Category Archives: Upcoming events

CNTA’s First Nations Native Title Workshop August 2023 Brisbane

Sunday, 20 August 2023 00:42
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CNTA held an inaugural workshop for First Nations staff and consultants working in the native title sector. Participants met in late August in Brisbane and were represented by  employees of the Federal Court, the National Native Title Tribunal, and staff from QSNTS, CYLC and NQLC.

Although a small gathering, we welcomed First Nations staff and President from the National Native Title Tribunal, and from the Federal Court as well as staff from native title service organisations. CNTA intends to grow this initiative in future years.

The meeting was facilitated by Petronella Vaarzon-Morel and Tahnee Innes with guest speakers (see program).

Attached are two photos of the joint session between NTRB/NTSPs and Land Council Research Managers and First Nations attendees which was followed by lunch.

CNTA hopes to create more opportunities for joint dialogue with First Nations people working in the native title sector.

The program for the event is available below:

Challenges and Opportunities for First Nations Anthropologists and Researchers in the Native Title Landscape.

29-30 August 2023

Venue: Christie Conference Spaces, Brisbane

ROOM 1, level 3 240 Queen Street. Access to the building is provided from 8am onwards.

Aim of the workshop: This workshop is the first of its kind offered by CNTA. We hope it provides a space for First Nations anthropologists working in the various domains of native title to meet colleagues and begin a network of professional connections.

The program seeks to touch on the various arenas involved in native title applied anthropology, such as research and preparation of native title determination reports, court work, the postdetermination space/phase, and return of materials, cultural mapping etc.

8.30-9.00 Coffee and registration

9.00-9.45 Introductions: Tahnee (CYLC) and Petronella (Director CNTA)

Who are you? How long have you been working in this field and in what role(s)

9.45- 10.30 Tahnee Innes: Managing relationships and challenges in NTRBs/NTSPs/land councils in attracting and retaining First Nations Anthropologists/researchers

10.30-11.00 Morning tea

11.45-12.30 Research Managers join the workshop: recruitment and retention challenges.

12.30-1.30 Joint lunch

1.30-2.00 Michael Aird, (UQ Anthropology Museum): What photographs can tell us.

This presentation will follow Michael Aird’s journey of working with Aboriginal photographs for over 35 years and how he has been able to attach information to photographs. Many of the photographs were taken at a time when Indigenous people were only valued for the stereotypical image, they represented, rather than as people with individual identities worthy of being recorded.

It is important to Indigenous people to identify who appears in photographs. This has enabled descendants to build family histories that connect people to place and country. From photographs, genealogical information has been sourced that forms important evidentiary grounding for native title claims.

2.30-3.00 First Nations Anthropologists. Open Discussion session (Facilitated by Tahnee and Petronella) Your experiences: what rewards, risks, and difficulties participants have you experienced as an Indigenous anthropologist?

3.00-3.30 Afternoon tea

3.30-4.15 Petronella Vaarzon-Morel: Review of key issues from today’s discussion

Joint Workshop Dinner at the Pancake Manor – 18 Charlotte Street Brisbane. 7.00pm

Day 2

9.00-9.30 Ivan Ingram: Registrar in the Federal Court of Australia. Expert Witnesses in native title
applications.
9.30-10.30 Carmen Cooms-Delaney (QSNTS): Working at the coal face as a First Nations
Engagement Advisor

10.30-11.00 Morning tea

11.00-11.30 Suzi Hutchings (RMIT): Treading lightly, but strong: reflections on being a First Nations
native title anthropologist.
11.30-12.00 Amanda Gamble and Sandez Barnard (NNTT) Assistance under s 60AAA of the NTA, and
the role of applied anthropology.
12.00 -12.30 Working collaboratively- two illustrations.
Trish Barnard (former curator QLD Museum. The NTRBS and Land Council’s role as “depository”
(genealogies, photos, storage/management of materials, access issues).

