Language for land management
Activity
The recent development of a new sub-discipline of linguistics known as 'documentary linguistics' has placed a new focus on the recording of knowledge that speakers of endangered languages have across a range of semantic fields, including those in the natural sciences. The recording of Indigenous…
Indigenous Australians in the city: Urbanisation and segregation
Activity
According to the 2006 Census, around three quarters of Indigenous Australians live in regional areas or major cities. This represents a small, but noticeable increase from previous census years, especially in large regional towns. While most measured socioeconomic outcomes are advantageous relative…
'Now we can see our song': When the oral/aural becomes visual. Animation and the cross-generational transfer of knowledge
Activity
The Yanyuwa language of the south west Gulf of Carpentaria is, as with many other Indigenous languages, critically endangered. This seminar describes the development of methods to record important stories about family and country. Beginning with the Yanyuwa atlas to more recent developments using…
Fresh water in the Maningrida region: Ameliorating intercultural contestation over values and property rights
Activity
This seminar will report on recent research about fresh water governance arrangements in the Maningrida region covering some 10,000 square kilometres in tropical Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. The seminar describes the region's water resources and then focuses on three linked broad perspectives…
Chainsaw Dreaming: Indigenous Australians and the forest sector
Activity
Recent figures released by the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) demonstrate that Indigenous engagement with the forest sector tends to be constructed in terms of employment in mainstream timber production forestry. The Commonwealth Government’s National…
On Noel Pearson
Activity
There can be no doubt that Noel Pearson is not only a national leader in policy development, he is also a controversial figure who manages to split the interested public, academia, journalists and politicians into candid supporters or staunch critics. To research such a polarising personality's…
Invisible to the state: Kinship and the Yolngu moral order
Activity
In the Yolngu-matha languages of north-east Arnhem land, the character trait rendered in English as 'self-centered' or 'selfish' is translated by gurrutu-miriw, literally 'kin-lacking' - acting as if one had no kin. Kin-based obligations structure the Yolngu moral order: everyone is classified as…