"In Second Nature, Lesley Head examines modern Australia's efforts to come to terms with its Aboriginal past.".

"Drawing on anthropology, archeology, and history, Head shows that through their use of fire and their methods of hunting and gathering, Aboriginal ancestors transformed the country's biophysical landscape in a variety of still debated ways. These findings present a dramatic shift away from the nineteenth-century evolutionary models, which viewed Aborigines as an unchanging people in an unchanging land."--BOOK JACKET.