Another anthropology student spends some time living in an Aboriginal community and turns her thesis into a book.
Yasmine records sleeping groups, and individual places within those groups to show how complex relationships in a community are made and nurtured without much need for verbal communication.
Yuendumu is on the Tanami Road, closer to Alice Springs than it is to Halls Creek.
Yasmine lives with the Walpiri people, describing their camps within the settlement and the fluidity of movement between these separate camps. Even the direction and placement of people's swags is documented and forms an important base for Yasmine’s work.
This was not a difficult read and the pages kept turning. I feel I have a little understanding of how much there is to take into account when trying to get suitable Aboriginal housing into these settlements, especially if the funding comes from outside and has to be spent within time frames that suit political purposes rather than taking the time to conceive of and develop structures that will suit fluid family structures and individual's obligations to family and community.
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