Ebenso wie Marlo Morgan's "Traumfänger" handelt es sich um eine Wohnzimmer-Phantasie über edle Wilde, die weise durch Wüste und Busch streifen - der heutige Alltag der Aborigines kommt nicht vor. Der Autor verbindet das mit einer Aufforderung zur Rückkehr zu den Ursprüngen und zur Abkehr von der technischen Zivilisation. Das ist bestensfalls romantisch.
Bitte die englischen Rezensionen auf amazon.com studieren, die von Ethnologen verfasst worden, die im Gegensatz zu Lawlor tatsächlich mit Aborigines gelebt haben:
bleary new-age fog, wishful thinking...
nothing but new age junk ...
One of Australia's greatest anthropologists, William Stanner, urged people who are inspired by indigenous cultures to "...avoid banal projection and subjectivism. ("White Man Got No Dreaming", 1979). Lawlor does both and more. He is an armchair anthropologist who has never lived among indigenous Australians and spins a tale that has little bearing on the real world of indigenous culture....
The Aboriginal culture depicted in this book bears little resemblance to that of the people I've spent most of my life working with. Alongside his often bizarre, and unfounded, speculations on Aboriginal beliefs, origins and abilities, Lawlor almost exclusively draws on the past (and very old ethnological sources) to describe Aboriginal life and culture. Aboriginal people are not stuck in the past, nor are they representatives of a past way of life that Westerners can identify with and make themselves feel better...
I have worked and lived with Aboriginal people in The Northern Territory for the last 10 years and the stuff Lawlor writes is akin to the fiction of "mutant message down under". Beware, what is contained within these pages bears no relationship to the real thing. Only through learning language and understanding culture through this will you receive the smallest glimpses of the spiritual lives of Aboriginal people. Sacred and secret knowledge is well safeguarded through a strict system of law. I see this FICTION is totally Robert Lawlors dreaming...