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I, the Aboriginal
In his youth, Waipuldanya was taught to track and hunt wild animals, to live off the land, to provide for his family with the aid only of his spears and woomeras.
This is the gripping story of his boyhood and youth, and how he trained as a skilled medical assistant, to become a citizen of both the Aboriginal and whitefella worlds.
This is the first great classic of Aboriginal autobiography, as told to renowned writer, Douglas Lockwood.
This is the gripping story of his boyhood and youth, and how he trained as a skilled medical assistant, to become a citizen of both the Aboriginal and whitefella worlds.
This is the first great classic of Aboriginal autobiography, as told to renowned writer, Douglas Lockwood.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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July 23, 2023
5★+
“It was one walkabout time at Mount Saint Vidgeon in the Never-Never Land south of the Roper River that the Medicine Man, the Doctor Blackfellow, tried to kill me.
I lived to tell the tale. Allabout hear ’im:…”
That’s the beginning of chapter one. White journalist and author Douglas Lockwood, who wrote this story in the first person for Waipuldanya, introduced it with this:
“This book is dedicated with gratitude and affection to WAIPULDANYA of the Alawa tribe of Australian Aborigines whose story it is.
First published in 1962, this is, without doubt, the most fascinating book I’ve ever read. The tone and writing style can be dry and straight-forward sometimes, but the blend of sophisticated sentence structure and the Aboriginal Pidgin English is terrific. I have just read it again and am even more impressed.
The details of his history are first-hand from a man who was born on a traditional bed of leaves and paperbark in the sand of a creek bed. He quotes the Pidgin English of other people in his life, and he speaks numerous aboriginal languages. There is no universal tongue, although he says they were all pretty good at “finger language” to get their messages across between groups and tribes.
This is not written in strict chronological order and sometimes later incidents hark back to earlier events when Waipuldanya was a boy. When describing the men catching a huge crocodile that was causing trouble, he recalls how strong his childhood memories still are of the girl who almost lost her hand fetching water.
School puzzled him. He was called Phillip Roberts, to start with. He wanted to be outdoors, and his mind was full of hunting, fishing, the kinds of fish, the laws he was learning, “that tracks – not books – were for reading.
. . .
Why should it be necessary for an aboriginal boy to say ‘I believe heavy rain is about to fall, Miss Dove’ rather than ‘Properly big feller rain bin come up, Missus?”
At the end of fifth grade, his formal schooling ended. That’s when he says his tribal teachers began his education that was far more difficult than text-book problems, “the primary equation on our own blackboards: Survival = Stealth x Cunning x Expertise.”
The apprenticeship under his uncle lasted longer and was more important. If he couldn’t hunt and support his family, of what use would he be? When he was little, he was already being taught hunting skills.
“My earliest recollection is of a day soon after I began to walk when my father first wrote a message for me. Didn’t I say he was illiterate? Quite so, but this was a message with a difference.”
They sat by the fire, and his father made a shape in the smoothed sand.
“‘What is this track?’ he asked. He clenched his fist, and with the thumb uppermost depressed his closed little finger into the sand. Around the apex made by the middle knuckle he touched a finger lightly into the sand four times.
‘Dog.’ I said.”
He went on to describe how his father replicated tracks of wallabies, kangaroos, turtles, goannas, emus, crocodiles, porcupines, birds, cattle, and horses and told Waipuldanya to copy them. Because his hand was so small, cattle became calves and horses became foals, but he remembered them forever.
He says his hearing and eyesight is hypersensitive, like most aborigines (on the land, I assume), and tracking is simpler than eight times seven.
While the daily life is easy to imagine, it’s almost impossible to get one’s head around the intricacies of the skin groups, the totems and dietary restrictions, the laws, the ceremonies, the rituals, and the religious practices.
People in modern cultures who wish to convert to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, for example, undergo education and training for a matter of months, a year, or possibly a couple of years. I think the aboriginal training is more like studying to be a rabbi or priest or other religious leader. (My comparison - don’t quote me!)
For a young aboriginal man, lessons and training go on for years. Ceremonies go on for days, songs are memorised and repeated. Waipuldanya doesn’t discuss the women’s ceremonies, of course, but they have their own lengthy rituals.
The skin groups and totems and moieties are foreign to modern western cultures. They function much like western bans on incest, but they are far more complicated. Not only are there totem animals that you can’t eat, if they are your totem, there are women to whom boys and men can’t speak: their mothers-in-law and other particular women. They are not to look upon their faces. Husbands and wives are designated for each other before birth, although there is some room to manoeuvre.
It’s an extremely strict, patriarchal society, and it seems, at least back then, children learned pretty early to do as they were told. Having said that, they did get up to all sorts of mischief, running free and playing tricks.
When Waipuldanya became a medical assistant, his community gave him special dispensation to address these women, but he found it terribly difficult. Which brings me to his career in medicine throughout the Territory. Leprosy was rife, including in his own family, so he was taken around by the doctors as an interpreter for the terrified patients who had been separated from their communities.
