Conference events
Monday 28 September
AIATSIS Collections tours
4:30pm AIATSIS
Tours of the AIATSIS collections will be held at 4.30pm and provide delegates with an opportunity to visit and learn about the manuscript and audiovisual collections at AIATSIS, and the Family History Unit.
Please sign up for the tours at the Registration desk on Monday from 1:00pm.
Welcome reception
5:30pm - 6:30pm AIATSIS
All delegates are invited to the welcome reception. Light refreshments will be provided. There is no cost for attendance, but numbers are required for catering purposes.
Book Launch followed by Documentary Film Screening Fire Talker: The Life and Times of Charlie Perkins
6:30 -7:45pm, Mabo Room, AIATSIS
Following the welcome reception, Rachel Perkins will launch The Indigenous Student’s Guide to Postgraduate Scholarships in Australia and Overseas which has been produced by the Aurora Project and the Charlie Perkins Trust for Children & Students. This comprehensive and timely guide promotes postgraduate study and contains invaluable information on over 120 scholarship opportunities for Indigenous postgraduate students to universities in Australia and overseas. It also includes reflections from 32 leading Indigenous postgraduates, a preface by the Prime Minister and a Foreword by Tom Calma.
The book launch will be followed at 6.45pm by a screening of Fire Talker: The Life and Times of Charlie Perkins (2009). This film by Ivan Sen uses archival footage from early 1960s to 2001 and builds an intimate and honest portrait of Perkins’ life bound inexorably with the most dramatic political shifts in Australian Indigenous policy.
Tuesday 29 September
Report Launch: Sort of like reading a map: a community report on the survival of South East Australian art since 1834 by Fran Edmonds with Maree Clarke.
1:00pm, Manning Clark Centre Foyer
The CRCAH and the Koorie Heritage Trust in Victoria invite you to the launch by Dr Dawn Casey of Sort of like reading a map: a community report on the survival of South East Australian art since 1834. This report, by Fran Edmonds with Maree Clarke, investigates the link between art and wellbeing in SE Australian Aboriginal communities.
Film Screening:Bran Nue Dae, introduction and Q & A with the Director, Rachel Perkins
6:00pm National Film and Sound Archive, McCoy Circuit
We are delighted to be able to offer conference delegates an exclusive screening of Bran Nue Dae. This much anticipated film is not yet on general release. Based on the stage musical by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles; directed by Rachel Perkins; produced by Robyn Kershaw and Graeme Isaac; and written by Reg Cribb, Rachel Perkins and Jimmy Chi; the film stars Rocky McKenzie, Jessica Mauboy, Ernie Dingo, Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Stephen Baamba Albert, with Missy Higgins and Geoffrey Rush.
Bookings essential — please sign up at the conference registration desk.
The National Film and Sound Archive is a 15 minute walk from the Manning Clark Centre. A mini bus will be running between the two venues.
Wednesday 30 September
Book Launch Murray River Country by Jessica Weir
1:00pm, Manning Clark Centre Foyer
Aboriginal Studies Press invites you to the launch, by Dr Payi–Linda Ford, of Murray River Country by Jessica K Weir. In this book, Weir moves readers beyond questions of how much water will be ‘returned’ to the rivers, to understand that our economy, and our lives, are dependent on river health. She uses different knowledge traditions to reveal unacknowledged assumptions that trap our thinking and disable us from acting. By engaging with the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia’s agricultural heartland, Murray River Country goes to the core of our national understandings of who we are and how we can live in this country. Weir brings new insights to these issues by focusing our attention on what Indigenous people from along the Murray are experiencing, saying, and doing.
National Museum tour and Conference dinner
5:30pm. Tour of National Museum of Australia, Acton Peninsula
Those attending the conference dinner have the unique opportunity to go on a curator-guided tour of the new exhibition in the First Australians Gallery at the National Museum: From Little Things, Big Things Grow: Indigenous Civil Rights 1920–1970. Staff in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program at the National Museum will be on hand to answer questions about the new exhibition and the First Australians Gallery.
Bookings essential – please sign up at the conference registration desk. Many thanks to staff at the National Museum of Australia for providing this free tour.
6:30 for 7:00pm. Dinner at the National Museum. The Museum is a 25 minute walk from the conference venue, or hop on the bus that will leave the Manning Clark Centre at 5:15pm (for the pre–dinner museum tour) then every 15 minutes to 6:15pm.
Bookings are essential.
Entertainment will be provided by comic Sean Choolburra & musicians Dale Huddleston and the Riverbank Band.
Thursday 1 October
Launch of online resources at AIATSIS: AUSTLANG and PRIMO
1:00pm, Manning Clark Centre Foyer
AIATSIS invites you to the launch of two online research and resource discovery tools. Jeanie Bell will launch AUSTLANG, a unique online database on Australian Indigenous languages. AUSTLANG enables users to search for a language by a language name, a place name or by navigating the Google Maps, and to find information about the language.
Rod Stroud will launch a new web discovery tool for the AIATSIS collections catalogue. This new resource embraces interactive capabilities by enabling users to search, tag, add reviews, subscribe to RSS feeds and store favourite records in an electronic shelf.
Conference tours
Two free tours of Indigenous cultural sites around the ACT are being provided by the conference sponsor, the ACT Government. For more information and to make a booking, please select the tour on your registration form or sign up at the conference registration desk.
- Monday 28 September This tour is FULL - no more seats available for this tour
Depart 1:30pm Return 5:00pm or - Friday 2 October
Depart: 9:30am Return: 1:00pm
Wayne Quilliam Photography exhibition
Manning Clark Foyer, ANU
View an exhibition of outstanding images by NAIDOC Artist of the Year 2009, Wayne Quilliam. The exhibition will run for the duration of the Conference. Other art works by young urban Indigenous people from the Canberra Region will also be on display.
Preview the exhibition here.