How do we maintain ethical relations in the face of a huge range of local, national, regional and global challenges? What do our communities, ancestors and the earth teach us in the present? How do Indigenous peoples maintain networks of knowledge sharing for individual and collective wellbeing? We live in times of national and global attacks on the humanities and higher education across the university sector. This has impacted the psycho-social, and environmental wellbeing of students, scholars, professional and academic staff while depleting institutional knowledge and the capacity for critical and ethical thinking, analysis and genuine service and care. Funding is often redirected toward disciplines that are deemed as pragmatic or entrepreneurial to support agendas for resource extraction, security, technology and particularly Artificial Intelligence.

This public symposium brings together Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, South Sea Islander, Pacific Islander and Indigenous scholars, artists, activists and creative practitioners to discuss their own approaches to ethical collectivity, wellbeing and relationality in the academy. How can we nurture and sustain ourselves, our students, our colleagues and our communities, within and beyond colonial institutions? How can we continue to nurture generative and caring spaces, and have critical and complex conversations about our collective histories and futures? How do we allow room for healing and rematriation grounded in solidarity with local, regional and global work to protect our communities, lands, seas and skies? How can Indigenous creative praxis and the arts support these efforts?

Keynotes include:

Associate Professor Christine Taitano De Lisle (University of California Los Angeles)

Dr Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Dechinta Centre)

Panellists include:

Juliann Anesi (UCLA), Judy Watson (independent artist), Sana Balai (UQ), Dr Julie Gough (TMAG), Kim Kruger (VU), Dr Rea Saunders/ r e a (UoM), Dr Eugenia Flynn (RMIT), Fiona Cornforth (ANU) and Dr Melinda Mann (CQU).

*Morning tea, lunch and evening refreshments are included.

About this event

This event is part of the ARC Discovery Indigenous project “Re-Imagining Humanities through Indigenous Creative Arts” IN220100080 — Flinders University, Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. It is hosted by Professor Katerina Teaiwa and Talei Luscia Mangioni of the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU.

The ARC project is led by chief investigators Associate Professor Ali Gumillya Baker (Flinders), Professor Simone Ulalka Tur (Flinders), Associate Professor Natalie Harkin (Flinders), Dr Faye Rosas Blanch (Flinders), Professor Katerina Teaiwa (ANU), Dr Lou Bennett AM (Melbourne) and Dr Romaine Moreton (RMIT). It is supported by research assistant Talei Luscia Mangioni and filmmaker Ellen Hodgson.

This symposium will be delivered face to face with an edited recording available in the future.