Eventually, he became a key in life-saving treatment and vaccination programs. Meanwhile, he had also become a senior figure in the ancient practices of his own Alawa people of the Roper River.
Interestingly, in this culture, no matter where he goes, when he tells them his skin group and where he comes from, he is told where he belongs. Here is his family in their community - this is your father, your mother, your sisters, your uncles - and these are the people you must avoid. Automatic acceptance.
Kunapipi is a ceremonial corroboree where Songmen perform thousands of chants accompanied by boomerangs used as beating sticks.
“Perhaps hundreds of thousands, for Kunapipi goes on and on, every night and every day often until dawn, for six months. During that time the Songmen, to the clack of the boomerang beat, tell their endless, ageless stories in the chants handed down to us orally by the Generations of Men.”
It belongs to many tribes along the Roper from Grootye Eylandt in the Gulf and west to the Kimberleys, down to north-central Australia. “It has penetrated the barriers of language and culture, survived white infiltration, and today is as virile as ever.”
This is how knowledge has passed down through the generations, oral history that has been carefully repeated so often that as with prayers and songs, people are still saying the same words.
I remember seeing David Attenborough with an Aboriginal elder on a beach in North Queensland. The elder had told him the history of the place and where the edge of the sea used to be and how it had moved. Attenborough was stunned, saying that science has shown the changes took place many generations ago exactly as he described. I don’t recall the exact place or the time span involved. Needless to say, I realised how much is being lost with young aboriginal people missing out on their history training.
I don’t know if this is what I’m referring to, but have a look at Attenborough’s sea level rise investigation:
https://takvera.blogspot.com/2016/04/...
But back to Kunapipi. The missionaries hated it and tried to ban the entire pagan rituals. They were eventually successful in banning only the “ceremonial mating between men and women, which symbolized fecundity and the relationship of intercourse to the reproduction of species.”
Waipuldanya is a Kunapipi Headman, a Djungayi. He instructs people’s movements but doesn’t dance himself, and he has many other duties.
“The High Djungayi combines the duties of both Judge and Priest within the ritual, punishing people who offend against its strict laws, admitting new members, and baptizing travellers who pass through our southern districts so they may drink at our sacred waterholes. This is done as a Christian child is baptized by sprinkling a drop of water on the head. And we have been doing it for much longer than the twenty centuries since the birth of Christ.”
There is so much I haven’t touched on. Medicine men, killings, payback. It’s the second time I’ve read this, and I had to do it bit by bit, to let some of the information sink in before I moved on. I intend to keep it handy.
You can read this online at the Open Library, where the edition they have is very clear and easy to read.
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38039...
“It was one walkabout time at Mount Saint Vidgeon in the Never-Never Land south of the Roper River that the Medicine Man, the Doctor Blackfellow, tried to kill me.
I lived to tell the tale. Allabout hear ’im:…”
That’s the beginning of chapter one. White journalist and author Douglas Lockwood, who wrote this story in the first person for Waipuldanya, introduced it with this:
“This book is dedicated with gratitude and affection to WAIPULDANYA of the Alawa tribe of Australian Aborigines whose story it is.
First published in 1962, this is, without doubt, the most fascinating book I’ve ever read. The tone and writing style can be dry and straight-forward sometimes, but the blend of sophisticated sentence structure and the Aboriginal Pidgin English is terrific. I have just read it again and am even more impressed.
The details of his history are first-hand from a man who was born on a traditional bed of leaves and paperbark in the sand of a creek bed. He quotes the Pidgin English of other people in his life, and he speaks numerous aboriginal languages. There is no universal tongue, although he says they were all pretty good at “finger language” to get their messages across between groups and tribes.
This is not written in strict chronological order and sometimes later incidents hark back to earlier events when Waipuldanya was a boy. When describing the men catching a huge crocodile that was causing trouble, he recalls how strong his childhood memories still are of the girl who almost lost her hand fetching water.
School puzzled him. He was called Phillip Roberts, to start with. He wanted to be outdoors, and his mind was full of hunting, fishing, the kinds of fish, the laws he was learning, “that tracks – not books – were for reading.
. . .
Why should it be necessary for an aboriginal boy to say ‘I believe heavy rain is about to fall, Miss Dove’ rather than ‘Properly big feller rain bin come up, Missus?”
At the end of fifth grade, his formal schooling ended. That’s when he says his tribal teachers began his education that was far more difficult than text-book problems, “the primary equation on our own blackboards: Survival = Stealth x Cunning x Expertise.”
The apprenticeship under his uncle lasted longer and was more important. If he couldn’t hunt and support his family, of what use would he be? When he was little, he was already being taught hunting skills.
“My earliest recollection is of a day soon after I began to walk when my father first wrote a message for me. Didn’t I say he was illiterate? Quite so, but this was a message with a difference.”
