Cirrus@Austlit

'Big things are being asked of history in 2023. Later this year, we will vote in the referendum to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative body – the Voice to Parliament – in the Australian constitution.' (Introduction)

'Anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, recently published a book titled Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. This book offers a dramatically different account of the social, spiritual and economic worlds of Australia’s First Peoples “before conquest” to what is presented in the acclaimed work by Yuin writer Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu.' (Introduction)

'For too long Australia's media has failed to communicate Aboriginal political aspirations. This unique study of key Aboriginal initiatives seeking self-determination and justice reveals a history of media procrastination and denial.

A team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers examine 45 years of media responses to these initiatives, from the 1972 Larrakia petition to the Queen seeking land rights and treaties, to the desire for recognition expressed in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. This analysis exposes how the media frames stories, develops discourses, and supports deeper historical narratives that corrode and undermine the intent and urgency of Aboriginal aspirations, through approaches ranging from sympathetic stalling to patronising parodies.

This book can be used by media professionals to improve their practices, by Aboriginal communities to test media truth-telling and by anyone seeking to understand how Aboriginal desires and hopes have been expressed, and represented, in recent Australian political history.'

'When the Black Lives Matter movement re-emerged powerfully this year, it encouraged a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told, reaching deep into Australia’s mainstream media. Once more, research showed just how unselfconsciously white Australian media is.

Our study of 45 years of mainstream print news reportage of Aboriginal self-determination found the media overwhelming reports from and assumes a white standpoint.

Published in a book titled Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments, our findings signal that the media’s problems go deeper than representation.

A podcast series based on the book has now been released. In this five-part series, titled Black Stories Matter, we bring together media researchers, historians, policy makers, a former Aboriginal Affairs minister and members of the growing cohort of Aboriginal journalists, to discuss how we can disrupt the negative patterns of the past.

'Where were you when Catherine Freeman won gold at the Sydney Olympic Games?'

'This year marks the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first landing on the east coast and his claim of territory for the British Empire. Like most scheduled events of 2020, commemorations of this milestone were scuttled by the pandemic.

'For some, the cancellation of Cook events relieved a simmering trepidation. But many Aboriginal communities had worked hard to consider their engagement in the 250-year commemoration and communicate the “view from the shore” among themselves and to wider audiences.

The film Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky, directed by Steven McGregor, canvasses Indigenous Australian accounts of, and responses to, Captain Cook’s arrival.'

Source: Introduction.

'The authors reflect on the methodology of using digital tools to learn about the experiences of Indigenous people enrolled from 1980 to 2000 as adult students at Tranby, an Indigenous-controlled post-secondary college. This collaboration between Tranby and the University of Technology Sydney drew on debates in post-colonial studies, oral history and archival studies. The authors found that participants prioritised personal control in all social media communication and engaged most actively in person-to-person communication to take part in this research. Participants were eager to share memories of student experiences but they have preferred to contribute to online publications which focused on activities, rather than on individuals. To support participants’ desire for control over digital communication, the authors slowed the pace of online outcome development to allow flexible and ongoing consent arrangements along with non-custodial approaches to oral, archival, photographic and material collections.' (Publication abstract)

''Against native title’ is an ethnography of one community’s rejection and partial re-engagement with the legal determination of native title over their country.' (Introduction)

'Last year, the federal government’s swift rejection of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament left an already despairing Aboriginal polity limping out the final weeks and days of 2017, myself included. Without offering an alternate plan for protecting and advancing Aboriginal rights at the national level, hope for Aboriginal futures was in short supply.' (Introduction)

'What do we want? is the first study of the most far-reaching and innovative Aboriginal land rights laws in the country. Heidi Norman tells a story full of possibility, tensions and entanglements as Aboriginal people took up the political demand of self-determination and worked to address their community disadvantage, all the while grappling with the expectations of government.'

'The laws, passed in 1983 by the Wran Labor Government, provided a mechanism for recovering land and the fifteen-year funding stream, to compensate for loss of land and culture, was intended to fund the more than 120 representative Aboriginal land councils, as well as support Aboriginal-run enterprises.'

'Yet chronic disadvantage continues for many Aboriginal people in NSW and Aboriginal land councils are yet to fully realise the expectations of their members.'

‘What do we want? reveals the challenges of Aboriginal adjustment to modernity as Land Councils focus their efforts on profitable enterprises to resource community social and cultural initiatives.' (Source: Publisher's website)

'NEW: Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies was initiated by Philip Morrissey from the University of Melbourne and Heidi Norman from the University of Technology Sydney in 2015. The journal provides a platform for publishing undergraduate scholarship in Indigenous studies and attracts high quality student work.' (Publication summary)