News Archive

Justice: A History of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia won the $25,000 Premier's Prize for best overall book in the WA Premier's Book Awards on Monday night.

The book beat a record 595 others including Anna Funder's Miles Franklin winner All That I Am and Cloudstreet: The Screenplay by Tim Winton and Ellen Fontana.

The judges described the ‘must read' book as an ‘elegantly written, painstakingly researched and profoundly relevant publication'.

Premier Colin Barnett said the book made a significant contribution to understanding the changes in criminal justice and policing, and to attitudes about racial discrimination an land rights that had occurred in recent times in WA.

Author Fiona Skyring said she was thrilled and delighted that the book had been accorded such recognition.

The book also won the State Library of Western Australia WA History award, worth $10,000; this year it has also won the 2012 Margaret Medcalf Award .

Dr Skyring was commissioned by the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia in 2005 to write the book and interviewed more than 60 people across the country, including throughout outback WA.

Dr Skyring is a Sydney-based historian who works for native title organisations (previously as an in-house expert for the Kimberley Land Council in WA) and contributes to a range of community history projects and academic publications.

Find out more about the WA Premier's Book Awards at pba.slwa.wa.gov.au .

Media references

Kiri Falls (UWA Publishing)   (+61 8)  6488 6806  /  (+61 4) 28 136 847

Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783