Aboriginal Australia Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Native title claims in Australia require research about traditional Aboriginal connections to land and waters. The relevant legislation seeks to establish if traditional law and custom has continued to provide rights to ‘country’ on the part of those identifying with deceased forebears and their occupation of the land at the time of British colonization. For the region of southeast Queensland there is a rich body of photographs documented in the late 1800s that can inform both research data and the evidence of Aboriginal native title claimants. Photographs in our case study emerge as potentially of considerable significance for anthropological research that is commissioned and applied in the production of expert opinion reports for native title legal proceedings. The photographs are, subject to memory and interpretation, also of great relevance for Aboriginal people seeking to claim rights and interests in their traditional lands and waters. This article addresses the potential intellectual productivity of historical photographs as well as tensions arising from their ambiguous status in legal proceedings.

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- Applied Anthropology, Native Title, Aboriginal Australia, Historical photographs
- by Victoria GRIEVE WILLIAMS and +1
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- Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Australian History, Aboriginal History in Australia, Aboriginal family history

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in Australia's Northern Territory continues to be a contested site, as half of its 400 000 visitors continue to climb Uluru each year against the wishes of the Traditional Aboriginal Owners, the Anangu. Since being opened to tourism in the 1950s, Uluru has come to symbolise the ‘heart’ of the Australian nation. The influx of tourists also marked the beginning of contestations over control and access to this site between settler Australians, who wished to photograph and climb it, and the Anangu, to whom it is sacred. That visitors still climb Uluru could be seen as evidence that this site continues to symbolise a split between settler and Aboriginal Australian concepts of place and appropriate actions in relation to Uluru. To explore whether the continued climbing of Uluru was indeed evidence of an irreconcilable ‘clash’ of cultures, a survey of visitors to Uluru and interviews with both tourist operators and National Park staff were undertaken regarding visitor decision-making processes. This research found that rather than entrenched, fixed perspectives on the issue of the Climb, both non-Aboriginal visitors and tour operators showed an openness to the Anangu view of Uluru and their wish that it not be climbed. It also indicated, however, the importance of tourism and other media in conveying the Anangu view to visitors before they arrived at the site of the Climb itself, a point considered to be ‘too late’ by many visitors. These findings suggest the potential for change in the actions of many visitors in regard to the Climb through a more proactive representation of the wishes of the Anangu to visitors before they reach Uluru.

- by Sarah James
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- Indigenous Studies, Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage, Tourism
- by Fran Edmonds and +1
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- Sovereignty, Aboriginal Australia, Melbourne, Decolonising/Decolonisation

A theory of ‘cultural sustainability’ in architecture must be underpinned by a conceptualization of architecture that is sensitive to cross-cultural contexts and values and not overly dominated by Western concepts of what architecture is. A number of key areas are thus outlined for design consideration if cultural sustainability is to become more intimately aligned with architectural outcomes. These include the cross-cultural variation in where authority lies in building and design decisions, culturally specific forms of spatial behaviour and the meanings encoded into buildings and environments. The cultural
properties of buildings need to be positioned as a subset of the cultural properties of places, and the dynamics of architectural traditions and their time properties need to be understood within varying scales of cultural change processes. Finally consideration is provided to cultural constructs of well-being and social design in the environment.

- by Paul Memmott
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- Culture, Well-Being, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal people

The monsters that anthropologists encounter in their field sites differ significantly from those portrayed and analyzed in the thriving interdisciplinary literature—anthropology's monsters haunt off the pages of books and screens of televisions. These monsters come in all sorts of (non-gothic) guises, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt. Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, media, and cultural studies, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world, from Aboriginal Australia in the Pacific to Asia and Europe.

