A living out of grievance

Some notes from the world of indigenous grievance:

*  Lidia Thorpe:

Victorian independent senator Lidia Thorpe has made allegations she was sexually harassed and assaulted at Parliament House, including in the Senate chamber, during her time as a Greens senator. 

"It has been a very hard time for me in this place. I was sexually assaulted four times in my first six months," Senator Thorpe said. ...

Senator Thorpe confirmed her allegations of sexual assault and harassment were about Labor and Coalition parliamentarians, not members of the Greens. 

She said she chose not to speak out at the time, but the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service (PWSS) were aware of her complaints. 

"I didn't want any action taken," she said.

Uhuh.

*  Chelsea Watego, the Queensland academic I have mentioned before, (sued her University because she didn't like the workspace they gave her, dropped the case, blamed lack of support from her union, got arrested and pleased guilty to obstructing police, lodged a complaint that they had discriminated against her, and lost that case too) has a video of a Byron Bay TED talk(!) about "Black joy is for Black people" which is not about joy at all, but about intense grievance:

 

 * Sandy O'Sullivan has just left for a 3 month tour of the US and England is a part of Queer indigenous academia which, as far as I can tell, is centred in Macquarie University.   She seems, between posting selfies on Twitter every second day (some sort of psychological necessity for her, apparently), to be slowly writing a book on "anti-colonialism" and gender.  She is joined in this field of study by Madi Day, who has become a Fullbright scholar:

Madi Day, from the Department of Indigenous Studies, received the Fulbright Sir John Carrick New South Wales Scholarship, funded by the New South Wales State Government, and will undertake their scholarship at Southern Connecticut State University this year.

Day is a career researcher who works across Indigenous studies, trans studies and gender studies. They are completing their PhD titled Coloniality, gender and heterosexuality in so-called Australia.

Day’s Fulbright research will offer a comparative study of coloniality, gender and heterosexuality across Australia and the United States as settler colonial nation-states. The research will also examine how anti-colonial approaches are integrated into gender studies departments in the United States, and whether this could be improved in gender studies in Australia.

Madi also gave a talk, the details of which I cannot find online, which featured the term "heterosexual terrorists", apparently:

 * Dr Corrine Sullivan, by the way, is currently an Associate Professor at Western Sydney University, but got her BA and PhD at - yes, Macquarie University.    Her research interests are this:

Her current research project explores Indigenous Australian sexuality and gender diversity. For Indigenous Australians that identify as sexually and/or gender diverse there can be significant implications on cultural/social identities, and are at risk of being ostracised, ignored, silenced, be socially and culturally stigmatised, and may face rejection and ejection from their families and communities. The key objectives of this research initiative are to fill the gap in this area of knowledge by; working with Indigenous Australians who identify as sexually and/or gender diverse, and with Indigenous community organisations to develop appropriate educational resources that can contribute toward building inclusive communities. The outcomes of this research will inform law-making, policy, as well as access and delivery of support and services that are culturally appropriate, relevant, and morally unbiased.

 I'm not entirely sure how the comments in this (about queer indigenous being ostracised within their own community) are meant to tie in with Sandy O'Sullivan's and Madi Day's apparent project to convince us all that it was only the colonisers/settlers who brought in the idea of just two genders, and fighting discrimination is an "anti-colonial" project.   Guess we'll see when their little-read books (apart from within indigenous studies faculties) are published.

Contrary to appearances, I do worry that a post like this gives the impression that I have suddenly become a fan of Andrew Bolt and his dubious criticisms.  No, I have really come here via my own reading what passes for academic commentary on aboriginal issues on Twitter and elsewhere.    

It seems pretty clear to me that too much funding is going into the more esoteric sociological aspects of aboriginality and, most worryingly, into helping them promote an ever increasingly radical view (ironically, while making a good living from selling the idea) that the economically and socially struggling members of the First Nations community should only hold the rest of the country they live in with contempt.    Now that I think of it, it's pretty much the Left wing version of Fox News - selling grievance as a way of making a good living.

