by Ian Saem Majnep and Ralph Bulmer, foreword by Tim Flannery, illustrations by Chris Healey, edited by Robin Hide and Andrew Pawley.

Full publication details appear in the attached flyer. This is the second volume of a planned trilogy on Kalam ethnobiology by Majnep, a native speaker of Kalam, and Bulmer, a social anthropologist, the first being Birds of My Kalam Country, which appeared in 1977.

The present book has an unusual history. Majnep completed the Kalam text of Animals the Ancestors Hunted in the early 1980s. Before Bulmer died in 1988 he had translated the Kalam text into English and added commentaries to some of the chapters. The task of editing the bilingual version as a series of working papers then fell to Andrew Pawley, Bulmer's literary executor. Later, in accordance with the wishes of Majnep and Bulmer, Robin Hide and Pawley prepared for publication an English-only version of the book, a task that occupied several years.

Majnep has now drafted most of the Kalam text for the third volume of the trilogy, Kalam Plant Lore. However, a vast amount of work remains to be done before an English version of this with commentaries will be ready.

 

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