Ryan Moore

Deeply shameful, deeply shocking. As an Australian it was absolutely gut wrenching to read this book. As Cassandra Pybus lays out page after page of meticulously researched proof of the genocide perpetrated upon the First People of Tasmania, the stories of the “resurrection men” are so callous, so craven, so absolutely racist in every facet, that it made me sick to my stomach. I knew that Indigenous people had been killed for their land, but I was ignorant of the level of desecration then enacted upon their dead bodies. Deprived of dignity, deprived of their spiritual afterlife, all for trophies paid for with status and power. Treated like one might mount a trout on the wall. Reading this book shows why Australia is not yet ready for a Voice from Indigenous Australia: because what would inevitably be spoken is just too confronting for most of us.