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'My first class in teaching Indigenous literature was beset with a challenge: 'Why are you quoting that songline on overhead?! An Aboriginal student asked me, deeply offended, when I introduced a pre-scripted lecture on Aboriginal 'text'. 'It is not to be taken away from its context. It is sung, not written; it is performed with dancing and has a meaning that you would not understand!' My bravado failed and I gave her the stage. She was right. I had unwittingly performed a 'colonial' act of misappropriation. The pressures of early career academic life were my rather feeble excuse - at the last minute I had been asked to take over the unit from a retiring colleague on top of my normal teaching load, was finishing, at night, my PhD on Australian novel to film adaptation, and was processing all sorts of new realities. I'd been instructed by this colleague to show an 'example' of a songline as an introduction to a unit called 'Australian Society, Aboriginal Voices'.' (Author's introduction, 70)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 27 Mar 2012 15:37:58
70-94
Teaching Indigenous Literature : An Ethics of Voice
Subjects:
- Ethical Approaches to Teaching Aboriginal Culture and Literature in Spain 2008 single work criticism
- Feelings 1996 single work poetry
- Fractured Conversations : Indigenous Literature and White Readers. A Reading of the Poetry of Lisa Bellear 2005 single work review
- Beyond Orality and Literacy: Textuality, Modernity and Representation in Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley 2004 single work criticism
- Dhuuluu-Yala : To Talk Straight : Publishing Indigenous Literature 2003 multi chapter work criticism
- Always Was Always Will Be 1993 single work criticism
- Wandering Girl: Who Defines "Authenticity" in Aboriginal Literature? 1998 single work criticism
- My Place 1987 single work autobiography
- Aboriginal Voices : Up Front and Centre 2008 single work criticism
- Benang : From the Heart 1999 single work novel
- Kim Scott's Benang : An Ethics of Uncertainty 2005 single work criticism
- Listening to Indigenous Voices : The Ethics of Reading in the Teaching of Australian Indigenous Oral Narrative 2005 single work criticism
- Politics of Writing 2002 single work autobiography
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