Author Description

"The Pintupi, a hunting-and-gathering people of Australia's Western Desert, were among the last Aborigines to come into contact with white Australians. Anthropologist Fred Myers, who has been working with the Pintupi since 1973, presents an innovative study of this small-scale, spatially dispersed, egalitarian society. His comprehensive ethnography focuses on contradictions between indigenous ideas of individual autonomy and those of "relatedness", a tension mediated in politics, spatial relations, and the mythological construction of The Dreaming. Myers' sophisticated analysis shows how these contraditions shape Pintupi personhood; despite the duress of recent relocation in settlements, these Aboriginal people struggle to define themselves in terms of this cultural logic."