Description:
This article examines the proposed popular historical interpretation of the decommissioned Pentridge Prison, in the course of its redevelopment as a residential and commercial precinct. The interpretation is judged to have been 'appropriated' by a 'gatekeeper' group comprising former prison officers in partnership with the commercially motivated site owners. In the process, it is argued, a wide range of 'alternative' narratives are excluded from the prison's public history. Examples of such narrative options are presented, including that of the author, who identifies as a stakeholder in the interpretation of the prison. This narrative 'sampling' is done with a view to asking how the consequent broader interpretation can be conveyed to visitors to the site. 'The eternal questions that concern historians … are the ones with which we grapple endlessly. Whose history is being told? Whose history is left out? Whose collective memory should be celebrated? Whose is forgotten? Which past should be preserved? Which re-created?'
Description:
In 2005 the so-called 'Aboriginal History wars' moved from Tasmania to a new convincing ground in Victoria. Michael Connor contested the historiography behind an alleged Aboriginal massacre at a site known as the 'Convincing Ground', at Allestree, on the coast some ten kilometres north of Portland. The site came to public attention in January 2005 when Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Officers halted bulldozing and development work that had begun as part of a proposed coastal residential development. It subsequently became the subject of a Federal Court Native Title case and a Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal hearing. The dispute with the residential developer was settled in February 2007 when it was agreed that an area of land that encompasses the Convincing Ground would be set aside as a reservation.
Description:
Recommendations made by the Commonwealth Rural Reconstruction Commission in 1944 were influential in shaping new policies for post-war land settlement. The Victorian Soldier Settlement Commission applied these ideas, hand-picking settlers who would make successful farmers. At Yanakie, in South Gippsland, a decision to turn crown land into a group soldier settlement scheme resulted in a model rural community where post-war technology transformed the environment into productive dairy farms. Interviews with those involved locally look beyond the policy to the experiences of the settlers and employees of the Soldier Settlement Commission during the 1950s and 1960s.
Description:
Recommendations made by the Commonwealth Rural Reconstruction Commission in 1944 were influential in shaping new policies for post-war land settlement. The Victorian Soldier Settlement Commission applied these ideas, hand-picking settlers who would make successful farmers. At Yanakie, in South Gippsland, a decision to turn crown land into a group soldier settlement scheme resulted in a model rural community where post-war technology transformed the environment into productive dairy farms. Interviews with those involved locally look beyond the policy to the experiences of the settlers and employees of the Soldier Settlement Commission during the 1950s and 1960s.
Description:
An exploration of sources available to document the history of a specific type of Australian labour organisation, the regional trades and labour council, has been informed by a quest for the early history of the Gippsland Trades and Labour Council. This paper builds on previous surveys to investigate the variety, extent and relevance of sources available to document the formation of such organisations and the context within which they determine and carry out their strategies and campaigns. The paper also considers advances in technology and the challenges and opportunities they offer for accessing, appraising and making available labour history sources, both physical and born digital.
Description:
Waltz with Bashir (Israel 2008) concerns itself with time on a number of formal and thematic levels, from its investigation of history to the use of animation to allow the recreation of an otherwise visually inaccessible past. The animated documentary’s plot interweaves historical and personal time in the form of Israeli soldiers remembering, or attempting to remember, their involvement in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A central preoccupation of the documentary is the untimeliness of trauma, where a repressed memory kept “out of time” will return to the present in unexpected and distorted forms. This personal experience of trauma is extended to the sphere of national identity in the degree to which the documentary re-examines events that have been largely silenced within the official versions of history within Israel. It is untimely insofar as it disrupts accepted understandings and exposes events that certain constructions of Israeli national identity would rather forget. Of course the dynamic between remembering and forgetting and how best to relate to history, a theme that informs the politics surrounding Waltz with Bashir, was addressed directly by Nietzsche in his Untimely Meditations. In “On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life,” he warned of the dangers of an excessive concern for the past, and of the necessity for a certain amount of forgetting as a condition for acting. While Waltz with Bashir investigates directly the repression of the past, of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, it is also haunted by the events of the Holocaust. The forgetting of one is enabled by the specific forms of remembering the other, a question central to the reading of the politics of the documentary.
Description:
Indigenous curricula content, including particular narratives of Australian colonial history are highly contested in contemporary Australia. How do white Australians understand Australia’s colonial past and its relevance today? An empirical study was conducted with 29 rural Australians who self-identified as white. Critical race and whiteness studies provided the framework for analysis of the interviews. I argue that they revealed a delimited understanding of colonial history and a general inability to link this to the present, which limited their capacity to think crossculturally in their everyday living - activities considered crucial in the contemporary move to Reconciliation in Australia. The normative discourse of white settler Australians to be ‘Australian’ is invested in the denial of Indigenous sovereignty to protect white settler Australian claims to national sovereignty. The findings support arguments for a national curriculum that incorporates Indigenous history as well as an Indigenous presence throughout all subject areas.
