Let's Make More Spear

 Make More Spear. We’ve now launched the first Aboriginal designed and built smart ‘phone app. The For us By Us aspect is the least important part of this achievement.  Some of the less obvious, but more far-reaching implications, will be explicated in a paper we’ll write on the project.  What it has done in the first instance is provide a real-world basis for critique of high profile social media projects relying on non-Indigenous technical expertise. Hence we’ve taken the Frank Yamma song to heart:   Let's Make More Spear – a further stage in community development requires that the technology, the spear, return to Aboriginal hands.

Geale vs Mundine. The fight’s set for the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 30 January next year and I’ve got a ticket. I expected Mundine would start sledging Geale about his Aboriginality (that’s only a reflection of the tensions within Aboriginal communities) but he went too far with his disrespectful objectification of Geale’s wife.  In doing that Mundine infringed the honour codes of boxing and ensured that there would be a personal edge to the contest. The only surprise is why, at this late stage of his career, is Anthony so bitter? In money terms he has been incredibly successful, and he’s chosen that path. Geale, like fellow Australians Robbie Peden and Michael Katsidis, has been a road warrior - Mundine has stayed  home and promoted his own fights against his own opponents. Once, according to oldtimers, promoters wouldn’t match Aboriginal fighters because it was expected they would take it easy on each other. Things have changed.

The Second AIS Biennial Practitioners Colloquium. Starting on the evening of the 27^th with special guest Tracey Bunda, and concluding with a full day on 28 November.  Looking good for more details, or to rsvp, contact Kate Rendell. 

Scott Lecture and Colloquium Photographs

and more on the Kim Scott Colloquium Facebook page...

Healing

Mobile 'Phone Apps. A nice end to NAIDOC Week celebrations when the first stage in the development of a mobile 'phone app for clients of the Boorndawan Willam Aboriginal Healing Service coincided with Melbourne's Outer Eastern Region NAIDOC Ball. Quite an achievement - the young Indigenous software engineer developed the app while completing an Honours degree and dealing with the potentially life-threatening illness of a close family member. After missing out on funding we invested our own time and money because of the urgency of the need. Maybe it was a bit like leading with your chin to commence our funding application with the following: ‘V. S. Naipaul famously said that the colonised were condemned to use the telephone never to invent it. This project contests the fatalism of Naipaul’s dictum in two ways: It builds mastery and capacity in Indigenous communities in relation to evolving information technologies and systems; and Indigenous leadership and knowledge are central to the methodology it uses.’

AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience). This organisation continues to set new benchmarks in achievement. A recent email:


'They say good things come in threes. Think Musketeers, happy birthday cheers and Origin deciders...

And now, for the third year running, AIME kids have finished school at almost the same rate as every Australian child. We've just released the 2011 AIME Annual Report, and the results are in. 
 

It's because of results like these that ABC told AIME's Australian Story. It's because of results like these that the Prime Minister of Australia donned an AIME Hoodie to celebrate Indigenous success. And it's because of people like you that we're seeing a generation of Indigenous kids, a generation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous university Mentors, and a whole nation, step up to believe in something bigger, something better.' 

Check out AIME 's annual report and also  the University of Melbourne's own Seamless Transition Education Pathway (STEPP) program.

Honourable Mention. "A good night's drinking in the village. Sharrocks and I went to the local cinema to see  film about the aborigines of Australia - Bitter Springs. The aborigines were good.' John Fowles,  The Journals: Volume 1, 2003, 159.


Don't Forget. @ 7.00pm, on the 25th of July Australian Indigenous Studies hosts a major address by Professor Kim Scott at the Spot Basement Theatre, Business and Economics.  In a wide-ranging address Professor Scott will bring together his concerns with Indigenous cultural renewal though language revitalization, and the role of literature in an evolving vision of Australia in the twenty-first century. This event will be followed by a reception to honour Professor Scott.

http://www.facebook.com/TheKimScottColloquium

A New Generation

Congrats.  to John Morrissey, a son of the Kalkadoons, who received the Faculty of Arts Richard Gunter Prize for 3rd Year English in 2011.

 And Lilly Brown - currently an Honours student in the Australian Indigenous Studies program, Lilly will commence an MA at the University of Cambridge later this year.

The Kim Scott Colloquium 2012

Guest Post from Ruby Lowe, Co-Coordinator, The Kim Scott Colloquium

Australian Indigenous literature has played a major role in my literary education at The University of Melbourne.  I am currently completing my honours thesis on the political dimensions of John Milton’s early poetry, while taking course work subjects in English Literature and Australian Indigenous Studies. I am also co-convening the first national conference on an Australian Indigenous author with Philip Morrissey. 

The idea for the Kim Scott Colloquium 2012 began as a series of informal discussions by a dedicated group of Kim Scott’s readers. Interest within the university, combined with Kim Scott’s recent accumulation of literary accolades, made Philip and I realise that there should be a formal academic recognition and analysis of Kim Scott’s work.

Two major events will be held at The University of Melbourne to celebrate and discuss Kim Scott’s writing.  Kim Scott has agreed to give a public lecture at The University of Melbourne on 25 July. This will be followed by a colloquium on Kim Scott’s writings on 3-4 August this year.

The colloquium will survey Scott’s fiction and focus on True Country (1993), Benang (1999) and That Deadman Dance (2011). Emerging and established scholars from Australian Indigenous Studies, English Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Contemporary Art will engage with Scott’s representation of Australian history, politics and identity.

 

To register an expression of interest email Kate Rendell, rendellk@unimelb.edu.au.

 

That Chilling Moment

That chilling moment in the modern university when you realise that for a powerful class of people corporate speak/political correctness is the new ethics: the management of facades and surfaces with concomitant institutional rewards and group validation. On these social occasions I’ve wondered, ‘How could a real human being ever appear in this setting?’

In contrast I was at a recent event where toughness or the appearance of toughness was clearly a necessary component of male and female capital – most men were heavily tattooed (three had facial tattoos).  I was sitting beside an ex-biker who had suffered an incapacitating breakdown of health and now lived on an invalid pension. After we discussed the anti-oxidant effects of blueberries, and he informed me that frozen blueberries were a lot cheaper than fresh, he spoke of one of his sons visiting the Sioux Indians, and of his great love for Native American spirituality but then as if to emphasise that he wasn’t another disconnected New Ager, and to acknowledge me, he said, “It’s funny, I’ve never been interested in Koori spirituality."