  

Academic waffle at its purest

I learned, while checking in on the Bluesky home of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan [the trans/non binary light skinned aboriginal who recently celebrated getting an Irish passport (as all Australian people indigenous do 😐) and "gender affirming surgery"  - which I would assume is breast removal - at the tender age of 60] that a university in Ireland is currently hosting the European Intersectional Humanities Summer School.  

While I (like all reasonable people) am appalled at the Right turning into an anti science conspiracy cult in the US, and rabidly anti-immigration populist in most of the West, and consider its ideological extremes are much more significant that those on the Left, in the interests of balance, it's still fair that from time to time I note the nutty vacuousness of Lefty academia in identity politics that produces nothing but hot air and well paid employment for people with nothing productive to do.   (I feel a bit guilty dissing O'Sullivan, who frequently appears emotionally fragile,  but have a look at a talk like this one on video that she has given, and I just have to question the funding of this corner of academia.)     

Anyway, lets read about the summer school and be amazed at the way words can be combined to say nothing of significance:    

The European Intersectional Humanities Summer School 2026 will be held in Maynooth University Arts & Humanities Institute from Monday, 22 June to Friday, 03 July. It will offer an innovative and transformative experience at the intersection of critical theory, social justice and humanities scholarship. Convened by Professor Anna Hickey-Moody, the Summer School will bring together scholars, activists and students for an immersive exploration of how intersectionality shapes and is shaped by the human experience across various fields of inquiry. Teaching alongside Professor Hickey-Moody will be A/Prof Loïc Bourdeau. As Associate Dean for Research & Engagement at Maynooth University (MU), Loïc brings extensive interdisciplinary expertise in creative methods, gender and sexuality research, languages, and the medical humanities. 

“Remixing”offers a methodological and conceptual framework for our interdisciplinary summer school grounded in the intersectional humanities. It foregrounds creativity, criticality, and relationality: remixing as praxis invites participants to work across historical periods, disciplinary boundaries, and cultural traditions, to produce new ways of thinking, making and imagining futures. In its most expansive form, remixing is not merely a technical process: the rearrangement or recombination of source materials, but a political and philosophical gesture. It challenges inherited hierarchies of knowledge, interrogates the power structures that have shaped archives, disciplines, and canons, and opens up space for voices, methodologies, and epistemologies that have been marginalised or excluded in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
 
Approaching the humanities through remixing allows participants to revisit history, philosophy, media, music, literature, languages and cultures not as fixed or closed narratives, disciplines or practices but as dynamic sets of traces and counter-narratives that can be recomposed to reveal suppressed perspectives, alternative genealogies, original grooves. Remixing in music and media provides a lens through which to understand circulation, appropriation, hybridity, and resistance: the ways cultural forms travel, transform, and accumulate political charge. In philosophy, remixing can mean bringing together disparate traditions, from Indigenous, African, or Asian philosophical lineages to continental and analytic thought, to unsettle universalist claims and expose the colonial assumptions embedded in dominant frameworks. In English, languages, and literature, remixing offers opportunities to reimagine texts through translation, adaptation, multilingual experimentation, and decolonial reading practices that foreground intersectional identities and experiences.

As a theme and method for our summer school, remixing encourages participants to work collaboratively and experimentally, drawing connections between past and present, theory and practice, the embodied and the textual. It emphasises process over perfection, dialogue over monologue, and creative inquiry over disciplinary closure. Crucially, it makes space for the emergence of intersectional futures, asking how collaborative remixing might contribute to repairing epistemic harm, redistributing authority, and generating new forms of storytelling, pedagogy, and cultural production. The summer school becomes a site where critical humanities scholarship meets artistic practice, where remixing is an opportunity not simply to reassemble what already exists, but to imagine otherwise. 

Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in collaborative learning environments, where they can critically interrogate dominant narratives and reimagine new possibilities for a more inclusive and equitable future. Through lectures, discussions of texts, and hands-on workshops, participants are invited to engage in deep reflection on the practical applications of intersectional thinking to fields like literature, history, media and cultural studies. The Intersectional Humanities Summer School at Maynooth University marks a significant step forward in creating spaces where the humanities can more meaningfully intersect with global struggles for justice, equity, and representation. 

