No abstract

This article explores the role of archives in the construction of Australian Indigeneity, past, present and future, with reference to the colonial and postcolonial culture of the archive in Australia, the possibilities for refiguring the archive present in post-colonial thinking, Indigenous ways of knowing, and digital technologies, and the role of reconciling research in that process. It presents the main findings of an Australian Research Council-funded project, Trust and Technology: Building Archival Systems for Indigenous Oral Memory, and draws on Ph.D. research undertaken by Shannon Faulkhead relating to the role that written and oral records play as sources of the narratives of the Koorie people of Victoria in south-east Australia. In conclusion, the article proposes new legal, policy and professional approaches that support Indigenous frameworks of knowledge, memory and evidence. It also discusses the implications of the findings of the Trust and Technology project for archival theory, practice and education.

Expanded carrier screening (ECS) for recessive monogenic diseases requires prior knowledge of genomic variation, including DNA variants that cause disease. The composition of pathogenic variants differs greatly among human populations, but historically, research about monogenic diseases has focused mainly on people with European ancestry. By comparison, less is known about pathogenic DNA variants in people from other parts of the world. Consequently, inclusion of currently underrepresented Indigenous and other minority population groups in genomic research is essential to enable equitable outcomes in ECS and other areas of genomic medicine. Here, we discuss this issue in relation to the implementation of ECS in Australia, which is currently being evaluated as part of the national Government's Genomics Health Futures Mission. We argue that significant effort is required to build an evidence base and genomic reference data so that ECS can bring significant clinical benefit for many Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians. These efforts are essential steps to achieving the Australian Government's objectives and its commitment ''to leveraging the benefits of genomics in the health system for all Australians.'' They require culturally safe, community-led research and community involvement embedded within national health and medical genomics programs to ensure that new knowledge is integrated into medicine and health services in ways that address the specific and articulated cultural and health needs of Indigenous people. Until this occurs, people who do not have European ancestry are at risk of being, in relative terms, further disadvantaged.

No abstract

The Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC)-funded project ‘Exploring Problem-Based Learning Pedagogy as Transformative Education in Indigenous Australian Studies’ raised a number of issues that resonated with concerns we have had as professionals engaged in teaching and researching Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education. In this discursive paper we air some of the concerns we share which emerge from our collective research and teaching interests. We argue that Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education are too frequently collapsed or used interchangeably, and while there is tension between these areas rather than see as a problem we chose to interrogate this and argue for the potential for fruitful intellectual collaboration. This article problematises pedagogy and finds that sustained effort needs to be made to understand how pedagogical approaches to Australian Indigenous studies and Indigenous education are guiding and shaping each cognate area.

Despite the vast research on landscape and landscape archaeology conducted over the past decade little attention has been given to the role of memory and imagination in people's engagement with their ancestral homelands, "country" or other meaningful landscape. An analysis of a range of case studies, both historical and contemporary reveal that people often feel great attachment to and desire to engage with lands that they may have never visited or have little empirical evidence for attachment. Further complicating this are those examples where a "heritage" landscape based on ancient homelands is constructed on the diasporic lands of their daily lives. Understanding these imaginary landscapes offers the opportunity to take a fresh look at the relationship between identity and landscape.

This paper serves as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the theme of archaeology, memory and oral history. Recent approaches to oral history and memory destabilise existing grand narratives and confront some of the epistemological assumptions underpinning scientific archaeology. Here we discuss these approaches to memory and explore their impact on historical archaeology, including the challenges that forms of oral and social memory present to a field traditionally defined by the relationship between material culture and text. We then review a number of themes addressed by the articles in this volume.Keywords: memory, oral history, belonging, narrative, place, heritage Archaeology has a lengthy tradition of using oral history and as a form of historical enquiry it has long contributed to the production of public memory. Yet, recent approaches to oral and social memory undermine existing master narratives and confront some of the epistemological assumptions underpinning scientific archaeology. The active selection and construction of memory in the present has been emphasised, along with memory's capacity to disturb dominant ways of understanding the past. In archaeology these developments have been prominent in post-colonial contexts and Indigenous archaeology. Yet there are also parallel trends in Europe, where oral history and social memory are seen as a means to access vernacular culture and subaltern understandings of the past.It was against this intellectual background that we decided to organize a theme titled Memory, Archaeology, and Oral Traditions at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress in Dublin in July 2008. Under this theme, as in this volume, we included oral history in the traditional sense of oral narratives based on first-hand experience, along with broader forms of transgenerational oral tradition, folklore, and social memory. These different forms of oral memory are frequently the focus of distinct bodies of research and publication. Nevertheless, these different kinds of oral memory intersect with one another in complex ways and all are socially and materially mediated to a greater or lesser degree. Their juxtaposition thus raises interesting and productive avenues of enquiry.We asked participants to consider the following questions, which we consider important in the future development of archaeological research on memory. How should we conceive of oral tradition and social memory? In recognizing their significance, how do we avoid objectifying and romanticizing them? Does a dichotomy between memory and history still prevail and if so what are its effects on our understandings of the past? How do we deal with the intersection of written and oral history? To what extent is social memory disparate, located and fragmented and how do authoritative narratives emerge and persist? What roles do archaeological remains play in the production of social memory and what of other 'memory props', such as, texts, images, folktales, myt...

Amongst the most striking and the most handsome of ancient Australian relics are the Bradshaw paintings of the Kimberley, in the remote northwest of the continent, uncertainly dated but seemingly most ancient. According to one published view, the Bradshaws are not so much ‘early Aboriginal’ as ‘pre-Aboriginal’. Issue is taken with that notion, in light of European attitudes to Aboriginal accomplishment over the last two centuries.