and the antithesis of consumerism, giving a glimpse of the cultural distance that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians must somehow negotiate.

As well as providing many insights into Indigenous belief, mythology and ritual, some of the speakers have strong views on historical and contemporary events. The difficulties of reconciliation are a key theme of Yuin man Max Dulmunmun Harrison, the Kupa Piti women are concerned about the aftermath of the Maralinga nuclear tests and the possibility of more nuclear waste being dumped on their traditional land. Wurundjeri woman Joy Wandin Murphy speaks of the stolen generations, while Nyoongar woman Vilma Webb feels the ghosts haunting massacre sites.

The claim of this book to Indigenous 'content unlike any other' is a large one that takes no account of the extensive anthropological documentation of Indigenous Australians since occupation. Much of this work is now seen to be flawed by colonialism, paternalism and prejudice; nevertheless it exists, even though unacknowledged here.

This absence does not detract from Elders. The strength of the book is in its brevity, the direct honesty of its speakers and the superb photographs by Peter McConchie. Together with its attractive packaging and a useful map of Indigenous Australian territories, Elders is a more effective means of communicating important aspects of Indigenous culture to non-Indigenous Australians than a library of learned tomes.

While there is always the danger of romanticising Indigenous culture in projects of this sort, the inclusion of harder-edged comments on contentious matters effectively balances the elements of spirituality, myth and lore that are such important and integral elements of this book.

The diversity of Indigenous culture is well reflected in Elders, as are the diversity of views that Indigenous Australian hold. At the southern end of the continent Jim Pura-lia Meenamatla Everest of Flinders Island powerfully expresses the bitterness of the Tasmanian experience of colonisation in his account of discriminatory legislation and struggle, a theme echoed by some other speakers.

From the islands at the northern end of the continent Athe (Great-Grandfather) Walter Nona of the Torres Strait Islands says simply: I am praying for all the Indigenous people and all the white people too, because we are one.