David Martin (consultant) Collaborative planning for development: a methodology for the Arnhem
Highway upgrade

12.30-12.45 Wrap Up by Tahnee: Next Steps?

12.45 Lunch

End of Workshop

References for follow up reading are also available (see download/attachment).

Click here for references for CNTA First Nations Native Title Workshop

CNTA ASWA Collaboration Perth Workshop

Tuesday, 01 August 2023 00:34
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In early August this year (2023)CNTA collaborated with the Anthropological Society of Western Australia (ASWA) to run a one day workshop at St Catherine’s College titled

Creating the Archive, Reading the Archive, Reproducing the Archive: A symposium on documents, their production and their use in Heritage, Native Title, and Community Development.

This was the first post-covid event and was well attended with 32 ASWA and non-ASWA people attending, plus presenters. Collaborations are key to us offering relevant and stimulating material for our members, enabling us to grow our memberships.

The attendance of two CNTA directors helped to give the event further gravitas, given we are all so far from the east coast with the rising costs of travel limiting our involvement in east coast events..

Themes discussed included:

  • Methodological issues in qualitative heritage surveys.
  • Cultural change and customary traditions in heritage assessments.
  • Use of documents in the context of orally inherited traditional knowledge.
  • Practitioners’ circumstances dealing with Indigenous politics among groups and individuals.
  • The need to deal with Archives, including the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Inquiry System as a socially produced artefact with similar strengths and weaknesses as other archives. The contents of the ACHIS needs to be critically assessed.

These themes allowed for thought provoking presentations and discussion around heritage, native title and broader research issues (including Aboriginal stolen wages). From ASWA’s perspective, those attending appeared to really enjoy the collegial and warm atmosphere. Since anthropologists often spend time on our own, it was great to see everyone share their experiences and work.

ASWA-CNTA Symposium:

Creating the Archive, Reading the Archive, Reproducing the Archive: A symposium on documents, their production and their use in Heritage, Native Title, and Community Development.

Documents have been part of the human story since the invention of writing and are ubiquitous in modern societies in hard copy and/or digital form often encompassing the minutiae of people’s lives and their encounters with social agencies. This is particularly true of indigenous peoples whose lives in the past have been tightly controlled. Official documents are regularly used in social research, though as Garfinkel (1965) and other researchers highlight, are not without inherent problems. Anthropologists, folklorists and others have historically documented oral traditions from societies without written records and currently engage with changes and adaptations in those societies that arise in part through engagement with archival resources. Ethnographers regularly produce fieldnotes and other “texts of the field”, which in turn are essential sources for other researchers, particularly in native title settings.

However, reading fieldnotes and other “texts of the field”, is problematic as they always have a liminal multi-vocal quality while at the same time, as ethnographers such as Sanjek (1990) point out, are always fragmentary, incomplete, inconsistent and contradictory. Indigenous peoples are increasingly turning to State, ethnographic and other archives which often are the source of both revelatory information and emotional distress. Archives can potentially facilitate connection with ancestral lives and create healing narratives to redress traumatic pasts. Archives may also be weaponised in intra- and inter-community conflict. There is now an ongoing process to repatriate archives to indigenous communities.

In this symposium we seek to critically evaluate the creation of archives and their use in heritage, native title and other social research, as well as their use by indigenous and other people in connecting with the past and creating narratives for the present.

CNTA 2022 Annual Conference

Friday, 17 December 2021 23:51
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CNTA’s 2022 Annual Conference had the theme Protecting and managing the Indigenous Estate, and was held from 9-11 February. It was the first virtual annual conference. Originally, it had been intended that sessions would be conducted simultaneously in venues in Cairns, Darwin, Perth and potentially Canberra, while being available at all sites and beyond them through Zoom. However, in light of recent Omicron events CNTA has decided to proceed with a zoom-only conference instead of a hybrid one.

Information on this very succesful conference, in particular videocasts of all presentations, can be found on the Annual Conferences tab of this website.