Long Road

I’m heading out tomorrow for the journey to Tennant Creek, because of crazy booking and crossing datelines and such, I won’t get to Tennant until 3 July.

I’ll be in town for a few weeks. First to update Mukurtu to version 1.2 (audio and video comments, updated search capabilities, added admin features, a robust “people” category added…and a few other additions). After that and the general catching up with folks I plan on doing, there will be a launch for my book, Aboriginal Business: Alliances in a Remote Australian Town, put on by Aboriginal Studies Press the Australian publisher and distributor of the book (in the US by SAR press).

If you happen to be in the NT, come on down to Tennant Creek, 13 July 11-2 at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre for a bbq and book launch! Thanks to Kim Johnston of ASP in Canberra and Elliot McAdam, Rose Graham and Trisha Frank in Tennant Creek for helping get this all organized over the last few weeks.

Check out the article at Inside Higher Ed “Fieldwork is not what it used to be…” a plug for their new book with the same name. The book looks like it would be perfect for a methods course.

The work done by contributors to Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be articulates, at the strategic point of career-making research, features of this transformation in progress. Setting aside traditional anxieties about ethnographic authority, the authors revisit fieldwork with fresh initiative. In search of better understandings of the contemporary research process itself, they assess the current terms of the engagement of fieldworkers with their subjects, address the constructive, open-ended forms by which the conclusions of fieldwork might take shape, and offer an accurate and useful description of what it means to become—and to be—an anthropologist today.

Lisa Breglia, George Mason University
Jae A. Chung, Aalen University
James D. Faubion, Rice University
Michael M. J. Fischer, MIT
Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Jennifer A. Hamilton, Hampshire College
Christopher M. Kelty, UCLA
George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine
Nahal Naficy, Rice University
Kristin Peterson, University of California, Irvine
Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston-Clear Lake

via the AASnet listserv:

I am a researcher from National Geographic Adventure magazine, and we are working on a story on Australia and would love your help
Specifically, we are looking for experts on Bruce Chatwin’s 1986 novel about the Aborigines, “The Songlines.”
Would any of you be willing to talk with our writer, David Vann, on the book’s validity? Or do any of you recommend other experts on “The Songlines”?
Feel free to email me directly with your thoughts.
Thank you,
Alyson Sheppard
Researcher
National Geographic Adventure
104 W. 40th St.
New York, NY 10018
p (212) 790.9057
f (212) 790.9040
asheppar@ngs.org

OK. My thoughts:

1. How original is the NG? “Hey it’s time we write on the “Aborigines” again….Bruce Chatwin wrote a fictional account like 20 years ago, ya that’s great, let’s do that AGAIN.
2. The book’s “validity”? IT’S FICTION
3. Maybe if this falls through NG can get Robyn Davidson to trek across some other desert for a while and report back on the “timeless traditions”..
4. If NG wants to write a story about Australia and include Aboriginal issues, why not include something on the new “Growth Towns” policy? that’s sure to effect Aboriginal land tenure, traditions, livelihood, etc
5. belch

Via The World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network an announcement about new programming and partners:

“Global indigenous broadcasters share similar organisational visions and purpose – to protect, maintain and strengthen indigenous representation in the media while preserving and developing their indigenous languages, culture, people and stories.

“Thus, the establishment of a worldwide network will create opportunities for increased audiences, better access to resources, enhanced knowledge transfer, improved understanding of indigenous issues by all audiences, strategic international leadership and enhancement of schedules through programme exchange.

Full deets here. The website is full of information on their programming, conference, etc.

If you are in the DC area, check out the National Native Language Revitalization Summit next week sponsored by Cultural Survival:

Join Cultural Survival and the National Alliance to Save Native Languages at the National Native Language Revitalization Summit in Washington D.C. May 11-13.

Monday, May 11, includes a training session on finding tribal language materials in the National Anthropological Archives, and a workshop with the Potlatch Fund on developing grant proposals to sustain grassroots language programs. Tuesday, May 12, is sponsored and hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), with a keynote by renowned language immersion school director Darrell Robes Kipp (Blackfeet) of the Piegan Institute, and presentations by numerous leaders in the Native language revitalization movement. On Wednesday, May 13, participants will convene on Capitol Hill to educate their Congressional delegations about the critical importance of defending and increasing support for Native language programs through the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act.