They sat by the fire, and his father made a shape in the smoothed sand.
“‘What is this track?’ he asked. He clenched his fist, and with the thumb uppermost depressed his closed little finger into the sand. Around the apex made by the middle knuckle he touched a finger lightly into the sand four times.
‘Dog.’ I said.”
He went on to describe how his father replicated tracks of wallabies, kangaroos, turtles, goannas, emus, crocodiles, porcupines, birds, cattle, and horses and told Waipuldanya to copy them. Because his hand was so small, cattle became calves and horses became foals, but he remembered them forever.
He says his hearing and eyesight is hypersensitive, like most aborigines (on the land, I assume), and tracking is simpler than eight times seven.
While the daily life is easy to imagine, it’s almost impossible to get one’s head around the intricacies of the skin groups, the totems and dietary restrictions, the laws, the ceremonies, the rituals, and the religious practices.
People in modern cultures who wish to convert to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, for example, undergo education and training for a matter of months, a year, or possibly a couple of years. I think the aboriginal training is more like studying to be a rabbi or priest or other religious leader. (My comparison - don’t quote me!)
For a young aboriginal man, lessons and training go on for years. Ceremonies go on for days, songs are memorised and repeated. Waipuldanya doesn’t discuss the women’s ceremonies, of course, but they have their own lengthy rituals.
The skin groups and totems and moieties are foreign to modern western cultures. They function much like western bans on incest, but they are far more complicated. Not only are there totem animals that you can’t eat, if they are your totem, there are women to whom boys and men can’t speak: their mothers-in-law and other particular women. They are not to look upon their faces. Husbands and wives are designated for each other before birth, although there is some room to manoeuvre.
It’s an extremely strict, patriarchal society, and it seems, at least back then, children learned pretty early to do as they were told. Having said that, they did get up to all sorts of mischief, running free and playing tricks.
When Waipuldanya became a medical assistant, his community gave him special dispensation to address these women, but he found it terribly difficult. Which brings me to his career in medicine throughout the Territory. Leprosy was rife, including in his own family, so he was taken around by the doctors as an interpreter for the terrified patients who had been separated from their communities.
Eventually, he became a key in life-saving treatment and vaccination programs. Meanwhile, he had also become a senior figure in the ancient practices of his own Alawa people of the Roper River.
Interestingly, in this culture, no matter where he goes, when he tells them his skin group and where he comes from, he is told where he belongs. Here is his family in their community - this is your father, your mother, your sisters, your uncles - and these are the people you must avoid. Automatic acceptance.
Kunapipi is a ceremonial corroboree where Songmen perform thousands of chants accompanied by boomerangs used as beating sticks.
“Perhaps hundreds of thousands, for Kunapipi goes on and on, every night and every day often until dawn, for six months. During that time the Songmen, to the clack of the boomerang beat, tell their endless, ageless stories in the chants handed down to us orally by the Generations of Men.”
It belongs to many tribes along the Roper from Grootye Eylandt in the Gulf and west to the Kimberleys, down to north-central Australia. “It has penetrated the barriers of language and culture, survived white infiltration, and today is as virile as ever.”
This is how knowledge has passed down through the generations, oral history that has been carefully repeated so often that as with prayers and songs, people are still saying the same words.
I remember seeing David Attenborough with an Aboriginal elder on a beach in North Queensland. The elder had told him the history of the place and where the edge of the sea used to be and how it had moved. Attenborough was stunned, saying that science has shown the changes took place many generations ago exactly as he described. I don’t recall the exact place or the time span involved. Needless to say, I realised how much is being lost with young aboriginal people missing out on their history training.
I don’t know if this is what I’m referring to, but have a look at Attenborough’s sea level rise investigation:
https://takvera.blogspot.com/2016/04/...
But back to Kunapipi. The missionaries hated it and tried to ban the entire pagan rituals. They were eventually successful in banning only the “ceremonial mating between men and women, which symbolized fecundity and the relationship of intercourse to the reproduction of species.”
Waipuldanya is a Kunapipi Headman, a Djungayi. He instructs people’s movements but doesn’t dance himself, and he has many other duties.
“The High Djungayi combines the duties of both Judge and Priest within the ritual, punishing people who offend against its strict laws, admitting new members, and baptizing travellers who pass through our southern districts so they may drink at our sacred waterholes. This is done as a Christian child is baptized by sprinkling a drop of water on the head. And we have been doing it for much longer than the twenty centuries since the birth of Christ.”
There is so much I haven’t touched on. Medicine men, killings, payback. It’s the second time I’ve read this, and I had to do it bit by bit, to let some of the information sink in before I moved on. I intend to keep it handy.
You can read this online at the Open Library, where the edition they have is very clear and easy to read.
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL38039...
May 23, 2023
Please see
My new review
with quotations after I read this again in 2023.
