Saturday,12th Aug 2023 Editors Ann McGrath & Jaky Troy reflect upon the idea of ‘EveryWhen’, a new collection on Australian Indigenous ideas about time and deep history..

Everywhen asks how knowledge systems of Aboriginal people can broaden our understanding of the past and of writing and performing history. Indigenous ways of knowing, narrating, and re-enacting the past in the present blur the distinctions of time, making all history now. Significantly, questions of time and the language of Country are at the heart of Indigenous sovereignty. In Australia, and much of the western world, history has been conceived of two narrowly. History is not as straightforward – or as recent – as some might think.

Ann McGrath is Professor of History and Director of the Research Centre for Deep History at ANU. She co-ordinated the history project of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2017. Her books include Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia (2015) and Born in the Cattle (1987),
Jaky Troy is Professor of Linguistics and Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Portfolio at the University of Sydney. She is well-known for her work on Aboriginal languages through her book The Sydney Language (1994), in retrieving the language of her own people, the Ngarigu of the Snowy Mountains, and in introducing Indigenous languages into school curricula. .

Laura Rademaker is an ARC DECRA research fellow in the school of history at ANU. Her research focuses on Australia’s Indigenous history, religion and gender in Australia. She is interested in cross-cultural engagements through history, as well as how history writing itself can become more cross-cultural. Her first book, Found in Translation (2018), was awarded the Australian Historical Association’s Hancock Prize.

All talks will be held in the Blackheath Public School Hall in Leichhardt St, Blackheath, NSW.

Talks start at 4 pm, doors open 3.30 pm for our famous afternoon tea, selling coffee, tea and cake.
Entry: $10 waged $5 unwaged

Online bookings preferred but a limited number of tickets are available at the door.
We accept card and cash payments.
Afternoon tea: cash payments are appreciated at the afternoon tea table, but you can also buy cake vouchers ($3 each) and coffee/tea vouchers ($3 each) along with your entry at the door when you arrive.
Payment can be made at the door or you can book in advance online.