"Through time he's been travelling to look for a planet to settle down as he makes the sky, the trees, the land and each different group of people - like the Chinese, the English, the Europeans and the Aborigines. Everybody has their own piece of land to live in. Then when he found his resting place he went into a very, very deep sleep. As he slept he started to dream into the future. It showed his people were very very happy living in peace, killing only what they need to live for their food." "As they go along they start to use fire, to cook, to cut shapes out of trees, to carry their water and other objects. Then some of the men started to cut out big parts out of the trees to make boats to go and hunt and they were so in peace until the white people came out here. Destroying the land itself cause their land was over populated. So they sent a lot of the convicts out here to work, so they can start to build the land up, put buildings in, farming and stuff. Then they started to destroy the native people of this land." "Then the Rainbow Serpent started to go into a type of nightmare dream. He sees in his dream how they destroyed a lot of animals we will never see again. As it gets closer to the 19th century they start to turn out cities, they called it the great country, the land of opportunity, for the whites, but not for the dark people of this land. We were thought of as the lowest class in this land of 'theirs'." "As the spirit was still dreaming his nightmare he sees a lot of things that are going to happen soon, like drugs, alcohol, deaths in custody. He likes to see all different personalities living together as one, white going out with dark people, dark people living with whites in harmony and no racism. But the Rainbow Serpent can see this is not going to be because a lot of the people today are still destroying us in devious ways. When the spirit shall have woken you shall have a lot to answer for what you have done to us. Then you had better watch out because he is your judge and he will destroy you all in a very evil way."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved Maps Illustrations Acknowledgments Contributors Preface PAUL BEHRENDT Introduction ANN MCGRATH 1 A national story ANN MCGRATH 2 New South Wales HEATHER GOODALL 3 Victoria RICHARD BROOME 4 Queensland HENRY REYNOLDS AND DAWN MAY 5 South Australia PEGGY BROCK 6 Western Australia SANDY TOUSSAINT 7 Northern Territory PETER READ 8 Tasmania: 1 ANN MCGRATH 9 Tasmania 2: MAYJUTENNER (VICKI MATSON-GREEN) 10 Contested ground: what is 'Aboiginal history'? ANN MCGRATH Select bibliography Index