A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off by Charlie Russell Ward (review)

IN AUGUST 1966 Vincent Lingiari led two hundred people in a strike off Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia. Challenging the status quo in which Aboriginal stockmen and their families worked for meager pay and substandard housing despite being vital to the operation of cattle stations in the interior, they left this branch of a multinational conglomerate business to follow a dream: to run a cattle station on their own land. A Handful of Sand is about what happened after the walk-off: the currents of Gurindji life from that point onward, and how, when, and why the Gurindji became the focal point—and political football—of Indigenous land rights across Australia.

In a basic sense this is a work of political history. The Wave Hill Walk-Off catalyzed economic change, social and legal debate, and reform. The title itself is drawn from the symbolic moment in which Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured a handful of soil from Gurindji country into Vincent Lingiara's hands. Yet A Handful of Sand is much more than a work of political history. It is committed to charting Gurindji life: the ongoing wear and tear, trials and triumphs, of which the historic granting of a lease, the formation of the Gurindji's own cattle run, and the iconic handful of sand constitute highpoints but not the end of the pulse of Gurindji lives and fortunes.

As the dedication to the realization of the Gurdinji's hopes and dreams foreshadows, Ward, a kartiya or white man, has made sure that the people and the places are the history as much as, or even more than, the politics and the key events. In a work about a small community and a wider political stage, such detailed portraits are both fitting and compelling. "Sensitivity" is an overused term, but the acuity of Ward's book lies in this and a commitment so great that it cannot shy away from the people and places involved or the rawness of it all. Ward details the human cost of oscillating political fortune as well as other realities: intergenerational conflict, substance abuse, the difficulties of a cash economy, encroaching age and senility, and the issues of translation in policy makers' requirements.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-Off, this book will be an illuminating read for scholars and layman nationally and internationally—aided by helpful maps and a list of terms. For those wanting a firmer grasp of the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, no finer introduction of the tone, texture, and story could be given, due in large part to Ward's impressive array of interviews. For those interested in the ongoing social and political turbulence for many Indigenous people more generally, this book will also yield rich insights.