Yami: The Autobiography of Yami Lester

by Yami Lester

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 2 ratings · 1 review

This is Yami Lester's story: from stockman to stirrer. Beginning in the heart of the Western Desert, Yami tells of his early years learning the country and the Law from the Ones Who Know. Of his years as a stockman, learning his trade on the vast, unfenced cattle stations of the Centre. Of this years living in the world of white people. And of the childhood memories stirre ...more

Paperback , 206 pages

Published June 1st 2000 by IAD Press (first published 1993)

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Sep 09, 2014 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: review-copy , autobiography , indigenous-australian , 20thcentury

I really enjoyed this book! Yami Lester (b. c1949) is a Yankunytjatjara man from northern South Australia. According to Wikipedia, his most significant contribution to indigenous rights was helping gain recognition for the atomic tests at Maralinga and an acknowledgement for the Aboriginal people who had been affected. An important achievement that led to the McLelland Royal Commission in 1985 - but this most modest of men grants it a mere ten pages or so in his autobiography. The rest of his bo I really enjoyed this book! Yami Lester (b. c1949) is a Yankunytjatjara man from northern South Australia. According to Wikipedia, his most significant contribution to indigenous rights was helping gain recognition for the atomic tests at Maralinga and an acknowledgement for the Aboriginal people who had been affected. An important achievement that led to the McLelland Royal Commission in 1985 - but this most modest of men grants it a mere ten pages or so in his autobiography. The rest of his book is a vivid picture of his extraordinary life which reminded me of Albert Facey’s A Fortunate Life.

As a boy Yami lived a bush life in camps in the area around Coober Pedy. His family travelled around from station to station getting itinerant work, living on bush tucker when the rations ran out. At Mt Willoughby Station, the kids were warned off the rubbish dump by the Aboriginal women:

‘Awai! Your father’s going to hunt you away from there’. That was my white father, Dick Lander, the manager of Mt Willoughby Station. ‘You gotta come this way,’ the women said, ‘and we’ll give you some food.’ So we left the rubbish dump, but we didn’t go to the house, we walked to the creek close by and waited until they brought out some food that my father gave to them: eggs and cake and different food.

That was as close as I got to my white father. I would like to have known him. But we couldn’t have talked because I didn’t have any English. I just had my own language Yankunytjatjara. It would have been something, that, to have talked with him. Anyway, we did share something: he didn’t want me to go to the rubbish dump! (p. 3)

That short excerpt is an indication of the character of this most entertaining storyteller: not an ounce of self-pity and always ready to look for the best in any situation. He was soon to need both those traits to overcome the challenge that defined his life
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