Didgeridoo

'Reflect, listen and learn': Melissa Lucashenko busts colonial myths and highlights Indigenous heroes

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
People, Old age, UQP, First Nations, Native, Female, Black Lives Matter, Tobacco, Family, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Community, Frontier war, Stolen Generations, Fruit, Story Bridge, Crying, Opium, Turtle, Aborigine, Heart, Law, Human voice, Man, Human, System, Haus, The Past, Brisbane River, Australia Day, Mental, Genocide, Essay, Heel, Melissa, Complex, Violence, Australian frontier wars, Life, Soil, Research, Melissa Lucashenko, Time, Reading, Franklin, Whaling, Book, Animal husbandry, Entertainment, Porcelain, Typesetting, Nursing, Drug, Country, Blak, Yagara, Didgeridoo

Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie, takes the reader on a journey through magnificent and heartbreaking dual narratives set five generations apart.

Key Points: 
  • Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie, takes the reader on a journey through magnificent and heartbreaking dual narratives set five generations apart.
  • Review: Edenglassie – Melissa Lucashenko (UQP) Lucashenko gifts us with characters impossible to not to invest in.
  • Read more:
    With wit and tenderness, Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko writes back to the 'whiteman's world'

It’s Granny Eddie’s world

    • The first character we meet is Granny Eddie, who has been hospitalised after a fall.
    • Winona laments not seeing her Granny Eddie enough, while also trying to find a job, disrupt the colony and make sure her granny is safe and cared for.
    • Respectful, kind and considerate, he is trying his best to care for Granny Eddie – and finds himself pushing professional boundaries as he falls head over heels for fiery Winona.
    • She and Dr Johnny have much to learn from each other as they bond over their care for Granny Eddie.

Shifting time

    • Lucashenko transports you, shifting through time.
    • In 1844, we meet Mulanyin, saltwater man, whose inner complexities are explored in depth as he learns the Law and lessons from Country and Ancestors.
    • With that thought, the boy had the electric realisation that all his life he had been eating the decisions of his Ancestors.
    • With that thought, the boy had the electric realisation that all his life he had been eating the decisions of his Ancestors.
    • I am reminded of the poem, The Past, by the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal:
      Let no one say the past is dead.
    • Haunted by tribal memories, I know
      This little now, this accidental present
      Is not the all of me, whose long making
      Is so much of the past.

‘Your body is not your own’

    • In the present, Winona and Granny Eddie interact and relate with Māori mob, through shared understandings of birthing practices and opposition to white cultural appropriation.
    • I found myself laughing, crying and fighting off goosebumps as I read.
    • There were moments when I had to put the book down, to sit with what I was reading.
    • It is clear Lucashenko has done extensive research to position this historical fiction through past and present Magandjin localities.
    • This is further evidenced by Lucashenko’s extensive acknowledgments and thanks to contributors and knowledge holders in the book’s author notes.

Fusing traditional culture and the violin: how Aboriginal musicians enhanced and maintained community in 20th century Australia

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Avery, Music, Veronica Willaway, Culture, Human, Research, Blue Mountains, Requiem, Ngiyampaa, History, Element, Name, Walking, Beauty, Community, Population, The Singleton Argus, Program, Didgeridoo, Cultural diversity, Jetta, Whaling, Jewellery, Nursing, Lac, Management, Entertainment, Nightclub, Aborigine, Noongar

The European violin was initially an imposition on Indigenous culture.

Key Points: 
  • The European violin was initially an imposition on Indigenous culture.
  • But Aboriginal engagement with the violin cannot be exclusively seen as a means of cultural loss.
  • As my new research shows, Indigenous violin playing throughout 20th century Australia saw Aboriginal people adapting the European violin to fit within ongoing cultural practices.

Cultural continuation

    • Western music was often taught to Aboriginal people as a means of demonstrating civility and as preparation for assimilation into white Australian society.
    • Aboriginal people used music in the creation and preservation of individual, cultural and collective identities.
    • As historian Anna Haebich writes, Jetta played the violin for local dances, weddings and Nyungar-only campfire gatherings in the bush.
    • Read more:
      An Ode To My Grandmother: remaking the past using oral histories, theatre and music

An Aboriginal jazz band

    • Music was provided by an Aboriginal jazz band playing locally made violins, banjos, steel guitars and gum leaves.
    • This couple walking down the aisle as these musicians played the Wedding March provides a rich evocation of the way western instruments were incorporated into Aboriginal music and events on their own terms.

