Globalizing Indigeneity: Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Wellbeing in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Indigenous communities in Australia (and elsewhere) suffer from extreme disadvantage. Northern Australia and many other places in the region, face a demographic time-bomb of alienated, self-destructive and culturally-disoriented youth. This manifests as violence in places like Wadeye, Palm Island and Port Moresby. Cultural festivals are one of the few consistently positive spaces for indigenou ....Globalizing Indigeneity: Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Wellbeing in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Indigenous communities in Australia (and elsewhere) suffer from extreme disadvantage. Northern Australia and many other places in the region, face a demographic time-bomb of alienated, self-destructive and culturally-disoriented youth. This manifests as violence in places like Wadeye, Palm Island and Port Moresby. Cultural festivals are one of the few consistently positive spaces for indigenous communities to assert a more constructive view of themselves both intergenerationally, and as part of their struggle for respect as distinct cultures in the broader national community. Cultural festivals also provide a rare space for novel intercultural accommodations to be negotiated on indigenous terrain.Read moreRead less
Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development - Grant ID: DI0882245
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$170,648.00
Summary
Reconciliation game: Australian Football in the new South Africa. An understanding of the role sport has played in shaping settler/native relationships will enable Australia to support the development of enduring and meaning football contacts with post-Apartheid South Africa. These will be built on appraisals that admit a similar colonial inheritance to sport in South Africa. Recent embrace of Indigenous Australian participation in Australian Football indicates the possibility of reconciliation ....Reconciliation game: Australian Football in the new South Africa. An understanding of the role sport has played in shaping settler/native relationships will enable Australia to support the development of enduring and meaning football contacts with post-Apartheid South Africa. These will be built on appraisals that admit a similar colonial inheritance to sport in South Africa. Recent embrace of Indigenous Australian participation in Australian Football indicates the possibility of reconciliation and the potential for positive sporting interchange with post-Apartheid South Africa. This study examines how reconciliations through Australia - South Africa sporting dialogue can not only be promoted but realised in terms of developing sustained and socially meaningful engagements. Read moreRead less
Bubbles on the surface: a place pedagogy of the Narran Lakes. The project will provide Aboriginal, ecological humanities, and pedagogical input into the problem of environmental sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin, complementing current physical science initiatives. It will have immediate national benefit in the production of educational resources based on alternative and previously invisible stories of water in the Narran Lakes area, an icon site in the Murray-Darling Basin. The finding ....Bubbles on the surface: a place pedagogy of the Narran Lakes. The project will provide Aboriginal, ecological humanities, and pedagogical input into the problem of environmental sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin, complementing current physical science initiatives. It will have immediate national benefit in the production of educational resources based on alternative and previously invisible stories of water in the Narran Lakes area, an icon site in the Murray-Darling Basin. The findings will have longer term national benefit by identifying the elements of a general pedagogy of place, drawn from the specific local case study of the Narran Lakes, which will be applied in adult and community education.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
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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Rural women, cross-racial collaboration and life writing in the Country Women's Association of New South Wales, 1956-1996. In an era when race relations in Australia are usually characterised by misunderstanding and conflict, this project brings to light a story of co-operation and hope. Investigating six Indigenous branches of the Country Women's Association in NSW from the 1950s uncovers collaborations between rural Aboriginal and white women that transgressed social barriers and launched two ....Rural women, cross-racial collaboration and life writing in the Country Women's Association of New South Wales, 1956-1996. In an era when race relations in Australia are usually characterised by misunderstanding and conflict, this project brings to light a story of co-operation and hope. Investigating six Indigenous branches of the Country Women's Association in NSW from the 1950s uncovers collaborations between rural Aboriginal and white women that transgressed social barriers and launched two significant Aboriginal matriarchs and authors into their public lives. This timely social and literary history project revalues conservative rural women's writing and activism, contributing to the reconciliation process and to the social health of Australia.Read moreRead less
Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development - Grant ID: DI0989294
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$190,000.00
Summary
Koorie archiving: Community and records working together. The integration, preservation and accessibility of all archival sources, forms and media of Koorie knowledge are vital to processes of recovery for those affected by past government policies and to national reconciliation. Working in partnership with the Gunditjmara community of the Victorian Western District and the Koorie Heritage Trust, the Project will assist Koorie and other Indigenous communities to access and control information ab ....Koorie archiving: Community and records working together. The integration, preservation and accessibility of all archival sources, forms and media of Koorie knowledge are vital to processes of recovery for those affected by past government policies and to national reconciliation. Working in partnership with the Gunditjmara community of the Victorian Western District and the Koorie Heritage Trust, the Project will assist Koorie and other Indigenous communities to access and control information about them and their culture, and to build sustainable community archives. This will help in establishing identity, reconnecting families, pursuing land claims, intergenerational healing, preserving culture, and redress. The Project will place Australia at the forefront of Indigenous archiving research.Read moreRead less
Indigenous Entrepreneurship in Victoria, Australia: Reconciling Mainstream Business Practice and Indigenous Community Values. Indigenous entrepreneurship is a mechanism for addressing 'reconciliation' one the Nation's major issues. This study recognises the interrelations between Indigenous Australians as individuals and members of wider community groups and organisations and addresses key strategic documents including 'A Fairer Victoria' which is concerned about the disadvantaged in a developed ....Indigenous Entrepreneurship in Victoria, Australia: Reconciling Mainstream Business Practice and Indigenous Community Values. Indigenous entrepreneurship is a mechanism for addressing 'reconciliation' one the Nation's major issues. This study recognises the interrelations between Indigenous Australians as individuals and members of wider community groups and organisations and addresses key strategic documents including 'A Fairer Victoria' which is concerned about the disadvantaged in a developed society. Identifying Indigenous cultural values and the exigencies and pressures (including mainstream cultural pressure) impacting on Indigenous entrepreneurs assists with removing those impediments and will strengthen key strategic Indigenous Policies and programs in the interests of national economic prosperity and national reconciliation.Read moreRead less
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
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL0992397
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,467,253.00
Summary
Cultural environmental research: the missing link in multidisciplinary approaches to sustainability. Despite widespread calls for cultural change to enable Australia to craft an environmentally sustainable future, the nation lacks systematic investment in cultural environmental research. This proposal will establish a critical mass of internationally competitive researchers in the cultural dimensions of environmental sustainability and human-environment interactions, including climate change. Th ....Cultural environmental research: the missing link in multidisciplinary approaches to sustainability. Despite widespread calls for cultural change to enable Australia to craft an environmentally sustainable future, the nation lacks systematic investment in cultural environmental research. This proposal will establish a critical mass of internationally competitive researchers in the cultural dimensions of environmental sustainability and human-environment interactions, including climate change. This will facilitate more effective multidisciplinary research across the natural science/social science divide and improve the relevance of environmental policies. Our ethnographic and related research methods will strengthen community capacity to respond to and shape the complex interactions of environmental and social change ahead.Read moreRead less