Newsletter Oct 2022

Hi all you wonderful readers – Well the year is advancing and I hope you’re getting through your to-do list and leaving yourself time out to read your favourite book or spend some time in nature or do whatever refreshes you.

Barbara Miller re her 2 memoirs – White Woman Black Heart and Secrets and Lies – brief interview

HOLOCAUST HANDBOOK FOR SCHOOLS & ADULTS ON THE HOLOCAUST & ANTISEMITISM

I have finished writing this project for a Jewish organisation and it is being edited. The graphic design work will begin soon. We are hoping that it will receive favour from curriculum bodies and teachers will use it. If anyone can help with this project, please let me know.

The photo is of a plaque outside the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Melbourne.

Brief Interview with author Barbara Miller re her books on William Cooper

BELOW COST SALE
WILLIAM COOPER GENTLE WARRIOR

Slashed from $29.95 to $7ea for September only.
Sales of 10 or more copies, the low price of $5 each
$12 Shipping for 1 copy. $2 extra for each additional copy. 
Email me for direct sales at bmiller@bigpond.com

Extended for October also. Order from
https://barbara-miller-books.com/

REEF AND RAINFOREST: AN ABORIGINAL VOICE THROUGH ART AND STORY

Munganbana’s work in creating this book is a perfect example of … connection to country. He has combined his personal, ancestral and spiritual experiences with a mix of traditional and contemporary art styles to help give us a greater understanding of the beauty, history and importance of the Reef.

Sheriden Morris, Managing Director
Reef and Rainforest Research Centre

LEARN MORE 

If I Survive: Nazi Germany and the Jews,100-Year-Old Lena Goldstein’s Miracle Story is available here

Re White Australia Has A Black History 
Read about up-to-date information on William Cooper and the people he mentored and how they changed Australian history

Re Shattered Lives Broken Dreams

The Nazis shatter glass and shatter the lives of European Jews at Kristallnacht, the start of the Holocaust. An Australian Aboriginal, William Cooper, leads the campaign for civil rights for his people who are dying of poverty and mistreatment around him. 1938; two worlds, far apart. Cut to the core after Kristallnacht, can he do anything to stop it?

FIND IT HERE

BOOK OF THE MONTH FEATURE

Title of Book – Gulpilil 
‘David is a gateway to a history that we’ve so far denied and not embraced. In this country, he’s more important than Ned Kelly.’ Jack Thompson

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that content inside this publication, contains images and the name of a person who has died. For cultural reasons, he is referred to as David Dalaithngu.

About the Author

David Gulpilil is a Yolngu man beloved around the world as a hunter, dancer, actor and artist. His preternatural acting in the films Walkabout, Storm Boy, Crocodile Dundee, The Tracker and Charlie’s Country – for which he won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes Film Festival and Best Actor at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards in 2014 – has allowed Gulpilil to transmit the worlds of the First Australians to screens with unrivalled magic and melancholy, and made him an icon of cinema.

Learn More

White Woman Black Heart: Journey Home to Old Mapoon, a Memoir

Oppressed Aborigines forced off their land at gunpoint. Over a decade later, one passionate young woman would take up their fight…


AVAILABLE HERE

Secrets and Lies: The Shocking Truth of Recent Australian Aboriginal History, A Memoir (First Nations True Stories)

Barbara Russell, a young woman from a white working-class family. A ruthless Premier Bjelke-Petersen enforcing legal discrimination. How could Barbara stand by and watch the feud of the people with governments and miners strip Australian Aboriginal communities of all they held dear? But what could she do to make a difference?

CHECK IT OUT

My book Secrets and Lies is often no 1 best seller on Amazon Australia as an ebook in Discrimination Constitutional Law

My book Secrets and Lies is often no 1 best seller on Amazon Australia as an ebook in Discrimination Constitutional Law, Public Law and Civil Law – 3 categories. It is currently no 1 in the Sociology of Race Relations in Amazon US and White Australia Has A Black History was no 2 beside it a couple of days ago.

 

Left – A fun photo of me putting my hands on Munganbana Norman’s Big Boomerang recently.

Right – I was invited to Courage to Care’s first event in Brisbane 5 June 2014 and am beside the William Cooper exhibit.

