Pride, resilience and identity: reimagining Aboriginal sport history. This project aims to investigate the largely invisible history of sport for Aboriginal people who were institutionalised during the 19th and 20th centuries. Sport is central to Indigenous communities, identities and cultures. This project aims to engage Australian Aboriginal communities in the history-making process by combining the passion for sport with culturally appropriate digital technologies. The project will expand our ....Pride, resilience and identity: reimagining Aboriginal sport history. This project aims to investigate the largely invisible history of sport for Aboriginal people who were institutionalised during the 19th and 20th centuries. Sport is central to Indigenous communities, identities and cultures. This project aims to engage Australian Aboriginal communities in the history-making process by combining the passion for sport with culturally appropriate digital technologies. The project will expand our understanding of the complexity of Aboriginal existence during their institutionalisation under the State Protection Acts. Using innovative digital technologies, this project will generate a comprehensive body of scholarship and an archive of artefacts about Aboriginal sport, developing capacities in Aboriginal communities to reclaim their history and enhance their cultural identities through digital storytelling.Read moreRead less
Aboriginal Visual Histories: Photographing Indigenous Australians. This project will strengthen our understanding of Australia's place in the world and enhance our capacity to interpret ourselves by showing how we have been perceived internationally through visual imagery - and specifically what is unique about Australia and its indigenous people through international eyes. It will explore how we have represented ourselves and the place of Aboriginal people, both historically and in the present. ....Aboriginal Visual Histories: Photographing Indigenous Australians. This project will strengthen our understanding of Australia's place in the world and enhance our capacity to interpret ourselves by showing how we have been perceived internationally through visual imagery - and specifically what is unique about Australia and its indigenous people through international eyes. It will explore how we have represented ourselves and the place of Aboriginal people, both historically and in the present. It will help us to engage with our neighbours and the wider global community. Collaboration with Aboriginal descendant communities will address their current aspirations regarding this important aspect of their heritage. Read moreRead less
Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestati ....Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestations from 1950 to the present. The project will uncover an unknown history, assist repatriation practice, provide information to help reduce the modern trade, and contribute to truth-telling as a precondition of healing and reconciliation.Read moreRead less
Blackfella Historians: An Historical Study of Aboriginal History-Making in South-eastern Australia. Aboriginal people had not only to endure colonisation, but to make sense of it. This innovative study examines their deployment of history, focusing on south-eastern Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will explore the importance of history in the efforts made by Aborigines to explain their plight to non-Aborigines and to make sense of it for themselves. The project will offer ....Blackfella Historians: An Historical Study of Aboriginal History-Making in South-eastern Australia. Aboriginal people had not only to endure colonisation, but to make sense of it. This innovative study examines their deployment of history, focusing on south-eastern Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will explore the importance of history in the efforts made by Aborigines to explain their plight to non-Aborigines and to make sense of it for themselves. The project will offer major new insights into the role of history in shaping relations between Aborigines and non-Aborigines and will also enrich our understanding of history's political and cultural uses and its significance as a medium for cross-cultural communication.Read moreRead less
Confronting Representations: Performing Indigenous Protests. By using performance studies approaches to analyse public political events this work will provide the practical benefit of increasing our understanding of how different cultures interpret and misinterpret each other in public encounters. Examining the dynamics that have and continue to operate between people and social discourses increases our understanding of ourselves as Australians and our ability to interpret ourselves. A further b ....Confronting Representations: Performing Indigenous Protests. By using performance studies approaches to analyse public political events this work will provide the practical benefit of increasing our understanding of how different cultures interpret and misinterpret each other in public encounters. Examining the dynamics that have and continue to operate between people and social discourses increases our understanding of ourselves as Australians and our ability to interpret ourselves. A further benefit is that the project develops an innovative methodology for interdisciplinary research drawing from the fields of performance studies, media studies and cultural studies.Read moreRead less
Food, Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge and the Expansion of the Settler Economy. This project will strengthen our understanding of Australian Indigenous-settler history by focusing on the role of food and traditional Aboriginal food knowledge. It will also represent a timely engagement with worldwide debates about the role of Indigenous knowledge in a modern world.
As well as producing scholarly outcomes including books the project will establish and maintain a data-base of this knowledge whi ....Food, Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge and the Expansion of the Settler Economy. This project will strengthen our understanding of Australian Indigenous-settler history by focusing on the role of food and traditional Aboriginal food knowledge. It will also represent a timely engagement with worldwide debates about the role of Indigenous knowledge in a modern world.
