Preface

The essays in this inaugural edition of New: Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies are the work of undergraduates from Social and Political Sciences, at the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Australian Indigenous Studies Program, University of Melbourne.

The essays proceed from different disciplines but fall into what might be termed Critical Indigenous Studies: politically committed but also distinguished by nuance and self-reflexivity and an awareness of the self-referentiality, and occasional solipsism, of the dominant disciplines in Indigenous studies. (Here history and anthropology come to mind.)

The topics range from a theoretical investigation of questions of recognition in relation to ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremonies, to critical discussions of contemporary Aboriginal art and literature, and activism.

Some of these students are now graduate students embarking on careers in the academy, others are working in the arts, or fields of law, education, administration or community activism. But in many ways they can be said to represent a generation noteworthy for the progressive interaction of theory and socially relevant engagement.

Heidi Norman and Philip Morrissey

Editors