AN ABORIGINE TRIBE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 4

AN ABORIGINE TRIBE

Th* People in Between. The Pitjantjatjara People of Ernabella. By Winifred Hillard. Hodder and Stoughton. Illustrated. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. 253 pp.

The book is written about one of the toughest and most courageous of the desert tribes of Central Australia—the Pitjantjatjara, whose literal meaning is “with ‘having come’.” Ernabella is a Presbyterian Mission set in the heart of the Musgrove ranges, in the far north-west of South Australia. It is here that Miss Hillard was asked by the Australian Presbyterian Board of Missions to take over the craft industry of the Pitjantjatjara people, and although the book starts with selections from the diaries of some of Australia’s early explorers, its main content is the tribe and its customs. The author makes no attempt to exaggerate the sordid part of her tale—she lets old documents tell their own story. How Ernabella began and how it developed has been related in detail by Miss Hillard who points out that but for the establishment, the Pitjantjatjara country would have been depopulated and returned to

wasteland. The lack of water supplies and difficult food—mainly edible plants, snakes and lizards—would have made this inevitable.

Through her competent pen the story unfolds the lives of these people—the men on their hunts, and the women always foraging for food, bearing and rearing their young, and the traditional games of the children. For Miss Hillard and the other Mission people life meant inching their way into the understanding of an elaborate culture with emphasis on the craft skills the people have mastered and the incredible sensitivity they display. Coloured photographs of some of the art designs painted in only a few hours by her pupils have to be seen to be believed. Miss Hillard sees the future as a very gradual process of integration of aboriginal and white culture, which must take place without abandoning many things of value which the aborigines can contribute to the white man. The reader will notice Miss Hillard’s sharp criticism of the general Australian attitude to the aborigines and appreciate her deep perspicacity. This book was not written in a flash and should not be reed in one.