Book Reviews

Issues of mortality, mourning and mortuary are a pertinent point of entry into Aboriginal life today, especially as it unfolds in the more remote regions of Australia. As most readers of this review will know, mortality rates in Indigenous Australia far outstrip those of the non-Indigenous population. Moreover, the process of death itself, both the events that foreshadow it and its aftermath, are matters that thoroughly absorb the residents of Aboriginal communities. The issues are pertinent, not simply because of the marginalised condition of a Fourth World people that these deaths reflect, but also owing to the depth of sentiment and endurance that they reveal within Aboriginal communities. The essays address the gamut of more and less salutary lessons to be drawn from this theme. The collection is a substantial one containing eleven essays. They describe different aspects of death and mourning in communities from north-west Australia through north-east Arnhem Land across the Top End, to Cape York Peninsula and south to central New South Wales. An important dimension of the collection is the degree of commonality evoked by contemporary mortuary practices, all influenced now in various ways by the encapsulating society. In addition to the essays, the collection contains an Introduction by the editors, a Foreword by the series editors, Andrew and Pamela Strathern, and an Afterword by Howard and Frances Morphy. The Foreword positions the essays in a broader comparative perspective, referenced mainly to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and to some classical anthropological issues concerning mourning practice, treatment of the body, issues of sorcery, and ghosts. The Afterword presents a longitudinal view over thirty years of death and responses to it among Yolngu. This framing of the essays is very effective and combines with a really excellent Introduction to the collection. In it, the editors discuss both the current context of death in Aboriginal communities, and the ‘anthropology of death’ as a human perennial. They summarise the import of the collection when they remark that ‘While death must be regarded as a constant of human social life, the contexts of its inevitability can nevertheless profoundly shape experience of death and responses to it’. In addition to these dual themes, the Introduction draws out a number of pertinent issues, including the importance of mortuary practices, the inequality of grief, psycho-social costs of death, and death as metaphor. It is not possible in a short review to do justice to all the essays, but in the space that remains let me mention a few themes that impressed me in this collection. Because Aboriginal people today die in ‘unprecedented numbers’ and amongst Anthropological Forum Vol. 20, No. 2, July 2010, 167–214