Unit Guide

General Information

Unit convenor and teaching staff	Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit Convenor Eve Vincent eve.vincent@mq.edu.au Contact via eve.vincent@mq.edu.au
Credit points	Credit points 3
Prerequisites	Prerequisites 39cp or admission to GDipArts
Corequisites	Corequisites
Co-badged status	Co-badged status
Unit description	Unit description This unit introduces and explores the anthropology of contemporary Indigenous Australia. Underlying the rationale of the lecture program is the view that the contemporary situation of both 'remote' Aboriginal people and urban and suburban communities and kin groups cannot be understood without knowledge of pre-colonial and early colonial cultural, economic and social forms. The unit thus explores current issues against the background of the deep historical perspective of human presence in Australia. A second underlying theme of the unit is that neither Indigenous nor settler Australian societies can be understood without a recognition of their profound historical inter-relation. Lectures thus explore how forms of Australian settlement and governmental practice have transformed Aboriginal Australia in some unexpected ways, and also how Aboriginal perspectives and forms of active social engagement continue to shape broader Australian cultural concerns. Specific topics to be covered include: life perspectives and practices of hunters and gatherers; the land-people connection (cosmology, totemism and territorial organisation); first contacts and the impact of European settlement; urban Indigenous communities and struggles over public space; and painting, music, and historically dynamic Indigenous expressive practices.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

Understand the history of the human presence in Australia
Gain insight into the complexity of Indigenous cosmologies, relations to land, and kinship systems
Develop a critical appreciation of debates over culture, ‘authenticity’, the meaning of Indigenous identity and how anthropologists engage with these
Consider the role of the state and ‘state effects’ in shaping, delimiting and producing Indigenous ways of being
Develop an understanding of the Settler Colonial experience and the ways in which Indigenous and Settler Australian worlds and identities are mutually constituted
Build skills in using anthropological knowledge to aid understanding of contemporary issues
Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion
Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Assessment Tasks

Name	Weighting	Due
Tutorial Participation	15%	Weekly
Tutorial Presentation	10%	Weeks allocated in Week 2
Research Essay	40%	Friday May 23
Take Home Exam	35%	Monday June 16

Tutorial Participation

Due: Weekly
Weighting: 15%

Brief Description: Some lectures invite your participation in the form of responses to selected questions and arguments. Tutorials offer the opportunity for informed, open discussion of the weekly topics and readings. Each week, you must prepare for the tutorial discussion by completing the assigned readings. You should arrive at class willing to engage in respectful discussion of the readings’ key points and arguments. At the conclusion of each discussion-based tutorial your tutor will spend 5-10 minutes asking for a written response to the following two questions: What was the most interesting argument that you heard expressed in class today? And: Were you convinced of a new point over the course of today’s class?

On successful completion you will be able to:

Understand the history of the human presence in Australia
Gain insight into the complexity of Indigenous cosmologies, relations to land, and kinship systems
Develop a critical appreciation of debates over culture, ‘authenticity’, the meaning of Indigenous identity and how anthropologists engage with these
Consider the role of the state and ‘state effects’ in shaping, delimiting and producing Indigenous ways of being
Develop an understanding of the Settler Colonial experience and the ways in which Indigenous and Settler Australian worlds and identities are mutually constituted
Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion

Tutorial Presentation

Due: Weeks allocated in Week 2
Weighting: 10%

In addition to weekly reading, students are also required to prepare and present one of the tutorial topics set out below. You should also consult some of the further reading listed for the week you are presenting. Your presentation will be assessed in terms of how well you are able to communicate the main ideas of the text, and the argument you develop about reading. An interactive format involving your fellow students is encouraged for your presentation. In effect, you are charged with the task of starting and directing class discussion. You will share with your tutor the responsibility for leading a discussion in which all viewpoints are respectfully considered. Your presentations should provoke questions and debate and be thoughtful, lively and potentially involve the use of a variety of media. You should think about how to present the content of your presentation. You may want to prepare overheads of the main points, photocopies for distribution or bring clips to play. Presentations should be no longer than 10 minutes in total.

On successful completion you will be able to:

Enhance their communication and interpersonal skills through oral discussion and written work that focuses on conveying understanding, argument and information in a clear and concise fashion

Research Essay

Due: Friday May 23
Weighting: 40%

A list of essay questions and detailed marking criteria will be distributed in Week 6, prior to the mid-semester break. While the readings listed in this unit guide will provide the basis for your essay, students are expected to engage with literature specific to their chosen topic, beyond that listed on the outline. Your lecturer is available to help you identify relevant sources to consult. Alternatively, you may develop your own topic subject to your lecturer’s approval. This topic must be approved two weeks prior to the due date.

