Cirrus@Austlit

'One of the longstanding aims and achievements of anthropology has been to write about different societies and cultures without being judgmental. Yasmine Musharbash writes about a remote Central Australian Indigenous community in this way, focusing (as the title promises) on certain aspects of everyday life. This is a valuable offering, providing insight into the way things work in Indigenous communities that most Australians are not privy to, and that many would like to know more about.'  (Introduction)

'Transgressions: Critical Australian Indigenous histories is a diverse and innovative collection of readings by early career researchers. Essentially the collection examines complex interactions between Australian Indigenous people and their colonisers. The collection had its origins in 2003 when a doctoral student from the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University invited a group of scholars to meet in Canberra. Their studies were focused across various parts of Australia and on different time periods but common to all those involved was an interest in developing critical re-assessments of Australian colonial and anti-colonial histories.'  (Introduction)

'‘It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ This is not the first line of Kaurna elder Lewis O’Brien’s story, although it obviously could have been, given his book’s title. Instead, it is the opening sentence of George Orwell’s 1984, a novel concerned with the struggle of the human spirit against totalitarianism. There are some similarities between Orwell’s book and O’Brien’s account of his life and times; it is not drawing too long a bow to claim, for example, that Orwell’s Big Brother and so-called Chief Protectors of Australia’s Aborigines had things in common in terms of power and its misuse, at least as far as Aboriginal people were concerned, when O’Brien was growing up in South Australia.' (Introduction)

'The article presents as update on the members of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Research Program as of November 2009. A manuscript tentatively titled "Abrogating Responsibility: Vesteys, Anthropology and Aborigines" was completed by Geoff Gray. Jeanine Leane was named as Education Fellow at AIATSIS as the start of the year. A project on Indigenous children in urban settings making the transition through kindergarten, pre-primary and school was completed by Jo Taylor.'  (Publication abstract)

'The article presents an obituary for Iris Rose Clayton, a Wiradjuri author, historian and poet affiliated with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), who died on July 5, 2009.'  (Publication abstract)