Another Year and Some Photographs

Rushing to finish off various chores before Christmas but our end of year party was a chance to step back and relax with friends and supporters.

A Happy and Safe Christmas. See you in the Celtic New Year.

Aboriginal Women and Coloniality

Aboriginal Women and Coloniality. Surprised but pleased to learn that our second year subject Aboriginal Women and Coloniality has been selected as the subject that best aligns with the aims of the Association of Women on Campus at the University of Melbourne for 2011. One of our students will be awarded a prize as a result.

The Hunter. Daniel Nettheim's The Hunter has been nominated for fourteen Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. (Formerly the AFI Awards.) The killing of the Tasmanian tiger at the end of the film is the most incredible act of hubris I've ever seen. I found it hard to believe that a filmmaker could even imagine a character doing such a thing, let alone present it in a film as a noble deed. (Otherwise it's an extravagantly beautiful film and worth seeing.)

Racism in Australian universities. The National Indigenous Unit of the National Tertiary Education Union has released a report detailing Indigenous academic and professional staff experiences of racism, and lateral violence (from other Indigenous employees), in Australian universities. Most of the testimony is grievance-based and I can imagine some universities responding by developing 'strategies' and offering 'cultural sensitivity' training provided by soi-disant experts. On a deeper level, if you want to address racism in universities, you need to be patient; in it for the long haul; be prepared to engage with senior people; and be alert for the instance when implicit racisms and racist discourses become objectified in the behaviour of an individual or individuals; then, if you've got the nerve, go for it.

https://www.nteu.org.au/anu/article/New-survey-reveals-racial-discrimination-is-alive-and-well-in-universities-12139

Sade. The first bi-racial superstar visited Australia for the first time in a quarter of a century. She still sets the bar impossibly high. YouTube footage from her Melbourne concert:

Where We've Been

Wrapping up. Teaching has finished and marks are being finalised. Some of our best students are off to join the Teach for Australia program. For me, the highlight of the university teaching year, was when six students spoke on their experience of Indigenous studies, life and communities in the final lecture of our first year course. Diversity, intellectual confidence, commitment - quite inspiring.

Aboriginal Time. The stereotype is that Aboriginal time meanders; meetings start whenever; people turn up whenever; outcomes take forever. The reality is that Aboriginal time is always constrained. Windows of opportunity are limited for Aboriginal individuals, communities or programs. We produced a poster display for a University of Melbourne colloquium, that summarised what we’ve done over the last few years. (Check out the link at the bottom of this post.) Getting there we've had to crash through a few barriers but sometimes you don't have any choice. (Read the late Hyllus Maris' 'The Concrete Box' as an example of an enduring parable of this structural reality.)

The AIS Poster

Modalities of Whiteness

Another Story. A Tuesday evening in the outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, an Aboriginal community organisation; a meeting in progress: two public servants, the Aboriginal executive officer of the organisation, the rest are Aboriginal men and women who are members of the management committee. Some are Victorian, others are from interstate. The set of challenges being addressed by this committee revolve around family violence, and programs for family and personal, healing and renewal. The same scene is repeated all over Australia. The problem with this undramatic and local work is that it doesn't fit into any of the current frames the mass media use to represent Aboriginals and Aboriginal issues.

Hedda Gabler. Part of the Melbourne Festival and directed by Thomas Ostermeier and performed by Schaubühne Berlin. Brilliant in very respect and an example of what great theatre can still do. One scene that will stay with me occurs after Hedda and Thea have fallen asleep waiting for the return of Løvborg. Hedda (played by Katharine Schüttler) wakes in the early morning and walks outside and, a wraith-like figure, gazes in upon her life and the tragedy that she has set in motion. The Melbourne Festival audience played its own disturbing role in the performance. Mirroring the emotional and ethical dissociation of the characters onstage it tittered and laughed even as the mood of the play darkened, and roared with laughter as Hedda, having taken her own life, lay slumped and bloody on stage. Ibsen would have been proud. When you are involved in Indigenous Studies you study the varying modalities of Whiteness and this audience was a keeper.

http://www.youtube.com/user/schaubuehne#p/search/0/1rxAFgyyM7A

http://www.youtube.com/user/schaubuehne#p/search/1/0EpuznSi93A

Heartland and Greenland

Daniel Geale. A capacity crowd filled Derwent Entertainment Centre in Tasmania for Daniel Geale's first defence of his International Boxing Federation middleweight title. Geale is Indigenous and enters the ring with the Aboriginal flag, and has a map of Tasmania emblazoned in the Aboriginal colours on his boxing trunks, but in Tasmania he attracts a heartland crowd: anti-Greens and anti-Bob Brown. Passionate in their support for Daniel as a Tasmanian they sang along with the national anthem and knew all the words. It was as close as boxing ever gets to being sport. As well as musing on the crowd I had a chance to watch Geale perform. He wasn't at his best but is Australia's best pure boxer since Johnny Famechon.

