Take Power: An Anthology Celebrating Twenty Years of Land Rights in Central Australia

by Alexis Wright (Editor)

This anthology takes us inside the Central Land Council to reveal the political battles, the legal manoevres and the extraordinary people of the fight for land rights in Central Australia. We encounter the human side of powerful modern Aboriginal organisastions at work and we learn the background and personalities of their Aboriginal leaders and staff. We see how, with considerable humour and passion, they continue to meet the challenges of the times. Take Power is a resounding to the strength of traditional Aboriginal law and culture, and to the workers for land rights who have helped shape the social and political landscape of a nation.

Genres: Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Alexis Wright is from the Waanji people from the highlands of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Her acclaimed first novel Plains of Promise was published in 1997 by University of Queensland Press and was shortlisted in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Age Book of the Year, and the NSW Premier's Awards. The novel has been translated into French.

Alexis has published award-winning short stories and her other books are the anthology Take Power (Jukurrpa Books, l998), celebrating 20 years of land rights in Central Australia; and Grog War (Magabala,1997), an examination of the alcohol restrictions in Tennant Creek.

Her latest novel, Carpentaria was published by Giramondo in 2006. An epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, from where her people come, the novel tells of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance. In 2007 Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Fiction Book, and the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA), Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year.

Biographical information from the Australia Council website.