Anna Haebich
Anna Haebich is a multi-award winning author whose books include For Their Own Good (UWAP, 1988) and Broken Circles (Fremantle Press, 2000). Her most recent, Dancing in Shadows: Histories of Nyungar Performance (UWAP, 2018), was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary awards. She is currently a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University.
Articles
On ‘Bran Nue Dae’, by Jimmy Chi
EssayAmid the fun and laughter of the film, memories of the original musical streamed back to me. I know it well; I spent time with Jimmy Chi and his partner, Glennys Allen, in Broome in the mid-1980s when he was working on the songs and the concept. I’d made my own road trip to Broome in a canary-yellow V8 station wagon that was covered with red dust.
A long way back – reflections of a genealogical tourist
EssayEarlier this year I made a brief visit to my mother's family homeland in Germany on the edge of the North Sea. Since I was a child I had dreamed of this country but as an adult had resisted...
Negotiating botanical collections
Essay IT IS NOT widely known that many Australian colonial natural history collections are represented in German museums and herbaria, nor that there are initiatives to transform these artefacts of colonial heritage and science back into objects from living cultures...
Ancestors’ words
EssayNO ONE WAS surprised when, in 1977, the Western Australian Government put a blanket ban on its recently decommissioned Aboriginal archive and even threatened legal action against researchers. The archive was a ticking time bomb: the dutifully documented words...
The return of the Carrolup drawings
From the edge of the edge
EssayGOING HOME FROM work on late afternoons in summer, I drive west between lines of flat grey bush straight into the glaring red sun that hangs just above the horizon. I’m driving to the edge. As the crow flies,...
From karaoke to Noongaroke
EssayTHIS IS THE story of how karaoke, that quintessentially global entertainment, came to Noongar country in Western Australia in the 1990s and was transformed into Noongaroke, a twenty-first century version of corroboree events of bygone days. Noongar people engaging...
Retro-assimilation
EssayNOSTALGIA FOR AN assimilated nation haunts public debate on national identity and nationhood, as well as related issues of race, ethnicity, indigenous rights and immigration. Commentators on both sides of Australian politics deny that the Prime Minister is turning...
No simple twist of fate
EssayON THE DAY we left Townsville for Bowen, a photo of soldiers wearing white hoods graced the cover of the Townsville Bulletin. On a bleak stretch of highway, we narrowly missed the debris of a freshly smashed semi-trailer. This was...
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