Welcome to Country by Marcia Langton: book review

Marcia Langton: Welcome to Country (2018) is the first comprehensive travel guide to 'Indigenous Australia and the Torres Strait Islands' - First Nations people.

Author Professor Langton, a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations, is an anthropologist and geographer, and the first Associate Provost at the University of Melbourne.

The author begins with suggestions for guided walking tours around Sydney Harbour and in Melbourne. She also discusses indigenous art – from rock drawings to bark paintings to early engravings, textiles, and modern interpretations that demonstrate a wide variety of styles. She also mentions indigenous music and provides examples of well-known artists and songs. Smoke ceremonies, dance, and story-telling, as well as clans, kinships, and skin systems are explained. There are also festivals, museums, galleries, parks, gardens, and bushwalking tours. She also explains First Nations rights to land and the stolen generations.

The author explains customs, place names, people’s names, and provides culturally appropriate recommendations for tourists, such as the use of photography and videos.

She also provides a list of poets, writers, and playwrights as a starting guide to the literature. And food.

Most of the book is a comprehensive series of tourist places around Australia and Torres Strait Islands, state by state, to visit cultural sites, festivals, tours, attractions, and lands.

This is an excellent tourism and travel guide with a great diversity of things to see and do, as well as to understand and enjoy.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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