5★
I read this book sometime in the 1980s or 90s and gave my copy to a young Aboriginal friend who was fascinated when I told her about it. I must buy another one. As I remember it, the author was a white journalist and writer living in the Territory who tried to convince his close Aboriginal friend Philip Roberts to write his story, but Philip wanted Lockwood to write it for him in the first person, as if it were his own autobiography.
I still remember the real narrator's Aboriginal name, Waipuldanya, because my father, who was losing his memory when I lent it to him to read, made a real effort to remember it (and he did). Waipuldanya was born into a traditional Aboriginal family, in a riverbed, and one of the traditions was that when a child was born, the placenta was saved and sent around to neighbouring groups to announce a new birth. He said he managed to save the one from his own first-born, but after that, his wife put her foot down. I seem to recall it was wrapped in leaves or something, not quite as grisly a process as we might imagine.
He was able to converse in many of the local languages, and he travelled everywhere with the doctors who were treating and vaccinating people so he could explain what was happening. I seem to remember he was able to give injections himself, but I may be wrong about that.
So many scenes from this are still vivid in my mind - I must get myself another copy and review it properly. It is probably the book that really inspired my interest in real stories of Aboriginal communities and traditions and the dreadful infliction of colonisation.
5★
I read this book sometime in the 1980s or 90s and gave my copy to a young Aboriginal friend who was fascinated when I told her about it. I must buy another one. As I remember it, the author was a white journalist and writer living in the Territory who tried to convince his close Aboriginal friend Philip Roberts to write his story, but Philip wanted Lockwood to write it for him in the first person, as if it were his own autobiography.
I still remember the real narrator's Aboriginal name, Waipuldanya, because my father, who was losing his memory when I lent it to him to read, made a real effort to remember it (and he did). Waipuldanya was born into a traditional Aboriginal family, in a riverbed, and one of the traditions was that when a child was born, the placenta was saved and sent around to neighbouring groups to announce a new birth. He said he managed to save the one from his own first-born, but after that, his wife put her foot down. I seem to recall it was wrapped in leaves or something, not quite as grisly a process as we might imagine.
He was able to converse in many of the local languages, and he travelled everywhere with the doctors who were treating and vaccinating people so he could explain what was happening. I seem to remember he was able to give injections himself, but I may be wrong about that.
So many scenes from this are still vivid in my mind - I must get myself another copy and review it properly. It is probably the book that really inspired my interest in real stories of Aboriginal communities and traditions and the dreadful infliction of colonisation.
March 2, 2018
Waipuldanya, of the Alawa tribe began life on the Roper River in south-eastern Arnhem Land. The story describes in great detail the way life was for Waipuldanya as a piccaninny, as I interpret, in the period of 30 years prior to 1953, and into the late 1950's. The context here is significant. In this autobiographical account, W. ( Waipuldanya ) introduces us into an Aboriginal way of life which had largely been untouched for fifteen thousand years, rich in rituals and beliefs...and regarded as pagan by the encroaching 'white-feller' society. His account lays bare feelings which to this day would still be in the minds of many traditional Aboriginal people.
I read in comments in other reviews which have labelled some of the story as 'sexist', ... you missed the point, in fact, it shows the reviewers' lack of understanding of anthropological issues, and immaturity in interpretation of historical fact.
It is in this regard that the story is so powerful, W. highlights with his candid and well-founded opinion the chasm that exists between the recent ( in the last 100 years ) upheaval of primeval Aboriginal society and the "Mission-driven, money-driven...etc" white-feller. Waipuldanya becomes Philip Roberts, his white-feller name, a trained medical officer dedicated to the welfare of his people, often travelling hundreds of miles by foot to treat remote tribes suffering the scourge of yaws, and leprosy. Hunting, and living off what the Land provides, instead of carrying tins of food...
The story for me was an eye-opener, educational. At times, not easy to read...not because of content, but because there's so much information, and the descriptions of some of the complex rituals are a little convoluted. But it is my lack of understanding of the Dreaming, the Rainbow Serpent that makes this all the more interesting but also very mystifying. I am still trying to absorb...
The issues in relation to gaining some understanding of Aboriginal culture and integration into our Anglo-Saxon are complex, with huge vacuums between the connecting dots. This story goes beyond the populist rants about the stolen generation, incarcerations, and the hunting parties in the late 1800's. We don't learn from these rants.
There is much to be learned from I, the Aboriginal.
This story should be read by every kid that goes to school in Australia.
I read in comments in other reviews which have labelled some of the story as 'sexist', ... you missed the point, in fact, it shows the reviewers' lack of understanding of anthropological issues, and immaturity in interpretation of historical fact.
It is in this regard that the story is so powerful, W. highlights with his candid and well-founded opinion the chasm that exists between the recent ( in the last 100 years ) upheaval of primeval Aboriginal society and the "Mission-driven, money-driven...etc" white-feller. Waipuldanya becomes Philip Roberts, his white-feller name, a trained medical officer dedicated to the welfare of his people, often travelling hundreds of miles by foot to treat remote tribes suffering the scourge of yaws, and leprosy. Hunting, and living off what the Land provides, instead of carrying tins of food...
