58227 Introduction to Aboriginal Cultures

This subject focuses on south-eastern Australian Aboriginal cultures and traditions. The subject draws upon a range of intellectual disciplines, including history, anthropology and archaeology alongside Indigenous knowledge to develop an understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing and being, including relationships to land and water, kinship networks, gender and social and economic modes of organising. The subject draws upon Aboriginal creation and control of their own cultural representations through various mediums including autobiography, life stories, documentary and feature films, poetry, painting, music and dance. Aboriginal culture, and the various disciplines that have sought to understand and detail them, are investigated in relation to the ideas that have informed them including tradition and modernity, romanticism, intersubjectivity, post-colonialism and cultural renewal.