With a focus on fostering inclusive, interdisciplinary dialogue, this immersive event features an exceptional lineup of distinguished guest appearances. These expert voices contribute to the rich landscape of discussions and practice-based workshops that address key themes of race, gender, identity, coloniality and the socio-political dynamics influencing the humanities today....

I wonder if "re-mixing", which is given the seal of approval by intersectionality academics, extends to allowing authors of any racial or ethnic mix write fiction or make music or art in a form originally generated by other races or ethnicities?  Because some writers a few years ago were being booed at writer's festivals for saying it was indeed OK.       

Anyway, I suppose it keeps some people off the streets.  But I would be much happier if their jobs were paid for by private funding, not public. 

Various controversies

*     If only I ran the funding of research grants, Part 1: 

 

This is receiving a lot of mocking on Twitter, and when you go read the article at the link, it's thoroughly deserved:

“What the general public think of as mathematics tends to be whatever they learned (or, more likely, did not learn) at school. But in many Indigenous societies, mathematics is lived from when you are born to when you rejoin your ancestors,” Professor Ball says.

“It’s about formalised relationships within human society and with every element of the environment. Everyone is taught them. And the levels go up from birth to adulthood, as you are ready for more knowledge. This mathematics permeates every aspect of life.”

Numbers and arithmetic and accounting often are of secondary importance in Indigenous mathematics.

“In fact, as most mathematicians know, mathematics is primarily the science of patterns and periodicities and symmetries − and recognising and classifying those patterns.”

Indigenous societies often excel at non-numerical mathematics, she says.

Her big example of this is aborigines knowing how to signal with differing smoke spirals.   She gushes into a wild extrapolation that is, as with most guff of this type, pretty obvious "cope" for getting no respect for being hunter gatherers for 60,000 years by pretending they were not really hunter gatherers but technologists and engineers and farmers, just like the rest of the world.  (See "Dark Emu"):

“One interesting example that we are currently investigating is the use of chiral symmetry to engineer a long-distance smoke signalling technology in real time,” Professor Ball says. “If you light an incense stick you will see the twin counter-rotating vortices that emanate − these are a chiral pair, meaning they are non-superimposable mirror images of each other.”

A memoir by Alice Duncan Kemp, who grew up on a cattle station on Mithaka country in the early 1900s, vividly describes the signalling procedure, in which husband-and-wife expert team Bogie and Mary-Anne selected and pulsed the smoke waves with a left to right curl, to signal "white men", instead of the more usual right to left spiral.  

Mithaka country is southwest Queensland − Kurrawoolben and Kirrenderri (Diamantina) and Nooroondinna (Georgina) river channel country − and for thousands of years this region was a rich, well-populated cultural and trade crossroads of the Australian continent.

To create and understand these signals, you have to be a skilled practical mathematician, Professor Ball says.

“Theory and mathematics in Mithaka society were systematised and taught intergenerationally. You don’t just somehow pop up and suddenly start a chiral signalling technology. It has been taught and developed and practised by many people through the generations.”

At that time in the early twentieth century, British meteorologists were just beginning to understand the essential vortical nature of atmospheric flows.

“Imagine if the existing Indigenous Mithaka knowledge of vorticity had been recognised, nurtured and protected? In what ways may it have fed into the high performance, numerical weather forecasting capabilities that we all rely on now?” she asks. 

 Yeah, sure, Prof.   

She's an interesting case:  a list of her published papers to which she has contributed indicate a wide range of interests in various things that are pretty hard science-y.   But then again, she did much of her study at Macquarie University, so that probably explains a lot!

She seems to have a fair amount of money for this feel good work:

 Mind you, I don't know how many people share in that funding, but still...

