Reconciliation and Indigenous Knowledges (AUST2006)
Semester 2 / 2010

Texts

y separately published work icon Blacklines : Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians Michèle Grossman (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2003 Z1072525 2003 anthology criticism essay (taught in 11 units)
y separately published work icon Black Chicks Talking Leah Purcell (interviewer), Sydney : Hodder Headline , 2002 Z966800 2002 anthology interview (taught in 1 units)

A series of nine interviews conducted by Leah Purcell with Indigenous Australian women. Each woman is separately interviewed about her experience of growing up, her family life (particularly her relationship with her mother), her sense of Aboriginality and her career. The collection closes with a record of the collective conversation between the women during a meal at Sydney's Edna's Table II restaurant which serves 'Australia's finest Aboriginal cuisine'.

y separately published work icon Nowhere People : How International Race Thinking Shaped Australia's Identity Henry Reynolds , Camberwell : Penguin , 2005 Z1217331 2005 single work autobiography (taught in 1 units)

'In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, people of mixed Aboriginal and European ancestry were commonly assumed to be morally and physically defective, unstable and degenerate. They bore the brunt of society's contempt, and the removal of their children created Australia's stolen generations. Nowhere People is a history of beliefs about people of mixed race, both in Australia and overseas. It explores the concept of racial purity, eugenics, and the threat posed by miscegenation.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Up from the Mission : Selected Writings Noel Pearson , Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2009 Z1585263 2009 selected work autobiography biography prose (taught in 1 units)

'Up from the Mission charts the life and thought of Noel Pearson, from his early days as a native title lawyer to his position today as one of Australia's most influential figures.

'This is writing of great passion and power, which introduces a fascinating man and a compelling writer. Many of the pieces included have been hard to find until now. Gathered together in a cohesive, broad-ranging book, they show a key Australian thinker coming into being.

'Pearson evokes his early life in Hope Vale, Queensland. He includes sections of his epoch-making essay Our Right To Take Responsibility, which exposed the trap of passive welfare and proposed new ways forward. There are pieces on the apology; on Barack Obama and black leadership; on Australian party politics - Keating, Howard and Rudd; and on alcoholism, despair and what can be done to mend Aboriginal communities that have fallen apart.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Dispossession, Dreams & Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies David Carter , Frenchs Forest : Pearson Education Australia , 2006 Z1258484 2006 multi chapter work criticism (taught in 12 units) This work introduces key topics and questions about Australia as a society, a culture and a nation. It contains a useful chapter on Australian modernities, which deals in part with literature in the early to mid 20th century.
y separately published work icon Sharing Spaces : Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Responses to Story, Country and Rights Gus Worby (editor), Lester-Irabinna Rigney (editor), Perth : API Network Curtin University of Technology. Australia Research Institute , 2006 Z1273416 2006 anthology criticism (taught in 2 units) A collection of conversations and essays by Elders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars addresses a range of contemporary issues including the politics of space sharing derived from a colonial history of non-sharing, the relationship between the stories Australians tell themselves about their place as a nation. (Libraries Australia)
y separately published work icon Looking for Blackfellas' Point : An Australian History of Place Mark McKenna , Sydney : University of New South Wales Press , 2002 Z1035628 2002 single work non-fiction (taught in 1 units)

'Blackfellas' Point' lies on the Towamba River in south-eastern New South Wales. As the river descends rapidly from its source on the Monaro plains, it winds its way through state forest, national park and farming land. Around twenty-five kilometres before it reaches the sea, just south of Eden, it passes through Towamba, the small village in which Mark McKenna now owns eight acres of land. Mark's land looks across the river to Blackfellas' Point , once an Aboriginal camping ground and meeting place.'

Looking for Blackfellas' Point is a history that begins by looking across the river to arc of bush that is Blackfellas' Point. From there, Mark McKenna's gaze pans out - from the history of one place he knows intimately, to the history of one region and, ultimately, to the history of Australia's quest for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.'

y separately published work icon Drawing the Global Colour Line : White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality Henry Reynolds , Marilyn Lake , Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2008 Z1509124 2008 single work non-fiction (taught in 1 units)

'[This] is a pioneering account of the transnational production of whiteness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A work remarkable both for its international breadth and for its sensitivity to local particularity, it is a model for the new global history.

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds expertly and imaginatively reconstruct how leading white intellectuals and politicians in Australia, South Africa, the United States, and Great Britain fought demands for racial equality and jointly invented new doctrines of racial superiority to justify the maintenance and, in some cases, the reinvigoration of white privilege in every part of the world that Britain either controlled or in which it had once deposited its settlers.

A powerful and sobering history, incisively and elegantly told.' Gary Gerstle, author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century

Description

This topic is designed to allow students to read, view and experience a range of texts which deal with encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It offers an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of representation of Australian Indigenous knowledges and cultural practices using an 'education for reconciliation' approach. It analyses contested definitions of culture and paradigms of cultural value, meaning and priority. It will introduce students to theories of representation and to their application to Indigenous materials, knowledges, social and cultural practices in: literature, drama, film, music, autobiography, visual art, artefacts and material culture, dance, storytelling, oral history, local legends, ceremony, sport etc. It will employ cross-cultural approaches to subject matter and also investigate post-colonial notions of authenticity, reciprocity, hybridity, third space negotiation and collaboration. This topic will be taught in conjunction with Australian Studies Staff.

Supplementary Texts

Toussaint, Sandy (ed.). Crossing Boundaries: Cultural, Legal, Historical and Practice Issues in Native Title. Melbourne University Press, 2004.

Goot, Murray; Rowse, Tim. Divided nation? : indigenous affairs and the imagined public. Melbourne University Publishing, 2007.

Carter, David. Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies. Pearson Education, 2005.

Gale, Peter. The Politics of Fear: Lighting the Wick. Pearson Education, 2004.

Langton, Marcia; Tehan, Maureen; Palmer, Lisa; Shain, Kathryn (eds.). Honour Among Nations?: Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People. Melbourne University Press, 2004.

Langton, Marcia; Tehan, Maureen; Palmer, Lisa; Shain, Kathryn; Mazel, Odette. Settling with Indigenous People: Modern Treaty and Agreement-making. Federation Press, 2006.

Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Talkin' up to the white woman : aboriginal women and feminism. University of Queensland Press, 2000.

Strelein, Lisa. Compromised Jurisprudence: Native Title Cases Since Mabo. Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006.

Other Details

Offered in: 2009
Levels: Undergraduate
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