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
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
Valuing Torres Strait Knowledge through Sustainable Digital Returns. This project aims to address the sustainable return of archival materials by utilising a case study of scholarship about Torres Strait society and culture created fifty years ago by Japanese researchers. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of research accountability by utilising an extensive fieldwork approach to foreground Torres Strait Islander perspectives. Expected outcomes include the co-creation of h ....Valuing Torres Strait Knowledge through Sustainable Digital Returns. This project aims to address the sustainable return of archival materials by utilising a case study of scholarship about Torres Strait society and culture created fifty years ago by Japanese researchers. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of research accountability by utilising an extensive fieldwork approach to foreground Torres Strait Islander perspectives. Expected outcomes include the co-creation of high-quality digital resources and new analysis of the Japanese research and Torres Strait Islander agency in shaping research. Benefits include advances in digital methodologies for sustainable community engagement, inter-generational knowledge transfer, and grounded insights into respectful research relationships.Read moreRead less
A reliable absolute chronology for the Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley, Western Australia. The Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley region of Western Australia is an internationally significant record of human occupation and cultural evolution. This project will determine the antiquity of human expression in one of the richest (and possibly the oldest) rock art regions in the world using advanced analytical techniques.
The two lakes project: a research history of Lakes Mungo and Gregory. This project investigates the history of research relations between scientists and Traditional Owners at Lakes Mungo and Gregory. Connecting recent histories of agency and reconciliation with deep time, it will produce a publicly accessible narrative that increases national understanding of significant stories in the peopling of our continent.
The Queen gave us the land: Aboriginal people's histories and memories of Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria was an important figure for Aboriginal people during her reign from 1837 to 1901 and became a powerful symbol in their oral traditions. By examining these histories and memories, the study illuminates Aboriginal people's changing ideas about and relationship to the British Crown.
The NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board 1883-1969: A History. Between 1883 and 1967 the lives of Aboriginal people in New South Wales (NSW) were in the hands of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board. The impact of the Board's systematic control over Aboriginal communities through policies of segregation, assimilation, child removal and wage withholding would endure for decades, and the negative results of those government directives are still being seen today. To date, however, no subs ....The NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board 1883-1969: A History. Between 1883 and 1967 the lives of Aboriginal people in New South Wales (NSW) were in the hands of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board. The impact of the Board's systematic control over Aboriginal communities through policies of segregation, assimilation, child removal and wage withholding would endure for decades, and the negative results of those government directives are still being seen today. To date, however, no substantive history of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board exists. This project aims to provide such a history, based on extensive archival and oral history research. Holding critical importance to NSW Aboriginal communities, the project expects to encourage the development of Indigenous historians in the process.Read moreRead less
Before Cook: Contact, Negotiation and the Archaeology of the Tiwi Islands. The narrative of culture contact in Australia is dominated by British colonisation, yet Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia had a much earlier connection with global explorers and traders. We aim to conduct the first systematic maritime and terrestrial archaeological investigations of the Tiwi Islands, alongside the study of material culture, oral history and archival materials associated with early Dutch explore ....Before Cook: Contact, Negotiation and the Archaeology of the Tiwi Islands. The narrative of culture contact in Australia is dominated by British colonisation, yet Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia had a much earlier connection with global explorers and traders. We aim to conduct the first systematic maritime and terrestrial archaeological investigations of the Tiwi Islands, alongside the study of material culture, oral history and archival materials associated with early Dutch explorers, British colonists, and Macassans. This multi-disciplinary approach will broaden our understanding of long-term race relations in Australia, the past presence of foreign visitors to Northern Australia, develop cultural heritage public policy and consolidate Tiwi cultural identity and history into the historical record.Read moreRead less
Don Dunstan and political and social reform in Australia. Don Dunstan, Premier of South Australia in 1967-68 and 1970-79, was an extraordinarily influential politician whose sweeping reforms led the way nationally and internationally in areas ranging from constitutional reform, Aboriginal land rights, equal opportunities, decriminalisation of homosexuality and civil liberties to urban planning, the arts and food culture. This project will produce the first full-length, comprehensive biography of ....Don Dunstan and political and social reform in Australia. Don Dunstan, Premier of South Australia in 1967-68 and 1970-79, was an extraordinarily influential politician whose sweeping reforms led the way nationally and internationally in areas ranging from constitutional reform, Aboriginal land rights, equal opportunities, decriminalisation of homosexuality and civil liberties to urban planning, the arts and food culture. This project will produce the first full-length, comprehensive biography of Dunstan. It will also use Dunstan’s political and cultural transformation of South Australia to examine the wider dynamics of reform in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, to understand how and why such change occurred at both state and national levels.Read moreRead less
Reciprocal Accountability and Public Value in Aboriginal Organisations. This project aims to examine the different meanings of ‘public value’ and accountability in the work of Aboriginal organisations. Aboriginal organisations in the Kimberley region are funded by governments to deliver services that are of value to the public. They also reflect Aboriginal culture and identity, and represent Aboriginal interests. This also creates value for their own publics. This project investigates the tensio ....Reciprocal Accountability and Public Value in Aboriginal Organisations. This project aims to examine the different meanings of ‘public value’ and accountability in the work of Aboriginal organisations. Aboriginal organisations in the Kimberley region are funded by governments to deliver services that are of value to the public. They also reflect Aboriginal culture and identity, and represent Aboriginal interests. This also creates value for their own publics. This project investigates the tension between these two ways of understanding public value. It investigates accountability for public value creation, whether it reflects the real value of Aboriginal organisations, and whether it can be done better. The project plans to draw on anthropology and public administration theory.Read moreRead less