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Category Archives: Politics
I Turn the Podium Over to Paul Keating
It was twenty years ago today….in Redfern Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here today at the launch of Australia’s celebration of the 1993 International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. It will be a year of … Continue reading
Save Art in TAFE
One of the most striking moments in recent Aboriginal art history was the emergence of the Lockhart River Gang in the mid-90s. Young people, not elders, pioneered a new style of art from remote Queensland that generated excitement and huge … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Politics
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Cui Bono?
The shadow of war is falling across Northern Australia once again. I think we all knew that Campbell Newman was going to be trouble, in many ways. The election of the CLP to power in the Territory under the leadership … Continue reading
Identity, Economy, and Controversy
Last July, in the Dymocks off Alice Springs’ Todd Mall, I was excited to discover a new title by Diane Austin-Broos, A Different Equality: the politics of debate about remote Aboriginal Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2011). I had greatly enjoyed … Continue reading
Revisiting Palm Island
It’s sometimes best not to (pre)judge a book by its title. I confess that when I first heard about the publication of Joanne Watson’s Palm Island: through a long lens (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2010), my first reaction was to wonder … Continue reading
The Dilemmas of Black Politics
It has already been two years since Sarah Maddison published Black Politics: inside the complexity of Aboriginal political culture (Allen & Unwin, 2009), time enough for her to have published a second study (Beyond White Guilt, 2011) that examines the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Politics
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Bad Behavior
In the course of my years I have periodically set myself to difficult reading assignments. At the age of seventeen, I determined to read Ulysses. Twenty years later, after numerous aborted attempts, I completed all seven volumes of Proust, followed … Continue reading
Season of the Witch
“When I look over my shoulder, what do you think I see?” asked Donovan. “Some other cat looking over his shoulder at me.” If not the season of the witch, it is the season of the Intervention, as last week’s … Continue reading
Eating Our Shadows
Four years ago this week, in 2007, I was touring through community based art centres in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, buoyed by the recent outpourings of support for the art centres that had emerged from the Senate Inquiry … Continue reading
Side by Side, Yolngu and Balanda
In his article, “Mutual Conversion?: The Methodist Church and the Yolngu,with particular reference to Yirrkala” (Humanities Research, vol. XII, no. 1, 2005, pp. 41-53), Howard Morphy essays a preliminary history of the Methodist Overseas Mission in Arnhem Land. Admitting that … Continue reading
Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye 