Indigenous resources for teachers: Overview

Originally published in 1994 and written from an Indigenous perspective, this highly illustrated and accessible introduction covers a range of topics from history, culture, and the Arts, through to activism and reconciliation. In this fourth edition, readers will learn about some of the significant contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have made, and continue to make, to the Australian nation.

‘Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.'Judges for 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing — behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

A new, fully illustrated book from award-winning author Bruce Pascoe and photographer Vicky Shukuroglou that offers a deeper understanding of Australia and how best to travel and appreciate the heart of the country. Featuring 18 places in detail, from the ingenious fish traps at Brewarrina and the rivers that feed the Great Barrier Reef, to the love stories of Wiluna and the whale story of Margaret River. This immersive book covers history, Dreaming stories, traditional cultural practices, Indigenous tours and the importance of recognition and protection of place. It offers keys to unlock the heart of this loving country for those who want to enrich their understanding of our continent, and for travellers looking for more than a whistle-stop tour of Australia.

Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021 – Nonfiction shortlist

Delving deep into the Australian landscape and the environmental challenges we face, Fire Country is a powerful account from Indigenous land management expert Victor Steffensen on how the revival of cultural burning practices, and improved 'reading' of country, could help to restore our land.

Port Phillip's free settlers often said that they were civilising a wilderness. The truth was that the occupied country already had people, laws, politics, and economies. What did ‘civilisation'mean to the free settlers? And what was the relationship between civilising and violence? The Civilisation of Port Phillip tracks the violent history of the first years of British settlement in the Port Phillip District, now the state of Victoria. It illuminates the underlying free-settler rhetoric that advocated and abetted violence on the frontier. For the first time, we hear the settlers tell us in their own words what the civilisation of Port Phillip really involved. Frontier violence in Port Phillip involved Aboriginal peoples, convicts, free settlers and colonial officials. This history shows how the lives of these different people interconnected in early Port Phillip, in unlikely friendships, dire misunderstandings, and fatal clashes. It paints a vivid picture of the period drawn from archival records, a thorough re-reading of older histories, and new ideas in the scholarship of violence. As well as sheep and firearms, free settlers brought Enlightenment ideas about civilisation to Port Phillip. When these European ideas were coupled with Australian frontier experience, they manifested in an exterminatory attitude towards people deemed undesirable in the coming colony. The Civilisation of Port Phillip shows how free-settler rhetoric, law, and systems of classification reinforced and sought to justify the violence of the frontier.

How does one read across cultural boundaries? The multitude of creative texts, performance practices, and artworks produced by Indigenous writers and artists in contemporary Australia calls upon Anglo-European academic readers, viewers, and critics to respond to this critical question. Contributors address a plethora of creative works by Indigenous writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and painters. The complexity of these creative works transcends categorical boundaries of Western art, aesthetics, and literature, demanding new processes of reading and response. Other contributors address works by non-Indigenous writers and filmmakers all of whom actively engage in questioning their complicity with the past in order to challenge Western modes of knowledge and understanding and to enter into a more self-critical and authentically ethical dialogue with the Other.

Large, bold, and colourful, indigenous Australian art--sometimes known as Aboriginal art has made an indelible impression on the contemporary art scene. But it is controversial, dividing the artists, purveyors, and collectors from those who smell a scam. Whether the artists are victims or victors, there is no denying the impact of their work in the media, on art collectors and the art world at large, and on our global imagination. How did Australian art become the most successful indigenous form in the world? How did its artists escape the ethnographic and souvenir markets to become players in an art market to which they had historically been denied access? Beautifully illustrated, this full stunning account not only offers a comprehensive introduction to this rich artistic tradition, but also makes us question everything we have been taught about contemporary art.

A landmark history of Australia's first successful settler farming area, which was on the Hawkesbury-Nepean River. Award-winning historian Grace Karskens uncovers the everyday lives of ordinary people in the early colony, both Aboriginal and British.

This new collection by Professor Diana Eades addresses the way non-traditional language Aboriginal speakers of English use and speak English. Here she draws together some of her best writing over the past thirty years. Older chapters are brought up to date with contemporary reflections, informed by her many years' experience in research and teaching as well as the practical applications of her scholarly work. The introduction includes an overview about Aboriginal ways of speaking English and the implications for both education and the law, as well as discussing the use of the term 'Aboriginal English'. To understand Aboriginal ways of speaking English leads to be better understanding Aboriginal identity, a better engagement in intercultural communication, and learning about the complexities of how English is used by and with Aboriginal people in the legal process. This is invaluable reading for university undergraduates in a range of disciplines but also postgraduate courses where there's little information available. Educated readers and students with or without a linguistics background will find the book accessible.