Cirrus@Austlit

'Exactly a quarter of a century ago, on 15 May 1961, 55 scholars assembled in University House to discuss the future of Aboriginal Studies. Stimulated by the prospects, Bill Stanner (Sheils 1963.XIV) later remarked that the participants "had a sense of making history". As convenor of the meeting, Stanner (Sheils 1963:XII) enunciated the following criteria for attendance. "Everyone should be invited who had authoritative knowledge of any relevant field of research; all appropriate academic disciplines should be represented; the sole concern should be with problems of fundamental study; and the approach should be truly national." By 1964, the Act which created the Institute was operating and I was elected to its first Council. As I have served on Council for all but two years since that time, I decided to reflect upon the Institute, its achievements and its critics over its first quarter century, as the first major theme in this lecture. Then follows some consideration of archaeology, its achievements and some of its problems.'  (Publication abstract)

'Two people who made important contributions to the film Waiting for Ham/ recently passed away: Harry D., whose name and significance are incorporated in the title, and Peter Barker, the sound recordist.

'Harry D. was born at Kopanga on the Blyth River about 1920. At the age of eighteen he made his way to Darwin, where he got a job in a Chinese laundry. During the war he worked at the Naval base and in various Army camps. After a spell at Oenpelli in the immediate post-war years, employed by a buffalo hunter, he returned to Darwin where the Native Affairs Branch made him a patrol assistant. Later he worked as a tracker for the Police Department.'  (Introduction)

'The sudden and tragic death of anthropologist Diane McEachern Barwick on 4 April brought to an end a vigorous academic and public career devoted to securing justice for Australia's Indigenous peoples, the Australian Aborigines. Dr Barwick possessed that combination—so rare in Australia today—of absolutely scrupulous scholarship and passionate conviction, and her reputation and influence have reached far beyond her actual published work.' (Introduction)

'Looking back on the 25 years that our Institute has been in existence, I wonder whether perhaps we have changed more than we then anticipated—or perhaps more than we generally realise to-day'  (Introduction)

'This book is one of the growing number of anthropological works on women by women. When Bell writes in one of her opening passages  that she locates her "analysis within the framework of feminist thought", one may be forgiven for fearing that one is about to encounter the curious astigmatism by which radical feminism manages to misproportion every social reality...'  (Introduction)