Canberra, Wednesday 29 November 2000

Aboriginal-Chinese encounters in Australia

The first national colloquium to focus exclusively on Aboriginal-Chinese encounters in Australian culture and history will be held at The Australian National University in Canberra this Friday, 1 December.

"The gathering will shed light on the multiplicity of voices, ancestries and histories which cut across and interweave Australia's Indigenous and Immigrant populations," colloquium co-convenor Penny Edwards said. " It is being held to debunk the colonial paradigm of an easily divided Black/White/Yellow Australia, and to discredit its contemporary versions."

The "Lost in the Whitewash: Aboriginal-Chinese Encounters from Federation to Reconciliation" colloquium has twenty participants drawn from the arts, national organisations, cultural institutions, and interstate universities. They include:

GORDON BRISCOE (ANU) is a member of the Mardu peoples whose homelands stretch from the Simpson Desert in the NT deep into Western Australia. He was born in a 'Native Institution' in Alice Springs in 1938. His pioneering and distinguished career spans the worlds of politics, government, law, welfare, medicine, academia, and sport. His paper "Legislative Aspects of Chinese-Aboriginal Relations" will be based on research conducted for his PhD on 'Disease Health and Healing: Aspects of Indigenous Health in WA and Qld, 1900-1940'. The paper will be presented at 9:20 am, Friday 1 December. A full version of the thesis is available here.

HANNAH McGLADE (Murdoch University) is a lawyer and lecturer in law, who recently won her own legal victory against Senator Ross Lightfoot for his racist remarks. An Aboriginal of Chinese descent, Hannah is currently completing a PhD on the history of Aboriginal-Chinese relations at Murdoch University. This academic project parallels a personal quest to map the Chinese ancestry of her Nyungar-Chinese grandmother Ethel Woyung McGlade, and track the life-story of her Chinese great-grandfather Ah Lee. Hannah will talk about "searching, finding, lost, recovering, missing" in her paper "Kung Fu, it means hard work…" at 4.00pm, Friday 1 December.

HELEN SHAM-HO (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation) is an Independent Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales and the first Parliamentarian in Australia of Chinese descent. She was re-elected in 1995 for a further 2 terms until the year 2003. Since elected, Mrs Sham-Ho has become known for her dedicated stand on race relations and multicultural affairs, anti-discrimination, community services and social justice issues. Mrs Sham-Ho was Event Committee Member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in organising Corroboree 2000. Mrs Sham-Ho will give the conference closing address at 5.15pm, Friday 1 December.

Co-convened by Dr Penny Edwards and Dr Shen Yuan-Fang, the colloquium is a joint venture between the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, the Centre for the Study of Chinese Southern Diaspora, and the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU.

Click here for Colloquium website, program details and abstracts.

For more information or to arrange an interview contact:
Ms Penny Edwards, Colloquium co-convenor 02 6249 0338 (w) or 0404 874 950 (mob), or email: Penny.Edwards@anu.edu.au
or Clarissa Thorpe, ANU Public Affairs 02 6249 5575 (w) or 0416 249 245 (mob)

No: 99/2000

© 2000 Marketing & Communications Division,
The Australian National University.
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Last Modified Tue, July 16, 2002