Tag: Identity

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.

Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India

By Meenakshi Thapan

This book explores the development of a sociology of embodiment in the context of women’s lives in contemporary, urban India. Through a critical analysis of gender and class, the author unravels the complexities that are intrinsic to the multi-layered and fluid construction of a woman’s identity in relation to embodiment.

Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India is the first book that unfolds an understanding of women’s experience of embodiment by a careful analysis of the facts gathered from an Indian metropolis. The author brings out numerous voices representing multiple subjectivities through interviews of working class slum women, professional upper class women, adolescent young women in secondary schools and in a slum, and the visual and textual representation of women in a women’s magazine in English.

Read the book here.

Ek Jagah Apni – A Place of Our Own

Ek Jagah Apni (‘A Place of Our Own’) is a film set in the city of Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh, India) and offers a glimpse into the lives of the transgender community in the city. Part of the Museum of Art and Photography’s exhibition ‘Visible/Invisible: Representation of Women in Art through the MAP Collection’, the movie follows the journey of two trans women in their quest for an apartment as well as for a space in society.

Presenting a slice of reality and shot in a realistic style, it is a story of an artistic expression of people who are the subjects of the film as well as the tellers of their own story as actors, co-writers, and the cast and crew that comprise the filmmaking process.

Read more and explore the museum’s website here.

The migrant’s time

By Ranajit Guha

Rethinking the concepts of migration and diaspora, Ranajit Guha focuses on the loss of one’s past and identity resulting from the temporal and spatial distortions imposed by migration. In addition to discussing the migrant’s status at the initial departure, Guha reflects on the migrant’s experience within the host community in the intensity of the immediate present. Suddenly ruptured from the continuity of their own roots, disoriented and with no insights in an incomprehensible present that has no before nor after, migrants are expected to struggle to build themselves a future and a new identity.

Read more here.

Why Indigenous People Want You to Stop Labeling Them as Latino

By Odilia Romero

In this fascinating and necessary Talk, Odilia Romero shares why the Latino narrative is oppressive for Indigenous communities. Through her nonprofit CIELO, listen to how Odilia fights for language rights and provides interpretation services to Indigenous communities across the United States.


As a fierce Zapotec leader, Odilia Romero is the co-founder of Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), advocating for Indigenous migrant rights in Los Angeles & throughout California. She is also an independent interpreter of Zapotec, Spanish, and English for Indigenous communities & her organizing knowledge & experience are held in high regard, with multiple academic publications, awards, & lectures in universities across the United States, including John Hopkins, USC, and UCLA. Ms. Romero’s work has also been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Vogue and Democracy Now. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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