Violins at a corroboree

    • An article from the Northern Champion in 1934 recounts a concert and corroboree that occurred in Purfleet, New South Wales, for the local “townspeople”.
    • The first part of the program was devoted to songs and native dances, followed by a corroboree which illustrated elements of native lore.
    • Each instrument was homemade and included single-string fiddles, violins and ukuleles made from tea chests.

Indigenous players today

    • These historical violinists are the predecessors of creative and innovative Indigenous string players who enrich our contemporary cultural life today.
    • Noongar violist, composer and conductor Aaron Wyatt made history in 2022 as the first Indigenous conductor of a state orchestra.

Another assault on Country and its precious species has begun at Binybara/Lee Point

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
EPBC, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Pressure, Lee, Housing, Environmental protection, Brachystelma, Samuel, Speech, Finch, Aborigine, Tree, Calendar, Medicine, Plant, Biodiversity, Death, Eagle, Animal, Population, Buchanania, Nature, Cooking, Native title in Australia, Didgeridoo, Environment, Erythrophleum, Smoking, Habitat, Bird, AP Biology, National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (Nigeria), Hunting, Forestry, Jewellery, Agriculture, Larrakia, Melaleuca

The government’s decision to approve this loss shows a continuing disregard for nature, cultural heritage and the legacy our descendants will inherit.

Key Points: 
  • The government’s decision to approve this loss shows a continuing disregard for nature, cultural heritage and the legacy our descendants will inherit.
  • The battle to protect Binybara – as it is known to its Traditional Owners – has galvanised the local community.
  • Read more:
    97% of Australians want more action to stop extinctions and 72% want extra spending on the environment

What’s at stake?

    • The shoreline near the proposed housing is a globally significant site on the flyway of many shorebirds that migrate from eastern Asia to Australia each year.
    • These birds face threats from habitat loss and degradation across their range.
    • The project’s environmental impact statement acknowledged it would also have a significant impact on another endangered species, the black-footed tree-rat.
    • Read more:
      Land clearing and fracking in Australia's Northern Territory threatens the world's largest intact tropical savanna

A deep cultural significance

    • The Larrakia people’s deep and rich cultural ties to this area stretch back millennia.
    • The birdlife, from the migrating shorebirds to the owls, kites, eagles and Gouldian finches, is integral to the ecosystems and to the cultural fabric and story of this place.
    • Erythrophleum chlorostachys (delenyng-gwa) leaves are used for smoking ceremonies and the inner bark for medicine to treat sores and deep wounds.
    • They ask for a management plan to protect their cultural heritage to be developed with their input and that of experts and Darwin locals who value this place.

A(nother) failure of national environment law

    • What those offsets are – or whether they are even possible – is not yet known.
    • By the time the difficulty of finding a suitable offset site becomes clear, it is often too late – the habitat is gone.
    • The case of Binybara exemplifies many of the failings of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act identified by the Samuel review.
    • Read more:
      Get the basics right for National Environmental Standards to ensure truly sustainable development

      John Woinarski receives has received funding from the Australian government's National Environmental Science Program.

Gilbane Building Company and Nextera Robotics Partner to Automate Construction Management with Autonomous Robots

Retrieved on: 
Monday, October 4, 2021
Partnership, Efficiency, MIT, Deep learning, Solution, Didgeridoo, Neural network, Gilbane Building Company, Map, Software, Computer, AI, Environment, Navigation, CEO, BIM, Construction, Gilbane, Inc., Automation, Safety, Robotics, Industry, 3D printing, Medical device, Surveying

"Our robotics platform is designed to offer a cost-efficient, automated means to make construction sites safer and more efficient," said Michael McKelvy, president and CEO of Gilbane Building Company.

Key Points: 
  • "Our robotics platform is designed to offer a cost-efficient, automated means to make construction sites safer and more efficient," said Michael McKelvy, president and CEO of Gilbane Building Company.
  • "We're always looking at ways to deliver greater value to our clients and our partnership with Nextera Robotics aims to do just that.
  • Nextera Robotics offers best-in-class software and robotics developed by AI engineers who are passionate about building a new paradigm of automation for the construction industry.
  • At the core of every Nextera Robotics solution is Nextera OS - an operating system for industrial robots.