- by Yasmine Musharbash and +1
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- Anthropology, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Ethnography, Social and Cultural Anthropology

Colonial ethnographers commenced compiling records on Australian indigenous shelters and camps from the 1870s and this work was extended into more complex settlement models by a small number of anthropologists and archaeologists in the mid-twentieth century. Building on this earlier work, a distinctive architectural anthropology has been developed and practised by researchers at the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) based at the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, since the 1970s. The broad focus is on the nature of people–environment relationships of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but the resulting theories and methods may contribute to ongoing developments in the field internationally. This paper (with the aid of a case study) demonstrates how various research tools in the AERC theoretical frame have been incorporated into design
processes, including the constructs of the “intercultural”, “recognition space”, “personhood”, and “cultural landscape”.

- by Paul Memmott and +1
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- Aboriginal Australia, Architectural Anthropology, Behaviour Settings, Aboriginal Environments Research Centre

Architectural anthropology considers the inseparable relationships between people, culture and the built environment. Drawing on social and cultural anthropology and environment-behaviour studies in architecture, Architectural anthropology not only seeks to produce theoretical outcomes but also applied research findings to assist people evolve, adapt and change (or resist change) in their environments. In this Chapter, we argue that a transactional focus in architectural anthropology provides a developing methodological framework for addressing Indigenous wellbeing.

Reason and rationality, upon which modern, westernized, societies have been founded, have powerfully characterized the nature of human relations with other species and with the natural world. However, countless indigenous and traditional worldviews tell of a very different reality in which humans, conceived of as instinctual and intuitive, are a part of a complex web of ecological relationships. Other species, elements of the natural world, and people are active participants in relations overflowing with communications, interactions sometimes recorded in ethnographies, or as ‘myths’ and ‘stories’. The present article draws upon a range of traditions to explore the biases which shape how indigenous and traditional life-ways are represented in westernized contexts; the phenomenon of receiving direct insight or intuitive knowing from more-than-human worlds; and the numerous valuable understandings regarding the nature of the human being, other species, and how to live well, that are offered by a deeper comprehension of different worldviews. I also argue that the various capacities for instinctual and intuitive knowledge which accompanies these life-ways are endemic to the human species yet overlooked, the correction of which might work to usefully recalibrate our ethical relations with each other, and with other life on earth.

- by Amba J. Sepie
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- Mythology And Folklore, Landscape Ecology, Future Studies, Anthropology

Despite documented changes to mainstream educational systems, Indigenouseducational achievements are still at critically low levels across all phases of formal education. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2011), Indigenous students are still less likely than non-Indigenous students to complete their final years of schooling (45% compared with 77% in 2009); tertiary level entry and outcomes are also significantly lower than non-Indigenous entry and outcomes. Although significant research has focused on the area of Indigenous education, in particular, identifying and making recommendations on how to close educational gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, these studies have failed to bring about the change needed and to engage successfully with Indigenous communities and draw on Indigenous communities’ insights for best practice. This thesis focuses on Indigenous perspectives and takes a closer look at the cultural factors that impact on tertiary education access for Indigenous young men who come from a Bundjalung community on the far north coast of northern New South Wales. To date, this community has not been the focus of serious postgraduate study. Their experiences and the values and ideas of their community have not been investigated. To do this, the study uses an Indigenous methodological framework. It draws on Indigenous Standpoint Theory to analyse data through concepts of the
cultural interface and tensions (Nakata, 2007, pp. 195-217). The study’s framing also draws on decolonising methods (Porsanger, 2004; Smith, 1999) and Indigenist research methods (Rigney, 1997). Such methodologies are intended to benefit both the research participants (community members) and the researcher. In doing so, the study draws on Creswell’s (2008) methods of restorying and retelling to analyse the participants’ interviews and yarns about their lives and experiences relating to tertiary educational access. The research process occurred in multiple stages: (1) selection of research sites,(2) granting of access which was requested through consultation with local Aboriginal Elders and through the local Aboriginal Lands Council, (3) conducting interviews with participants/ data collection, (4) analysis of data, (5) documentation of findings, (6) theory development, and (7) reporting back to the nominatedIndigenous community on the progress and findings of the research.The benefits of this research are numerous. First, this study addresses an issue that has been identified from within the local Aboriginal community as an issue of high precedence, looking at the cultural factors surrounding the underrepresentation of indigenous people accessing tertiary education. This is not only of local significance but has been identified in the literature as a local, national and international area of concern amongst Indigenous peoples (Department of Economic and Social Affairs,2009; Herbert, 2010; King, 2011). Secondly, the study draws on local Indigenous knowledges and learning processes from within a Bundjalung community to gain inside perspectives, namely the cultural factors that are being expressed from a range of Indigenous community members – young men, community Elders and community members – and finding out what they perceive inhibit and/or promote tertiary education participation within their community. Such perspectives are rarely heard. Finally, recommendations made from this study are aimed at revealing investigative styles that may be utilised by Western institutions to improve access for Indigenous young men living in the Bundjalung region.

