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Steeped in story-telling and endlessly curious, Reading the Country: An Introduction to Nomadology (1984) was the product of Paddy Roe, Stephen Muecke and Krim Benterrak, experimenting with what it might be like to think together about country. In the process a senior traditional owner, a cultural theorist and a painter produced a text unlike any other. Reading the Country: 30 Years On is a celebration of one of the great twentieth-century books of intercultural dialogue. Recalling a spirit of intellectual risk and respect, in this collection, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, poets, writers and publishers both acknowledge the past and look, with hope, to future transformations of culture and country.
This book also addresses issues relevant to our Australian Indigenous Studies series here.
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Despite the catch-cry bandied about after the Holocaust, "Never Again", genocides continue to destroy cultures and communities around the globe.
In this collection of essays, Australian scholars discuss the crime of genocide, examining regimes and episodes that stretch across time and geography. Included are discussions on Australia’s own history of genocide against its Indigenous peoples, mass killing and human rights abuses in Indonesia and North Korea, and new insights into some of the core twentieth century genocides, such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.
Scholars grapple with ongoing questions of memory and justice, governmental responsibility, the role of the medical professions, gendered experiences, artistic representation, and best practice in genocide education. Importantly, genocide prevention and the role of the global community is also explored within this collection.
This volume of Genocide Perspectives is dedicated to Professor Colin Tatz AO, an inspirational figure in the field of human rights, and one of the forefathers of genocide studies in Australia.
Kirril Shields is a member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He teaches at The University of Queensland and The University of Southern Queensland. Kirril is an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellow, and a Fellow of the Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilisation, Royal Holloway.
Nikki Marczak is a member of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute’s 2016 Lemkin Scholar. Her research focuses on Armenian women’s experiences and the current Yazidi Genocide by ISIS.
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Between 1860 and 1910, Australian governments sanctioned and then tried to stop the trafficking of South Sea Islanders to Queensland as forced labourers. Over 60,000 Islanders were lured from their villages: tricked, transported, forced to work in the harsh Queensland bush, and then repatriated. Most Islanders returned with little savings to find their communities deeply scarred by the blackbirding trade and the internecine tribal conflict it had provoked.
Georges Baudoux (1865-1949) was brought up amongst the Islanders who experienced the raw and competing greed of French, British and Australian colonialism. Son of a French prison commander stationed in New Caledonia, Baudoux lead a colourful life amongst the Pacific islands and deep in the brousse (bush) before becoming an author and capturing the stories of his travels and, importantly, the experiences of friends and colleagues as life in the islands changed forever. In recognition of his work, he was awarded the esteemed Palmes Académiques, the French medal for literary and academic achievement.
Jean M'Barai is one of his best works. Expertly translated by Dr Karin Speedy and published here in English for the first time, this book exposes the rich, complex and brutal world of a South Sea Islander caught up in the duplicitous trade that came to be known as Blackbirding. It is an exciting, provocative and often astonishing account, drawing on the lived experience of people known to the author.
In her critical introduction, Dr Speedy uncovers not just the author and his intriguing life (a life that spanned the uprising of the Paris communards in 1870 to post-Second World War reconstruction in the Pacific), but also the challenges for scholars working in, and undertaking translations in, the Francophone/Anglophone colonial/postcolonial sphere. Here, where empires, languages and Pacific peoples collide, the nuances of culture and terminology really matter if we are to find meaning amongst the shifting tides of use.
Accompanied by photographs, postcards, cartoons and maps, this is a book to read and re-read, to contemplate ingenuity and inhumanity and the price all cultures pay as they are tested by forces beyond their control. It is a story that still resonates today, as we reflect on the experiences and resilience of the Pacific South Sea Islanders who contributed to modern Australia: the many that left and the descendants of those who stayed.
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History, Power, Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies is a collection of essays on Indigenous themes published between 1996 and 2013 in the journal known first as UTS Review and now as Cultural Studies Review. This journal opened up a space for new kinds of politics, new styles of writing and new modes of interdisciplinary engagement. History, Power, Text highlights the significance of just one of the exciting interdisciplinary spaces, or meeting points, the journal enabled. ‘Indigenous cultural studies’ is our name for the intersection of cultural studies and Indigenous studies showcased here.
