ie They are  NOT coming from overseas !!

Terra Nullius

en resa genom ingens land 

- by Sven Lindqvist -

ISBN-10: 9100110167

Publisher: Albert Bonniers Forlag, Sweden

Published: 2005

Binding: SOFTcover 204 pages  

Condition: Once read and stored condition! HERE in MELBOURNE! A display copy - has cover wear - as illustrated!

Edition:  FIRST Bonnier Pocket SOFTcover EDITION: 1st printing 2006

TIGHT,  INCREDIBLY SCARCE   SOFTCOVER  ~  IN  MELBOURNE  ... 

WHY do ebayers buy from US?

Because you KNOW what you're getting. My close up photos are of the actual item!!

Remains read once - it was then stored, re-discoevrd and the display copy in a senior academic's personal collection til now. It is Tight -  neat, no inscriptions or marks within - but front cover has some wear and corner curl. Appears as in my photos - this is the exact copy!!  A precious copy - superb!

Some discernible shelf wear to the front cover(repaired nick to edge), the interior is tight and clean with  204 pages - illustrated with black and white. Front map endpaper has minor blemish.  THIS  Swedish language copy is the first Bonnier Pocket edition: first printing from 2006 - the Swedish publishing by Albert Bonnier Forlag. 

Incredibly SCARCE title - this is a RARE  SWEDISH language copy!!

In original SOFTcover binding, in publisher's original pictorial covers which are in good condition.

(Stored with 2018!)

Measures approx.  14 x 22 ¼cm

SYNOPSIS ....

Terra nullius? country. Country that does not belong to anyone. Or in any case not someone who counts. Land that soon becomes unbuttoned because it is populated by lower standing races as ...

"Terra nullius - land. Country that does not belong to anyone. Or in any case not someone who counts. Countries that soon become unbuttoned because it is populated by lower standing races which, according to nature's laws, are convicted of extinction. Terra nullius. Particularly common was the term in the defense of the White Invasion in Australia. " 

Terra nullius, land of land, so called Australia by the English when they got there. That there were already inhabitants and a rich culture there was nothing to care about. Desert Lover Sven Lindqvist has driven 1,200 miles through this alleged nobleman, responsive to all shifts in the landscape. At the same time, he has traveled through 200 years of Australia's history of ideas. How did it happen when an unknown desert people in the heart of the world's distant continent in 1900 suddenly emerged as the world's most famous and controversial urm people? Why did Australia remove 100,000 children from their black mothers? The children were taken from a people whose culture reached its highest bloom in the family ties. You took the ground from a people whose heaven was just the ground. In the 1980s, desert people in central australia became once again world famous, now through their art. Old women who have never been the same in the nearest town exhibit in Tokyo and New York. The culture of Black Australia has an international position that White Australia can only dream of. 

In Terra nullius, Sven Lindqvist's theme from Utrota extends every bastard. The crime of history remains in the midst of us. How should we deal with them? It's one of the hottest issues in today's Australia - and should be it all over the world.

About the author

Sven Lindqvistwas born in 1932 in Stockholm, where he still lives. He has traveled extensively through Asia, Africa and Latin America, and is the author of over thirty books, including Exterminate all the Brutes, and his companion books Desert Divers and A History of Bombing. He still lives in Stockholm.

Very  Informative read!

REVIEW

BRILLIANT!   …. The finest exploration of the history and morality of a continent. Better because it is more serious than Bryson's 'Down Under', and more hard-hitting as it should be. 

Highly Recommended ….. Sven Lindqvist has never written a bad word, and the abuse and destruction of Aboriginal and nomadic peoples is one of his pet subjects - see his work on the destruction of the Hetero peoples in "Exterminate All The Brutes". Now he turns to Australia and the dismal treatment of the Aboriginal population by both settlers, anthropologists, "protectors" (possibly one of the most grotesque misuses of a word in the history of the English language) and politicians. He travels through South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia documenting at each stop another example of a community torn apart by casual race hate, or near genocide, of Aboriginal communities desperately trying to protect cultural and family ties. None of this is new material, but rarely has it been described in such stark terms. Lindqvist argues, correctly, that whether the near genocide was intended or not (he thinks it was, or at least that the removal of Aboriginal communities was a desired outcome) it very nearly succeeded, and that the extent to which Aboriginal culture has managed to survive is remarkable. He believes it a sign of a very strong culture rather than the weak, outmoded one it is often portrayed as. He also correctly argues that saying "Sorry" is meaningless without some attempt to change behaviour or make things right. As he points out to those who would argue "its nothing to do with me, I haven't mistreated any Aborigines", maybe not, but if you've enjoyed the spoils of conquest, as all European settlers have, then you should pay part of the reparation costs. Couldn't agree more. Highly recommended!

