Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Here is  a press release regarding a new exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

An exhibition celebrating Australian Indigenous women

Discover Indigenous women’s contribution to the Australian community through a new exhibition - Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey - opening at the Powerhouse Museum on 21 March.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey will take visitors on a journey into the sometimes unknown and often unexplained world of Indigenous Australian women. A world of people, land, law and ritual, of ceremony and celebration, of social order, language, story, song and dance, art, lore, plants and animals.

Through objects, photographs and personal interviews, Yinalung Yenu reveals the many roles Indigenous women have played in Australian society from traditional times to the present.

The exhibition explores areas where a woman’s influence far outweighed those of Indigenous men, from their everyday activities as educators, child rearers, camp builders and food collectors, to their influential role as decision makers, artists, story tellers, peace keepers and healers.

This history is interpreted through a display of beautiful crafts from the Powerhouse Museum collection, including textiles, posters, ceramics and basketwork, each of which reveal the skill and artistry of Indigenous women.

The exhibition also features the stories of six prominent Indigenous Australian women: doctors and twin sisters Dr Marlene Kong and Dr Marilyn Clarke; artist, designer and businesswoman Bronwyn Bancroft; lawyer and university professor Larissa Behrendt; and respected elders Aunty Beryl Carmichael and Aunty Sue Blacklock.

Be inspired by the strength and expression of these Indigenous women who have become successful in contemporary Australian society and who have become role models for a new generation.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey reflects the ways in which Indigenous Australian women’s knowledge and perspectives of their world were often ignored until recent times. Today, they are carving their rightful place in Australia’s Indigenous history and endowing the next generation of women with the knowledge to speak to their future for succeeding generations of women to come.

On View:          Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Date:                From 21 March 2008

Address:           Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney

Telephone:       (02) 9217 0111 or infoline (02) 9217 0444

Website:           www.powerhousemuseum.com

Hours:              10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Christmas Day)

Admission:       $10 adult, $5 child, $6 concession and $25 family.  Powerhouse Museum members and children under four admitted free.

More Yum Cha exhibition

More Yum Cha, an exhibition featuring several Chinese artists, is currently showing at the Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney. As this image shows, at least some of the exhibition involves an engagement with China’s relationship to globalisation.

The exhibition is running till 16 February.

A round-up of news coverage of the AAA meetings

Usually anthropology is only in the news when some new theory about Neanderthals is announced. But in the past week, anthropology has been all over the news, thanks to the American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington, D.C. which just ended a few days ago.

Before I left for the meetings, I fantasized that every night I would post some news from the day’s events on Culture Matters. I diligently took notes during the sessions on anthropology and the U.S. military, but between the intensity of the perpetual overlapping meetings (at one point I actually ran back and forth four times between two panels that I was trying to follow simultaneously) and the jet lag, I barely opened my computer. Now that I’m back, I see that journalists have covered the AAA meetings better than I possibly could have done, so instead I thought I’d just provide a round-up of the coverage and links to recently published stuff.

The indigenous cabinet minister Marion Scrymgour’s lecture on the Howard government’s intervention plan in Nortern Territory

The indigenous cabinet minister Marion Scrymgour will give a lecture on the government national emergency at Sydney University. The details are below (www.usyd.edu.au):

Australia’s first ever female Indigenous cabinet minister, Marion Scrymgour, will discuss the Howard Government’s National emergency when she delivers the Charles Perkins Oration this week.

Unable to address larger issues such as environmental destruction, or the marginalisation of Aboriginal people, the Howard Government has preferred to focus on Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory, she says.

“Unwilling and unable to resolve these big picture issues, on 21 June 2007 the Howard government seized on a report dealing with the abuse of children on Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to launch a new ‘children overboard’ strategy in an election campaign that looks difficult to win.”

Ms Scrymgour is a Labor member of the Northern Territory’s Legislative Assembly, representing the seat of Arafura which covers western Arnhem Land and the Tiwi islands.

But she also points blame at her federal Labor colleagues who, in “scrambling for power themselves, have proved incapable of doing much more than hang on to the Coalition’s political apron strings.

“From Caboolture to Kirribilli, the crisis within settler society is deepening. That is the real national emergency.”

The Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial oration was established in 2001 to commemorate the University of Sydney’s first Indigenous graduate, Dr Charles Perkins.

This year’s lecture will be held this Tuesday in The Great Hall at the University of Sydney. Three Indigenous students will also be awarded the Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial prize on the night.

More information and bookings details are availableonline.
What: Dr Charles Perkins AO Annual Memorial Oration and Prize
When: 6pm, 23 October 2007
Where: The Great Hall, The University of Sydney Contact: Kath KennyPhone: 02 9351 2261

Tariq Ali in Sydney

UK activist, historian and author Tariq Ali, will speak about the political revolution across Latin America and its implications for the Middle East at Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney’s International public lecture series. Here are the details:

Fresh from a tour of Latin America, the author of Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006) will discuss how the views of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez - the foremost challenger of American foreign policy - have polarised Latin American.

In his engaging and well-informed style, Ali will discuss his first-hand experience with the political leaders and systems of Latin America and show how Latin America is challenging the “Washington Consensus” of US policies that aim to expand the role of market forces and constrain the role of the state.

Ali’s lecture, titled “Latin America and the Arab World: Resistance and Occupation,” will take the Sydney Ideas audience through a world divided between privilege and poverty and will show how the situation in Latin America could not be more different to the Arab world. Both Latin America and the Arab world have sparked intense hostility from the West by challenging neoliberalism, but according to Ali, the resistance in the Middle East is divided and without the social vision to unite people.

Sydney Ideas event details (www.usyd.edu.au):

What: “Latin America and the Arab World: Resistance and Occupation”. Tariq Ali at Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney’s international public lecture series.

When: 6.30pm, Tuesday, 26 June, 2007Where: The Seymour Theatre Centre, Cnr Cleveland St and City Rd, The University of Sydney.

Cost: $20/$15 concession. A limited number of free tickets are available for Sydney University staff and students. (Contact box office for availability.)

Bookings: (02) 9351 7940