- by Alessandro Ramasco
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- Native Title, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies

In 2010 a large project to map the 5ha Gummingurru stone arrangement site on the Darling Downs, southeast Queensland, Australia, was completed; 9368 rocks were plotted and recorded and many of these rocks make up the over 20 motifs on the site. But Gummingurru is a site that is more than rocks. It is part of a large cultural landscape which includes neighboring sites, resource tree plantings, scarred trees, story places and memoryscapes (Lavers, 2010). Current mapping of the site and the associated landscape features has been inhibited by the constraints of two-dimensional mapping. In this article we outline an alternative map for the site and its cultural landscape – the Prezi web-based tool. The Prezi ‘map’ allows the documentation of a fluid and contextual approach to place and is easily updated or modified as data or attachment to place change.

- by Bridget Grogan
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- Phenomenology, Postcolonial Literature, Australian Literature, Tourism
- by Dr Vanessa Whittington and +1
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- Racism, Reconciliation, Aboriginal Australia, Settler colonialism

This article analyses two cases brought by aboriginal Australians against the Australian government acquisition of long leases of their land under the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007. These leases are conspicuous, particularly in that the government always made it clear that it would not take up its right to exclusive possession of the leased land, and has not done so. The leases have not been used to evict residents, as some feared; nor to pursue mining or agricultural activity. Socio-legal theories centered on the right to exclusive possession cannot account for these leases. The article explores the use of property under the 2007 Act, the legal geographies of the areas subject to the leases and the political potency of property beyond exclusive possession, and suggests an understanding of property as a spatially contingent relation of belonging. Specifically, the article argues that property is productive of temporal and spatial order and so can function as a tool of governance.

- by Sarah Keenan
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- Space and Place, Property Law, Critical Race Theory, Post-Colonialism
- by Victoria GRIEVE WILLIAMS
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- History, Sociology, Anthropology, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies

During colonization in Australia (over 230 years), Indigenous people have experienced a continual cyclic process of both losing and reasserting legitimation of their settlement traditions. The tensions between cultural and political modes of settlement legitimation are evident in recent government attempts to close down 150 small remote settlements in several states and to create larger 'hub' settlements, based on the rationale of advancing economic independence through focused development. Yet in many small settlements, residents remain emotionally and psychologically anchored. Legitimacy of place occupation and identity is sustained by persistent collective (social) and place-based identity as well as hybrid economies.

Given the proposed expansion of developments in northern Australia and current tensions among stakeholders, there is a need to develop new planning approaches that support multiple uses of land and water, while maintaining environmental and cultural values. This project aimed to demonstrate how to operationalise multi-objective catchment planning supported by scenario thinking, by which stakeholders can collaboratively construct and assess the outcomes of alternative development futures. The project follows a participatory scenario planning approach to guide stakeholders through a systematic and critical examination of possible development trajectories and their associated environmental and socioeconomic outcomes. The process and outcomes of this project will be summarised in a planning toolkit, which can be used by diverse stakeholders to inform future land/water use decisions. The development of the toolkit includes identifying, selecting, parameterising, and integrating spatially explicit tools and models to inform the scenario planning process. In collaboration with stakeholders, we collated and integrated data, parameterised tools and models, and use modelling outputs to guide the development of scenarios, including spatially explicit maps of future land/water uses. The project provides diverse outputs that can support planning in the Fitzroy River catchment, but followed planning methods and tools that can be used elsewhere in Australia.

