The present and the ethnographic present: change in the production of anthropological knowledge about Aboriginal Australia

Abstract

Well first, I’d just like to thank the organizing committee and the museum invitation. It’s a wonderful chance to be here, I haven’t been here before. And also Phillippe Peltier and Anne-Christine Taylor and Jessica De Largy Healy for taking us around the museum yesterday, it was such a privilege and it was a wonderful experience, completely devoid of anybody else and with full access to the collections.My paper “The present and the ethnographic present: reflections on the production of anthropological knowledge about Aboriginal societies and cultures”. The period between the 23rd of September 2000 and the 25th of October 2001 is as good as any to take for the public transition in the production of anthropological knowledge in Australia. On the first of these dates, Peter Sutton, a linguistically oriented anthropologist working mainly in Cape York, gave the inaugural Berndt Foundation memorial lecture. And on the second date, Noel Pearson, a leading public intellectual from Cape York gave the inaugural Charles Perkins Memorial Oration. Broadly speaking they were saying the same things: there was a policy failure in remote Aboriginal Australia where 30 years of solicitous welfare State policies had led to wide spread but not universal demoralization and unacceptable levels of social problems. These two speeches enabled those both inside and outside Aboriginal affairs to speak out aloud about what had previously been only whispered, and be heard. Ultimately this led, on the 23r [...]