Category Archives: Aboriginality

THE VOICE Referendum in Australia: ‘Overview’ of the Results

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/svSud/

The brutal truth of the referendum result was that Yes campaign couldn’t cut through to a hesitant electorate

Albanese and Burney stand behind podiums in front of the Australian, Indigenous and Torres Strait flags
Albanese’s position put an absolutely unfair pressure on his Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney to lead the debate.()

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A Voice on THE VOICE ….. Its Double Standards

Peta Credlin in The Sunday Telegraph, 7 October 2023, where the title runs thus Voice’s Yes campaign full of deceit and double standards”

The unauthorised protesters who marched through Sydney this week spewing anti-Semitic bile and screaming “Gas the Jews” are a sign of what can happen when people make everything about race.

After being poisoned for decades with hatred against “the Jews who stole their land”, it’s hardly surprising Palestinians (and their supporters here) don’t want peaceful co-existence with the people of Israel. Instead they want to wipe Israel off the map and drive the Jewish people into the sea, quite literally.

 Anthony Albanese and Ray Martin on stage at the Factory Theatre. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Peta Credlin says Anthony Albanese has not been up front with the Australian public regarding the Voice. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

 

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Adelaide University on Engaging THE VOICE

Stephen Larkin, Pro-VC for Indigenous Engagement, Adelaide University, 9 October 2023

This week, Australians will vote on whether to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First First Peoples of Australia, through a First Nations Voice enshrined in our Constitution.

At the heart of the Voice are its design principles which ensure Indigenous Australians are empowered to provide insights and advice on the decisions that impact them directly. As we consider what a Voice would mean to the Parliament and our nation, it is worth reflecting on how the principles of the Voice apply in the context of our University.

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How Anthropologists Think: Configurations of the Exotic

  Bruce Kapferer, … being the Huxley Lecture: British Museum, 16 December 2011, subsequently published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 9, 886 ..in 2013 … [with the numerals in the publication date references subject to distortion in this version–distortions that will be corrected eventually]

Anthropology has often been criticized for its exoticism and orientalism. They are the paradoxes of a discipline focused on the comparative study of difference and diversity and are at the centre of the discussion here in the larger context of the importance of anthropology in the humanities and social sciences. The emphasis is on the role of the exotic as vital to anthropology’s study of difference and to its overall coherence and significance for the understanding of humanity as a whole.

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Scrutinizing Sri Lanka’s Past in ATITA

A New Investigative Website …. https://atita.org/

 

About Atita: Atita is dedicated to the investigation of historical events in Sri Lanka. Taking its name from the Pali word for “past” (atīta), Atita serves to fill in gaps in English-language literature of Sri Lankan history.

All are welcome to read our work, but those already familiar with Sri Lankan history since 1948 will find it the most enriching. Our primary focus is on events from 1948 to 1972, when Sri Lanka was still called “Ceylon.”

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Debating Australian Aboriginal Lifeways Past

Gillian Cowlishaw, at John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal 15 August 2023 where her title is “Misreading Dark Emu”** …with highlighting emphasis imposed by Thuppahi

 

Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society.

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A Conservative Voice against Today’s Aboriginal ‘Voice’ ”

 Dr David Barton, in THE QUADRANT,  December 2022, with this title “Australia’s Aboriginal Industry: Always Was, Always Will Be About Power”

 

In 1983, as a naïve youth worker and concerned by what I had been reading since the early 1970s about what was happening with Aborigines in Alice Springs, I moved there to see what I could do to help. All told, I spent six years in Central Australia, leaving both depressed and convinced that the situation could never be fixed.

Unfortunately, much of what passes for Aboriginal ‘culture’ today is an invention of the last 50 years.

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A Konkani Baila that Crosses the Indian Seas

This lively presentation was sent to me as a venture of “Batticaloa Burghers singing in three languages”. But digital commentary indicates that the words are (mostly?) Konkani … and raises questions as to where exactly this lively collective was located when they sang. SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=munAPKRQ0nk So, that means we are definitely in Thuppahi territory! Ole! Ole! Hai Hoyi! ………. Thuppahi. 

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Sustaining Cultural Performance Practices across the Indian Ocean

Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya et al

PREFACE to her new book entitled “Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage” (ICH)

Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) continues the conversations on cultural heritage which commenced at a virtual conference held on August 3, 2020, at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. The conference was spurred by the screening of my film – “Indian Ocean Memories and African Migrants” – at the Social Scientists Association, Colombo. The interest shown by UNESCO Global Network Facilitators, Dr Bilinda Nandadeva and Dr Gamini Wijesuriya, who attended the screening, was a catalyst to convening the conference. The Covid-19 pandemic further exposed the significance of heritage and the vulnerability of intangible culture. The book is a call to value ICH and an inspiration for academics, researchers, stakeholders, civil society, cultural practitioners and policymakers to understand the threats to sustaining heritage.

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Frank Rees George: Intrepid Cameleer & Pioneer in Outback Australia

Rob George to Anne Scherer, 25 September 2022

Hi Anne, Michael has passed on your request to me and I am delighted to respond!  George was the camel driver on a geological expedition in 1905/6 led by my great uncle Frank Rees George that led ultimately to Frank’s death in Alice Springs in early 1906.  George wrote a letter to Frank’s mother, Ediva, (known as Nora) and my great grandmother, explaining to her the details of Frank’s incredible journey and his final hours.  It’s a wonderful letter made even more poignant by the fact that it was penned by a man who cannot have had a lot of education.  Please find a copy of the letter attached together with a photo that I think is George with the camels on the expedition.  The letter was originally in a box of family memorabilia that we carted around rural South Australia (my father was a bank manager so we moved frequently) and which he donated to the State Archives in the mid 60’s.  The letter is available at the archives.

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