- by Jorge G Álvarez-Romero and +1
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- Future Studies, Participatory Research, Participatory Action Research, Sustainable agriculture

The design of buildings and environs for the fair and just delivery of justice for Indigenous peoples is a new architectural domain. In this chapter, we discuss the background and design of the Kununurra Courthouse, a new courthouse designed and built in Kununurra, a town in northern Western Australia on the eastern extremity of the Kimberley region near the border of the Northern Territory. Courts have been part of a ‘revolving door of despair’ for generations of Australian Indigenous people. Historically, procedures occurring in courts have contributed little to decreasing the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system. The physical nature of the Western court settings designed with layers of hierarchy and control devoid of Indigenous control, have not allowed Indigenous people to participate meaningfully and have contributed to greater numbers of Indigenous people being remanded or sentenced to custody.
This chapter is a collaboration bringing the first author’s theoretical scholarship in the field of Indigenous architecture and placemaking together with the architectural theory scholarship and practice experience of the second author as an academic and a senior member of the design team for the Kimberley courthouse project. It should be stated from the outset that the authors, in line with the views of many others, see inherent issues arising from the design of courts, courthouses, and other criminal justice projects for Indigenous users. The vexing question continually arises as to how architects and design practitioners are able to design to engage Indigenous peoples with Western legal systems, when these are the systems that have usurped Indigenous peoples from traditional lands, destroyed sacred sites, and been used almost universally to divide and conquer.

Kriol Emotion Glossary (Barunga region) First draft, September 2019 Compiled by Maïa Ponsonnet, in collaboration with Angela Ashley, Ingrid Ashley, Bonita Bennett, Jurraine Bennet, †Lily Bennett, Queenie Brennan, Alexandra Bush-Martin,... more

Tesis doctoral inedita cotutelada por la Macquarie University, Department of Anthropology y la Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Departamento de Antropologia Social y Pensamiento Filosofico Espanol. Fecha de... more

In 2010 a large project to map the 5ha Gummingurru stone arrangement site was completed. 9368 rocks were plotted and recorded; many of these rocks make up the over 20 motifs on the site. But Gummingurru is a site that is more than rocks. It is part of a large cultural landscape which includes neighbouring sites, bunya tree plantings, scarred trees, story places, and memoryscapes (Lavers 2010). Current mapping of the site and the associated landscape features has been inhibited by the constraints of two-dimensional mapping. In this paper we outline alternative maps for the site and its cultural landscape, including the use of web-based tools such as Prezi.

- by E. Jaydeyn Thomas
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- Landscape Archaeology, Representation, Aboriginal Australia, Counter-Mapping

The Economist recently reported, "Australians should soon get the chance to vote on [a] constitutional amendment concerning aboriginal rights…, in some way acknowledging aborigines as the first Australians. But just how far it should go is a matter of intense debate." A “First Nations National Constitutional Convention” at Uluru put forward the proposal in May 2017, when delegates called for "Makarrata"—"coming together after a struggle"—accomplished by a "First Nations voice enshrined in the constitution."
The Uluru Statement reproduces sovereignty conundrums. It asserts, "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander…sovereignty…has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown." The Statement then asks, "How could it be otherwise?" But, I ask, how can Aboriginal sovereignty—from "time immemorial"—coexist with British sovereignty created 200 years ago? What does co-existing sovereignty mean?

