Dingo makes us human

The Aboriginal people are essential figures in White Australia's mythology, and as such are often represented as being intrinsic to the past. Nevertheless their role in the future is widely perceived as being irrelevant and the much publicised images of the squalor and misery of contemporary Aboriginal communities often serve to further alienate European Australia from Aboriginal Australia. Debbie Bird Rose's highly original ethnography of the people of the Victoria River Valley in the Northern Territory fulfils what she sees as anthropology's basic purpose: to emphasise our shared humanity.…