Dreamkeepers: A Spirit-Journey Into Aboriginal Australia

Arden, a staff writer for National Geographic and coauthor of Wisdom keep ers: Meetings with Native American Elders, here movingly and tellingly portrays modern-day Australian Aboriginals. Aided by a guide, he traveled in the Outback and sought out Aboriginals; interposing himself even less than Bruce Chatwin did in Songlines , another portrait of these people, Arden tried not to probe, but rather encouraged the Aboriginals to talk freely while keeping himself unobtrusive. He recorded poignant memories, inner thoughts, old stories and apocalyptic prophecies. Like Native Americans, the Australian Aboriginals regard themselves as a nation within a nation. Their sense of the sacredness of the land is unaltered; their frequently expressed hunger to retrieve their lost land is powerful. Regarded by many tourists and Australians as unsophisticated and as curiosities, the Aboriginals Arden met are extremely poor, living partly in the modern era and partly in the Dreamtime of their belief that their ancestors sung the world into existence. Photos. (Apr.)