- by Katharine Massam
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- Australian History, Catholicism, Benedictine History, Mission History
- by Oscar Cruz
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- Aboriginal Australia

To access the online interview you need to select a link named "file" when you open this entry.
Conversation with Professor Victoria Grieve-Williams ahead of the Blak and Bright First Nations Writer’s Festival. The second part of our conversation begins with us discussing reactions to colonial settler practices that shocked Indigenous people around the world; practices like felling big trees regardless of their significance to the people.Professor Grieve-Williams also explains the origin of the concept of the Dreamtime.

Informal conflict management implicitly claims to value cultural difference and to be able to mediate relations between cultural minorities and states. This article considers this claim in challenging circumstances borne of settler-colonialism by examining the cultural politics of the establishment of a conflict resolution programme in an Australian Aboriginal community. In addition to settler-colonial maligning of Aboriginal capacities to manage conflict, the Gununa community has in recent decades faced the severe attenuation of customary processes and escalating uncontrolled violence. Nonetheless, the Mornington Island Restorative Justice Project involved a spontaneous appropriation of mediation as a customary initiative and an accompanying implicit negotiation between the customary sociolegal order of Mornington Islanders and that of the liberal settler-state. Analysis of these circumstances and relations leads us to argue that informalism can support cultural difference and mediate relations with the state, although it cannot be relied upon to transform the accompanying asymmetric relationship.

- by Paul Memmott and +2
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- Indigenous Peoples, Conflict Mediation Strategies, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies
- by Pascale Bonnemère
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- Aboriginal Australia, Warlpiri

these are proof pages ...

- by Yasmine Musharbash
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- Social Change, Anthropology, Autism, Postcolonial Studies

ABSTRACT: This thesis is based on fieldwork conducted in two different urban contexts. I explore the cultural and media practices of Latin American people in Madrid, Spain and Aboriginal people in Sydney, Australia. I argue that both case studies constitute attempts to decolonise the dominant and homogeneous representations of these peoples within mediatised industries. Utilising a range of research methods that include multi-located ethnography, participant observation, interviews and analysis of the creative works of two radio and theatre groups in each location, I evoke different social worlds where political identities of resistance are articulated. Attention to daily practices reveals both groups’ difficulties in accessing commodified media markets, in part because of their physical characteristics. Further, I show how these groups find their own ways to expose their subjectivities and disseminate their creative works, voices and responses, including dialogues with institutions and funding bodies. The analysis of these groups presents different results yet overall shows commonalities in how these collectives use similar tools to counteract the residues of colonialism in the present. Throughout this thesis, colonialism appears as an unfinished power relation between dominant groups and minority groups in Spanish and Australian societies.
RESUMEN:
Esta tesis se basa en el trabajo de campo realizado en dos contextos urbanos distintos. Exploro las prácticas culturales y mediáticas de latinoamericanos en Madrid, España y aborígenes en Sídney, Australia. Argumento que estos casos de estudio constituyen intentos por parte de estos dos grupos por descolonizar representaciones dominantes y homogéneas en las industrias mediáticas. Utilizando una metodología variada que incluye etnografía multi-local, observación participante, entrevistas y el análisis de los trabajos creativos de los dos grupos de radio y teatro en cada localidad, señalo los distintos mundos sociales donde los sujetos de estudio articulan identidades políticas de resistencia. Prestando atención a sus prácticas diarias se revelan las dificultades de los dos grupos para acceder a los mercados mediáticos, en parte debido a sus características físicas. Además, muestro cómo estos grupos encuentran sus propias maneras de exponer sus subjetividades y difundir sus trabajos creativos, voces y respuestas, incluyendo diálogos con instituciones y organismos que conceden ayudas económicas. El análisis de estos grupos presenta distintos resultados pero sobre todo muestra comunalidades en cómo estos colectivos usan similares herramientas para contrarrestar los residuos del colonialismo en el presente. A lo largo de la tesis el colonialismo aparece como una relación de poder inacabada entre grupos dominantes y grupos minoritarios en las sociedades española y australiana.

