It was fifty years ago in February of 1969 that my wife Ruth and I first set foot on a remote island in north Australia to research the way of life of the local Aboriginal people, just as mining was commencing on their land--a couple from Canada via London, England, and Perth, Western Australia, myself enrolled as a Ph. D. student at the University of Western Australia, sent to Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory by my professor, Ronald M. Berndt. A tent in the middle of the Aboriginal camp at Angurugu for day-time work, a "staging house" across the Angurugu River as living quarters: spiders, snakes, a river to cross every evening with the risk of salt-water crocs swimming upstream. A wet season that's too wet and hot, a dry season that's too dry and hot, infection from even the slightest cut. Trying to learn Anindilyaugwa, one of the most complex languages in the world. Missionaries, mining. The whole gamut. All this time, all those revisits in between, articles and books published, working to come to an understanding of what makes these Aboriginal people and their way of life tick. But what better way to understand something than to become part of it yourself? And what better way to express a basic understanding than in just a few words, leaving the rest to the readers' experiences in their own environment? After all, we're all the same kind of people. Aren't we? Capable of the same experiences. Hopefully. There was continuity in my experience of their world until the beginning of this century when my situation changed dramatically: a child, a detour to the Arctic, the death of my mentor, Nagulaba: na (Gula) Lalara. So, for 16 years all that knowledge and experience has lain dormant apart from keeping in touch with Jabeni through Jenny in Darwin. Jenny was married to Warren, Jabeni's na: nigama (in our terms, "younger brother," but much more and less in theirs). Then circumstances I could not ignore arose and all of a sudden it rushed to the surface, all bundled up in a quite compact and summary form. It had been integrating itself without my help all this time. Professor Berndt once said that he thought Aborigines had seen signs of Divine Intent in the world and acted upon them. With all due respect, I agree that they saw signs of intent in the world from somewhere, but I don't think they emanated from a Divinity. --from the Preface