As well as producing scholarly outcomes including books the project will establish and maintain a data-base of this knowledge which will be accessible to Indigenous communities, scholars, land users and managers. A further benefit will be the repatriation of knowledge and information located in archives and other repositories to descendant Aboriginal communities in culturally sensitive, socially and historically contextualised Community Reports.Read moreRead less
A demographic and socio-medical history of the Aboriginal People of Victoria 1800-2000: reconstitutions and epidemiological analysis. We have produced a world-first historical demographic and epidemiological database that will be of continuing cultural and professional value to the Indigenous and research communities, and which can be copied to capture elusive mobile populations that are better identified genealogically than via conventional census methods. We will index and digitise the papers ....A demographic and socio-medical history of the Aboriginal People of Victoria 1800-2000: reconstitutions and epidemiological analysis. We have produced a world-first historical demographic and epidemiological database that will be of continuing cultural and professional value to the Indigenous and research communities, and which can be copied to capture elusive mobile populations that are better identified genealogically than via conventional census methods. We will index and digitise the papers of the late Dr Diane Barwick. Through this innovative study of past life courses we seek to understand the unique experience of 'fourth world' people in the health transition, and the deep historical forces structuring the persistent health problems of Indigenous Australians.Read moreRead less
Colonial encounters: Archaeology at Ebenezer Mission, north-western Victoria. From the 1860s, most Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia were confined to reserves such as Ebenezer Mission, and despite official accounts which argue for the success of the 'civilising' enterprise, archaeological evidence promises to provide a new Indigenous perspective. Investigation of this key site, in collaboration with Aboriginal descendants, will reveal 1. How everyday life on the mission was experience ....Colonial encounters: Archaeology at Ebenezer Mission, north-western Victoria. From the 1860s, most Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia were confined to reserves such as Ebenezer Mission, and despite official accounts which argue for the success of the 'civilising' enterprise, archaeological evidence promises to provide a new Indigenous perspective. Investigation of this key site, in collaboration with Aboriginal descendants, will reveal 1. How everyday life on the mission was experienced by different social groups: Aboriginal girls, boys, families and 'fringe' dwellers, and Moravian missionaries, 2. The role of gender organisation within the colonial process, and 3. How Aboriginal cultural identity was shaped by missionisation. A range of general and scholarly histories will be produced.Read moreRead less
Aboriginal Femininity and Modern Identity: Gender and Race in the Late Colonial Visual Scene. The project is the first sustained cultural history of Aboriginal femininity in Australian from 1870-1967. It will draw on diverse forms of modern visual culture: painting, black and white drawing, mass commodity spectacle, film and photography, to investigate six modes of production of Aboriginal feminine visibility: the 'primitive' woman in Western exhibiting practices such as colonial museums: the pe ....Aboriginal Femininity and Modern Identity: Gender and Race in the Late Colonial Visual Scene. The project is the first sustained cultural history of Aboriginal femininity in Australian from 1870-1967. It will draw on diverse forms of modern visual culture: painting, black and white drawing, mass commodity spectacle, film and photography, to investigate six modes of production of Aboriginal feminine visibility: the 'primitive' woman in Western exhibiting practices such as colonial museums: the perceived failure of 'Mission Mary' to appear modern; the relation of Aboriginal femininity to imported forms of exoticism; the fetishism of Indigenous women; girl piccaninny kitsch in domestic and tourist ornaments; and the entrance of public Aboriginal women and celebrities into modernity.
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From Race to the Genome: the Tasmanian Aboriginal People in the Scientific Imagination. This project addresses the nationally significant issue of contested Aboriginality in Tasmania. It offers a broader understanding of complex scientific ideas and deeper insights into the 'History Wars' debate that goes to the heart of shaping Australian national identity. It provides a comprehensive historical and legal context to the current national definition of an Aboriginal, of direct relevance to the co ....From Race to the Genome: the Tasmanian Aboriginal People in the Scientific Imagination. This project addresses the nationally significant issue of contested Aboriginality in Tasmania. It offers a broader understanding of complex scientific ideas and deeper insights into the 'History Wars' debate that goes to the heart of shaping Australian national identity. It provides a comprehensive historical and legal context to the current national definition of an Aboriginal, of direct relevance to the collection of national census data, the allocation of welfare funding and the Government's current restructuring of ATSIC. It will place Tasmania and Australia within an international context and make accessible new sources of Tasmanian culture and history to scholarly, indigenous and regional communities.Read moreRead less