 

Barbara Miller Books Newsletter June 2021

Announcement My new book Secrets and Lies: The Shocking Truth About Recent Aboriginal History, A Memoir, is available for pre-order on Amazon for the special price of 99c US as an ebook. It will be launched on 3 July and will stay at 99c for a few more days. The print book will be available shortly after. Here is the link – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095SDW3LY

I would love some reviews on Amazon please and for you to share about it on social medial. It is my second memoir, a follow-up from White Woman Black Heart which was too long. So in mid-2017, I pulled out about 50,000 words written mostly in 2016 and published White Woman Black Heart in March 2018. I planned to use the chapters I took out to write a second memoir and wondered if I would ever get back to it.

Then in November 2020, I had a dream where I was taken to Aurukun Aboriginal community, and saw an elder, a relative by marriage who was a Uniting Church pastor. In my dream, I thought ‘but you’ve passed away’. Then I saw a young Aboriginal girl who I thought might be his great-granddaughter. She pointed to a mobile phone of all things and said, “This is your story. You need to tell it.” Surprised, I didn’t say anything. The next morning, I remembered the dream clearly and that the first few chapters of my unfinished second memoir were about Aurukun. This gave me the inspiration and motivation to pick up the pieces and finish the writing.

REVIEW
Secrets and Lies: The Shocking Truth of Recent Aboriginal History, A Memoir, is both a political chronicle and a personal memoir – a journey the young Barbara took into political activism and personal transformation, which became life-long. Barbara Miller shows the political and the personal can be two sides of a life journey of service.

There is critical history in this book from an activist on the inside. Yet the book also shows that political activism is not enough. It must be balanced by personal integrity and pursuit. The journey from the political into the personal, with fulfillment in spiritual practice, is also illuminating. Can we do one without the other? I think not, whatever the spiritual practice is.

Barbara’s book bought memories of the days of the Aboriginal Co-ordinating Council (ACC), both of us working at different levels within the ACC to respond to the directions and needs of the old reserve mission controls moving into deeds of grant in trust and ‘self-management’. Barbara’s political background provided essential insight and sound analysis. Mine saw the failure of the services delivered by a racist regime, with the ACC working to meet their legislative responsibilities. Barbara supported this work through research. Hers has been an inspirational journey of service at many levels.

Judy Atkinson, Emeritus Professor, PhD AM

ANOTHER REVIEW OF SECRETS AND LIES
Secrets and Lies contains exciting examples of the battles by the indigenous people of QLD against a repressive state regime which greedily sought to control their land and their lives in order to exploit the natural resources. They have developed a remarkable capacity for developing relationships with non-indigenous people who have joined them in their struggle. Barbara has been admitted, not only into their confidence, but also into their families and has achieved remarkable advantages for them in those battles.

Paul Richards, lawyer, author of Adventures with Agitators


MONTHLY FEATURED BOOK BY ANOTHER AUTHOR

it is incredible to read a true account of a life and understand firsthand what leads a person down ‘an inevitable path’. The person in question is Josie Lacey OAM whose experiences of antisemitism and the rise of Nazism saw her and her parents have to leave their homeland, apply to immigrate to Australia, arriving here in 1939.

At school as a ‘reffo’ Josie encountered ignorance and antisemitism which left an indelible mark. Her strong moral stance and her deep desire to combat racism and foster greater understanding between people of different faiths has resulted in her extraordinary life’s work; to educate, demystify and to fulfill responsibilities to family members who never had the chance to reach their potential. The scope and extent of this work demonstrates Josie’s many and varied achievements, including her interfaith activities, her enormous contribution to WIZO and her work on the Race Discrimination laws. Her commitment to her husband, Ian, and to her family is like every aspect of her life; complete and unfaltering.

This book reveals Josie’s thoughts on so many subjects and shows her joie de vivre and the passion she has to effect change, which is Josie’s hallmark. An insightful and comprehensive look into a life well-lived, An Inevitable Path will provide the reader with a real sense of the amazing woman that is Josie Lacey.

ORDER FROM
https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/shop/products/books/an-inevitable-path/

Books on Yarrabah, Mapoon, William Cooper and de Quiros

The Dying Days of Segregation in Australia: Case Study Yarrabah
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GF864Q6/
White Woman Black Heart: Journey Home to Old Mapoon, A Memoir
https://www.amazon.com/dp-B07CCMV6CP/
William Cooper Gentle Warrior and The European Quest to Find Terra Australis Incognita:Quiros Torres and Janszoonwww.barbara-miller-books.com

Be blessed and happy reading!