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.

2010 - Wrapping up the Year

The Last Week. A pleasant time of the year, meetings now tend to be about opening up possibilities rather than sorting out problems or getting my hair dried. With the support of a major peak body in the not-for-profit sector and colleagues in the Graduate School of Education we intend to develop a proposal for a Masters by Course Work degree, and we've commenced planning. I attended a useful University of Melbourne colloquium on Graduate Attributes - a lot of useful experience shared with colleagues and we've already started to factor this into our thinking.


Bronwyn Jane Adams Memorial Award. Johanna Simmons was successful in her application for a Bronwyn Jane Adams Memorial Award:

‘Johanna will undertake a comparative study of two programs demonstrating leadership and best practice in teaching Indigenous studies in Australia and New Zealand. The study will include curriculum inventories, exploration of the two programs’ pedagogy rationales and overarching philosophies and a quantitative study of student numbers. Her visit will contribute to inter-university relationships that could lead to an international academic consortium and specialised exchange programs for students undertaking Indigenous studies.’

Blair's Insights. I know people get angry at the content of Tony Blair's Tony Blair: A Journey but it's artful, intelligent, and often funny. From a literary perspective it's one of those self-exculpatory narratives without the naivety of most of them. There's plenty to be learned from it. Versions of the battle between New Labour and Old Labour are played out in many domains, including Aboriginal affairs.

Interdisciplinary Foundation Subjects. Once more our subject Australian Indigenous Studies topped the quality of teaching evaluations for these subjects. Our tutoring team led by Alicia Coram did a fantastic job. Several students commented on the fact that tutors made the tutorials a place for respectful and open discussion. With 360 students it’s probably the largest non-compulsory Australian Indigenous Studies subject in Australia. The fact that it’s at the University of Melbourne which has never had anything remotely comparable makes it all the more remarkable. The subject introduces students to different aspects of Indigenous Australia – some are inspired to go on and do our Indigenous Studies major. Changes to the current structure for Interdisciplinary Foundation subjects are planned next year and our primary concern will be to ensure that those changes do not detract from our achievements. Our 2nd and 3rd year subjects were very well received by students this semester as well. I really hope that we are developing an identifiable University of Melbourne Indigenous studies culture.

Happy Christmas. The Year of the Tiger has at times been tempestuous. We're happy to have survived and grateful for what we have. We’ll leave you with this song that featured in Four Lions. Even the suicide bombers were singing it.

Anthony Mundine

Whether he admits it or not, it’s the end of the road (or at least the boxing road) for Anthony ‘The Man’ Mundine. He may fight on, and win a few more fights, but on the evidence, his reflexes are shot and his strength and durability minimal. It’s been quite a journey since he walked away from a rugby league career in 2000. A magnetic presence, The Man was a source of pride to many Koories and his individualism and personal style an attractive alternative to the conformism and uncouthness of some sports people. Unfortunately the expectations some of us had of him as a leader were probably unrealistic. There were moments however when anything seemed possible.

Anthony achieved far more than most could have foreseen as a fighter and is one of a very small group of athletes who’ve performed at an elite level in two distinct sports. The problem was the better he became as a fighter the greater the expectation that he would fight major names in the sport but once he was established he preferred low risk fights in Australia. After each win there was always talk about taking on the best. It never happened and when a head-butting novice finally knocked him out it no longer mattered.

As well as the highlights Anthony also provided a few lowlights - the fight with Lester Ellis (Ellis was an alcoholic at the time) and the fight with Danny Green - with both men engaging in coded race-baiting.

The stand The Man took against racism in rugby league was courageous and the viral response an indication of how insecure a lot of Settler Australians are when challenged by Aboriginals. Unfortunately he undermined any chance to build on this. His comments on race sometimes seemed to coincide with the publicity demands of his fights and ten years after leaving rugby league it's hard to say if his understanding of issues affecting Aboriginal Australia is any more developed. This all sounds pretty tough but I believe it's the result of trying to balance his contradictory roles as fighter, promoter, and Aboriginal leader. Once The Man is out of boxing we'll see his full potential.

Winter's Bone, Age and Youth

Winter’s Bone. Now on general release, I saw this at the Melbourne International Film Festival. I’d just seen a few blockbusters so at first it seemed amazingly low-tech and needy in its demanding of sustained attention. The film works with a subtle narrative so it won’t appeal to everyone but it effectively sketches out the lives of a group of Ozark mountain people. What struck me was the eros of their attachment to the animals they hunted for food and those they kept a pets. For some Murri rural workers this eros was a transmutation in a post-colonial setting of the original relationship with land and creation. I count myself fortunate in that I’m part of a minority who were actually connected to people who embodied it. Some of the women in Winter’s Bone looked like they had Native American ancestry as well, so I wasn’t completely surprised to read an interview with the director in which she talked of the importance of animals to the Ozark community she worked with and the Native American connection.

http://thefastertimes.com/film/2010/07/08/q-and-a-winters-bone-debra-granik/

Jindalee Lady. Thanks to Jane Brown, School of Culture and Communication Library Manager, for arranging a screening of this film at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. We never quite untangled the riddle of why this film is almost impossible to see. Johanna, Jane and I watched it, and a consensus opinion was that though Brian Syron’s film may be naïve in its cinematic technique, and some of its representations, there is nothing naïve in its emotional power. The film is a tribute to Aboriginal women centred on conception and the mother-child connection. Lydia Miller amps up the intensity with an outstanding performance.

Age and Hypocrisy. We’d received emails from a Settler woman from another university who’d received some grant and was inviting people to a workshop. (The workshop included the usual genuflections to Indigenous people.) It looked like it could be relevant to our program but on the day of the workshop we couldn’t attend because it clashed with our School planning day. As a compromise I arranged for a 20 year old high-achieving Aboriginal undergraduate (who does some work for me as a research assistant) to attend as an observer. The intention was for AIS academics to attend further meetings. The woman who had been emailing us was notified by email that this would happen. On the day of the meeting there was torrential rain and despite having a bad cold the research assistant put on a shirt with a collar and leather shoes and headed off to the workshop. On arriving at the room where the workshop was supposed to be he was confronted by a middle-aged Settler woman whose opening gambit was, ‘Who are you?’ and who then dismissed him with the words, ‘I think you’ve come to the wrong place.’ If he’d only confirmed that woman’s name I’d be doing a lot more with this but that’s where mentoring comes in.

Age and Marginality. A post-graduate student of mine (in his early twenties) presenting a paper at one of those off-campus/para-university events was subject to an unchecked half hour of blather and personal attack by an ‘independent scholar’. I’m not blind to the imperfections of sandstone universities and the University of Melbourne but I sincerely believe that this couldn’t have happened if it had been held at the University of Melbourne. In fact I was surprised the other week when attending a contentious paper presented by a visiting scholar on Indigenous issues, at the fairness and courtesy of the critique by University of Melbourne scholars.

Incidents like these and our continued response to them are the substratum necessary for the advancement of Australian Indigenous Studies.

Volunteering. If you know a student or recent graduate who is interested in volunteering Youth Challenge Australia is worth considering. More on these opportunities next year.

http://www.youthchallenge.org.au/