Cirrus@Austlit

'Despite the emergence of decolonizing methods for the conduct of research involving Indigenous peoples since the 1990s, the field of Australian Indigenous studies remains characterized by the "spatial distance' that exists between professional academic researchers and the Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders over whom they claim knowledge, understanding, and "expertise." This paper, written primarily as an opinion piece, describes what transpired when I decided to seek a deeper engagement with the Aboriginal community that is the focus of my research activity. Moving from southeastern Australia to the regional center of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, this paper documents my efforts to close the spatial distance between researcher and researched through of series of vignettes. As the material outlined in the vignettes suggests, efforts to address the spatial distance proved only partially effective. Yet what emerged from this attempt was on ongoing engagement with inland remote Australia and a greatly enhanced understanding of the complex race relations between the Anangu (Aboriginal) peoples of the region and the non-Aboriginal population, as well as of the legacy of colonialism and the lingering impact the past continues to exert on the present.'

Source: Abstract.

'In his highly influential history of Australian rules football, Geoffrey Blainey promoted the idea that the sport constituted a ‘game of our own’. In making this claim, Blainey suggested the sport was the outcome of Anglo-Australian cultural innovations. In raising the prospect of an Aboriginal football ethic we question this assertion and ask who is really taking this indigenous sport forward today.'(Introduction)

'Encounters with indigeneity surveys the career work of renowned Australian anthropologist Jeremy Beckett. This important book highlights a scholarly engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that spans the second half of the twentieth century and demonstrates how these encounters prompted Beckett to move beyond the disciplinary limits of anthropology to produce a body of work that is characterised by its overtly inter-disciplinary approach to the study of indigeneity. In this sense, Beckett is much more than an anthropologist as he engages with history, political science, economics, sociology, literary studies and post-colonial studies to develop understandings and insights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that are rich in detail and complex in analysis. As a collection of works, Encounters with indigeneity demonstrates the ease with which Beckett is able to show how local issues concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples often have implications that are felt in the politics of the nation-state and increasingly in the politics of the global community. Unlike many of those who preceded him,' (Introduction)

'In Australia the formation of a national cricket team acted as a popular exemplar of the nationbuilding project, a touchstone of an emergent national identity and an important precursor to the political establishment of a white nation. Reflecting the attitudes of a nation-state that viewed membership of the white race and cultural adherence to British standards of civilisation as mandatory to national belonging, it is unsurprising that in the twentieth century the Australian cricket team also came to represent itself as the exclusive domain of white men. Popular narratives that mythologised Australian cricket celebrated matches against England as ‘Tests’ of white Australian masculinity. Cricketing victories against England were seen as indicative of the physical and moral superiority of the British race in Australia measured against those born in the mother country. No player publicly known to be Aboriginal has ever been selected to represent Australia in Test Match cricket, a fact that demonstrates the enduring strength of the historic relationship between Australian cricket and white nationalist sentiment.' (Introduction)

'Now in its third edition, this book documents the history of Aboriginal participation in the Australian horse-racing industry. Detailing the achievements of Aboriginal jockeys from the nineteenth century to the present day, the book highlights a part of our national sporting past that remains largely forgotten in the collective memory of the Australian public. Ignored in other published histories of the sport, the significant contributions made by Aboriginal people to the Australian racing industry are documented in this book and make it an important addition to contemporary understandings of Australian sport and the experiences of the Aboriginal participants.' (Introduction)

'As a scholar from an Aboriginal background who is deeply embedded in the western academe and its claims to universal truth, in this chapter I consider the possibility that Australian Indigenous studies may simply function to re-inscribe the power/knowledge claims of European ideas. This outcome is contrary to the stated claims of the field, which proclaims to offer an anti-colonial platform from which Indigenous peoples can be heard within the academe. Seeking to expose the problematic relationship that exists between Australian Indigenous studies and the European ideas that underpin its critical gaze, my discussion takes place in the context of my own research on the historical and contemporary involvement of Aboriginal people in Australian Football. Applying the notion that Europe exists as an idea that is implicit in the western academe, this chapter develops a critical discussion of key ways in which European understandings of self and other are applied in the research of Aboriginal peoples in Australia. Referencing the work of Gayatri Spivak, I offer a personal and self-reflective insight into the paradoxical nature of research generated in Australian Indigenous studies. This chapter challenges readers to consider if Australian Indigenous studies, instead of disrupting the power of the western academe, has assumed the status of the new anthropology.'  (Introduction)