*      If only I ran the funding of research grants, Part 2:  

Yes, maybe I target poor old grievance vortex Professor O'Sullivan too much, but here's a tweet about an article explaining her work:

 From the paper:

The background to Queer As . . . is complex and focused on representation of gender, sexuality, Indigeneity and other intersecting complexities. In 2020, substantial funding was secured from the Australian Research Council in the form of a 4-year Future Fellowship in a programme called Saving Lives. The programme, staffed by the authors of this article, comprises component projects in service of mapping the impact of queer Indigenous representation, with Queer As . . . a deep dive into representation on TV forming a central part of this work. During the development of Queer As . . . audit, we narrowed to focus to TV rather than other screen forms for a few reasons. The first is the capacity for the development of long-form characters, whose arc has potential for greater complexity through the time they spend onscreen. In addition, television represents a relatively accessible availability, while noting that subscription services have limited access to these forms. Television has a long history of entering our homes and allowing individuals and families to engage and learn diverse worlds outside of their own, and despite other forms of screen-based engagement, still represents a high volume of drama and story-based representations. For Indigenous viewers, we were interested in the impact of learning of local and international queer Indigenous representation across this accessible form. 

And the waffle continues.  One of Sandy's co-authors has a CV that is pure arts woke of the kind which makes any lasting career outside of introspective academia (that's a nicer way of saying "sheltered workshop") rather improbable:

Han Reardon-Smith (they/them) is a flutist, electronic musician, improviser, radio producer, community organiser, writer, researcher, and thinker living on the unceded land of the Jagera, Yuggera-Ugarapul, and Turrbal Peoples. Their work and thinking are rooted in queer and feminist collaborative and contaminative co-creation with other “holobionts with history”—soundmakers and artmakers, physical and social environments, ecologies, histories, and narratives, exploring the emergent possibilities of making-kin and finding agency within community (soundmaking as kinmaking: musickin). After completing their doctorate at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University (2021), Han is now Postdoctoral Research Associate at Macquarie University, supporting Wiradjuri trans/non-binary Professor Sandy O’Sullivan’s Senior ARC Future Fellowship project, "Saving Lives: Mapping the influence of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ creative artists". They are an active experimental musicker in the Magan-djin/Brisbane scene, playing with Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra, It’s Science And Feelings, The Flowers of Evil, Rogue Three, and as a soloist under the moniker cyberBanshee.

Oh look, here is an example of the "soundmaking" she participates in:

 

 

*  Look, I'm really sorry my third example is also a woman: 

   Many funny tweets follow:

That is all.  For now.

 

Oh dear

Noticed on Twitter, the non-binary aboriginal Professor (University of Sunshine Coast) who is currently in the USA doing stuff:

But "listening" means also making sure Sandy's feelings are OK, apparently:

 

Oh, and if you are wondering how the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University (with which O'Sullivan has a lot of connection) are taking the loss, the answer is "not well".

The head of  the Department, Bronwyn Carlson, was recently funded by the Winston Churchill Trust to do this project:

To investigate community approaches to rethinking colonial commemorations and their wider impacts

The description:

Every year protests against colonial commemorations are led by Indigenous peoples. There are numerous cases where communities have worked together to rectify commemorations which often represent violent histories, in the hope to reconcile the past and imagine a shared future. Little is known about the journeys undertaken for such efforts, and what the wider impacts might be. This project will investigate case studies in New Zealand, USA, Canada and Norway, noting that local-level efforts have the potential for significant global benefit. The focus will be on the approaches taken by these communities, the challenges and lessons learnt, and resulting changes for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous futures.

Sounds like there might be travel for Carlson for her to write a report that will achieve nothing of significance, to be perfectly honest.

Update:   More Sandy:

Sandy's work at the moment:

A problematic take

Not sure that I should highlight this, given I don't independently know any details of her life struggles, but surely I can't be the only person to read this and not conclude that it sounds like a case of neuroticism (or some other mental health diagnosis) which finds a convenient blame outlet in claims of extreme racism.  (She's not the only neurotic sounding indigenous woman - including several in academia - who are on Twitter.  They really are going to explode if the Voice referendum fails.)      

As with Sandy O'Sullivan, there seems to be an awareness that they are known as "difficult" or "too much", even within their own group, who they get upset with if they don't take the same line.  

What bothers me most about it is that this rhetoric is extremely unhelpful messaging to young indigenous who we want to succeed in the system they live in (a modern, capitalist State with a pretty good, if imperfect, welfare system), rather than live lives of continual resentment.  

