Tag: aboriginal

A History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne

By Dhoombak Goobgoowana

Dhoombak Goobgoowana can be translated as ‘truth telling’ in the Woi Wurrung language of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people on whose unceded lands several University of Melbourne campuses are located.

Volume 1: Truth

This book, the first of two volumes, is an attempt to acknowledge and publicly address the long, complex and troubled relationship between the Indigenous people of what we now call the continent of Australia and the University of Melbourne.

It is a book about race and how it has been constructed by academics in the University. It is also about power and how academics have wielded it and justified its use against Indigenous populations, and about knowledge, especially the Indigenous knowledge that silently contributed to many early research projects and collection endeavours.

Although many things have changed, the stain of the past remains. But the University no longer wishes to look away.

Read Volume 1 of the book here.

Volume 2: Voice

Volume 2 reveals the pivotal role played by Indigenous people in the history of the University of Melbourne.

It traces the University’s role in ignoring and quietening Indigenous peoples’ voices, and the reverberations created by those voices that broke through. It shows how collections of art and cultural objects have transitioned from texts for western interpretation to expressions of self-identity. It reveals the Indigenous pioneers who gained admission to the University as students more than a century after it was established, and then later as staff, and documents their triumphs and struggles.

This second volume, following the revelations of Dhoombak Goobgoowana Volume I: Truth, shows how Indigenous communities challenged and disrupted the University, how they contributed to its research endeavours and exhorted it to introduce Indigenous knowledge into the academic sphere.

Imperfect, overdue and then often painfully slow, but marked by stories of courage and hope—this is what a history of inclusion looks like.

Read Volume 2 of the book here.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that Dhoombak Goobgoowana contains images and names of people who have died. Readers are also advised that they may be disturbed by the content of this book, which includes distressing images and descriptions, and derogatory terms for Indigenous people used in their historical context.

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.

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.

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