Abstract: Bamblett, Laurie Review(s) of: Serious whitefella stuff: When solutions become the problem in Indigenous affairs, by Mark Moran, 2016, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 256pp, ISBN 9780522868296 (pbk).
Abstract: Wiltshire, Kelly Review(s) of: Deep time dreaming: Uncovering ancient Australia, by Billy Griffiths, 2018, Black Inc., Carlton, Vic., 384pp, ISBN 9781760640446 (pbk).
Abstract: Brinckley, Makayla-May Review(s) of: Growing up Aboriginal in Australia, by Anita Heiss (ed.), 2018, Black Inc., Carlton, Vic., 320pp, ISBN 9781863959810 (pbk).
Abstract: Kamp, Alanna; Dunn, Kevin; Paradies, Yin; Blair, Kathleen A perception exists that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are uneasy with cultural diversity. Such unease has been attributed to problematic positioning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within multicultural policy, and the requirement that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people declare an overriding and primary commitment to the Australian nation-state. Furthermore, the lack of a formal treaty, absence of constitutional recognition and continuing experiences of racism mean that the encounter with the multicultural nation-state is colonialist. We present nationwide survey data collected between July and August 2015 and in November 2016 revealing that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are largely supportive of diversity, which is one of the central tenets of multiculturalism. In most respects, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents' attitudes towards cultural diversity and views on 'old racism' are similar to those of non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, despite their higher reported experiences of racism. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to acknowledge racism and Anglo privilege, and have more negative views on inter-racial marriage, especially with white Australians. While there is evidence of some support for cultural diversity among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents, the data reveal that, as a group, they are not as supportive as non- Indigenous Australians, demonstrating some levels of unease with cultural diversity.
Abstract: Sundbery, Jacqui; Latham, Robyne The need for collaborative approaches has both an ethical and pragmatic imperative in the fields of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, education and research. It has been argued that both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous people are not adequately equipped to address inequity in contemporary Australia without an understanding of both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Towards developing this capacity, a collaboration between differing knowledge systems can result in a kind of 'gestalt leap' or 'third space'. Examples of this exchange include Anangu concepts such as Malparara and Ngapartji Ngapartji. Mindful of this argument, the authors of this paper have found a limited literature on the process and benefits of collaborations that bring together the disparate knowledge systems of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures. This paper contributes to the development of such a literature and focuses upon the processes by which these benefits may be maximised.
Abstract: Rogers, Jessa This paper outlines how an Aboriginal researcher approached international indigenous research based on indigenous research practices and principles, indigenous worldview and Country-based ontologies. In particular, this paper discusses how relatedness functions as a methodology in collaborative indigenous work and how photostory, a modified version of the method termed 'photoyarn', was developed specifically for Kanaka Maoli young people attending boarding school with noho. To 'noho' means to 'commit to the establishment of the relationship and to maintain it with humility and respect' (Lopes 2016:32). Opening with the connections that bind Aboriginal, Maori, Kanaka Maoli and Native peoples of North America, this paper presents photostory as a method and outlines how cross-cultural research can function from an Aboriginal perspective.
Abstract: Hutchings, Kate; Bodle, Kerry; Miller, Adrian Although the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter Indigenous) people completing undergraduate degrees has improved markedly in recent years, Indigenous people remain under-represented in higher degree research (HDR) programs, which limits progression into academic careers. This paper explores factors affecting Indigenous people's commencement and completion of HDR programs. The research was undertaken at a large, multi-campus, metropolitan Australian university and involved a qualitative, culturally appropriate research design based on yarning circles and interviews with Indigenous HDR candidates and interviews with HDR supervisors. The research was undertaken by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers with advice provided by the Indigenous community at the university to ensure cultural safety. Highlighting the central role of supervisors and system-wide university support, the most significant finding of the research is that although additional research and university commitments can be barriers, other research/ work opportunities enable completion. The findings suggest that in addressing under-representation of Indigenous people in HDR and academia in Australia, universities need to provide strategic attention to how they engage, support and recognise achievements of Indigenous people in HDR while also being cognisant of individuals' competing responsibilities.