More cringe

I still drop in sometimes to see what chronic grievance whirlpool Sandy O'Sullivan is up to.  Here's today's entry:

"We insist on their futures"??

Odd that the art seems to reflect a Harry Potter sensibility, given the condemnation of Rowling by the trans mob.

Anyway, I also learn from her twitter feed that "anti-coloniser" academia also really, really hates it when any body dares tries to make "acknowledgement of country" a bit less, well, exclusive:

 For what it's worth, here's where I am at on such matters:

a.    I have felt for some time that moving Australia Day is a good idea, given that Australia wasn't created in any sense on 26 January.   And yeah, I can see the indigenous objection to the use of that day.

b.   I've never been a fan of "welcome to country" and acknowledgements of traditional land, considering they have become overused and are deployed in some pretty obviously insincere ways.  (Such as pretending that "emerging elders" have much to tell certain organisations about certain things.  I always think this when listening to the acknowledgement given at QPAC performances.)  It has become a "political flex", too - and far from sending any message of reconciliation and unity, sends a message of disunity and power seeking.  

As such, it may be something Right wingers started, but if a Council seeks to "balance things up" somewhat, as in that Council statement, I think that's not a bad thing.

c.   Aboriginal politics is moving in the wrong direction, being based purely on grievance.  It is counter-productive - encouraging youth crime and lawlessness due to teaching them that the "colonisers" deserve only distrust and hatred and that all current social problems are their fault.  That's no way to get your people fully integrated into modern society with all the benefits that can come from that.

In which I find something useful via Helen Dale

As I have long said, I am no fan at all of Helen Dale and her writings, but occasionally, very occasionally, I will drop into Twitter X and see what she is commenting on.

This time, she linked to an article she wrote about another writer's book about the indigenous academia world of "settler-colonialism", a phrase of no obvious meaning (much like a mantra simply made to repeat in front of other academics)  which I have seen used endlessly on the Twitter accounts of the likes of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan - the indigenous/Irish academic who is, for my money, a hot favourite for any award there may be for the worst waste of money on academic research funding in Australia (see the list at the end of the article linked).      

I'm still not sure who claims credit for the term - Dale claims a lot of Australian academia helped it spread, but she's light on details.  Nonetheless, this part of Dale's article about it seems to me to explain it well:

This replacement of history with myth leads Kirsch to argue the ideology is a “political theology,” that is, a secularised religious concept expressed civically. A form of original sin where the everlasting process of colonisation means never-ending exploitation, racism, misogyny, and genocide, it suggests only the Noble Savage that is the Native can redeem us.

In one of the field’s most influential papers, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Eve Tuck of SUNY New Paltz and K. Wayne Yang of UC San Diego write that “relinquishing settler futurity” is necessary if we are to imagine “the Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone.”

And here’s me thinking futurity referred to a competitive equestrian event for younger horses.

As Kirsch says, “The goal is not to change this or that public policy but to engender a permanent disaffection, a sense that the social order ought not to exist.”...

Much of On Settler-Colonialism turns on Kirsch’s argument that because it requires policies that can never be implemented (“deport 97 per cent of the US population!”), it’s merely depressing and stupid. “America should not exist” is never analysed with a view to doing anything apart from making the place miserable with itself. 

Yes:  this is exactly what it has been like to watch indigenous rights street protest in Australia for the last couple of decades - as silly as watching 1960's communists trying to muster support for abolishing capitalism, and simply designed, so it seems, to perpetuate grievance without any sensible work as to how to actually improve things.

I will add to this later...

Let me do a bit of "both sides-ing"

First, a spectacularly embarrassing look for the top Fox News/MAGA crowd:

And now for the other side of the culture wars.  I have mentioned Prof Sandy O'Sullivan before, who I don't follow on Twitter, but someone else I follow does, hence I keep seeing their tweets.  And Twitter keeps suggesting I should follow "them".

"Them" because this is the byline:

Challenging gender binaries is anti-colonial work. Aboriginal trans/non-binary/queer/kin & Professor of Indigenous Studies @Macquarie_U   ARC Future Fellow  

Now, I like to think I'm pretty tolerant of universities having humanities schools which can have characters stuck in esoteric areas of research that interest few.   I mean, I'm pretty interested in philosophy as a field, and a lot of that has been spinning its wheels and going nowhere for some time. 

