This multi faceted project is an investigation through written and studio research of the complexities of interactions that took place between Lutheran missionaries and Indigenous people at such places as Hermannsburg mission. The study uncovers dialogues and cross-cultural exchanges that led to shifts in understandings of Indigenous Australian cultural practices. It also explores the creation of a place and a cultural space that was occupied by both Lutheran missionaries and Indigenous people, as well as the space between what is generally regarded as binary oppositional perspectives of negative and positive effects of Lutheran missions in Central and South Australia. This has been conceptualized through form, texture and media in a new body of artwork. Whilst clay is predominantly used within this body of studio work to refer to Indigenous cultural practices, to the land and to media introduced by the Lutheran missionaries and mission workers, there are also other significant objects that have been in the Heidenreich family for generations and which create a link between past and present. / "Contact 2002" refers to individual identities (Lutheran and Indigenous), whilst the spaces in between vessels allude to exchanges and dialogue that took place in and around the missions. "Exchange 2003" is suggestive not only of the physicality of interactions that occurred within Lutheran missions such as Hermannsburg, but considers the psychological and spatial consequences of such encounters. / The space created by the presence of the Lutheran church and other buildings built by the early missionaries at Hermannsburg is the focus of "Space/Place 2002", which is also indicative of the interactions which took place in such structures. / The documentation and transliteration of Aboriginal languages by some of the Lutheran missionaries is explored through "Land and Language 2002", in which the importance of the land as teacher and classroom as well as oral traditions for the Indigenous people prior to the arrival of the Lutheran missionaries is also referenced. Accounts of specific documentation of Indigenous Australian languages and the collection of Indigenous cultural objects are represented in "Sand 2002" and "Recollections (of Namatjira) 2003" is suggestive of insights given to the broader Australian public into Aranda cultural and visual art practices. / Exchanges and dialogue that occurred between the Lutherans and the Indigenous people at Hermannsburg is explored again through "Thread(s) 2003", which gives reference to traditions and activities encountered by Indigenous men and women as a result of the presence of the missionaries and their wives. Flour, tea and sugar were materials/ provisions that were sources of exchanges between the Indigenous people and the missionaries and this has been explored in "Cultural Exchanges 2003", whilst in "Zum Andenken 2003" exchanges of knowledge are investigated further. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2003.

Thesis (MPsy(Specialisation))--University of South Australia, 2003.

Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2001.

Thesis (MA(AborStud))--University of South Australia, 1997

Thesis (PhD) -- University of South Australia, 1999

published_or_final_version / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Drawing upon field work, mass media accounts, and Canadian government internal documents, this thesis considers how settler/Aboriginal power relations were reproduced when Taiwan Aboriginal artefacts held by the Royal Ontario Museum were used in a 2001 exhibition in Taipei to commemorate the centennial of the death of the Taiwanese nationalist hero, George Leslie Mackay (1 844-1 901). I argue that this exhibition and related Taiwan-Canada state Aboriginal exchanges have been hierarchically structured by organizational narratives in which coalitions of settler state institutions function as adept heroes who quest to help inept Aboriginal peoples deal with various reified difficulties such as "cultural loss" or "economic development." Aboriginal participants are portrayed as thankful for the heroes' sacrifices and thereby morally validate the heroes' quests and relations between settlers and Aborigines. Helping Aborigines thereby allows for moral claims by involved institutions that just@ the use of Aboriginal exchanges to advance multiple institutional agendas including Canadian government nation branding, Taiwanese government informal diplomacy, and corporate advertising.

This thesis is a seminal in-depth study of how non-indigenous writers and illustrators construct Aboriginal childhood in children's fiction from 1841-1998 and focuses not only on what these say about Aboriginal childhood but also what they neglect to say, what they gloss over and what they elide. This study probes not only the construction of aboriginal childhood in children's fiction, but explores the slippage between the lived and imagined experiences which inform the textual and illustrative images of non-Aboriginal writers. This study further contends that neo-colonial variations on the themes informing these images remain part of Australian children's fiction. Aboriginal childhood has played a limited but telling role in Australian children's literature. The very lack of attention to Aboriginal children in Australian children's fiction - white silence - is resonant with denial and self-justification. Although it concentrates on constructions of aboriginal childhood in white Australian children's fiction, this study highlights the role that racial imagery can play in any society, past or present by securing the unwitting allegiance of the young to values and institutions threatened by the forces of change. By examining the image of the Other through four broad thematic bands or myths - the Aboriginal child as the primitive; the identification of the marginalised and as the assimilated and noting the essential similarities that circulate among the chosen texts, this study attempts to reveal how pervasive and controlling the logic of racial and national superiority continues to be. By exploring the dissemination of images of Aboriginal childhood in this way, this study argues that long-lived distortions and misconceptions will become clearer / Doctor of Philosophy (Literature)

