Dark Emu

Directed by Allan Clarke

Thought provoking, revelatory and inspiring – this feature length documentary from Blackfella Films tells the story of Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 best-selling book, Dark Emu, which challenged thinking around Australian history.

It’s been said that ‘Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the ‘hunter-gatherer’ tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession.’

Critics at the time praised the book, Marcia Langton for the Australian wrote “This is the most important book on Australia and should be read by every Australian.”

Watch the documentary here.

September 3, 2025

Australia: Tainted Blood—Scientific Racism, Eugenics and Sanctimonious Treatments of Aboriginal Australians: 1869–2008

By Greg Blyton

The Eugenics movement that emerged in England in the latter half of the nineteenth century was a continuance of European scientific racism sustained by a flotilla of political and academic ignorance that defined human credibility by hereditary traits, including colour and race. The movement may be defined as a European intellectual promotion to scientifically improve western societies through state systems that regulated human reproduction. In Australia, the foundations of the eugenics movement were heavily influenced by two former Cambridge University students, English scientists, Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) and Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882). It was a case of intellectual imperialism with colonial policymakers in Australia willingly adopting eugenics ideologies from their two English tutors. However, it would be unfair to blame a single man for the sanctimonious ways his concepts and theories were applied in policy and practice in relation to the treatment of Aboriginal Australians by Australian federal and state governments.

Read the full chapter here.

September 3, 2025

A Humanist View: A Speech

By Toni Morrison

Excerpt from [35:46]

“It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious
function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over
again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.
Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so
you dredge that up.
None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Read the full transcript here, listen to the full audio here.

November 18, 2024

MAP: Museum of Art & Photography

Located in Bangalore, India.

MAP is home to a growing collection of paintings, sculptures, textiles, photographs, popular culture, and more dating from the 10th century to the present day. The museum spans six storeys and includes art galleries, digital experience centres, and a dedicated research and conservation lab. MAP is a melting pot of ideas, stories and cultural exchange where we hope to encourage humanity, empathy, and a deeper understanding of the world we live in, through art.

As South India’s first major private art museum, MAP wants to help recognise the transformative power of the arts! It brims with ideas and conversations that enable cultural exchanges between our several communities. MAP inspires people to interact with art in ways that encourage humanity, empathy, and a deeper understanding of the world in which we live.

With a lot of materials published and accessible online, you can engage with the art through online exhibitions from wherever you are.

Access the museum website here.

November 1, 2024

Reproductive injustice in mid-20th century Britain and America

By Ariel Hart and Michael Lambert

Photo: Francisco Venâncio

This seminar examined the values of public health work targeting maternal and child welfare in the 20th century. Hart interrogated the social, political, and radical implications of new mid-century US public health surveillance programmes, looking at Black pregancy-related mortality and public health surveillance. Lambert considered the role of UK Medical Officers of Health in perpetrating reproductive injustice, highlighting the role of Medical Officers of Health in mid 20th century Britain.

Marked Women: The Cultural Politics of Cervical Cancer in Venezuela

By Rebecca G. Martinez

Cervical cancer is the third leading cause of death among women in Venezuela, with poor and working-class women bearing the brunt of it. Doctors and public health officials regard promiscuity and poor hygiene—coded indicators for low class, low culture, and bad morals—as risk factors for the disease.

Drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted in two oncology hospitals in Caracas, Marked Women is an ethnography of women’s experiences with cervical cancer, the doctors and nurses who treat them, and the public health officials and administrators who set up intervention programs to combat the disease. Rebecca G. Martínez contextualizes patient-doctor interactions within a historical arc of Venezuelan nationalism, modernity, neoliberalism, and Chavismo to understand the scientific, social, and political discourses surrounding the disease. The women, marked as deviant for their sexual transgressions, are not only characterized as engaging in unhygienic, uncultured, and promiscuous behaviors, but also become embodiments of these very behaviors. Ultimately, Marked Women explores how epidemiological risk is a socially, culturally, and historically embedded process—and how this enables cervical cancer to stigmatize women as socially marginal, burdens on society, and threats to the “health” of the modern nation.

Tequiologies: Indigenous Solutions Against Climate Catastrophe

Berkeley Center for New Media: History and Theory of New Media Lecture Series

with Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil
Linguist, writer, translator, language rights activist, and researcher ayuujk (mixe)
Introduced and moderated by Natalia Brizuela and Alex Saum-Pascual
Presented in partnership with the Center for Latin American Studies. Co-sponsored by Alianza UCMX, Spanish & Portuguese, the Arts Research Center, and The American Indian Graduate Program.

It is a myth of the West’s choosing: perpetual economic growth, advancing through a digestive system of sorts, one that uses technology as one of its core components. In its churn, ecosystems became goods; people, mere consumers. The myth turned the world into a place increasingly inhospitable to human life. An alternative, offered by Abya Yala, lies in separating economic development and the development of new technologies from consumerism. This would place technological creation and ingenuity once again at the service of the common good, not of the market. Technology as tequio; technological creation and innovation as a common good.

Anti-racism and health: levels of health intervention

Camara Jones

In this talk, the first in a series of three public lectures on Anti-Racism and Health to be offered by Professor Camara Jones during the year, making the case that “racial” health disparities cannot be eliminated until racism is named and addressed.
Professor Camara Jones is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London

June 13, 2023