Word length: 2,500 words

On successful completion you will be able to:

Develop a critical appreciation of debates over culture, ‘authenticity’, the meaning of Indigenous identity and how anthropologists engage with these
Consider the role of the state and ‘state effects’ in shaping, delimiting and producing Indigenous ways of being
Develop an understanding of the Settler Colonial experience and the ways in which Indigenous and Settler Australian worlds and identities are mutually constituted
Build skills in using anthropological knowledge to aid understanding of contemporary issues
Cement critical analysis and creative thinking skills through research assignments.

Take Home Exam

Due: Monday June 16
Weighting: 35%

The exam will be both short answer and essay based and will cover the films, lectures and tutorial readings in the course.

On successful completion you will be able to:

Understand the history of the human presence in Australia
Gain insight into the complexity of Indigenous cosmologies, relations to land, and kinship systems
Develop a critical appreciation of debates over culture, ‘authenticity’, the meaning of Indigenous identity and how anthropologists engage with these
Consider the role of the state and ‘state effects’ in shaping, delimiting and producing Indigenous ways of being
Develop an understanding of the Settler Colonial experience and the ways in which Indigenous and Settler Australian worlds and identities are mutually constituted

Delivery and Resources

A unit reader will be available for purchase. The reader contains all required readings.

This course entails both lectures and tutorials. It is expected that you attend both. All lectures (not films) will be recorded on echo360 and made available on the iLearn site to assist with review of course material (audio recording only). This should not be considered a substitute for lecture attendance.

Lecture slides will also be available on the iLearn site for review.

Unit Schedule

Weekly Topics

Week 1: Beginnings. Introduction to Indigenous Australia

Monday March 3

This lecture will provide an introduction to the unit, its scope and aim, and an explanation of requirements and student assessment. We will discuss the readings, some conceptual and representational problems we will face, and the history of research in Australianist Anthropology and Indigenous Studies. We will also begin our discussion of the history of human inhabitation of the continent, and of mobile hunter-gatherer resource use. There are no tutorials in Week 1.

Required reading:

Anderson, Ian. 2003 Introduction: The Aboriginal Critique of Colonial Knowing. In M. Grossman, ed. Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 17-24.
Dodson, Michael. 2003 The End in the Beginning: Re(de)finding Aboriginality. In M. Grossman, ed. Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 25-42.

Further reading:

· Barwick, Diane. 1964 The Self-concious People of Melbourne. In M. Reay, ed. Aborigines Now. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 20-31.

· Paradies, Yin. 2006 Beyond Black and White: Esssentialism, Hybridity and Indigeneity. Journal of Sociology 42(4), 355-367.

Week 2: Aboriginal Cosmologies: Time, Space, and Social Relations

Monday March 10

Guest Lecturer: Dr Georgia Curran

Having established the economic basis of hunter-gatherer life in the previous week, we now turn towards the Aboriginal world-view or cosmology, and its embodiment and objectification in ritual and social relations. As anthropologists have long identified and Aboriginal people strongly assert, the living land created by ancestral beings is the cornerstone of their self-understanding. Anthropologists speak of a totemic system or the Dreaming. What exactly is meant by the terms ‘totemism’, 'country’ and ‘Dreaming’? How do these concepts help us to understand different understandings of emplacement, belonging, and social relations?

Required reading:

Stanner, W.E.H. 2009 (1953) The Dreaming. In R. Manne, ed. The Dreaming and Other Essays. Melbourne: Black Inc, 172-224.
Swain, Tony and Gary Trompf. 1995 Tradition. In their The Religions of Oceania, London and New York: Routledge, 19-47.

Further reading:

· Swain, Tony. 1993 Introduction and Worlds to Endure. In A Place for Strangers: Towards a history of Australian Aboriginal Being, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1-68.

Week 3: Relatedness: What does it mean to be kin?

Tuesday March 17

This week we shift the focus from people-land relations to people’s relationships to each other. We will learn that social relations can best be understood, using Myers, when we consider people’s rights and relationships to objects. Further, we will explore the way kinship concepts are activated in urban and regional settings today as we ask: What does it mean to be family?

Required reading:

· Myers, Fred. 1989 Burning the Truck and Holding the Country: Pintupi Forms of Property and Identity. In E. Wilmsen, ed We are here: politics of Aboriginal land tenure, Berkeley: University of California Press, 15-43.

· Babidge, Sally. 2010 Family Affairs: Relations and Relatedness. In her Aboriginal Family and the State: The Conditions of History, Ashgate Publishing, 101-133.

Further Reading:

· Myers, Fred. 1986 Relatedness and Differentiation. In Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines, USA: Smithsonian Institute, 159-179

Week 4: First Contacts: early colonial relations, early anthropological concerns

Monday March 24

Lecturer: Dr Eve Vincent

This week we discuss early colonial relations, questions of conquest and ownership, and begin to explore the great shift from early colonial assumptions of terra nullius to later imaginings of the ‘Two Laws’ that are said to apply in Indigenous Australia. To do so we ask, how did Aboriginal people experience first contact? Why did European soldiers and colonists imagine that the land was ‘unowned’? How did intercultural relations begin to shape the experience of country and place for both Indigenous people and settlers? And what drove early anthropological enquiries into Aboriginal cultural forms?

