Aboriginal Material Culture in Australian Museums

Porijekla aboridžinskih zbirki u Australiji i izvan nje nedavno je postalo predmetom brojnih studija. Kolonijalni muzeji su se počeli usko povezivati s kolonijalnim praksama otuđivanja i prisvajanja, a muzejske interpretacije povijesti autohtonih naroda pomno se preispituju. U ovom članku istražuje se tradicija sakupljanja, klasificiranja, dokumentiranja, pohranjivanja, izlaganja i žaštite aboridžinske materijalne kulture u australskim muzejima i drugim ustanovama. Ta tradicija, koja se razvila iz kolonijalnih diskursa devetnaestog stoljeća, predstavlja kontinuiran izazov i za kustose i za aboridžinske zajednice. Kao mjesta susreta europskih i autohtonih kultura, muzeji ostaju važna uporišta u povijesti autohtonih naroda i kulturnog institucionalizma.The origin of Aboriginal collections in Australia and overseas hes recently become the subject of numerous stusies. Colonial museums have become intricatly linked to the colonial practices of disposession and appropriation, and museum interpretations od indigenous peoples\u27 history have been brought under scrutiny. This paper explores the tradition of collecting, classifying, documenting, storing, displaying and protecting. Aboriginal material culture in Australian museums and other institutions. This tradition, developed from the nineteenth century colonial discourse, represents onhoing challenges for curators and Aboriginal communities alike. As meeting places of European and indigenous cultures, museums remain important landmarks in the history of indigenous peoples and cultural institionalism

‘Little Gunshots, but with the blaze of lightning’: Xavier Herbert, Visuality and Human Rights

Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century

Cultural matter in the development of an interactive multimedia self-paced educational health program for aboriginal health workers

Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander health workers are key providers of primary health services to Aboriginal communities especially in remote and rural areas. They are often overloaded with competing demands. There has been limited attention given to the maintenance and ongoing enhancement of their skills and knowledge following the completion of formal training. A culturally appropriated interactive multimedia self-paced health program as a mechanism to improve the accessibility and the use of scientific data and information for health purposes is proposed as a basic method for better supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health care workers in their practice locations. This paper explores different approaches for the development of a culturally appropriate interactive multimedia educational health program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander health workers and it also explore cultural matters concerning program development in the light of existing literature

What is Same but Different and why does it matter?

A detailed outline of the Same but Different Desert Art forums held in Alice Springs in 2012 and 2013, and an introduction to the essays, interviews, films and images that make up the 'Same but Different' section of this issue of CSR

Songlines and Navigation in Wardaman and other Australian Aboriginal Cultures

We discuss the songlines and navigation of the Wardaman people, and place them in context by comparing them with corresponding practices in other Australian Aboriginal language groups, using previously unpublished information and also information drawn from the literature. Songlines are effectively oral maps of the landscape, enabling the transmission of oral navigational skills in cultures that do not have a written language. In many cases, songlines on the earth are mirrored by songlines in the sky, enabling the sky to be used as a navigational tool, both by using it as a compass, and by using it as a mnemonicComment: accepted by JAH

Rural Autochthony? The Rejection of an Aboriginal Placename in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

This article addresses the question of why the name ‘Mullawallah’, advanced by local Wada wurrung for a new suburb in the Ballarat area, was contested and rejected by residents. It argues that the intersection between corporate profit, government policy and meaning-based issues of belonging should be highlighted for a deeper understanding of practices around place naming. The contextual conditions regarding the democratisation of place-naming policy, overwhelming power of commercial developers to ‘name Australia’ with marketable high status names and a ‘carpentered’ pastoral environment ‘emptied’ of the Indigenous population, created an environment conducive for the contests over naming. The Indigenous people appeared to have been wiped from the landscape and the worldview of settler locals. Concepts of ‘locals’ and ‘rural autochthony’ prove useful for understanding the ambiguities of belonging and placename attachment in Australia. The article argues that cultural politics of naming remains a contested social practice

Oral Traditions Under Threat: The Australian Aboriginal Experience

Many writers in Australia have written about the economic and social effects of the written tradition upon the various oral traditions of Australia, but few have addressed the inappropriateness of replacing the oral tradition with a written one. It is wrong to assume that the written word is a means of cultural preservation. What, in fact, is occurring is that the oral tradition in Australia is being supplanted by the written tradition