A New Paradigm in Indigenous Studies? Tess Lea Launches Moving Anthropology at Cullen Bay Wharf
The act of launching a book is like naming a ship—it’s all about doing things with words. Those present at Absolutely Books in Cullen Bay for the launch of Moving Anthropology would have been aware that words were being put into action, as Associate Professor Tess Lea, the Co-Director of the School for Social and Policy Research, spoke of a “paradigm change” in Indigenous Studies.
After an introductory speech by Olga Havnen, Tess Lea announced that she and the other co-editors of the collection (Emma Kowal and Gillian Cowlishaw) hoped the book would become the textbook introduction to a new field called “Critical Indigenous Studies”. In the introduction to the new volume, the editors state that “Critical Indigenous Studies is characterised by the recognition of relationality” (2), and this conceptual approach is developed in a series of chapters that explore the theme of movement. There are chapters about roads, music, medical discourse, travel, four-wheel drives, churingas, shame and profit – a series of topics that will be of interest to readers with no specialist background in anthropology.
The editors criticise the discourse of “remedialism” that underlies the views of many politicians and policy-makers who believe that all the social problems facing indigenous society need to be “fixed up”. They suggest that “remedialism” stems from a wider discourse of liberal multiculturalism, that “seeks to extend all the advantages of our society to Indigenous people, without harming their cultural distinctiveness, through carefully imposed and directed interventions” (5).
The editors also argue that outdated binary oppositions such as black/white or indigenous/non-indigenous are categories that must be deconstructed through an analysis of movement between racial, cultural and institutional boundaries.
Moving Anthropology: Critical Indigenous Studies is published by Charles Darwin University Press, and can be purchased from the CDU Bookshop and Absolutely Books for $34.95.