In my fantasy life I could move to Sydney…but since this is RL and I can’t, anyone else interested should see the job posting below:

The Department is seeking to appoint an anthropologist to a teaching and research position in our department where exciting new synergies are developing after a series of fresh appointments.  The appointee will teach at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including PhD theses and our Masters degrees in Applied Anthropology, and in Development Studies and Cultural Change.

Essential Selection Criteria:  Experience and commitment to fieldwork in Australian Indigenous communities & demonstrated capacity to contribute to the teaching, research and supervision of Anthropology of Aboriginal Australia; PhD in Anthropology or related discipline; Demonstrated research record relative to opportunity as evidenced by peer reviewed publications.

Desirable Selection Criteria:  The area of academic specialization is open but could include any of the following fields:  Visual Anthropology, Anthropology of Performance, Anthropology of Environment, Health, Art or Law.

The position is available on a full-time (continuing) basis and may be subject to probationary conditions.  Selection criteria must be addressed in the application.

Enquiries:  Dr Christopher Houston on 61-2-9850 8471 or email chris.houston@scmp.mq.edu.au

Package: From $84,949 pa, including Level B (Lecturer) base salary $71,783 to $85,121 pa annual leave loading and up to 17% employer’s superannuation.

Information on the Department of Anthropology is available here

This appointment is currently governed by the terms of the Macquarie University Enterprise Agreement 2006-2009.

Closing date: 7 June 2009

If you haven’t yet, check out the In Media Res Indigenous Media Week (post below). The video posts are fantastic and there is a great conversation going on each thread.

I was totally floored by this video:

Check out Michelle Raheja’s post on In Media Res…I wonder if the Dixie Chicks know about this?

In Media Res, a fantastic project  dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship, has dedicated this week to work on indigenous media, inaugurated by Faye Ginsburg’s post “Beyond Broadcast: Launching NITV on Isuma TV.” Each day, a different scholar curates a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.

Check it out and if you want to comment you just need to register.

Check out the new documentary, The Green Gold Rush, on Indigenous peoples and bioprospecting.

The Green Gold Rush is the name of a video documentary about bioprospecting (the exploration of biodiversity for commercially valuable genetic and bio-chemical resources) and indigenous peoples that was realized in October-November 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The production of this film is the first result of a project between a Swiss NGO and the national government of Bolivia, that is being realized since October 2008 and till July 2009

What is really great is you can download the movie or watch it on their website! I’ll certainly use this next time I teach Global Indigenous Issues, there is really very little in the way of movies out there on the subject.

I haven’t read the book yet, but here is a review of Gillian Cowlishaw’s latest book, The City’s Outback (she always seems to have a new book!):

The least that can be said about Gillian Cowlishaw’s book The City’s Outback is that it offers the reader none of these simple narratives of substitution. Through the relatively simple narrative device of allowing Aboriginal people to tell their stories, doubled with the story of herself trying to get their stories taped and transcribed, Cowlishaw offers the reader a portrait of her encounter with what she calls “everyday Aboriginality” in Western Sydney’s Mt Druitt.

Here, a relatively large number of Aboriginal people are struggling to live “ordinary” lives while stumbling from one drama to another and from one ordinary but heroic act of survival against the odds to another. For non-Indigenous people, it is nothing short of a challenging invitation to enter our Aboriginal social unconscious with all the emotions, uncertainties, ambivalences, limitations, but also rewards, that such a difficult encounter generates.

What makes the trip less daunting but perhaps more alluring is that Cowlishaw gets the help of some Mt Druitt Aboriginal insiders who help us along the way with their reported commentary. Particular mention should be made here of Cowlishaw’s main informant, Frank, a man endowed with an exceptional social sharpness and acumen who urged Cowlishaw to embark on the project. The result is probably one of the most important books yet written about urban Aboriginal life.

The book’s power does not only lie in giving us a sense of what it is like to live in a colonially marked space. Even more so, the book offers all of us, non-Aboriginal people, an ethics: a mode of approaching and interacting with Aboriginal people and Aboriginal issues while minimising the chances of falling into the many pitfalls of everyday white discourse “about” them, whether of the racist or the “well-meaning” variety.