Abstract: Fitzpatrick, Emily A picture is worth a thousand words, but the paintings I discuss in this paper capture what words could not. The Picture Talk Project commissioned Australian Aboriginal artists to paint research results, to be used as a visual medium to present findings back to the Aboriginal communities. However, the way in which the artists were briefed, the process of creation and the artists' lived experiences all emerged in the paintings. The process reinforces the fact that efforts to ensure greater collaboration take place within a long history of power inequities. The experience is a sober reminder that we must embody appropriate cultural frame works of communication every step of the way.
Abstract: Hughes, Karen; Smith, Cholena In transnational settler colonial contexts, the photograph has been a tool of suppression, playing a key role in the categorisation of race and difference, as well as furthering the logic of elimination through gestures towards whiteness, authenticity and vanishing races. For Indigenous peoples living in early-invaded, densely settled areas, such as the participants in this study - Ngarrindjeri in south-eastern Australia and the Shinnecock Algonquin in the north-eastern United States (US) - the problem of visual representation has long contributed to a denial of their contemporary identity and to persistent discrimination. Administrative and anthropological photography in the early twentieth century across these settler colonial polities was inextricably connected with policies of assimilation, eugenics and anti-miscegenation, and to the making of racial categories. Yet at the same time that official photographers were consciously filtering out the impacts of colonisation - imaging perennial stereotypes of the lone plains Indian on horseback in full regalia, for example, or the northern Aboriginal man poised on one leg, spear in hand - pioneering Ngarrindjeri and Shinnecock women and men creatively seized upon the camera, experimenting with new technologies and media to counter these colonial imaginings. Producing rich archives in their own communities that assert visual sovereignty, their photographs narrate vital histories not known through other means. This paper arises from research with the Ngarrindjeri and Shinnecock communities to reveal the practice of two prolific Indigenous commuunity-based photographers from the mid-twentieth century: Charlotte Richards and Wickham Hunter. We explore the democratising ways in which they worked intentionally to undo colonial stereotypes and represent their people, shedding new light on Indigenous aesthetic traditions and technologies, identity, cultural continuity and belonging, and adding to recent transnational scholarship on visual sovereignty and the decolonising of the settler colonial archive.
Abstract: Spillman, David The brumby dance episode occurred as a Warlpiri-inspired response to an emotionally charged conversation regarding the Northern Territory Emergency Response. It took place during the Cross-Cultural Collaboration Project, undertaken in the Northern Territory Department of Education, Employment and Training in 2008. This paper contextualises, describes and analyses the brumby dance episode, examining the perspectives and intentions underlying its enactment. This analysis proposes the brumby dance episode as an exemplar of the great value of cultural continuity processes in bringing traditional Aboriginal ways of knowing, doing and being to the localised complexity of contemporary Indigenous education in Australia, particularly in remote settings. Such strongly relational, strength-based approaches are juxtaposed with those of the currently dominant standardisation policy agenda in Indigenous education, critiqued as over-simplistic (one size fits all), deficit-focused and relationally impoverished.
Abstract: McCleary, Tim Review(s) of: Relating to rock art in the contemporary world: Navigating symbolism, meaning, and significance, by Liam Brady and Paul Tacon (eds) 2016, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, 384pp, ISBN 9781607327790 (pbk).
Abstract: Casey, Bill This paper's main concern is how educators can best face the challenge of teaching Australia's history of frontier violence. Understandably, high school and undergraduate students are wary of such a dark topic that draws in massacres, rapes and allegations of genocide. However, if teachers steer clear of the controversial material, students are left with significantly reduced understandings of why Australian race relations can be so strained. Ignoring the full story of colonisation undermines reconciliation and augments a racial divide. Ignoring frontier violence also strengthens imperialism's capacity to render subjugated people 'invisible'. The curriculum's requirement to teach Australian Aboriginal history in partnership with Indigenous community members is therefore a crucial way of dispelling invisibility and reasserting the legitimate rights of Indigenous peoples to their intangible heritage. Shared teaching humanises the impact of colonisation and frontier violence on Australia's First Peoples, and protects, maintains and respects Indigenous knowledge, practices and innovations.