But boy (or "non binary"), I'm pretty sure that if ever you want feelings of "what an extraordinary sheltered workshop and mutual admiration society of academia these people have built for themselves" to feel fully justified, I strongly recommend reading their twitter feed.   

This week, for example, Sandy keep posting tweets about the "Digital Intimacies" conference being held at Macquarie.  I can give you a taste:

 

You get the idea?   Sorry, I found it hard to stop, because nearly every tweet seemed to be asking for ridicule for being such obvious examples of the type of academic endeavour that seems so - what's the word? - introverted? and self serving, mainly in the interests of just providing jobs for the boys (and girls and non binaries.)  

And, I should add, it's not that there aren't areas of interest to them that are worth studying, if you want to see some practical changes, like the safety of indigenous sex workers, or something.  But it's the invention of the terminology which really grates, and gives the strong suspicion that mostly, it's just about writing papers for each other to swoon over.  (Or in some cases, bitch about for not including the "non binary" adequately.)   A bit like blockchain advocates at RMIT!

Update:  another subject covered at the mini conference - 

 

A few comments on the Arday story

*  Twitter/X has been absolutely covered in its general feed with content about this story, in a way that makes you think "I know that this is now dominated by Right wing content, but this still looks like Musk made a call and required that the algorithm promote this story as much as possible."

*  As lots of people have said, significant parts of academic sociology (and the humanities more generally) have for decades (ever since identity politics and analysis became a thing) devolved into pretty vacuous and arcane complaint twaddle with little in the way of substance or remedy to social ills.   And as someone who has several times pointed to the (to be generous) dubious value of the work of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan and her Macquarie University compatriots, I sympathise entirely.

By the way, from my dim memories of it from some, ugh, 48 years ago, the introductory sociology subject that I did as a small part of my degree was actually pretty solid and interesting.  It's not an inherently valueless subject; it is just what academia has decided to do with it.   Basically, if this scandal results in Universities (and the bodies that fund academics) taking a harder look at what is being produced by who in their Humanities schools, it's not a bad result.

* I am somewhat puzzled as to how long it is taking for journalism to turn up comments from family or fellow students (or therapists) who knew Arday when he was young and allegedly unable to talk or read.  As one would think that if his claims were not exaggerated, there would be people willing to confirm it's true.   It is making it look more likely that there is no one who wants to defend the background story.

*  The New York Times has published some "Takeaways" from his (just published?) memoir, and man, I can just imagine the embarrassment of the person or persons who decided to fund it.  I like this little bit:

When he decided to go to college, his girlfriend “wrote out the entire application for me — including my personal statement.” At St. Mary’s University in London, he scored just 9 percent on his first exam. He worked hard, raising his grades so quickly that a professor at the school accused him of cheating.

“When you succeed against pretty much insurmountable odds, it weirdly makes people question your credibility,” he writes.  

 Actually, when you make claims that sound wildly implausible and an exaggeration that even Donald Trump would hesitate to claim, that's when people question your credibility.  

Microbes to the rescue

Feeding the world with plant microbiomes | The Saturday Paper

A short but quite interesting report here on how research into newly discovered plant microbiomes may help increase agricultural output.  For example:

Meanwhile, other bacteria can boost agricultural output. Pseudomonas,
which live in the soil around a plant, make hormones goading roots to
grow. In one trial, inoculating wheat with a cocktail of these bugs over
two years increased yields by more than 30 per cent. Another bacteria, Burkholderia,
has been shown to ramp up rice production. O’Sullivan wants to use
these plant steroids to inspire crops to grow during drought. “There is a
lot of potential here,” she says.

This sounds ripe for satire, but no one would be game to try

This lengthy article in The Guardian about a huge amount of infighting going on at Melbourne University on the issue of aboriginal studies and who gets appointed to positions would clearly be grounds for some good satirical fictionalised treatment.   I'm casting my mind back to A Very Peculiar Practice, from the late 1980's, as the kind of thing I would like.  (I wonder how that would play now, if I rewatched it; I do remember enjoying it at the time.)   But the problem is, no one would be game to try this now.  Not unless it was very, very sympathetic to the Aboriginal characters.

