Information and image taken from AIATSIS website

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Aboriginal Studies Press is proud to release a second edition of its celebrated title Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-Off.

With a new foreword from Brenda L Croft (Gurindji People), Professor of Critical Indigenous Creative Practice and Research Knowledges, ANU and Deputy Chair, AIATSIS Council, the book, first published in 2016, has received accolades for its approach to community-driven truth-telling told in both Gurindji and English.

Professor Croft was invited to join the 2014 Gurindji History Project team as a photographer.

‘Being one of the project’s photographers meant that I got to travel in the company of incredible Senior Knowledge Holders and Elders … to important sites far and wide across Gurindji homelands,’ said Professor Croft.

‘I was aware how privileged I was hearing personal and communal stories recounted by Elders with connections to places steeped in ancestral knowledges. Country seemed to sing and pulsate as Countrymen and women moved across it – re/memorying, reinvigorating place and people through retelling oral ancestral and communal histories.’

On 23 August 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, protesting against poor working conditions and the taking of their land by pastoralists. Led by Vincent Lingiari, this landmark action in 1966 precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.