Deepening Australian Histories of Place
Date: Friday 13th November
Time: 2.30pm - 4.30pm
Location: Paul Hughes Room Y2-58, Yungondi Building, City West Campus, North Terrace Adelaide
How should the history of Australia be told? What are the problems that continue to prevent an ancient, Indigenous history becoming part of Australian history? Where would the legends that David naipon collected fit into such a story?
After spending time with scientists and Indigenous custodians in the Willandra Lakes/Lake Mungo region, the possibilities and difficulties of writing an ancient history of Australia - or at least selected regions in Australia -start to become clear.
Professor Ann McGrath is Head of the History Program, and inaugural Director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
She has worked for many years in the field of Indigenous Australian history and the history of colonialism. Her best-known publications include Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country (1987), Creating a Nation (co-written with Pat Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, and Marian Quartly), and edited volumes such as Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown (1994), Aboriginal Workers (with Kay Saunders and Jacky Huggins, 1995), and Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration (with Ann Curthoys, 2000).
Professor McGrath has previously worked in Darwin, at Monash University and the University of New South Wales. She was Program Director of Society & Nation at the National Museum of Australia during its opening years, 2000-02. She has worked on a range of significant public enquiries and legal cases, including Northern Territory Land Claims, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Gunner & Cubillo case. She was Advisor to Hilton Cordell Productions for The Colony reality television series.