The story for me was an eye-opener, educational. At times, not easy to read...not because of content, but because there's so much information, and the descriptions of some of the complex rituals are a little convoluted. But it is my lack of understanding of the Dreaming, the Rainbow Serpent that makes this all the more interesting but also very mystifying. I am still trying to absorb...
The issues in relation to gaining some understanding of Aboriginal culture and integration into our Anglo-Saxon are complex, with huge vacuums between the connecting dots. This story goes beyond the populist rants about the stolen generation, incarcerations, and the hunting parties in the late 1800's. We don't learn from these rants.
There is much to be learned from I, the Aboriginal.
This story should be read by every kid that goes to school in Australia.
February 5, 2018
1962
Waipuldanya is one of his tribal names, and Philip Roberts is the name he acquired at mission school.
He would have been born in 1923. Raised in Roper River in SE corner of Arnhem Land. Died in Darwin 1989.
The book is written in the I form and Douglas Lockwood took down the story over sessions lasting many hours. A great pity that Lockwood did not choose to put Philip Roberts [or Waipuldanya] as co-author; you have to read the introduction to find out whose life story it actually is. And one wonders how and how much Lockwood 'tweaked' the story. But it is terrific that Waipuldanya's re-telling of his life story did get written down.
He has a fantastic memory, telling in great detail things that happened when he was a child [he would have been nearly 40 when he told it to Lockwood]. Lockwood lived 1918-1980.
Waipuldanya repeatedly emphasizes the conflict inside him between 'white fella' ways/religion and his Aboriginal ways and beliefs which he cherished all his life. He was taught all the things necessary to be initiated as a young man [teenager, actually, I think], so he learned very well how to hunt, find water, survive long treks in the bush.
He became a medic, assisting [white] doctors who traveled around treating Aboriginal communities, and lived with his wife and kids in 'white' towns a good part of the time. So he really had a foot in both worlds.
You can easily appreciate the conflict between the two ways of life, and how you can't really have/live both. Very sad.
I would probably like to read other books by Lockwood on Aboriginals.
Waipuldanya is one of his tribal names, and Philip Roberts is the name he acquired at mission school.
He would have been born in 1923. Raised in Roper River in SE corner of Arnhem Land. Died in Darwin 1989.
The book is written in the I form and Douglas Lockwood took down the story over sessions lasting many hours. A great pity that Lockwood did not choose to put Philip Roberts [or Waipuldanya] as co-author; you have to read the introduction to find out whose life story it actually is. And one wonders how and how much Lockwood 'tweaked' the story. But it is terrific that Waipuldanya's re-telling of his life story did get written down.
He has a fantastic memory, telling in great detail things that happened when he was a child [he would have been nearly 40 when he told it to Lockwood]. Lockwood lived 1918-1980.
Waipuldanya repeatedly emphasizes the conflict inside him between 'white fella' ways/religion and his Aboriginal ways and beliefs which he cherished all his life. He was taught all the things necessary to be initiated as a young man [teenager, actually, I think], so he learned very well how to hunt, find water, survive long treks in the bush.
He became a medic, assisting [white] doctors who traveled around treating Aboriginal communities, and lived with his wife and kids in 'white' towns a good part of the time. So he really had a foot in both worlds.
You can easily appreciate the conflict between the two ways of life, and how you can't really have/live both. Very sad.
I would probably like to read other books by Lockwood on Aboriginals.
February 12, 2017
This story comes across as a really candid account and it reads very well. I don't necessarily agree with the viewpoint of the person that took the narrative (the dedication on the first page came across to me as condescending to Aboriginal people) or with the narrator himself (he has learned sexist views from his tribe that are grating to this feminist reader, yet he seems aware of them in a helpfully objective way), but then I don't have to agree with anything. It does help, however, that I feel the storyteller and story-writer are genuine 'well-meaning' people. This story is the account of an Australian Aboriginal man, Waipuldanya, who was raised on a mission into native tribal customs and later is enticed by white men who feel he should aspire to being 'something more' into learning to be a medical assistant. Waipuldanya is open about his curiosity toward white methods versus his ties to his black culture. A really fascinating read.
January 21, 2022
"I, The Aboriginal" is the story of Phillip Waipuldanya Roberts as told by the journalist Douglas Lockwood. Waipuldanya spent the first three decades of his life living as a member of the Alawa tribe at Roper River until he was chosen by a doctor to work as a driver mechanic during a cross country tour. During the tour Waipuldanya began working as the doctors assistant. The bulk of this book is a detailed account of Waipuldanya's experiences as a member of the Alawa tribe.
January 9, 2025
Picked up from a street library/book swap.
