Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:02:57.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Towards Reconciliation: Teaching Gender and Music in the Context of Indigenous Australian Women's Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Elizabeth Mackinlay*
Affiliation:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Get access

Extract

This paper addresses issues related to the conflicting paradigms of Western systems of knowledge and Indigenous systems of knowledge within the context of teaching about gender and music in Indigenous Australian women's performance practice. I will first describe the subject which I am currently teaching at the University of Queensland. I will then discuss the theoretical concerns related to teaching about gender and music in terms of the differences between Western and Indigenous ways of knowing about these concepts. I will then examine the conflicts which arise in the context of teaching Indigenous studies within a non-Indigenous framework. Finally, conclusions will be drawn in regard to the reconciling the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing and the implications for teaching this type of curriculum on an international scale.

Type
Section C: Tertiary Education
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Attwood, Bain (1992). ‘Introduction’. In Attwood, Brain and Arnold, John (Eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines. A special edition of Journal of Australian Studies: Melbourne: LaTrobe University Press in conjunction with Monash University, pp. ixvi.Google Scholar
Beherendt, Larissa (1993). ‘Aboriginal women and the white lies of the feminist movement: implications for Aboriginal women in rights discourse’. Australian Feminist Law Journal 1: 2744.Google Scholar
Bell, Diane (1983a). ‘Consulting with women’. In Gale, Fay (Ed.), We are Bosses Ourselves: The Status and Role of Aboriginal Women Today. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, pp. 2428.Google Scholar
Bell, Diane (1983b). Daughters of the Dreaming. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Berndt, Catherine H. (1950). ‘Women's changing ceremonies in northern Australia’. L’Homme 1: 187.Google Scholar
Berndt, Catherine H. (1965). ‘Women and the “Secret Life”‘. In Berndt, Ronald M. and Berndt, Catherine H. (Eds), Aboriginal Man in Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, pp. 236282.Google Scholar
Berndt, Catherine H. (1970). ‘Digging sticks and spears, or, the two-sex model’. In Gale, Fay (Ed.), Women's Role in Aboriginal Society. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, pp. 3948.Google Scholar
Berndt, Catherine H. (1983) ‘Mythical women, past and present’. In Gale, Fay (Ed.), We are Bosses Ourselves: The Status and Role of Aboriginal Women Today. Canberra: Australian institute of Aboriginal Studies, pp. 1323.Google Scholar
Bin-Salik, Mary-Ann (1993). ‘Aborigines and universities: are they compatible?The Eighth Frank Archibald Memorial Lecture delivered at the University of New England, Annidale, 8 September.Google Scholar
Bradley, John (1992). With Jean Kirton and the Yanyuwa community. Yanyuwa Wuka. Language from Yanyuwa Country. A Yanyuwa Dictionary and Cultural Resource. Unpublished document.Google Scholar
Bradley, John (1997). Lianthawirriyarra, People of the Sea: Yanyuwa Relations with their Maritime Environment. PhD thesis, Northern Territory University.Google Scholar
Cowlishaw, Gillian (1982). ‘Socialisation and subordination among Australian Aborigines’. Man 17(3): 492507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodale, Jane (1971). Tiwi Wives. A Study of Women of Melville Island, North Australia. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Patricia (1981). ‘Aboriginal women: a study of culture contact’. In Grieve, Norma and Grimshaw, Patricia (Eds), Australian Women. Feminist Perspectives. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 8694.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Annette (1980). ‘Dual social systems: technology, labour and women's secret rites in the eastern western desert of Australia’. Oceania 51(1): 419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hastrup, Kirsten (1995) A Passage to Anthropology. Between Experience and Theory. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huggins, Jackie (1991). ‘Letter to the editor’. Women's Studies International Forum 14(5): 505513.Google Scholar
Huggins, Jackie (19871988). ‘“Firing on in the mind”: Aboriginal women domestic servants in the inter-war years’. Hecate 13(2): 523.Google Scholar
Huggins, Jackie (1994). ‘A contemporary view of Aboriginal women's relationship to the White women's movement’. In Grieve, Norma and Burns, A. (Eds), AustralianWomen: Contemporary Feminist Thought. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 7079.Google Scholar
Huggins, Jackie and Blake, Thom (1994). ‘Protection or persecution? Gender relations in the era of racial segregation’, In Saunders, Kay and Evans, Raymond (Eds), Gender Relations in Australia. Domination and Negotiation. Sydney: Harcourt Brace, pp. 4258.Google Scholar
Jolly, Lesley (1997). Personal communication. Conversations and documents provided to author, march-April, University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Kaberry, Phyllis M. (1939). Aboriginal Women: Sacred and Profane. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Langton, Marcia (1981). ‘Anthropologists must change’. Identity 4(4): 11.Google Scholar
Langton, Marcia (1996). ‘The Hindmarsh Island bridge affair: how Aboriginal women's religion became an administrable affair’. Australian Feminist Studies 11(24): 211217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langton, Marcia (1997). ‘Grandmother's law, company business and succession in changing Aboriginal land tenure systems’. In Yunupingu, Galarrwuy (Ed.), Our Land is Our Life. Land Rights — Past, Present and Future. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, pp. 84116.Google Scholar
Larbaleister, Jan (1990). ‘The politics of representation: Australian Aboriginal women and feminism’. Anthropological Forum 6(2): 143157.Google Scholar
Lucashenko, Melissa (1994). ‘No other truth?: Aboriginal women and Australian feminism’. Social Alternatives 12(4): 2124.Google Scholar
Merlan, Francesca (1988). ‘Gender in Aboriginal social life: a review’. In Berndt, Ronald M. and Tonkinson, Robert (Eds), Social Anthropology and Australian Aboriginal Studies. A Contemporary Overview. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, pp. 1576.Google Scholar
Netti, Bruno (1983). The Study of Ethnomusicology. Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Netti, Bruno (1989). ‘Mozart and the ethnomusicological study of Western culture (An essay in four movements)’. Yearbook for Traditional Music: 116.Google Scholar
Robertson, Carol (1993). ‘The ethnomusicologist as midwife’. In Solie, Ruth M. (Ed.), Musicology and Difference. Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship. Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 107124.Google Scholar
Sargent, Margaret (1994). The New Sociology for Australians, 3rd edn. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire.Google Scholar
Toomey, Vanessa (1994). ‘Live performance as a teaching and learning resource and a way towards reconciliation’. Journal of the Aboriginal Studies Association Dec: 1417.Google Scholar
White, Isobel (1970). ‘Aboriginal women's status: a paradox revisited’. In Gale, Fay (Ed.), Women's Role in Aboriginal Society. Canberra: Australian institute of Aboriginal Studies, pp. 2129.Google Scholar
Williams, Michael and Trigger, David (1997). ‘Anthropology's canon and Aboriginal knowledge in Australia: the politics of doing Indigenous studies in the 1990s’. Unpublished paper, prepared for American Ethnological Society Conference, Seattle, 69 March.Google Scholar