Cirrus@Austlit

'It is an honour to address this Australian Academy of the Humanities conference on Human Rights and Humanitarianism, though I rarely frame my own creative work in terms of ‘Human Rights’. I can’t remember the last time I approached the blank page thinking ‘Social Justice’ or ‘Social Change’ either. It’s surprising then, that a word like ‘Decolonisation’ can be appropriate, particularly if ‘we … understand decolonisation as the unravelling of assumed certainties and the re-imagining and re-negotiating of common futures.’' (Introduction)

'I expect that most readers of Humanities Australia will be familiar with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Map of Indigenous Australia (fig. 1). Some, particularly the Academy’s anthropologists, will be acquainted with it professionally. But most, I suspect, will have come across it in one or another of the more general contexts in which it has been circulated. These include museums. It forms a part of the visitor’s orientation to the First Australians: Gallery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at the National Museum of Australia, and, since it was first made available in 1996, has performed a similar function in relation to exhibitions of the cultures of Indigenous Australians at many Australian museums.' (Introduction)