This is the first paper to indicate that Western Australia's 1927 Royal Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Killing and Burning of Bodies of Aborigines in East Kimberley and into Police Methods when Effecting Arrests may be the plot source for Arthur Upfield's (1961[1931]) novel The Sands of Windee and for the Murchison murders (1929-30). The case study's example of Kimberley Aboriginal people becoming 'invisible' leads into an overview of imperialism, where invisibility is implicated in the process of colonisation. The paper then illustrates how collaborative teaching benefits students, teachers and Indigenous people.
Abstract: Andrews, Julie Calls are growing within the social sciences for Indigenous peoples to assume sovereignty over data that are about them and for analysis of these data to be led by, or be inclusive of, an Indigenous perspective (Kukutai and Taylor 2016; Walter 2016; Walter and Andersen 2013). This paper presents data based on interviews with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Melbourne and Victoria that provide an Aboriginal voice to show the degrees of both constraint and choice in the formulation of Indigenous data. The results show that the census as a social instrument needs to be viewed as a dynamic interplay between the state and Indigenous people, and that Indigenous community awareness of their role in this process needs to be further explored. Although volatility of Aboriginal census data is a key focus of this paper, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has attempted to investigate from time to time why the census counts should be so volatile, yet its investigations have been undertaken as an outsider on what makes people (as it puts it) 'change their identity'. In this paper I examine the issue of census volatility from within the Indigenous community and get people to openly provide their perspectives on census engagement and census utility as an expression of Indigenous data sovereignty. This approach has not been adopted before in relation to the issue of census volatility but the views of Indigenous people on such matters are likely to become more prevalent as the issue of Indigenous data sovereignty gains ground.
Abstract: Rioux, Joel; Ewing, Bronwyn; Cooper, Tom This paper reports on an action research study that investigated the integration of Aboriginal and Western science knowledges and languages into science learning for Aboriginal adolescent students in one regional independent secondary school in Queensland. To strengthen the students' learning, the study drew on community members' local knowledge and language of fauna and integrated this understanding with the teaching of science to 12 students in Years 8-9. As part of the study, 75 lessons were conducted and included an initial short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) study and a collection of local animal narratives. It applied thematic analysis to data to explore the effect of this integrated approach on students' language use, pride in heritage, cultural knowledge, learning and the Linnaean zoology taxonomy. Results showed that to enable the flow of the science lessons, the average number of words spoken (103) at introduction times needed to remain low to facilitate engagement and to avoid embarrassment and an overwhelming factor when the teaching site is cluttered with words. The sensitive planning in terms of two-way Linnaean and local languages gave rise to meaningful contextualisation of culture.
Abstract: Wells, Kathryn Review(s) of: Recirculating songs: Revitalising the singing practices of Indigenous Australia, by Jim Wafer and Myfany Turpin (eds) 2017, Hunter Press, Hamilton, 424pp, ISBN 9780994586315 (pbk).
Abstract: Ferguson, Glenn Review(s) of: Constitutional recognition of first Peoples in Australia: Theories and comparative perspectives, by Simon Young, Jennifer Nielsen and Jeremy Patrick (eds) (2016), The Federation Press, Annandale, NSW, 304pp, ISBN 9781760020781 (pbk).
Abstract: Reidy, Nell Review(s) of: Remembering Yayayi, by Pip Deveson, Ian Dunlop and Fred Myers (directors) 2014, Australian National University and the Pintupi Communities of Kintore and Kiwirrkura, 57 mins, Documentary Educational Resources (distribution).
Abstract: Norman, Heidi Review(s) of: 'Against native title': Conflict and creativity in outback Australia, by Eve Vincent (2017), Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 212pp, ISBN 9781925302080 (pbk).
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