Another great book from Sven Lindqvist. ...... This is a unique blend of informed travelogue with historical analysis, social anthropolgy, and the origins of modern Australian art & literature.

Lindqvist accounts for how the white European settlement of Australia in turn resulted in the wholesale systematic dispossession of the indigenous aboriginal peoples. Of course it doesn't end there - not only were their lands and waters stolen but there was a conscious attempt to actually exterminate them altogether. Citing countless and varied sources he demonstrates how this peaked in the 1930s - one exponent even calls it 'the final solution' - and would even continue in many aspects well into the post-WW2 era.

Families are seperated, children interned in labour camps, boys made to pearl-dive, girls sent away as maids (often to repeated sexual & physical abuse), mothers would have their babies taken away, and the men would be utterly disenfranchised and often arrested, rounded-up, beaten, disappeared, and even shot. Time after time the authorities would turn a blind eye or even encourage these acts. The prison islands for supposed carriers of STDs were little more than concentration camps for the thousands...

Towards its end, Lindkvist's book explores how through art the persecuted peoples have made a sort of breakthrough into modern Australian identity and consciousness. The subject of restitution is an ongoing one and has clearly become a hot political issue in 21st century Australia.

As others will doubtless echo - all Australians should read this book, but it isn't a story unique to that country alone. We should all look at our own countries and ask ourselves did this happen here? Did we do it over there? Are we still responsible for it happening?

Librarything review online … This is a historical exploration of the treatment of the Australian Aborigines, as the author travels the country, primarily visiting places where the legal fiction "terra nullius" was used to justify the seizure of their land from the Aborigines, or even to massacre them. The first stop is Moorundie, the site of the first fighting in South Australia, and where the entire Ngaiawong people were wiped out. When the author first arrived in Adelaide, no one seemed to know where it was--the South Australia Museum didn't know where it was, and referred the author to the tourist office, which referred him to another tourist office. He finally located the town on a computer in the maps section of the Department of the Environment.

He next traveled up the Stuart Highway to Woomera, a town built in 1947 by the British to test intercontinental missiles. They moved white settlers from their stations, but the Aborigines, scattered over this area the size of western Europe, didn't have radios or other means to be notified. (Most of the territory appropriated for the testing had been allocated to the Aborigines in 1930).

He next visited Uluru, "an inverse Grand Canyon. The same red sandstone, the same grandeur. But the Grand Canyon, unlike Uluru, is instantly comprehensible. You can see its cause--the river--and understand at once how it came about. Uluru is a visual mystery, lacking any perceptible cause." Uluru is another area that was "restored" to the Aborigines, but only on the condition that they immediately lease the whole area back to a park authority. Today, they are powerless to prevent the countless torurists from climbing this spiritual site.

The book considers the government policy of removing "half-caste" children from their families, a policy that did not end until 1957. "The half-caste is intellectually above the aborigine, and it is the duty of the state that they be given a chance to lead a better life than their mothers who soon forget their offspring." (See the movie or read the book Rabbit Proof Fence to see the fallacy of the belief that Aborigines did not have close and loving familial relationships.)

The British conducted nuclear tests on land belonging to the Aborigines in the Great Victoria Desert. These tests went on until 1963, and in 1968 the Australian government signed an agreement with Great Britain releasing the British government from any further liability. Ten years later, this agreement was reconsidered, when it was learned that the British "decontamination" efforts had consisted of ploughing the plutonium a few decimeters below the surface, which was soon exposed by the desert winds.

I found the sections about the aboriginal artists to be the most interesting parts of the book. In the 1930's an aboriginal camelkeeper, Albert Namatjiras, asked his employer if he could learn to use watercolors. Soon, his work began selling very well. His success was held up as a model of how the Aborigine by learning from the white man could become his cultural equal. Namatjiras was rewarded for his success with full Australian citizenship. However, in 1959 after he was caught drunk with one of his relatives, he was convicted and sentenced to hard labor for supplying intoxicants to his relative. He died shortly after his release. The book also covers the birth of what we now refer to as "Aboriginal Art" in the 1970's, and notes that unprecedented percentages of these populations have become important and sought-after artists.

This book was a fascinating read, and was full of obscure facts and stories. Although it is specific to Australia, it is reflective of other areas "settled" by Europeans to the detriment of the indigenous people.