Michael Roberts
In step with David Sansoni’s email questioning Victor Melder has categorically challenged my speculative suggestion that NOVA PERIS may possibly have had a grandparent who was a Sri Lankan pearler/trader/seaman in the north-western reaches of Australia .
VICTOR: “No, Nova Peris is not of Sri Lankan heritage; she is a prominent Indigenous Australian from the Gija, Yawuru, and Muran/Iw
Filed under Aboriginality, accountability, Australian culture, australian media, cultural transmission, demography, ethnicity, European history, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, migrant experiences, outmigration, Pacific Ocean politics, self-reflexivity, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Dennis McGilvray in ASIAN ETHNOLOGY Vol 73, 1&2, pp 348-49, reviewing Sharika Thiranagama, In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
The title of this book points to the author’s personal connection with the decades-long Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, which ended abruptly in 2009 after much of the manuscript had been written. Her mother was a Tamil academician and human rights activist assassinated by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) in 1986 in Jaffna because of her outspoken condemnation of brutalities committed by the Tamil Tigers as well as by the Sri Lankan armed forces. This volume offers a scholarly analysis of the deep effects of the civil war upon a generation of displaced Sri Lankan Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims, but the author’s family history will be immediately recognized by many readers familiar with Sri Lanka.
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, citizen journalism, communal relations, demography, ethnicity, Fascism, historical interpretation, human rights, IDP camps, insurrections, language policies, life stories, LTTE, migrant experiences, Muslims in Lanka, outmigration, pilgrimages, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, refugees, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, teaching profession, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, war reportage, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes
Sharika Thiranagama …. Abstract of her refereed article in the American Anthropologist, Vol. 116, No. 2 (JUNE 2014), pp. 265-278 (14 pages) …. where the title reads thus: “Making Tigers from Tamils: Long-Distance Nationalism and Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto”
This article discusses the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Toronto and its relationship to the Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Taking the case of the Sri Lankan Tamils, oft-cited as the example par excellence of long-distance nationalism, I argue against naturalizing diasporic ethnonationalism to investigate instead how diasporas are fashioned into specific kinds of actors. I examine tensions that emerged as an earlier elite Tamil movement gave way to the contemporary migration of much larger class-and caste-fractured communities, while a cultural imaginary of migration as a form of mobility persisted. I suggest that concomitant status anxieties have propelled culturalist imaginations of a unified Tamil community in Toronto who, through the actions of LTTE-affiliated organizations, have condensed the Tigers and their imagined homeland, Tamil Eelam, into representing Tamil community life. While most Tamils may not have explicitly espoused LTTE ideology, as a result of the LTTE becoming the backbone of community life, Tamils became complicit with and reaffirmed the LTTE project of defending “Tamilness” militarily in Sri Lanka and culturally in Toronto. I suggest that the self-presentation of diasporic communities should be analyzed within specific histories, contemporary conflicts and fractures, and active mobilizing structures.
Rajini Thiranagama Continue reading
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The Thuppahi SITE can pat itself on its bum for featuring the athletic prowess of Tania Murphy nee Van Heer and her son Aidan Murphy over the decades — achievements on the athletic tracks as well as academic fields and moving beyond to a small welfare enterprise in Sri Lanka.
Australia’s gold medal winning team, (left-right) Tania Van Heer, Catherine Freeman, Sharon Cripps and N. Peris-Kneebone, wave to the crowd as they go on a lap of honour (Photo by Tony Marshall/EMPICS via Getty Images)
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Item in THE ECONOMIST, 6 Sep 2025, entitled “The Sri Lankan government’s honeymoon is nearly over” … & sent to me by Jayantha Somasundaram of Canberra; while the highlights are my imposition
Initial popularity: OPENED IN AUGUST with the stated ambition of making Sri Lanka “India’s Macau”, the City of Dreams development in downtown Colombo houses a casino, luxury hotels, high-end shops and a champagne-and-cocktail bar “floating amid the clouds”. The gleaming but for now largely deserted halls of the vast complex seem a symbol of renewal: a far cry from the mass civil unrest of just three years ago and the accompanying economic collapse—rampant inflation, fuel shortages, mass poverty and foreign-debt default.
Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, debt restructuring, democratic measures, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, growth pole, historical interpretation, human rights, IMF, island economy, JVP, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, migrant experiences, outmigration, performance, plural society, power politics, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, tourism, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Oivund Fugleruud in ???? where the the title runs thus: ‘ “Working for Sisters” — Tamil Life on the 71st Parallel’
The article discusses the phenomenon of migration of Sri Lankan Tamils to Finnmark, the northemmost part of Nonvay. While most other groups of immigrants in Nonvay tend to settle in the larger Cities, this particular group has a tradition of settlement in the fishing villages in Finnmark, facing the Barents Sem.
[t is argued fhat there is a continuity in this pattem from the early migration workers in the 1970s ro present•day asylum-seekers. The “imicrohistory” of Tamil migration to one particular village is presented and discussed. It shows an overlap from one type of migration to another.
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, demography, economic processes, education, Eelam, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, life stories, LTTE, migrant experiences, outmigration, politIcal discourse, prabhakaran, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, transport and communications, travelogue, war reportage, working class conditions, world events & processes
Avishka Mario Senewiratne in The Island, 24 August 2025, where the title is “A Mirror to the Sea: Revisiting Sri Lanka’s Forgotten Maritime Legacy” …. Review of “Sri Lanka, Serendib & the Silk Road of the Sea” by Dr. Sanjiva Wijesinha …. with the highlighting here being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi
It is not often that a slim volume quietly arrives on the literary shore, only to awaken something dormant and forgotten within the national consciousness. Sri Lanka, Serendib & the Silk Road of the Sea, the latest work by Dr. Sanjiva Wijesinha, is just such a book—a timely voyage through history’s less-traversed sea lanes, executed with scholarly rigour, personal charm, and a deep-rooted love for this resplendent isle.
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Aanya Wipulasena in Ceylon Today, August 2025
The decision to work overseas wasn’t easy. Burdened by debt, 25-year-old Nelum Niroshani, a mother of one from Anuradhapura, felt she had no choice. Her plan was simple: Take a job as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia, earn enough to support her family, repay her loans and then return home to her seven-year-old child. But her time in the Middle East quickly turned into a nightmare.
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Tomos Morgan, BBC News, 19 August 2025, where the title runs thus: “Faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia recreated by AI” ++
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped researchers generate what they believe could have been the faces of Welsh convicts sent to Australia in the 19th century. The lives of 60 criminals deported from Anglesey for crimes as small as stealing a handkerchief have been traced by a team of volunteers and researchers.
They have used detailed prisoner records from the time, historical sketches and, where possible, photos of the prisoners’ modern day descendants to create a profile of what they may have looked like.
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