MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

BY PETER SUTTON and KERYN WALSHE

The ongoing debate sparked by "Dark Emu" by Bruce Pascoe delves into the historical perception of Indigenous Australians as either farmers or hunter-gatherers. Pascoe's book challenges the traditional view of Indigenous communities as solely hunter-gatherers by presenting evidence of sophisticated farming practices. This controversial interpretation has ignited discussions among scholars, historians, and the general public, raising questions about the true nature of pre-colonial Aboriginal societies. As the debate continues to unfold, it prompts us to reconsider our understanding of Australia's rich indigenous history and the complex relationship between humans and the land.

Melbourne. Melbourne University Press. 2021. 287p.

By Denis Judd

FROM THE COVER: The British Empire radically altered the modern world. At its height it governed over a quarter of the human race, encompassed more than one fifth of the globe and provided the British people with profits and a sense of international purpose. For the people it dominated and controlled, however, the Empire represented arbitrary power, gunboat diplomacy and the disruption of local customs. Yet while it rested upon military force and direct rule, it also pulsated with ideals - of freedom, democracy and even equality.

London. Phoenix Press. 1996. 567p. USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Frantz Fanon. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox with commentary by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K Bhabha

Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon provides a psychological and psychiatric analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and discusses the broader social, cultural, and political implications of establishing a social movement for the decolonization of a person and of a people. Of twisted irony is his account of the psychological suffering of those who torture others.

Grove Press. New York. 1963. 316p.

By Keith Smith

Canada is regularly presented as a country where liberalism has ensured freedom and equality for all. Yet with the expansion of settlers into the First Nations territories that became southern Alberta and BC, liberalism proved to be an exclusionary rather than inclusionary force. Between 1877 and 1927, government officials, police officers, church representatives, ordinary settlers, and many others operated to exclude and reform Indigenous people. Presenting Anglo-Canadian liberal capitalist values and structures and interests as normal, natural, and beyond reproach devalued virtually every aspect of Indigenous cultures. This book explores the means used to facilitate and justify colonization, their effects on Indigenous economic, political, social, and spiritual lives, and how they were resisted.

Edmonton: AB, Athabasca University Press, 2009. 337p.

By Keith L. Camacho

Between 1944 and 1949 the United States Navy held a war crimes tribunal that tried Japanese nationals and members of Guam's indigenous Chamorro population who had worked for Japan's military government. In Sacred Men Keith L. Camacho traces the tribunal's legacy and its role in shaping contemporary domestic and international laws regarding combatants, jurisdiction, and property. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notions of bare life and Chamorro concepts of retribution, Camacho demonstrates how the U.S. tribunal used and justified the imprisonment, torture, murder, and exiling of accused Japanese and Chamorro war criminals in order to institute a new American political order. This U.S. disciplinary logic in Guam, Camacho argues, continues to directly inform the ideology used to justify the Guantánamo Bay detention center, the torture and enhanced interrogation of enemy combatants, and the American carceral state.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 313p.

By Frances S. Hasso

Race, Reproduction, and Death in Modern Palestine.. Bringing together a vivid array of analog and nontraditional sources, including colonial archives, newspaper reports, literature, oral histories, and interviews, Buried in the Red Dirt tells a story of life, death, reproduction, and missing bodies and experiences during and since the British colonial period in Palestine. Using transnational feminist reading practices of existing and new archives, the book moves beyond authorized frames of collective pain and heroism.

Cambridge University Press (2021) 288 pages.