Introducing the fighters.

Waiting to sing Advance Australia Fair.

Later this Week. A lecture on Kim Scott's Miles Franklin award winning novel That Deadman Dance for Melbourne Free University at the Alderman in Lygon Street, Brunswick. That Deadman Dance is more accessible than his earlier novels True Country and Benang; the prose is simpler and it's in the popular contact narrative genre. The context as such is immediately evident and there are sentimental moments. There are also continuing passages of majestic writing and evocations of wind, sea and sand that resonate long after reading.

Australian Literature/Aboriginal Writing

The Letter. The good thing about this blog is that the Australian Indigenous Studies Program, and by extension, myself as an Indigenous Australian, do have a chance to represent what we are doing. Today I've pasted in a letter I wrote in response to two recent articles in The Age. I kept it as succinct and factual as possible and steered cleared of the various agenda of those driving the issues but to no avail. The Age wouldn't publish it- hence today's post.

'Recent articles in The Age (“Speaking up for the Humanities” 16/8) and Sunday Age (“Uni brought to book for snub to local literature” 21/8) have given the erroneous impression that Australian literature is not represented in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts curricula. The University’s Australian Indigenous Studies program teaches undergraduate and honours subjects that emphasise Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian writers. These include Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, Xavier Herbert, B. Wongar, Bruce Pascoe and Katherine Susannah Pritchard. Last year two of our students received high distinctions for honours theses written on Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air and Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise.

(Nice to report that since posting this I've had a call from The Sunday Age with respect to publishing the letter.)

Semester 2 Surge

Semester Two. This semester marks a definite shift into another gear. It's clear that our program's development phase has been completed. We're generating and attracting the sort of energy that is not all that common in corporate entities. One of my key concerns has been the recruitment and development of young Indigenous scholars. Policy developments now mean that's going to be a reality. Our curriculum and teaching coach has commenced working with with us to finesse the Australian Indigenous Studies curriculum as well as conducting one on one sessions with staff. My intention here has been to continue to improve without recourse to the thick-headed carrot and stick approaches used elsewhere.

Critical Debates in Indigenous Studies. It's our capstone subject and compulsory for students completing the Australian Indigenous Studies major. The aim is to give students the chance to engage with practitioners working with Indigenous issues in the corporate world, media, health and arts and others. This year we've got 27 students. Many of whom would not have considered an Australian Indigenous Studies major if they had not enrolled in our first year interdisciplinary foundation subject Australian Indigenous Studies. Both of our subjects rank at the top when it comes to student satisfaction.

Aesopic Voices: Reframing Truth through Concealed Ways of Presentation in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. This edited collection of essays is almost ready for printing. As well as Australian and Australian Indigenous scholars the collection includes essays from scholars from Greece, USSR, United States, France and Germany as well one of the last essays of Professor Greg Dening. The opening sentence of the foreword asks, 'How does one respond, as a humane and critical thinker, when political, social or religious circumstances are hostile to truth and open discussion?' It follows on from a conference I convened with Gert Reifarth in 2008. I'm credited as a co-editor of Aesopic Voices but it's been driven by Gert who's put an in an amazing amount of work with contributors, designers and editors.

Aesop as imagined by Velasquez:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diego_Velasquez,_Aesop.jpg

And Gert:

Visitor: Uncle Herb Patten came in to lecture in our first year subject. (Pictured with Odette Kelada and Fran Edmonds before the lecture.)

Afterwards he came back to our offices for a cup of tea with some of the students.

Looking forward to: A trip to Hobart to see Daniel Geale defend his world middleweight boxing title, and wondering about a visit to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). I’ve heard glowing reports, though I think that it may not be my cup of tea. http://mona.net.au/.

Past Matters and Post Party

The Past Matters. Another success thanks to Meera Govil and Eltham Bookshop and the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group. Numerous highlights included Anita Heiss discussing her novel Paris Dreaming and explaining why she uses 'chick lit' as a means of presenting contemporary Indigenous issues and subjectivities and a poetry performance by Aly Cobby Eckerman and the legend, Lionel Fogarty.

Lionel chooses one of his poems while Aly zooms in.

