Submitted by Paul Daley on
There’s a pressing need to create a national keeping place for the cultural property of Indigenous people – a kind of reverse museum to repatriate rather than appropriate
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Activists say symbols of resistance taken when Captain Cook’s men first encountered Indigenous people in 1770 must come home, and not just on loan
Almost 250 years ago, Captain James Cook and his men shot Rodney Kelly’s ancestor, the Gweagal warrior Cooman, stole his shield and spears, and took them back to England in a presciently violent opening act of Australian east coast Aboriginal and European contact.
Now Kelly is heading on a quest to the British Museum in London to reclaim the precious shield and spears on behalf of his Gweagal people.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The ABC has missed an opportunity to explore the many complex arguments from within Indigenous Australia itself
• Recognition: Yes or No review: Bolt’s barney with Burney an exercise in cheap spectacle
The ABC television documentary Recognition: Yes or No is an opportunity lost.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
It’s almost time to go now from this cocoon that’s been ours for almost two decades: an archive of elation and celebration, of sorrow and disappointment
My father was never much given to sentiment, nostalgia, spiritualism or superstition.
He was practical and prosaic in belief and taste. In his last years he continued to attend church mainly because he had always done so and, I suspect, to have done otherwise would’ve necessitated an explanation to my excessively churchy mother.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
In appointing Glenn Iseger-Pilkington, the once conservative state museum has challenged how institutions should think about their collections
The South Australian Museum’s Indigenous Australian collection of 28,000 artefacts stands as one of the world’s most significant accumulations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural and historical material.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
After a dramatic decline post-1788 invasion, Tuesday’s census will mark a significant resurgence in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population
There was a time, far more recently than many Australians would care to admit, that this country’s policymakers and anthropologists believed they were witnessing the vanishment of the continent’s Indigenous people.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
What we witnessed this week is part of a continuum that began with invasion and manifests today in profound disadvantage
Many Australians are aghast at the confronting images of the abuse and torture of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory that finally hit critical media and political mass this week.
It was mostly politicians (and not all of them non-Indigenous) who expressed “shock” that such abuse of young Aboriginal people could happen in a supposedly civilised place like Australia.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
Amid the overheated political rhetoric about national security, Australia’s intelligence agencies would be wise to heed the lessons from the Croatian Six miscarriage of justice
Senator-elect Pauline Hanson makes an audacious claim that we are in the midst of a terrorist threat manifesting in the type of politically motivated violence Australia has not previously experienced.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The 100th anniversary of the darkest day in Australia’s military history gives us pause to ponder the utter pointlessness of what happened, as well as what, if anything, we’ve learned from it
French Flanders in summertime, especially around the small village of Fromelles, always seems so improbably beautiful when you consider the vast horror that unfolded there a century ago.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The theme of Naidoc week is songlines. For the uninitiated – and that is most non-Indigenous Australians – songlines challenge the way we think about history
How many non-Indigenous Australians know what a songline is?
Given this country’s pervasive general ignorance regarding Indigenous Australia, you’d have to bet not too many – despite the fact that songlines criss-cross not only the remotest parts of the continent as well as our seas, but also the cities and suburbs.