Australian First Nations’ Art, Culture, and Politics

Australian First Nations' arts and cultural practices, cosmological beliefs, and politics span more than 60,000 years, with Australian First Nations Peoples standing firm in the belief that they have been on the continent known as Australia since time immemorial. The concept of everywhen, with specific reference to the more widely known, somewhat misleading, term the Dreaming, intersects with Australian First Nations' concept of synchronous temporalities and spatiality. This being the belief that ancestral times, beings, and actions continue in the present and will continue into the future. This course explores the diversity of pre-colonial contact across the many nations whose traditional homelands embody the continent known as Australia, from colonial contact to the present day; from customary to contemporary representation, reclamation, reinvigoration, and reimagination; through diverse media and trans-disciplinary platforms; and informed by socio-political frameworks impacting contemporary Australian First Nations and First Nations futures. The course. has three main aims. First, to provide students with basic geographical, historical, and contextual frameworks for the study of Australian First Nations visual art, culture, and politics in mainland Australia and the islands of Tasmania, Tiwi, and the Torres Strait. Then, to familiarize students with concepts that are fundamental to Australian First Nations understandings of the interconnected relationships between art, culture, and life, both historically (pre- and early post-contact up to the early twentieth century) and in a contemporary (early twentieth to present day) context. Finally, to assist students in developing ideas about how contemporary Australian First Nations visual art, culture, and socio-political actions have contributed to critical methodologies and theory, representation and identity reclamation, reinvigoration and reimagining, and inter-disciplinary, creative-led research. Collections and exhibitions at arts, cultural, social history, and archival institutions are used as part of the teaching and learning experience wherever possible. Cultural institutions and collections at Harvard University are actively engaged with throughout the course, including the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology collection, specifically Australian First Nations cultural material.