Description:
This paper argues that Darwin’s work relied upon patriarchal white assumptions of entitlement to knowledge, their objects and the processes of knowledge production. It assumed an objective observer and fashioned their conquest of knowledge, knowledge production and the objects of knowledge to fit patriarchal white supremacist views. I posit that this materialist view has been promulgated as the only legitimate view, despite being debunked within quantum physics and quantum cosmology, and has led us to these dark times. The consequences risk the future of the planet and all its sentient inhabitants. However, Charles Darwin also posited in his meticulous observations that evolutionary development depends on ever-widening circles of compassion as the deepest primal instinct of all creatures – a view shared by First Nations peoples, such as Indigenous Australians colonised under Liberal/Neoliberal regimes and Tibetan (and others) colonised under Communist regimes. Neoliberalism has increased the intensity of consequences in Australia; however, this paper argues that the concept of a shared origin is the fundamental error about the nature of reality presented in metaphysical realism in triad with extractive possessive consumerism. The latter prioritises economic growth and hedonism and values only external happiness rather than a Eunomia understanding of wellbeing, where Eunomia refers to a general sense of inner wellbeing not caused by perceived external stimuli. CRAWS scholars can draw on ever widening circles of compassion as First Nation and critical ally scholars, educators and activists, to reorient our past understanding and present mindful embodiment for a fiercely compassionate future.
Description:
This paper argues that Darwin’s work relied upon patriarchal white assumptions of entitlement to knowledge, their objects and the processes of knowledge production. It assumed an objective observer and fashioned their conquest of knowledge, knowledge production and the objects of knowledge to fit patriarchal white supremacist views. I posit that this materialist view has been promulgated as the only legitimate view, despite being debunked within quantum physics and quantum cosmology, and has led us to these dark times. The consequences risk the future of the planet and all its sentient inhabitants. However, Charles Darwin also posited in his meticulous observations that evolutionary development depends on ever-widening circles of compassion as the deepest primal instinct of all creatures – a view shared by First Nations peoples, such as Indigenous Australians colonised under Liberal/Neoliberal regimes and Tibetan (and others) colonised under Communist regimes. Neoliberalism has increased the intensity of consequences in Australia; however, this paper argues that the concept of a shared origin is the fundamental error about the nature of reality presented in metaphysical realism in triad with extractive possessive consumerism. The latter prioritises economic growth and hedonism and values only external happiness rather than a Eunomia understanding of wellbeing, where Eunomia refers to a general sense of inner wellbeing not caused by perceived external stimuli. CRAWS scholars can draw on ever widening circles of compassion as First Nation and critical ally scholars, educators and activists, to reorient our past understanding and present mindful embodiment for a fiercely compassionate future.
Description:
This paper concerns the question of why there are so few named groups in the Woiwurrung language area compared with other language groups to its west and north-west. It does this by analysing the 1863 Governors levee in which representatives from three Aboriginal groups-the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Tara-Waragal-presented gifts to royalty. In seeking to understand who this third group-the Tara-Waragal-was, Stephens (2003) has suggested that they were a Woiwurrung patriline. Wesson (2001) has suggested that the name was a pejorative label applied to a Gippsland group by the Kulin. This study finds that both interpretations are wrong. First, it finds that the name applies to a Brataualung clan, the Yowung, whose country centred on the Tarra and Warrigal creeks-hence the name. Second, it finds that the attempt by Stephens to identify the Tara-Waragal with a possible Woiwurrung patriline identified in a series of sketches by William Thomas found in the RB Smyth Papers was also a failure. Nevertheless, the implication that the sketch maps may reveal up to 53 patrilines is a possibility worth exploring, as it may address the issue of the apparent under-representation of Woiwurrung named groups with which I began. Analysis reveals the possibility of an additional 27 Woiwurrung patrilines. Although the exact number of additional patrilines will never be known, at least we have addressed the issue that within the ethno-historical record it is possible to find additional named groups in Woiwurrung. Thus there was in all likelihood greater internal division in the Woiwurrung than has been reconstructed by Barwick (1984) and Clark (1990).
Description:
Over the last one hundred and fifty years, the meaning of the Eureka Stockade has been characterised in different ways. To some it has been the birthplace of Australian democracy, to others the germ of republicanism, or the cradle of the labour movement. Eureka can also be celebrated as an early expression or example of internationalism in Australian. The principles and values of the Ballarat Reform league attracted workers Irom many nations in a universal fight for better conditions and political participation. The language and membership of the league were inclusive, embracing a very international definition of the term· 'citizen', though for many years afterward that definition was circumscribed to exclude those of non-white ancestry.