Fascinating account of aboriginal life transitioning into the white fella ways.
Fascinating account of aboriginal life transitioning into the white fella ways.
January 30, 2021
‘Waipuldanya began life as a piccaninny on the Roper River in the south- east corner of Arnhem Land.’
Philip ‘Waipuldanya’ Roberts OBE (1922 – 24 November 1988) was a traditional doctor, activist and adviser to the Commonwealth Government of Australia on Aboriginal policies and programs. This book is his autobiography, as told to Douglas Lockwood, and was first published in 1962.
This is the story of a man who straddled two cultures and was aware of the influence of both on his life. As a youth, Waipuldanya was taught how to track and hunt, how to live off the land. He introduces us to a way of life which had been largely untouched for thousands of years. He introduces us to a way of life which, while it was rich in meaning, full of ritual and beliefs, was considered inferior by ‘white-feller’ society.
‘Unfortunately for us, the alien laws of England, written centuries after our own, do not list interference with a sacred tree as a punishable offence, although heavy penalties are provided for sacrilege committed elsewhere – whether in a Christian Church, a Moslem Temple, or a Chinese Joss-House.
Is it surprising, therefore, that we resent compliance with supreme laws compulsorily applied to our lives without consultation?’
Waipuldanya , known in the ‘white-feller’ world as Philip Roberts, trained as a medical assistant and travelled far and wide to treat remote Indigenous people suffering from diseases such as leprosy and yaws. He learned how to read medical slides, with Dr ‘Spike’ Langsford. Later he was taught, by Dr Tarlton Rayment, how to operate an X-ray machine.
I read this book, conscious of how little I know about Indigenous cultures and beliefs. I finished wanting to know more.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Philip ‘Waipuldanya’ Roberts OBE (1922 – 24 November 1988) was a traditional doctor, activist and adviser to the Commonwealth Government of Australia on Aboriginal policies and programs. This book is his autobiography, as told to Douglas Lockwood, and was first published in 1962.
This is the story of a man who straddled two cultures and was aware of the influence of both on his life. As a youth, Waipuldanya was taught how to track and hunt, how to live off the land. He introduces us to a way of life which had been largely untouched for thousands of years. He introduces us to a way of life which, while it was rich in meaning, full of ritual and beliefs, was considered inferior by ‘white-feller’ society.
‘Unfortunately for us, the alien laws of England, written centuries after our own, do not list interference with a sacred tree as a punishable offence, although heavy penalties are provided for sacrilege committed elsewhere – whether in a Christian Church, a Moslem Temple, or a Chinese Joss-House.
Is it surprising, therefore, that we resent compliance with supreme laws compulsorily applied to our lives without consultation?’
Waipuldanya , known in the ‘white-feller’ world as Philip Roberts, trained as a medical assistant and travelled far and wide to treat remote Indigenous people suffering from diseases such as leprosy and yaws. He learned how to read medical slides, with Dr ‘Spike’ Langsford. Later he was taught, by Dr Tarlton Rayment, how to operate an X-ray machine.
I read this book, conscious of how little I know about Indigenous cultures and beliefs. I finished wanting to know more.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
January 10, 2018
I found this book in an old box with books that had sat in my parents’ loft for at least ten years. I have always been fascinated by Australia, its animals and its indigenous people and I must have gotten this book for that reason. I never got round to reading it though.
This is the story of an aboriginal man called Waipuldanya or Phillip Roberts which is his ‘white-feller’ name, written by Douglas Lockwood, who spent a lot of time with Waipuldanya getting his story right.
The memoir was first published in 1962, so it was never going to be politically correct, but having read it, I do not really think it matters. It gives a frank picture of Aboriginal life in the 1950s in the remote bush in the Northern Territory and how contact with white people changed one man’s life.
Overall I found this book a joy to read. I loved reading about aboriginal culture (even if it’s a highly sexist one!). Tribal life was explained, matter-a-factly, without making excuses and you could almost taste the kangaroo meat and barramundi, and hear the feet dancing and voices singing. I felt sad reading about the diseases white people brought that ravished the natives and amazed at how the narrator embraced western medicine to help his fellow aboriginals.
This is largely a positive story of change. This is an account written by a white man, but told by an aboriginal, and I would hope it is true to the stories he told.
I have been to Australia, and I have seen forlorn aboriginals sitting by the side of the road, smoking and drinking. The Western world has treated them harshly, forcing change upon them.
Years ago I stood on the banks of the Roper River, where large parts of this book are set, and it reminded me of the magic of the bush, of the great big skies where the milky way shines bright.
I would thoroughly recommend this book if you’re interested in different cultures, because this is a fascinating look into a culture that is rapidly disappearing…
This is the story of an aboriginal man called Waipuldanya or Phillip Roberts which is his ‘white-feller’ name, written by Douglas Lockwood, who spent a lot of time with Waipuldanya getting his story right.