This volume republishes key works by academics and writers Katelyn Barney, Jennifer Biddle, Tony Birch, Wendy Brady, Gillian Cowlishaw, Robyn Ferrell, Bronwyn Fredericks, Heather Goodall, Tess Lea, Erin Manning, Richard Martin, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Stephen Muecke, Alison Ravenscroft, Deborah Bird Rose, Lisa Slater, Sonia Smallacombe, Rebe Taylor, Penny van Toorn, Eve Vincent, Irene Watson and Virginia Watson—many of whom have taken this opportunity to write reflections on their work—as well as interviews between Christine Nicholls and painter Kathleen Petyarre, and Anne Brewster and author Kim Scott. The book also features new essays by Birch, Moreton-Robinson and Crystal McKinnon, and a roundtable discussion with former and current journal editors Chris Healy, Stephen Muecke and Katrina Schlunke.
This book also addresses issues relevant to our Australian Indigenous Studies series here.
Book DetailsThis book is an outcome from a five year Australian Research Council funded research project, CAMRA cultural asset mapping in regional Australia project (LP0882238). Over this time four universities, four local governments, and peak regional, state and federal agencies sought to develop knowledge that would enable better informed planning for arts and cultural development in rural and regional communities. Over the course of the project, it became evident that rural-regional local government staff and cultural decision makers need better place-specific data and are keen to learn from the experiences of other local governments to inform their own planning. This book is CAMRA’s response to that need and includes 17 case studies on good practice in (1) Cultural Mapping and Data Collection and (2) Cultural Planning. The case studies have been written with the aim of making ideas and processes transferrable for any regional local authority - with the resource implications made clear – and are ordered using Australian Standard Geographical Classification-Remoteness Areas for local government area.
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The identity of suburbia, so far as it can be ascribed one, is shifting and insecure, a borderline and liminal space. Dominant stereotypes have listed it as ‘on the margins’ beyond edges of cultural sophistication and tradition’ and the areas that make up ‘sprawl’. But in the twenty-first century this static view has to be modified. As is evident from this collection, suburban dwellers themselves have redefined themselves. This collection explores the range and complexity of twenty-first century responses to city suburbs, predominantly in Sydney. It draws on a range of approaches – from history to creative non-fiction and multi-media.
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Genocide isn't past tense and the Nazi and Bosnian eras are not yet closed. The demonising of people as 'unworthy' and expendable is ever-present and the consequences are all too evident in the daily news. These fourteen essays by Australian scholars confront the issues: the need for a measuring scale that encompasses differences and similarities between seemingly divergent cases of the crime; the complicity of bureaucracies, the healing professions and the churches in this 'crime of crimes'; the quest for historical justice for genocide victims generally following the Nuremberg Trials; the fate of children in the Nazi and postwar eras; the 'worthiness' of Armenians, Jews and Romani people in twentieth century Europe; and the imperative to tackle early warning signs of an incipient genocide.
Colin Tatz is a founding director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, visiting fellow in Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University, and honorary visiting fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He teaches and publishes in comparative race politics, youth suicide, migration studies, and sports history.
Book DetailsThis book arises from Parklands, Culture and Communities, a project which looks at how cultural diversity shapes people's understandings and use of the Georges River and green spaces in Sydney's south west. Culturally diverse uses and views have not often been recognised in Australia in park and green space management models, which tend to be based on Anglo-Celtic 'norms' about nature and recreation. This book focusses on the experiences of four local communities - Aboriginal, Vietnamese, Arabic and Anglo Australians - and their relationships with the river, parks and each other.
Book DetailsWaterborne: Vietnamese Australians and Sydney's Georges River parks and green spaces, has been created by talking with the Vietnamese Australians who live around the Georges River and who often visit its parklands. Here they explain their memories of their early homelands, which are given context with information about the histories of rivers and parks in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Australians highlighted talk about their hopes for parks in Australia and their actual experiences in the parks and rivers around their new homes near the Georges River.
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