Required reading:

· Langton, Marcia. 2008. They made a solitude and called it peace. In Perkins, R and M. Langton, eds. First Australians, pp. 3-20, 25-61. Miegunyah Press.

· Kimber, Dick. 2008. The Sea met the Desert, and the Desert Met the Sea. In Perkins, R and M. Langton, eds. First Australians, pp. 174-223. Miegunyah Press.

Further reading:

· Broome, R. 1994. Aboriginal Australians. Black Responses to White Dominance 1788-1994. Second Edition. New South Wales: Allen & Unwin (see early chapters).

Week 5: Civil Rights and the Bark Petition

Monday March 31

This week our attention shifts to the twentieth century, and particularly to changing

Indigenous political and cultural aspirations in the post-war period. Our focus is on how

Indigenous-land relations articulate with the broader settler colonial society and state. We

track the emergence of a cultural politics at this time, and consider how ‘traditional’

meanings and messages are conveyed to new audiences.

Required reading:

Morphy, Howard 1983 ‘Now you understand’: an analysis of the way Yolngu have used sacred knowledge to retain their autonomy. In N. Peterson and M. Langton, eds, Aborigines, Land, and Land Rights, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 110-133.
Merlan, Francesca. 1988 Caging the Rainbow, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, pp 149-181.

Further reading:

· Attwood, Bain 2004 Rights for Aborigines. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Week 6: The politics of recognition

Monday April 7

As we have seen, from the early 1970s until the early 1990s, Aboriginal efforts to secure recognition of their prior occupation and status as land owners made strides at state, territory, and national levels, most prominently in light of the Land Rights Act, NT (1976). This week we also discuss the Mabo ruling that led to Native Title legislation. The lecture and readings introduce critical perspectives on the politics of recognition, the notion of cultural difference, and what it has come to stand for. Why are land rights and sacred sites legislation so important to Aboriginal people? Do you think that Mabo fostered European understanding of Aboriginal land tenure? Does native title offer a way for European and Aboriginal reconciliation? What are some ways we might think of the unintended consequences of native title legislation for Indigenous identities and senses of belonging?

Required reading:

· Povinelli, Elizabeth, 1998, The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous Citizenship, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, no. 2, pp 575-610.

· Eve Vincent, 2012, ‘Sticking up for the land’: Aboriginality, mining and the lived effects of native title. Australian Journal of Human Rights, vol. 19, no. 1, pp 155-174

Further reading:

· Correy, Simon, McCarthy, Diana and Anthony Redmond. The differences which resemble: The effects of the 'narcissism of minor differences' in the constitution and maintenance of native title claimant groups in Australia. In Bauman, T. and G. Macdonald (eds), Unsettling Anthropology: The Demands of Native Title on Worn Concepts and Changing Lives, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 41-62.

April 14-27: mid-semester recess, no lectures or tutorials

Week 7: Bringing the State into View

Monday April 28

We have been circling around the question of the state’s role in Indigenous lives. This week, we focus our attention firmly on the state. We ask: What might an anthropology of the state, ‘state effects’ and state practices look like? Where and what is ‘the state’? How does the state constitute and govern modern, Aboriginal subjects? How do Aboriginal people meet the state?

Required reading:

· Cowlishaw, Gillian. 1998, Erasing Culture and Race: Practising ‘Self-Determination’, Oceania, vol. 68, no. 3, pp 145-169.

· Collmann, Jeff. 1988, Living in the Fringe-Camps. In Fringe-dwellers and Welfare: the Aboriginal response to Bureaucracy, St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, pp 73-104

Policies and Procedures

Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central. Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

Academic Honesty Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html

Assessment Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy.html

Grading Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grading/policy.html

Grade Appeal Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/gradeappeal/policy.html

Grievance Management Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grievance_management/policy.html

Disruption to Studies Policy http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/disruption_studies/policy.html The Disruption to Studies Policy is effective from March 3 2014 and replaces the Special Consideration Policy.

In addition, a number of other policies can be found in the Learning and Teaching Category of Policy Central.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/support/student_conduct/

Student Support

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

Learning Skills

Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.

Student Services and Support

Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.

Student Enquiries

For all student enquiries, visit Student Connect at ask.mq.edu.au

IT Help

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://informatics.mq.edu.au/help/.

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.

Graduate Capabilities

Capable of Professional and Personal Judgement and Initiative

We want our graduates to have emotional intelligence and sound interpersonal skills and to demonstrate discernment and common sense in their professional and personal judgement. They will exercise initiative as needed. They will be capable of risk assessment, and be able to handle ambiguity and complexity, enabling them to be adaptable in diverse and changing environments.