The Art of Fire
The Art of Fire is a little gem of science as well as art. It will appeal to anyone interested in Australian Indigenous art and traditional life.
Jimmy Pike grew up in the Great Sandy Desert, where he became familiar with fire, its uses and its dangers: knowledge and practice passed down through the generations.
He shares some of this knowledge with others through his minimalist drawings and compact, vivid explanations.
Desert Cowboy
The story of Yinti's contact with white society, sensitively recounted by Pat Lowe, is poignant and humorous. Jimmy Pike, internationally acclaimed Aboriginal artist, illustrates his own adventures with striking and inimitable works of art. Desert Cowboy, from the award-winning Yinti series, will inform and captivate everyone.
Based on true stories from a real life cowboy.
Yinti
This book is made up of various stories based on Yinti, the desert child. All of the stories are based on actual people and events. Lowe then fictionalised the stories to make them more immediately interesting to children, eliminating characters not essential to the plot, inventing names and some, though not all, of the conversation.
In the desert
This remarkable and intimate account of what was a traditional Walmajarri boyhood, one of the last of its kind, opens your eyes to a completely different culture and way of experiencing the world. The startling fact is that after 60,000 years following a nomadic, hunter-gatherer way of life, the exodus of the Walmajarri people from the desert occurred in only one or two generations after white settlement.
Hunters and Trackers
The peoples of the deserts in the centre of Australia adapted to one of the most marginal environments on earth, with no technology to assist them other than what they could make with their own hands. The book describes the hunting lifestyle of desert people both before European contact and today. It discusses the art of tracking in some detail, and shows it is part of a body of knowledge, which includes an intimate understanding of animal behaviour, an excellent memory and a faultless sense of direction.
Jimmy and Pat meet the Queen
Artist Jimmy Pike, a Walmajarri man, together with his wife Pat Lowe, decides to challenge the Queen's ownership of his traditional land in the Great Sandy Desert. Pat writes to the Queen, inviting her to visit their camp in the desert, and the Queen accepts! Not just for children, this book explains native title from the Aboriginal point of view.
Jimmy and Pat go to China
A quirky story of a romp by two Australians through a fascinating country in the company of one of its former citizens. The trio, from three very different cultures, visit some of the grand sites of China, climb the Yellow Mountains and the Great Wall, attract the attention of the public and police, and feast along the way.