Introduction

OK, so today we’re moving onto a session on kinship, gender and social relatedness and all that jazz. This has been the object of a fair amount of debate in the past, and presumably it will be so in the future. For those who don’t know me, my name is Michael Houseman. I’m closely linked to Aboriginal Australia through affinity, but I’ve done a little bit on kinship as well, and this is Ian Keen who will be discussant and will take up the challenge of wrapping the different papers together, at...

Payback and Forward: Relatives as a Source of Weakness or Strength

We are all aware of the dreadful death rates of Aboriginal youth linked to suicide and other self-destructive behaviour (ABS 2012, Silburn et al., Brady 1992, Moisseeff 2011, Robinson 1992 a&b, 1990, 1995). During my last fieldwork in Australia, an Aboriginal friend in charge of an Aboriginal Youth Centre, Sherry, emphasised a problem which may seem obvious but which we need to understand more fully in order to allow for solutions that are more effective than those that already exist: youths ...

A quality of being: embodied kinship among the Tiwi of Northern Australia

Setting the scene

Thirty years ago, almost exactly, I argued in my PhD thesis that, among the Tiwi, dance was kinship-in-action, not so much because it reflected kinship practices in other social domains - which it did - but because I observed on the dance floor kinship relationships being explored and new ones being generated. As I put it then ‘the kinship dances are not models of, but rather models for kinship practices’ (Grau 1983: 333).

The anthropologist Jane Goodale coined t...

The Body in Linguistic Representations of Emotions in Dalabon (Northern Australia)

In the Dalabon language of Northern Australia (Gunwinyguan family, non-Pama-Nyungan), body-part words are used in expressions denoting emotions. For instance, kangu-yowyow(mu), literally ‘flowing belly’ (kangu ‘belly’+ yowyow(mu) ‘flow’) means ‘feel good, be nice’. This is cross-linguistically unsurprising: most languages in Australia and around the world make use of body-parts to describe emotions. However, these body-parts can play different roles. They are often involved in metaphors. Thes...

Introduction

So, I’m very glad to present Fred Myers, the discussant of the session, and of a very dear friend, I think we’ve known each other for quite a long time. And of course, Fred Myers is known for the book, the most quoted in Aboriginal studies, as Nick Peterson, who opened the conference was reminding us. The book is also really worth regarding Pintupi country, Pintupi self, but also for his extensive work regarding Aboriginal art, and he was in fact, and I will say the conference, and I want her...

The East Kimberley painting movement: performing colonial history

This paper is based on PhD research undertaken at the EHESS -Paris and the University of Melbourne between 2005 and 2010. My fieldwork was based in the East Kimberley Region of north-west Australia around the community of Turkey Creek, and the towns of Kununurra and Wyndham. I collaborated with a group of contemporary artists named Jirrawun Arts, on the everyday running of the corporation and as archivist and anthropologist. The present paper will be mainly based on artworks by Rover Thomas, ...

Remediating sacred imagery on screens: Yolngu experiments with new media technology

When I first arrived in the Yolngu township of Galiwin’ku to undertake fieldwork for my doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, almost a decade ago to the day, a particular research question had been on my mind for some time. Over the past few years, I had been keenly following the development in Aboriginal Australia of several exciting projects making use of digital technologies – such as the Central Australian Ara Irititja interac...

Fora of Identity: From Public Ceremonies through Acrylic Painting to Evangelical Preaching

Thanks.

Introduction

This presentation has for aim to give you a glimpse, only a glimpse of manifestations of Aboriginality in a settlement in Central Australia where I have worked for the past 30 years. I address here in a truncated manner how what is now often called “indigeneity” become locally and globally rooted and routed through particular public performances. By examining various performances, which engage publically cross-cultural audiences, I highlight different repertoi...

‘Under Western Eyes’: a short analysis of the reception of Aboriginal art in France through the press

Good afternoon, I know you are all very tired and are over swept by the communications, so I am going to try to be brief. I am not going to read my paper because when I read a paper in English usually people don’t understand what I’ve said, so I am going to talk more freely. My starting point will be a sentence which is quite known among the art historians : “ce sont les regardeurs qui font les tableaux”, it’s the people who look at the picture that do the picture. It’s a Marcel Duchamp sente...

A history of art from the Tiwi Islands: the source community in an evolving museumscape

Introduction

‘Morning tea with Tiwi Ladies’ is one of the attractions for tourists visiting Bathurst and Melville Islands in northern Australia. Indigenous graveyards and the production of arts and crafts are part and parcel of the itinerary. The islands have a history of one hundred years as a ‘destination culture’ (Kirshenblatt- Gimblett 1998) for tourists and anthropologists alike. From the early years of the twentieth century onwards museum interests have been a steady factor in sha...