Description:
Australia has been one of the countries to most enthusiastically embrace the neo-liberal conditions conducive to the dismantling of equitably provided public schooling. The article argues that part of the explanation for the absence of any effective challenge to this trajectory lies in the contradictory nature of the Australian identity. The ensemble of policies that have been officially promoted to produce this situation, include: an official process of disparaging public education, while eulogising the alleged virtues of private education; promoting school choice as the mechanism for upholding standards and accountability; encouraging structures and school cultures that bolster marketised views; deliberately cultivating inequities in resources and funding that exacerbate exit of a fearful middle class; and generally producing a compliant view of educational leadership that is deferent to management views. The effect has been a major shift of social justice off the wider Australian educational and political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Educational Administration & History is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Description:
The Tracker is a Dream for filmmakers, explorers, myth makers, writers, politicans, academics alike. He can represent Aboriginal privilege, Aboriginal complicity, oppression, containment. He can represent settler powerlessness, powerfulness, arrogance, ignorance and illegitamacy.
Description:
The Tracker is a Dream for filmmakers, explorers, myth makers, writers, politicans, academics alike. He can represent Aboriginal privilege, Aboriginal complicity, oppression, containment. He can represent settler powerlessness, powerfulness, arrogance, ignorance and illegitamacy.
Description:
Injustice is said to be the cornerstone of collective action, but why is it so important, and how does the way in which it is framed for mobilisation affect the outcomes? This paper compares two lengthy disputes in the Australian electricity industry which demonstrate that a sense of injustice and a history of successful industrial action do not guarantee that a dispute will be resolved to employees' satisfaction when the wider context is unfavourable. Although leaders of both disputes expressed confidence in success predicated on the outcomes of previous industrial activity, there were specific factors within the industrial, economic and political context which provoked determined employer and government counter mobilisation leading to unsuccessful outcomes for the workers in dispute. The reasons for the poor outcomes are discussed within the context of the framing of the injustice by leaders and the effect of the response of a determined government.
Description:
There is little evidence of Aboriginal involvement in the events of the Eureka Stockade, but there are numerous ways in which Aboriginal people are relevant to the Eureka story. The events took place on Aboriginal land (an obvious but rarely articulated truth) and Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat diggings, as they were, indeed, on and around most Australian goldfields. The records are full of references to their fundamental and diverse contribution to life and work on the diggings, and to the complex and varied relationships they formed with the invaders. For Indigenous communities already reeling from the invasion of pastoralists, the arrival of 300,000 immigrant miners, swarming onto the alluvial districts of Victoria, represented a second wave of dispossession. But as we have noted elsewhere, there is abundant evidence that gold, at least in Victoria, brought many new economic opportunities for Aborigines, many of whom took advantage of these changed circumstances.' David Goodman argues persuasively for historians to consider an 'edgier interpretation' of the goldfields story. This could include a better appreciation of the social dislocation and cultural adaptations experienced by Indigenous people on the goldfields .
Description:
The paper interrogates implied and explicit narrative aspects of the standard guided tour taken by tourists visiting the forrner Centre for the Criminally Insane, 'J Ward' (closed in 1991), in the Victorian country town of Ararat. Of particular note are tour guides' accounts of certain routine procedures of inmate management andcontainment, including the punitive administralion of 'shock' treatment, and anecdotal depictions of escape attempts by notorious prisoners, especially Garry David The reality of inmate experience is found to be grossly euphemised and historically distorted in the retelling, rendering intrinsically shocking and disturbing episodes entertaining and acceptable, even in some cases amusing. It is argued that this process, along with the sale, as souvenirs, of artefacts reportedly associated with an escape attempt, both commodifies the suffering of inmates and in some cases perpetuates the 'containment' imperative of those charged with their incarceration.
Description:
This paper celebrates the life of a businessman and central banker who, in the depression years, outshone and prevailed over both Theodore and Jack Lang. One member of the Scullin Cabinet, the fiery radical Frank Anstey recalled that 'with his seven year tenure in his pocket he was more than ever Prime Minister and the elected government was only the tube through which he issued orders'. The puzzle then is why Gibson has not received the coverage and attention that he deserves. While there has been a brief memoir of Gibson by Schedvin, no biography of him exists. Just after Gibson dies in 1934 the Commonwealth Bank, with the support of Gibson's Melbourne-based business and banking associates, was intent upon commissioning a short biography with University of Melbourne historian Sir Ernest Scott (1867-1939) assigned to undertake the task. At the same time on one of Gibson's daughters, Phyllis, wrote a doting, but incomplete, memoir of her father. The draft was never completed nor circulated but it led to an interesting sequel.
Description:
Within the context of the war on poverty and an acknowledgement of the wider global phenomenon of a ‘post-industrial society’, the Australian Labor Party under Gough Whitlam sought out a range of reforming and innovative social policy programs. This article explores the origins of one such program, the Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), and its connections, similarities and differences to the Canada Assistance Plan. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history sources, it offers a comparative analysis of both national programs, then outlines how international social planning and community development ideas, especially from Canada, infused the AAP and its predecessor, the Geelong Experiment.