- by Roger I Lohmann
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- Mythology, History of Religions, Landscape, Aboriginal History in Australia

Cet article entend détailler un moment clé de redéfinition des frontières raciales dans la petite ville de Nambucca Heads sur la côte nord des New South Wales : le processus de la ségrégation de l’école en 1915. L’examen minutieux de tous les aléas de cet événement, et en particulier l’étude des diverses formes de « réactions aborigènes » auxquelles ce processus a donné lieu, permettra de s’interroger sur les conditions d’émergence d’une discrimination explicite, inconnue jusqu’alors, entre Noirs et Blancs.

- by Bastien Bosa
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- History, Sociology, Anthropology, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies

Relatedness has been a fundamental notion in recent studies of Aboriginal personhood. My research asks how people who ‘form a mob' decide with whom to do this and for how long. The concept of relatedness—while useful—distracts the ethnographic gaze away from those relations not captured by relatedness—away from considering non-realisations, and different ways of relating to others (e.g., Aboriginal ways of relating to non-Indigenous people). Three case studies illustrate that we need clearer understanding of relatedness and its non-realization. The first two are concerned with non-relating between kin and the ensuing emotional burden carried by all involved. The last case study, about relations between Aboriginal camps and non-Indigenous neighbours, offers a glimpse into non-relating without toxicity, and shows why this template does not work in the intra-Aboriginal domain.

- by Yasmine Musharbash
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- Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, Kinship (Anthropology), Personhood

El valor del arte y la música Aborigen en Australia han estado condicionados por políticas gubernamentales y un énfasis tradicionalista hacia prácticas culturales ancestrales como objetos exóticos en el mercado. Este trabajo analiza el valor de uso identitario de la música Aborigen e Isleña del Estrecho de Torres (ATSI) en la radio Aborigen Koori Radio bajo la nomenclatura ‘Black & Deadly’. Bajo estos dos términos la radio emite y produce distintos géneros musicales frente a otras formas mercantilizadas y homogeneizadas de representación de la cultura Aborigen en las industrias musicales y del mass media. Koori Radio es una radio comunitaria que surgió dentro del contexto de movimientos políticos Aborígenes en Sídney en los años 70-80. Desde sus orígenes, uno de sus objetivos ha sido el de dar cobertura al amplio número de músicos y artistas ATSI que encuentran escasa representación en otros medios de comunicación y la industria musical. Dentro de estas industrias existe una tendencia tradicionalista dirigida hacia la mercantilización de prácticas culturales Aborígenes, situando aquéllas no consideradas “tradicionales” fuera del atractivo del mercado. En este contexto, Aborígenes e Isleños asentados en Sídney ven cuestionadas sus prácticas culturales e identidades en base a binomios culturalistas que asemejan tradición con real Aboriginal, permeando esquemas colonialistas racializados que dividen a Aborígenes en Australia en función de color de piel y continuidad de prácticas culturales ancestrales. Ante el creciente interés nacional e internacional por consumir esas formas ancestrales culturales, las políticas gubernamentales han dado énfasis a la mercantilización de esas prácticas. Sin embargo, el trabajo de Koori Radio muestra cómo el valor de uso identitario Aborigen supera los intereses monetarios sistémico-capitalista generando música no-industrial pero con valor identitario y cultural a nivel local y de proyección exterior.

- by Helen Idle
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- Media, Aboriginal Australia

For the past two years, two apparently unconnected groups have been working together to develop cultural resources to help deal with difficult socioeconomic circumstances. The groups, from Ashington, Northumberland, and various Aboriginal communities around Brisbane, Australia, have very different histories, traditions and environments, separated as they are by thousands of miles and years of human history. Members of the Ashington group have visited their Aboriginal counterparts for a month-long exchange, during which they shadowed their hosts, examined their circumstances and engaged in a discussion about advancing collective interests.

- by Matthew T Johnson
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- Poverty, Indigeneity, Aboriginal Australia, Precariousness