Understanding
INDS207 Indigeneity in the Contemporary World
Associate Professor Evan Poata-Smith
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What do you have to do? What are the key themes? INDS207 Weekly readings. My contact details. Week One On-line resources. Welcome to INDS207
INDS207 involves a focus on:
Indigenous people and everyday life.
We will be looking at:
- How Indigenous people in both the Australian and international contexts have been studied and represented.
- How Indigenous people collaborate with others to create symbolic ‘worlds’ that can provide a sense of identity and belonging.
- How cultural objects and technologies may be inscribed with new meanings and reworked by Indigenous people in ways that incorporate local knowledges and sensibilities.
- How Indigenous people may ‘perform’ their Indigeneity; how, and in what ways, they may symbolize their Indigenous ‘selves’ to others.
- How Indigenous people may confirm, challenge or disrupt some of the common expectations about what constitutes "authentic" Indigenous
cultural expression.
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Week One
Over-arching objective for the course:
To develop critical perspectives on Indigenous people, their everyday activities and experiences, and the way their lives are represented.
This involves:
- Interrogating popular ‘common sense’ understandings about Indigenous people and the world around them.
- Reading against the grain of supposedly self-evident truths –rather than simply taking them for granted.
- Questioning what may appear to be “obvious”, “common sense”, or “natural”.
- Over-emphasis on Indigenous people as a “problem”; e.g. there is a focus on substance abuse, violence, ‘delinquency’, criminal offending etc.
- Much of the research lacks specificity:
§ It tends to assume homogeneity among Indigenous people. § It tends to disregard the everyday experiences of significant sections of
Indigenous populations. In Australia, for example, there is an over emphasis on the experiences of Indigenous people living in rural and remote communities.
§ It tends to treat Indigenous cultures as if they are sealed off or are living
in “splendid isolation” from the rest of the world; that Indigenous people only share cultural experiences with other Indigenous people.
§ It is often underpinned by ‘primitivist’ assumptions about the way
Indigenous people engage with new technologies and what constitutes authentic forms of cultural expression.
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INDS207 Why is this issue? Week One
Indigeneity is often associated with primitivist notions of ‘cultural purity’ that lock Indigenous peoples in the past.
§ Indigeneity is strongly associated with notions of idealized
simplicity and ecological belonging (i.e. an intrinsic part of the landscape, intimately linked to the ecology of the country like trees and rivers and animals).
§ Indigenous peoples are expected to maintain ‘authentic’ identities
and express those identities in those ‘traditional ways’ while settlers and their descendants remain largely untroubled by this.
§ We will examine where these ideologies come from and how they
may be employed to enable and/or constrain Indigenous agency.
Why is this issue?
If Indigenous peoples don’t express their creativity in these easily recognisable ways they are all too often treated as being ‘inauthentic’ or fake.
Key point: failure to express one’s indigeneity in ways that are in accordance with the settler imagination has significant implications.
e.g. Indigenous people that embrace new technologies, popular past-times or contemporary forms of creative expression.
INDS207 Week One 7
Key themes
Indigenous people and the contemporary context.
Throughout the course, you will:
- Explore how human creativity and its incessant desire to innovate,
- vercome limitations and extend horizons, shapes the everyday life.
- Examine how indigenous people search for, and create, meaning in the context of the spontaneous, unpredictable and capricious nature of life itself.
- How, despite constraints, indigenous people create spaces that offer both relief, and temporary release, from significant societal pressures.
- How Indigenous people actively produce, appropriate and consume media technologies and mass-produced consumer commodities to create their
- wn symbolic ‘worlds’.
Key themes
Indigenous identities and music cultures
Week One INDS207 Key themes • Global hip hop and Indigeneity. Case studies
Indigenous identities and music cultures
Case studies
• Bob Marley and transnational Black cultures.
- To what extent do the reggae rhythms emanating from indigenous communities speak to local social, political, and economic struggles at the same time as they relate to those of others?
- Can music cultures act as a ‘cultural bridge’ that allows people who have their own issues of marginalisation to be a part of a ‘global youth cultures’ of resistance?
Key themes
Exhibiting Indigeneity
Case studies:
§ How do Indigenous people use nonverbal signs and symbols as part of a
discursive mix to communicate their individual and group identity?
§ Tatoos, piercings, scaring and modified bodies.
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12 INDS207 Week One In all societies, irreversible forms of body decoration are used as a vehicle for human expression. Piercings, scarification, and tattoos may signify a wide array of meanings.
Alongside more temporary forms of adornment (hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and cosmetics), these nonverbal signs and symbols are part of a discursive mix used to communicate individual and group identity.
INDS207 Week One
By the end of the course, you should be able to identify:
- The ways Indigenous youth may ‘perform’ their Indigeneity.
- How forms of body decoration may be used as a way of marking identity
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• How may we symbolize the Indigenous ‘self’ to others?
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Source: Ralph Lauren's 2014 holiday ad campaign for its RRL line
Source: Thosh Collins, http://thoshcollinsphotographer.com/
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INDS207 Key themes Week One
Indigenous Superheroes and Science Fiction
Focus:
- Do indigenous superheroes function as symbolic expressions of indigenous pride and resistance?
- To what extent does indigenous science fiction (or speculative fiction) act as transformational metaphors for reimagining indigenous futures and identities in new and provocative ways? § Since indigenous cultures (and peoples) have long been relegated to the past in the mythos
- f colonial settler states, could the very act of imagining indigenous futures also constitute an act of resistance?
The critically acclaimed, action-packed, sci-fi drama Cleverma is among a new wave of pop culture that celebrates Indigenous resilience. Set in the future, creatures from ancient mythology battle for survival in a world that seeks to silence and destroy them. Photograph: BBC/Red Arrow International/Sundance TV
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INDS207 Key themes Week One Social Media and Indigeneity Case studies:
- What online strategies have Indigenous people deployed to subvert dominant settler colonial narratives and agitate for political change?
- Internet memes and indigenous political activism.
| Assessment | Type | Weighting | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concept Map | Individual | 20% | Friday 25th March 2022, 4:30pm (Week 4) |
| Video Presentation | Individual | 30% | Friday 6th May 2022, 4:30pm (Week 9) |
| Final Essay | Individual | 50% | Friday 3rd June 2022, 4:30pm (Week 13) |
What do you have to do?
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Week One
One-stop-shop for the subject. Detailed information on course assignments. E-learning platform PowerPoint slides.
Weekly readings (or links to those
readings) for tutorial assignments.
Links to relevant web sites and both scholarly and popular articles.
Multimedia clips used in class.
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INDS207 Week One 25 INDS207 Week One
My expectations Read. Read. Read!
Reading is one of THE most important skills and habits for students.
Franz Kafka once said that a book should be “...the ice axe to break the frozen seas within us.”
Reading gives us access to the inner-most thoughts of other people and a window to their day-to-day lives.
Many of the academic issues that students face at
university relate to the quality and quantity of time spent on reading!
So... get into the reading habit now!
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¨ Associate Professor Evan Poata-Smith
¤ Indigenous Studies ¤ School of Humanities and Social Inquiry ¤ Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts ¤ Building 19 Room 1078 ¤ Phone: 02-4252-8502 ¤ E-Mail: evanps@uow.edu.au