Listening to the ancestors

18 November 2021

A panel comprised of four papers, each of which looks at ways in which the ancient traditions of Australian Indigenous wisdom and knowledge embedded in ceremonial song and dance might inform our response to ‘the connected crises of climate change and biodiversity decline’ and the ‘multitude of threats to humanity’ that they pose.  Are we able to value and protect these songs and dance tradition? Are we capable of the deep listening required to engage with the knowledge and wisdom that they contain?  Can we grasp and apply what they have offer us in the midst of the present environmental crisis?

Event details

When: 11.00am-12.30pm (AEDT), Thursday 18^th November 2021 Where: Zoom Webinar

Speakers

Emeritus Professor Allan Marett

Emeritus Professor Allan Marett’s main fields of research include: Australian Aboriginal song, in particular, the wangga of NW Australia; and Sino-Japanese music, including Japanese court music (gagaku) and Japanese Noh drama.  His book Songs, Dreamings and Ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia won the 2006 Stanner Award, and in 2017, a seven-CD set of wangga songs, co-authored with Linda Barwick, won the National Indigenous Music Award for Best Traditional Release. Prior to his retirement in 2007, Allan was Professor of Musicology at the University of Sydney and before that, Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong.

Associate Professor Clint Bracknell

Clint Bracknell is a musician and researcher from the south coast Noongar region of Western Australia and Associate Professor at WAAPA and Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University where he leads an ARC funded program of research focusing on the connections between Noongar performance, language, Country and digital technologies. He recently worked on Hecate, the first Shakespearian theatre work to be presented in an Australian language, and Fist of Fury Noongar Daa, the first feature film to be dubbed in one. Clint received the 2020 Barrett Award for Australian Studies and serves as an elected AIATSIS Council member.

Associate Professor Trevor Ryan

Trevor Ryan Noongar/Yamitji stage and screen performer and drama teacher with a strong interest in language and cultures. His recent career highlights include performing as King Duncan in the Noongar Macbeth, Hecate (2020) and as Yoshida in the Noongar-dubbed version of the classic Bruce Lee film, Fist of Fury Noongar Daa (2021). As a constant member of the Wadumbah Aboriginal Dance Group, Trevor performed for the Queen on her arrival to Perth and at the opening of CHOGM 2011. Trevor is currently completing a Masters of Performing Arts researching the links between Noongar performance and Country.

Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick

Linda Barwick is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney’s Sydney Conservatorium of Music. A musicologist, she specialises in the study of Australian First Nations musics, community and immigrant musics, and has also worked on cultural traditions of the Philippines and Italy. Linda has published extensively in ethnomusicology, digital humanities and archiving, and has collaborated with many other researchers and communities in winning funding to support research on sustaining and developing performance traditions. She is co-founder of the digital archive PARADISEC, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures. Her edited volume (co-edited with Jennifer Green and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel) Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond (Sydney and Honolulu: Sydney University Press and University of Hawai’I Press, 2020) was recently awarded the Australian Society of Archivists 2020 Mander Jones Award for “publication making the greatest contribution to the archives profession in Australia”. In 2019 she was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the SOAS University of London. Linda is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Associate Professor Linda Payi Ford

Associate Professor Linda Payi Ford is a Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and Arts located in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. She underpins her theoretical approach to her projects with her Mirrwana and Wurrkama (2005) methodology to her Indigenous research practice and theory across multiple disciplinary fields. Payi is a Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu Traditional Aboriginal Owner from Kurrindju. Ford’s Country is Kurrindju in the Finniss River and Reynold River regions southwest of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Ford balances her academic research career, teaching, and learning in higher education, family and caring for Country, threatened Aboriginal languages and culture.

Associate Professor Sally Treloyn

Dr Sally Treloyn (PhD Ethnomusicology, USYD) is an ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Intercultural Research in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. As Co-Director of the Research Unit for Indigenous Arts and Cultures at the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, Sally plays a strategic role in the Indigenous research and research training agenda of the Faculty.