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Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines
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Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines

by David Unaipon, Stephen Muecke, Adam Shoemaker

This edition restores a collection of Ngarrindjeri and South Australian Aboriginal stories originally compiled in the 1920s. The repatriated text corrects a historical appropriation, returning the stories to their community with additional cultural context.

Accession 13949 ISBN 9780522852462 Publisher The Miegunyah Press
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Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines spine
Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines cover
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TAGS
Curated Derived
Australia Culture Ethnology Folklore History Mythology Religion Stories
CONNECTIONS
No connections
State
on_shelf
True
position_updated_at
2026-05-28 15:27
orientation
vertical
Details

Physical

binding_type
Hard Back
dimensions
none captured
spine_text
none captured

Metadata

Book form
LOCATION HISTORY
M:N4:23 3 Current vertical
1 week, 3 days ago
Book Location
Updated 1 week, 2 days ago
Vernon snapshot
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Frozen copy of Vernon's record from the last sync. Fields tagged → flow back into the Pulse record.

Last synced 2026-05-21 12:00 (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

Identity

name→ title
Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines
vernon_id
22161
accession_no→ accession_number
13949
vernon_slug
legendary-tales-of-the-australian-aborigines-david-unaipon-edited-by-stephen-muecke-and-adam-shoemaker

Drives Pulse state

curr_loc_status→ on_shelf
On Shelf
location_name
Zone N4/Level 2 (Mezzanine)/Phrontisterion/MONA
location_reason
On Shelf
isbn_issn→ isbn (when valid)
9780522852462

Descriptive

production_date
2001
object_type
Books/Document genres/Information forms/Visual and Verbal Communication
object_status
Accessioned
brief_description
David Unaipon the man on the $50 note was a most extraordinary person. An early Aboriginal political activist, he was also a scientist, a writer, a preacher and an inventor. In the 1920s, under contract to the University of Adelaide, he was commissioned to collect traditional Aboriginal stories from around South Australia. He also acted as a collector for the Aborigines Friends Association. Most of the stories come from his own Ngarrindjeri people, but some are from other South Australian peoples. The stories were published in 1930 as Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, but the author of the work was given as W. Ramsay Smith, FRS, anthropologist and Chief Medical Officer of South Australia. Unaipon s name does not appear anywhere in the book, except where he is mentioned in passing as a narrator . In putting together this new edition of the stories Unaipon collected and transcribed, Stephen Muecke and Adam Shoemaker have undertaken a literary repatriation , restoring the text to its original form and bringing it home to its community the community to whom the stories belonged in the first place. --Book Depository

Subjects & people

authors→ author (initial fill only)
David Unaipon, Stephen Muecke, Adam Shoemaker
tags→ tags
Religion, Civilisation, Mythology, Aboriginal Australians, Ethnology -- Australia, Manners and customs, Folklore, Aboriginal Australians -- History, Dreamtime (Aboriginal Australian mythology), Mythology, Aboriginal Australian
subject_people
David Unaipon (Australia, b.1872, d.1967)
subject_objects
—

Cover image

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Topics and Themes