Dare I say, I don't have any doubt at all that there are many positions in indigenous academia which deserve to be cut.   I mean, I read Sandy O'Sullivan's twitter feed just to aggravate myself, where I learn about all sort of esoteric talks and projects and overseas travel that are useful for keeping indigenous  academics talking amongst themselves about how important their work is, rather than engaging with he rest of us, which is (I suppose) some sort of benefit to society.  At what cost to more useful funding, though?

Here are some extracts:

The University of Melbourne has come under fire for appointing non-Indigenous academics to senior roles focused on Aboriginal studies, at the same time as acknowledging it is “ill-equipped” to handle allegations of institutional racism.

The fresh criticism follows the resignation of Dr Eddie Cubillo – a Larrakia, Wadjigan and Central Arrernte man – from his role as part-time associate dean and senior fellow at the university’s prestigious Melbourne Law School (MLS).

Cubillo continues to lead the university’s Indigenous Law and Justice Hub but alleged the law school was “the most culturally unsafe place” he’d worked.

In an email sent to staff last week, the deputy vice-chancellor (Indigenous), Barry Judd, said Cubillo’s experiences showed current processes were “ill-equipped” to deal with “the complex issues raised by allegations of racism in the workplace”.

“As an organisation we have to do better,” he wrote.

And:

The Indigenous Knowledge Institute, founded in late 2020 to advance Indigenous research and education, is headed by Aaron Corn, who is a “long-term collaborator” with Indigenous leaders.

A University of Melbourne (UoM) academic who wanted to remain anonymous said the appointment of a non-Indigenous academic as the inaugural head of a department wholly dedicated to Indigenous knowledge was “one of the big catalysts” for the recent exits of First Nations staff.

“There was no shortage of [Indigenous] talent and it wasn’t a one-off,” they said.

Zena Cumpston, a Barkandji woman and former research fellow at the university, said it was common for non-Indigenous “experts” rather than Indigenous academics to be placed in senior roles advising on community and teaching Indigenous subjects.

Cumpston quit in August last year. She said she experienced significant mental distress linked to her treatment at the university and said she felt that anyone who spoke out against hiring policies was “carved off as an individual problem”.

While she was in the science faculty, Cumpston was asked to join its Indigenous advisory body for no extra pay. She was shocked to find the advisory panel was mostly comprised of non-Indigenous academics.

“Our elders and communities have fought for these upper-level positions for decades – the fundamental basics of self-determination – and here’s a trend for positions with the word ‘Indigenous’ to be filled by ‘experts’, taking us back decades,” Cumpston said.

And:

Nic Radoll worked for seven months at the University of Melbourne as its Indigenous engagement and outreach coordinator before resigning late in 2022.

Radoll, a non-binary and queer Anaiwan person, said it was the “worst experience” of their career. They sent an email when resigning arguing Indigenous staff were under-appreciated and subjects were labelled as being “Indigenous-run” despite key decisions being made by non-Indigenous staff.

“When I raised issues … I was told that I ‘don’t exhibit any leadership qualities and will never go anywhere’ at the university,” they said.

“I was told to ‘reduce my expectations’ and that ‘it takes time to make change’ so I should just do what I get told to do. It’s a killer for mental health.”

Nic is interviewed on this Youtube video.  I feel mean in saying it, but yeah, "leadership qualities" are a bit hard to detect when you speak with that upwards inflection at the end of every second or third sentence.  

Now, to be fair, it's not only this area of academia I would cut back if I were Benevolent Dictator of Australia.

RMIT's Blockchain Innovation Hub is the Right wing equivalent of Indigenous academia - keeps them off the street, developing arcane terminology with which to convince themselves it's a field worth pursuing, and (thankfully) off the TV or anywhere else.