The memoir was first published in 1962, so it was never going to be politically correct, but having read it, I do not really think it matters. It gives a frank picture of Aboriginal life in the 1950s in the remote bush in the Northern Territory and how contact with white people changed one man’s life.
Overall I found this book a joy to read. I loved reading about aboriginal culture (even if it’s a highly sexist one!). Tribal life was explained, matter-a-factly, without making excuses and you could almost taste the kangaroo meat and barramundi, and hear the feet dancing and voices singing. I felt sad reading about the diseases white people brought that ravished the natives and amazed at how the narrator embraced western medicine to help his fellow aboriginals.
This is largely a positive story of change. This is an account written by a white man, but told by an aboriginal, and I would hope it is true to the stories he told.
I have been to Australia, and I have seen forlorn aboriginals sitting by the side of the road, smoking and drinking. The Western world has treated them harshly, forcing change upon them.
Years ago I stood on the banks of the Roper River, where large parts of this book are set, and it reminded me of the magic of the bush, of the great big skies where the milky way shines bright.
I would thoroughly recommend this book if you’re interested in different cultures, because this is a fascinating look into a culture that is rapidly disappearing…
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July 29, 2011good book if you are intrested in knowing more about Aboriginal culture. Bit dated, due to being written in 1962, but the author makes some intresting observations about his people.
Wonder what he would make of them today?
Wonder what he would make of them today?
May 2, 2012
I hqd read this for a social anthropology course in college and enjoyed learning about the author's culture and perspective. I did not like the gender bias of his tribe, but suppose if I belonged to his culture that it would not seem so important.
May 29, 2021
No-one would use a title like that nowadays, and no-one would write a book this way. Waipuldanya / Phillip Roberts, whose story this is (and who in the 1960s photos looks a bit like Little Richard, with his big quiff and thin moustache) is not named on the cover and presumably got little if any of the proceeds; yet the text is in the first person singular, as if coming direct from him. In fact Douglas Lockwood has completely usurped his voice, in doing so using a literary ‘whitefella’ prose which would be highly unlikely to come from an Aboriginal person who had grown up in the traditional life and speaking their tribal language: ‘I was in an agony of impatience at once’.
There are particular problems in a case like this (similar to Native American ‘autobiographies’ like Lame Deer): these are not the authentic words of the person whose autobiography it supposedly is; how far does it represent their authentic thoughts, and how far those of the ghostwriter? It is obvious that, at the least, Douglas Lockwood has asked a lot of leading questions and led Waipuldanya into the areas that were of interest to himself.
Allowing indigenous peoples their say at last, or the final act of colonialism? Writers have since found ways of doing the first without being too much guilty of the second. To be fair it’s not a straightforward problem: if we want to find out about authentic tribal ways of life, we can’t go to people who are Westernised enough to write their own books.
Anyway, if you can get over such concerns and the slightly precious style, there is a lot of interesting information here about (virtually) pre-contact Aboriginal life; but I can’t say that the story, or the personality of the subject, really come alive.
There are particular problems in a case like this (similar to Native American ‘autobiographies’ like Lame Deer): these are not the authentic words of the person whose autobiography it supposedly is; how far does it represent their authentic thoughts, and how far those of the ghostwriter? It is obvious that, at the least, Douglas Lockwood has asked a lot of leading questions and led Waipuldanya into the areas that were of interest to himself.
Allowing indigenous peoples their say at last, or the final act of colonialism? Writers have since found ways of doing the first without being too much guilty of the second. To be fair it’s not a straightforward problem: if we want to find out about authentic tribal ways of life, we can’t go to people who are Westernised enough to write their own books.
Anyway, if you can get over such concerns and the slightly precious style, there is a lot of interesting information here about (virtually) pre-contact Aboriginal life; but I can’t say that the story, or the personality of the subject, really come alive.
February 9, 2019
Of most interest here to me was how the man of many names, I'll call him Waipuldanya because that one stuck in my mind, straddles two so vastly different worlds. Blackfella/whitefella. The resolved conflict between his traditional pagan beliefs and his Christian faith: he comfortably identifies with both. His medical training and roving medical practice around the peoples of Northern Australia, his moving in and out of western living and traditional living. Waipuldanya seemed not to have any trouble with the two. In an age where reconciliation is both a dream and a byword, this man appears to have found peace within himself.
The writing is really great, so descriptive, as Lockwood records the details of Waipuldanya's life. All the traditional, the ceremonies, the taboos, the hunting skills, the relationships...really fascinating. I found this book by accident (bought it at a second hand market) and I'm so happy I did...and I just remembered that I started reading it on January 26 (controversially Australia Day)
Waipuldanya, through Lockwood, presents an extremely well balanced view of the whitefella/blackfella tension: brutally honest about the bad, but also acknowledging the good. It's very respectful, honest and thoughtful. I'd love to meet this guy. As a white Australian with little understanding of Indigenous culture, I am glad I read I, The Aboriginal, and highly recommend it.
