AustLit

'I'm Aboriginal. I'm just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.

'What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal - however, this does not mean she likes to go barefoot and, please, don't ask her to camp in the desert. After years of stereotyping Aboriginal Australians as either settlement dwellers or rioters in Redfern, the Australian media have discovered a new crime to charge them with: being too "fair-skinned" to be an Australian Aboriginal. Such accusations led to Anita's involvement in one of the most important and sensational Australian legal decisions of the 21st-century when she joined others in charging a newspaper columnist with breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. He was found guilty, and the repercussions continue.

'In this deeply personal memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, Anita Heiss gives a first-hand account of her experiences as a woman with an Aboriginal mother and Austrian father, and explains the development of her activist consciousness.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Growing up in the Aboriginal community, the idea of Aboriginal sovereignty

became a concept that seemed inherent.'

'The possibility of a new beginning was central to celebrations of the advent

of native title in Australia. A re-imagined history of white invasion

and settlement could, as then Prime Minister Paul Keating proclaimed,

provide the possibility for a new foundation “because after 200 years, we

will at last be building on the truth.” This “truth” was embodied in the

recognition of the presence of Indigenous communities, their laws, and

their dispossession. Unlike such British colonies as India or Nigeria, the

colonization of Australia proceeded on the basis that there were no Indigenous

people who held property rights and who therefore had any entitlement

to remain on the land or to govern. This is central to the logic of

settler colonialism, which erases the traces of Indigeneity such that settlers

replace Indigenous peoples, sovereignties, and communities on the land.

This logic has been reflected in Australian jurisprudence around settlement,

the origins of property, and the reception of British law.'

'Unparalleled in its breadth and scope, Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility brings together some of the freshest and most original writing on sovereignty being done today. Sovereignty’s many dimensions are approached from multiple perspectives and experiences. It is viewed globally as an international question; locally as an issue contested between Natives and settlers; and individually as survival in everyday life. Through all this diversity and across the many different national contexts from which the contributors write, the chapters in this collection address each other, staging a running conversation that truly internationalizes this most fundamental of political issues.

In the contemporary world, the age-old question of sovereignty remains a key terrain of political and intellectual contestation, for those whose freedom it promotes as well as for those whose freedom it limits or denies. The law is by no means the only language in which to think through, imagine, and enact other ways of living justly together. Working both within and beyond the confines of the law at once recognizes and challenges its thrall, opening up pathways to alternative possibilities, to other ways of determining and self-determining our collective futures. The contributors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, converse across disciplinary boundaries, responding to critical developments within history, politics, anthropology, philosophy, and law. The ability of disciplines to connect with each other—and with experiences lived outside the halls of scholarship—is essential to understanding the past and how it enables and fetters the pursuit of justice in the present. Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility offers a reinvigorated politics that understands the power of sovereignty, explores strategies for resisting its lived effects, and imagines other ways of governing our inescapably coexistent communities.' [publisher's summary]

Published in 1889, and regarded as New Zealand's first science fiction novel, Anno Domini 2000 has been described as a surrealistic political melodrama with a plot that revolves around, love, desire and dynastics (Bleiler p. 779). Anticipating a utopian future where women around the world, including the British Empire and the United States of America, hold many positions of authority, the story is mostly set in New Zealand and Australia, with some events scattered elsewhere.

The central character is Hilda Richmond Fitzherbert, a young New Zealand woman who works as a sub-secretary to one of the ministers. Lord Reginald Parramatta, a villainous Australian republican, has his eyes set on the abduction and wooing of Miss Fitzherbert. Opposed to him is Colonel Laurent, head of the secret police, who is also in love with the beautiful sub-secretary. Lord Parramatta attempts to abduct Hilda on several occasions but is foiled each time. When Hilda and the young Emperor Albert fall in love and Parramatta is publicly rejected he plots to take Australia out of the Empire. The romance between Albert and Hilda also creates an international crisis, too, as Albert is forced to refuse the hand of the female US President's daughter. This which precipitates an Anglo-American war, which the Empire wins, and which further leads to the dissolution of the United States and its reabsorption into the Empire. Several years later, the Emperor and his Empress find that their opinions about male primacy in royal succession have reversed themselves, when faced with a brilliantly competent princess and bookish, scholarly prince as prospective heirs apparent to the throne.

Vogel devotes lengthy sections of the book towards detailing the intricacies of finance and federal Imperial politics of the future - which in this instance sees the needs of the people largely eliminated 'through the benevolence of the wealthy and governmental aid finances through stiff inheritance and income taxes' (Bleiler, p.779). While the novel did not initially attract widespread interest, it has since received recognition for its uncanny representation of New Zealand's female-dominated political, judicial and corporate executive hierarchies. One of the primary technological devices used within the story is magnetism - which provides the use the ability to paralyse people (including groups of people) through the use of magnetic force.

'Manoa is a unique, award-winning literary journal that includes American and international fiction, poetry, artwork, and essays of current cultural or literary interest. An outstanding feature of each issue is original translations of contemporary work from alongside contemporary writings from Asian and Pacific nations, selected for each issue by a special guest editor. Beautifully produced, Manoa presents traditional alongside contemporary writing from the entire Pacific Rim, one of the world's most dynamic literary regions.'

Source: University of Hawaii Press website, http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/
Sighted: 04/06/2007

The craft of composing tabi songs - songs sung by individuals as distinct from group (e.g. corroboree) singing - was taught to young Aboriginal men in their initiation years. This collection of tabi in eleven Aboriginal languages with English translation is, with the exception of a few Maralga (mythical people) tabi, generally from the twentieth century.

The introduction by A. P. Thomas describes the way in which C. G. von Brandenstein went about collecting and recording these songs. Thomas also describes the demographic and social Aboriginal situation in the Pilbara when the tabi were being collected in the 1960s.

Pages 53 to 91 contain notes specific to each tabi including an explanation of the translation, who sung the tabi to von Brandenstein, and details about the tune created or used.