Records of Resistance Truth, Archives and Exposing Aboriginal Histories
Next on
Wed 9 Jul
5:30-7pm
Location
State Library Theatre - Ground Floor
This event is for
Adults
Researchers
Students
Event Type
This NAIDOC week, the State Library is proud to host a night of public lectures from two talented Aboriginal researchers, the State Library’s Battye Fellow Shino Konishi, and the inaugural Aboriginal Research Fellow, Jordanna Yoontj Eades. Shino and Jordanna will share their research and revelations over the past year as they delved into archival collections spanning the colonial era to more recent histories of the 1970s and 80s. Audience members are invited to learn from their discoveries and to reflect on two significant Aboriginal stories, with ongoing impact and resonance, and consider both the presence and absence of evidence in our archival collections.
The Sesquicentenary and the Question of Aboriginal Self Determination
Dr Shino Konishi. Associate Professor, School of Humanities and the School of Indigenous Studies, UWA
In 1979 the state of Western Australia commemorated the 150th anniversary of its foundation with the WAY’79 campaign. It was envisioned that this ‘year of excitement’ would provide an opportunity to reflect on the state’s history and future, bring together its many communities, ranging ‘from Wyndham in the north to Esperance in the south’, and entice tourists from interstate and overseas to visit. The sesquicentenary celebrated the ‘hardy settlers’ who established the Swan River colony through a series of colonial re-enactments, balls, and memorabilia. Not everyone revelled in this nostalgia, however. The 1970s was a period of political renewal, typified by Gough Whitlam’s ‘It’s Time!’ campaign. Alongside a suite of other reforms, there was a push to recognise Aboriginal self-determination. In this talk, leading Yawuru academic Shino Konishi, will discuss how the WAY’79 campaign addressed the state’s Aboriginal history and grappled with the question of Indigenous self-determination.
Associate Professor Shino Konishi is a Yawuru historian based in the School of Humanities and School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. She is an ARC Future Fellow and was the State Library of Western Australia’s 2024 Battye Fellow.
Kaniyang Diaspora and the Blackwood River Valley
Jordanna Yoontj Eades. Anthropologist and Researcher.
While the peaceful and picturesque towns of Balingup, Bridgetown, and Boyup Brook along the Middle Blackwood River Valley are well-known today for their settler and farming history, their Noongar histories have been neglected. The result of this has been much hearsay and uncertainty about Noongar history generally in the Middle and Upper Blackwood River Valley as well as the gradual erasure of the local Kaniyang clan from the Valley’s history. Using research techniques from historical anthropology, Kaniyang woman and anthropologist Jordanna Eades has delved into the State Library’s archives to understand the violent and unsettling events Kaniyang Noongars endured between 1850-1900 which led to them being displaced from the Blackwood River Valley. In addition, results from her interview with a senior Kaniyang Elder links oral history with the archival timeline. Hear from a young Kaniyang and Wilman woman how truth-telling from the archives can take a legacy of survival and diaspora towards reconnection and resilience.
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