Going the Whiteman's Way

This exceptional volume presents a detailed account of kinship and marriage in an Australian Aboriginal community on the island of Mornington in Northern Queensland. Employing case histories to demonstrate the reasons and counter-reasons that the elders advance for accepting or rejecting proposed marriages, it documents the fundamental changes that occurred in the late 1960s. David McKnight traces how, under the hegemony of the Presbyterian missionaries, young people began to identify with the European Australian world and eventually succeeded in defying the authority of the elders, seeking to marry according to their own inclination. What appears to have been a simple matter of personal choice turned out to have devastating social consequences. The volume is the result of the author's numerous field trips to the island over the past 35 years and what amounts to over five years of living with the Mornington Islanders.