Quentin Beresford - Rob Riley: An Aboriginal Leaders Quest for Justice

The story of our mate is incredibly sad. The challenge for Quentin Beresford has been to tell the chapter of that story that is our mates alone. There will be those that feel betrayed and those whose hearts will be forever broken but our mate would have demanded honesty. The life portrayed in these pages will above all else challenge our capacity to look into this blighted page of our history and to deal with and understand the nature of our national racist cancer.

Patrick Dodson
Broome

As a baby, Rob Riley was separated from his family and taken to the half caste home, Sister Kates, whose purpose was to strip him of his indigenous identity. As an adolescent, he lived in the squalor of the Pingelly Reserve and in the slums of East Perth. And yet, despite all this, he grew up to become one of the most effective and most loved Aboriginal political leaders of Australias modern political history. Rob Riley was intimately associated with all the great causes of his peoplethe struggles for land rights, self-determination, the signing of a treaty, the search for truth about Aboriginal deaths in custody and the stolen generations. Yet his final years were overtaken by intertwined public and private suffering, as he fought the inexorable rise of the reactionary forces in society and as the traumas of his early life slowly overcame him. In this detailed and delicate biography, Quentin Beresford tells a story of triumph and of tragedy. I cannot think of a finer introduction to Aboriginal politics in the contemporary era. I urge all Australian citizens who care about reconciliation to read it.

Robert Manne
Professor of Politics
La Trobe University

Front cover illustration: Rob Riley, West Australian Newspapers Ltd

Index compiled by Michael Harrington

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