Indigenous languages are under attack yet again. The federal budget, released on May 13, includes a substantial reduction of A$9.5 million over four years for the Indigenous Languages Support Programme…
An illness sits on the nation’s psychological and social landscape.
AAP Image/Karen Michelmore
on the shore we wait for the tide to turn in nights light it recedes and the fish are gone In Australia there are many different views about the historical and current role of Aboriginal people in the…
This unconventional review of an exhibition, Jinjilngali, Kurlukuku Minpiya, Yirdingali, now on show at the Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne, also constitutes a tribute to three Warlpiri women artists…
Carly Sheppard is performing in Melbourne as part of Next Wave.
Gregory Lorenzutti
Carly Sheppard’s latest work, White Face playing as part of Melbourne’s Next Wave festival this week, is a contemporary performance addressing personal experiences as a fair-skinned Aboriginal person based…
Australian Indigenous performance traditions are a unique expression of what it is to be human.
Tali Caspi
Australian Indigenous performance traditions, among the oldest in the world, are also among the most endangered. According to a Statement on Indigenous Australian Music and Dance endorsed in 2011 by the…
A rich inventory of monstrous figures exists throughout Aboriginal Australia. The specific form that their wickedness takes depends to a considerable extent on their location. In the Australian Central…
Aboriginal Mimi ‘trickster’ spirits are genderless.
Making Camp at 'Forest, Cunningham's Gap, 1856', 2009, pigmented inks on 310gsm Huhnemuble German Etching Paper, edition of 5, 29.5 x 42 cm (paper size). Courtesy of the artist, Troy-Anthony Baylis
Since European contact Aboriginal people, such as myself, have been constructed as “straight”. This cultural default has contributed to the difficulty of proving so-called “real accounts” of sexual and…
Desert Designs showcase their unique aesthetic in Sydney this week.
Ryan Kitching
It’s not difficult to find reference to Indigenous ethnographic designs in contemporary Australia. Motifs from Adelaide’s Balarinji Design Studios coat Qantas’ Boeing fleet and elders wore Victorian possum…
Recently on The Conversation, military historian John Blaxand put forward a design proposal for a new Australian flag. This was in light of a call by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key for a “post-colonial…
The resources housed in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages include educational materials for children.
Fiona Morrison/Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages
Attitudes and policies relating to Australian Indigenous languages are in a state of flux. The Northern Territory government is reportedly again aiming to banish Aboriginal languages from the classroom…
Location, location, location. The real estate agents’ hollow, hackneyed mantra takes on real purchase when applied to the distribution of Dreamings and Dreaming narratives across this continent and its…
Shorty Jangala Robertson, 2011, Warlpiri, ‘Ngapa Jukurrpa’ (Water Dreaming) – Pirlinyanu, 76 x 76 cm.
Copyright the artist; Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu.
To imagine what “Australia” was like B.C. (“Before Cook”, or before colonisation), one needs to envision the entire landmass of this island/continent and most of its surrounding islands and waters as crisscrossed…
** **We’re all, it seems, familiar with the terms “Dreamtime” and “The Dreaming” in relation to Aboriginal Australian culture, but – as I noted in the first part of this series – such terms are grossly…
Black Diggers tells the stories of young Indigenous soldiers who fought in the first world war. How did their stories get forgotten?
Jamie Williams/Sydney Festival
In August 2012, I was invited by the Sydney Festival to work with Wesley Enoch, Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, to assist in developing Black Diggers, currently playing as part of the…
Rosie Tasman Napurrurla, Warlpiri 2002, Ngurlu Jukurrpa (‘Grass Seed; Bush Grain Dreaming’), line etching on Hahnemuhle paper.
Warnayaka Art Centre, Lajamanu, and Aboriginal Art Prints Network, Sydney
In 2002, Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi, formerly a Warlpiri teacher at the Lajamanu School in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory, where I worked for many years first as a linguist and then as school…
Many remote communities have been cut off from the internet, missing out on services and skills others take for granted.
yaruman5/flickr
Most remote Australian Indigenous communities have little or no access to digital technology. Last year, three internet-enabled terminals were installed as a trial in the remote communities of Burraluba…
Two golden records, on their way out of our solar system, carry Australian Aboriginal music – but what’s the real story behind the recording?
x-ray delta one
Earlier this year, NASA spacecraft Voyager 1 left our solar system after a 35-year journey, carrying with it a golden record containing sounds, images and music from Earth. Its sister craft, Voyager 2…
Torres Strait Islanders use constellations, such as the shark ‘Baidam’ pictured here, for practical purposes.
Brian Robinson
Technology has, without doubt, expanded our understanding of space. The Voyager 1 space probe is on the brink of leaving our solar system. Massive telescopes have discovered blasts of fast radio bursts…
If funding for Aboriginal artists and organisations is cut, performers like The Black Arm Band will not receive adequate support.
IFACCA
Like many others, I was pleasantly surprised by the government’s announcement last month of A$54 million in funding for Indigenous languages as part of the national cultural policy – Creative Australia…
Dugongs rely on seagrass for food - damage to grass beds is a bigger threat to the species than Indigenous hunting.
sandwichgirl/Flickr
Jon Altman, Australian National University and Seán Kerins, Australian National University
In the 1990s some international animal rights and environment organisations instigated a concerted campaign to stop the hunting of pilot whales by Faroese people living in the northeast Atlantic. The thousand-year-old…