The writing is really great, so descriptive, as Lockwood records the details of Waipuldanya's life. All the traditional, the ceremonies, the taboos, the hunting skills, the relationships...really fascinating. I found this book by accident (bought it at a second hand market) and I'm so happy I did...and I just remembered that I started reading it on January 26 (controversially Australia Day)
Waipuldanya, through Lockwood, presents an extremely well balanced view of the whitefella/blackfella tension: brutally honest about the bad, but also acknowledging the good. It's very respectful, honest and thoughtful. I'd love to meet this guy. As a white Australian with little understanding of Indigenous culture, I am glad I read I, The Aboriginal, and highly recommend it.
November 5, 2019
Šī bija nākamā grāmata kuru izlasīju pēc B. Danielsona grāmatas "Bumerangs". Grāmatas viens otru papildināja, tomēr padarīja arī grūtāku šo lasāmvielu, jo notikumi vairs nebija jauni un nezināmi. Grāmata sižets atspoguļo konkrētu vēsturisku periodu Austrālijas vēsturē, kur ir akcents, ka būt civilizētam ir būt pārākam par mežoni. Šie divi jēdzieni ir saprotami vislabāk tā laika kontekstā, kad rietumu kultūra tiek uzskatīta par cilvizācijas augstumu. Kaut arī galvenais varonis aborigēns ir nolēmis pārņemt rietumnieku, Britu, iezīmes, viņš vienlaikus vēl nav pazaudējis saknes ar savu tautu. Brīžiem noliedzot savas tautas ieradumus, citreiz rietumu tautas iezīmes.
February 26, 2023
3.5 zvaigznes
Interesanti un redzesloka paplašināšanai noderīgi ielūkoties pilnīgi citas kultūras domāšanas veidā. Ļoti uzrunāja aprakstītais par to, cik saprotama ir sadzīvošana ar dabu un spēja izdzīvot un dzīvot tajā pašam par sevi. Tāpat arī interesantas likās pārdomas par to, kā Vaipuldaņja aprakstīja dzīvošanu starp divām savām ticībām - aborigēnu totēmismu un kristietību.
Grāmatā bija nodalītas aborigēnu vīriešu un sieviešu pasaules, un sieviešu pasaulē varēja ielūkoties knapi pa adatas aci. Tagad gribu atrast vairāk informāciju tieši par aborigēnu sieviešu dzīves pusi, jo šķiet, ka tieši tas pietrūka pilnīgākam kopskatam.
Interesanti un redzesloka paplašināšanai noderīgi ielūkoties pilnīgi citas kultūras domāšanas veidā. Ļoti uzrunāja aprakstītais par to, cik saprotama ir sadzīvošana ar dabu un spēja izdzīvot un dzīvot tajā pašam par sevi. Tāpat arī interesantas likās pārdomas par to, kā Vaipuldaņja aprakstīja dzīvošanu starp divām savām ticībām - aborigēnu totēmismu un kristietību.
Grāmatā bija nodalītas aborigēnu vīriešu un sieviešu pasaules, un sieviešu pasaulē varēja ielūkoties knapi pa adatas aci. Tagad gribu atrast vairāk informāciju tieši par aborigēnu sieviešu dzīves pusi, jo šķiet, ka tieši tas pietrūka pilnīgākam kopskatam.
June 11, 2025
I always learn something when I read about Australian First Nations people. This book was written in the early 1960s and is an account of an Aboriginal man born in Arnhem Land who grows up traditionally and then becomes a medical assistant. His account of his culture is fascinating as is the tensions with also being part of the white world. It is quite confronting in parts- particularly the portrayal of women - but worth reading.
August 29, 2021
awesome! This is the story of a traditional Aborigine told by Douglas Lockwood. It was written in 1962 and tells of this guys life and that of his family.
June 9, 2022
īss, bet pietiekami skaidrojošs ieskats Australijas aborigēnu dzīvesveidā. traķenē vairāks reizes izlasiju, baigi patika.
July 31, 2022
Learnt some Alawa tribal language.
January 7, 2023
Absolutely fantastic!! Amazing! I learnt more about the Aboriginal culture and peoples having read this book than any television documentaries and newspaper articles etc. Highly recommended.
April 3, 2023
This book tells the story of Waipuldanya, an Alawa man, who lives between his tribal family and white man's world as Phillip Roberts, a health worker in the Northern Territory.
A wonderful read
A wonderful read
January 22, 2024
Stāsts ar skumju pēcgaršu. Reiz Austrālija bija viņu mājvieta. Tad ienāca baltie. Austrālijas pamatiedzīvotājs stāsta, kā kļuvis par izglītotu un civilizētu cilvēku.
December 3, 2009
Very informative and educational given its vintage.
August 24, 2015
A great perspective on aboriginal life
December 15, 2020
I read this for school. It was super insightful.
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