After a long day a photo with Meera.

(Photo courtesy of Sasha Trikojus, Nillumbik

Reconciliation Group)

The Office Warming. Nice to catch up with some of our friends and collaborators who made their way to our new offices through a late autumn rainstorm. A heterodox group of professional staff, academics, philosophers, postgrads and undergraduates filled the rooms with warmth and plus energy.

Two of our friends: undergraduate Torie Mcwilliams-Murray and Steph Batsakis. Steph majored in Australian Indigenous Studies and is now completing the Melbourne Law School's Juris Doctor. Torie is starting to consider the range of possibilities offered by an arts degree at the University of Melbourne.

The Past Matters 2011, May 27-28

The Past Matters 2011, May 27-28. The seventh annual Past Matters series of talks celebrating Indigenous writers, poets and literature kicks off tonight. Convened by the Nillumbik Reconciliation Group and Eltham Bookshop - this year it will be held in The Barn, Montsalvat. Australian Indigenous Studies has had the good fortune to be involved over the years. Featured authors include Nadia Wheatley, Paul Carter, Andrew Stojanovski, Camilla Chance , Anita Heiss, Lionel Fogarty and Adrian Hyland.

A full program can be seen at

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~nrgp/index_files/Past_Matters_2011.pdf

Honouring Indigenous Servicemen and Women. A ceremony honouring Indigenous servicemen and women will be held in the Shrine of Remembrance forecourt next Tuesday at 11.00am.

Right Back Where we Started From

Returning. AIS has moved back to the John Medley Building where we've re-united with other disciplines housed in the School of Culture and Communication. Thanks to the School’s vision we’ve got a suite of offices with a view across the Quad. I’m not invested in appearance but one of the first things visitors do is gauge the relative centrality of an Indigenous program by its offices. Our previous offices in the Elisabeth Murdoch Building were excellent, and ideal during our early development but back in the Medley is to be squarely in the University.


Honours. Our Honours program is up and running. A small but v. good cohort to start with. I’m expecting an intake of around 10 students in 2012.

Masters of Indigenous Studies by Thesis. Approved and quite a saga. Special thanks to Charles Green, the School’s Director of Graduate Studies, for his attention to detail; and professional staff, Sharon Tribe, Ishara Wishart and Kate Rendell who saw it through its final stage.

Exhibition Opening at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre. Black and White: documenting Indigenous Australia
20 May 2011 - 10 July 2011
‘Aboriginal people have featured in the photographic history of Australia since the earliest days of the camera. They have been keen collectors and producers of photography since the late nineteenth century, and, over recent years, Indigenous photographers have been among the most celebrated figures in contemporary Australian art. From the commercial photography of European immigrants in the 1870s, through to the conceptually driven work of contemporary Aboriginal artists, black-and-white photography provides a vehicle for recording, remembering and re-negotiating cross-cultural relations.’

http://bundoorahomestead.com/whats-on/exhibitions

Australian Indigenous Studies 1.0.

Already into week 5 of semester! The long twilights giving way to sudden darkness and the temperatures starting to fall. It’s been a lot less stressful than last year though there have been system failures that have affected subject delivery across the Faculty of Arts. At the moment we are overextended as we deliver subjects, develop forward plans, research and support networks. Later this year a coach will work with us in finessing our curriculum and subject delivery. This will mark the transition from Australian Indigenous Studies 1.0 to Australian Indigenous Studies 2.0. It starts with a vision, its implementation and then evaluation and improvement.

Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). One outcome of the response to damage caused by the Queensland floods has been the Federal Government’s abolition of the ALTC in order to free up funds for the reconstruction. The ALTC was an organisation with some achievements – but its twilight zone ambience provided negative inspiration for the practitioners colloquium we organised for University of Melbourne staff teaching Indigenous students, or Indigenous themed subjects. The floods provided the excuse to get rid of the ALTC: eventually a research body more closely aligned with reality should take its place.

Christian Thompson. Some of the most exciting work in Indigenous art is being done by photographers and one of the best is Christian Thompson. Check out his new exhibition at Gallery Gabriell Pizzi, April 12- May 7. http://www.gabriellepizzi.com.au/home.html

Indigenous Troubadors: The National Library of Australia has funded a study of early Aboriginal folk/country singers from western NSW.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/01/27/3123379.htm?site=canberra

And on the Money. Trying to set up a meeting with a Bunnerong elder on Labour Day produced this response:
Next Monday celebrates Labour Day, not that anyone works an 8 hour day anymore, somehow the working week has been extended. And of course - you work for that University.