In the past fire ecology literature in the tropics has focused mostly on the role of fire within the savanna biome. The fire ecology of tropical wetlands has been largely neglected. This thesis attempts to redress this imbalance by examining the fire behaviour of the wetlands in Kakadu National Park, northern Australia. Wetland burning has become a critical management issue in the Park, particularly since the eradication of the feral Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis Linnaeus) from the Park. Fuel loads, which had been previously suppressed by grazing and trampling, have increased substantially, and this has subsequently affected the fire ecology of the region. This thesis investigates aspects of fire ecology in the Mclaleucafloodplain communities of Kakadu. It examines Aboriginal people's contemporary use and knowledge of fire, as well as the fire behaviour and impact of fires both set by Aboriginal people and from other sources of ignition. In addition, a 'Wetland Burning Index' (WBI) is compiled in order to examine some of the interactions between wetland fuel, weather and fire behaviour. A range of ecological and ethnoecological methodologies are employed in order to measure fire behaviour in situ rather than approximating specific fire regimes under experimental conditions. The thesis assesses the effectiveness and practicability of these methods. A description of wetland fire behaviour is also given, and includes a range of fire types and phenomena. Aboriginal names of fires, and related terms, are also detailed (in the Gundjeihmi language), some of which have not been previously documented. The study concludes by discussing how indigenous people's knowledge of fire can contribute to the field of wetland fire ecology. It also discusses how different fire types can be used to manage tropical wetland ecosystems.

This thesis is a narrative exploration of white teachers inhabiting Indigenous spaces in Central Australia. These stories are drawn upon to invoke autobiographical conversations on my processes of becoming an educator. These conversations with white teachers facilitate and help contribute to my unlearnings of whiteness and increase my understandings of living and teaching in cross-cultural spaces. I encapsulate this narrative journey exploring whiteness by drawing on the metaphor of textual pilgrimage to help clarify the roles of narrative and writing that are central to this research inquiry. / I understand a thesis to be a storied story, a narrative providing the writer textual space in which to chronicle ones reflections on their becoming, as one writes to articulate how ones research experiences have shaped and transgressed ones knowledge bases. My interests in positioning my concepts of a thesis are guided by the possibilities of discovering narrative meaning within a thesis. It is hoped that the reader will ascertain that the text they are holding in their hands is a result of me shaping my self while utilising writing as a method of discovery (Laurel Richardson 2000). I use this thesis as a personal narrative in which I seek awareness toward my own individual whiteness and illumination of the cross-cultural spaces in which I live and teach. The structure of this personal narrative is advanced through Michel Foucaults (1994) writings on hupomnemata, or reflective notebooks that I use to comprise this thesis. / The research employs personal narrative as its methodology. This personal narrative originates out of and is enriched by various narrative traditions of research such as narrative inquiry (Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly 1994, 2000), nomadic writing practices (Elizabeth St. Pierre 1997), writing as method (Laurel Richardson 1997, 2000), and autoethnography (Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner 2000). These diverse traditions of utilising narrative in research have informed and led to the development of personal narrative as the research methodology within this educational inquiry. / This thesis explores the idea what white teachers perform their whiteness while teaching in Indigenous communities in Central Australia and that these performances of whiteness are constructed around particular relationships and understandings of space. I understand space and identity to be interconnected and that both shape the social constructions of one another. Understandings of space help to create notions of identity, and particular notions of identity help to construct understandings of space. / In exploring the social construction of space and identity I survey four discourses of the Central Australian desert and how these discourses help shape its social construction within the imagination of white Australian teachers. After elaborating upon these four desert discourses, I shift into noticing what I refer to as discursive identities. My attempt is to illumine the discursive identities of white teachers and how these identities may shape white teachers motivations for living and teaching in remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. I then explore the construction of an archetypal white teacher in Central Australia to help illumine what the intensity of the desert experience could be like for white Australian teachers. This archetype is performed through my own interpretations of the desert teaching experience by the thoughts, ideas, and feelings that are invoked within me while reflecting about teaching in Central Australia. / This thesis represents the physical and intellectual journeys that I have travelled through and experienced as part of my textual pilgrimage. This textual pilgrimage encapsulates nearly four years of full time study. Being a textual pilgrim has provided me with the gift of time in which to indwell within a research question that has greatly interested me. The learnings and self-awareness that have occurred in this time have been profound. The beauty of textual pilgrimages is that one seldom knows where ones journey will lead. This thesis documents my own growth, awareness, and unlearnings of whiteness while increasing my understandings of living and teaching in cross-cultural spaces. This thesis is a representation of my processes of becoming an educator. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.