Update:  I note that Aaron Corn, who gets a mention in one of the extracts above, had a book out earlier this year co-authored with Marcia Langton.   That would indicate that she doesn't have a big problem with his being appointed to head the Indigenous Knowledge Institute.    

Update 2:   Oh good.  The professor is about to go on another junket, having just returned from a trip that took her to American and England:

Why is "non-binary" a thing?

This question arises in my mind (again) while reading a Guardian piece on Hannah Gadsby, which consistently uses the PC approved "they" and "their" pronouns.

The other insistently "non-binary" person I read occasionally is the grievance whirlpool Sandy O'Sullivan (on Twitter), who always seems to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.  

Oh, and some female soccer person was in the news recently for "coming out" as non-binary.

What seems very, very clear, is that, not so long ago, these women could simply have called themselves "butch lesbian" (or, if they felt a vague interest in men sexually) "butch bi woman", I suppose.  Everyone would understand that this was an apt descriptor.  That is, a woman sexually attracted to other women, who presents physically (usually deliberately, at least to some degree, in terms of fashion and physicality) as somewhat masculinised, and who likely has a somewhat "non [gender] traditional" mix of interests.  

In other words, everyone would assume that she felt like neither a "typical" female or male.  

It's clear that this can come with the territory of same sex attraction - although everyone also knows that that there can be gay women (and men) who share most stereotypical gender interests - guys only attracted sexually to men but who are heavily interested in cars and motor sports and don't care for the other type of "drag" at all, for example.

Maybe you could say that "non binary" women don't want to use "butch" as a self descriptor because it could be used an insult when it first started being commonly used.  But then, queer people are supposed to be happy about how they've "reclaimed" insult and use such terms with semi ironic pride.   I mean, seriously, if "Dykes on Bikes" has been no insult for the last (I dunno?) 30 years, surely the same can be said about "butch".  

Oh look - here's a painfully long Wiki entry on the use of "butch" and "femme" categories for lesbians.

The point I am trying to make is that it's been obvious for a long, long time that some people (be they gay, bisexual, or even straight) don't feel as if they have the "typical" gender interests, and that early feminism responded to this by critiquing overly conservative attitudes as to what it meant to "act like a real woman" (or man). 

Just thinking out loud here, because I feel there are more important things to spend time reading up on, the new thing in the "gender discourse" seems to be an implicit surrender to conservative attitudes of "this is what it takes to be a 'real' man or woman", and an insistence that not feeling like being able to "fit in" to either category deserves it's own special self identity (and the basis of great insult if people don't share this form of analysis -  including using language in a way it has not been used before.)  

As such, I find it hard to credit that "non-binary" is anything other than an exercise in category building of no use other than attention seeking, and even grievance-mongering.    

Update:  Here's the nonbinary soccer player talking, and SBS trying to explain:

Non-binary refers to people who do not relate to being either exclusively male or female.

Someone who is non-binary may feel like a mixture, somewhere in between the two, or may feel that they have no gender at all.

In a video shared by Adelaide United and Pride Cup, Wilson said their perception of gender "does not fit" the traditional definitions of man or woman. 

[Well, exactly the same as a butch lesbian or fem man doesn't "fit" traditional definition.]

"For me personally, I don't really feel like I'm anywhere near that; I feel like I'm separate from it," Wilson said.

"Other non-binary people may feel between, or they may feel a bit of both, or they may have that fluidity where they flow (between).

"It's really important to understand that every non-binary person experiences this differently and they will all have their own stories and they will all feel it some way differently."

 Wilson, who uses they/them pronouns, said it is important to use the correct pronouns when speaking to people.

"Not every non-binary person is going to use they/them, they might have no preference with pronouns, they might use any.

"It's a really important thing; you don't realise how much of a difference it makes.

"I didn't realise, but finally hearing people refer to me as they/them is this phenomenal, euphoric feeling."

Seems an odd thing to get "a euphoric feeling" about, when it's basically just getting people to conform to your adoption of an invented category that was considered unnecessary until (more or less) yesterday. 

I think it's possible that this is going to go away as a thing in due course.   

Update 2:  I feel a bit guilty in that I once speculated that in trying to understand "transgender", we might be better off allowing for a third category of gender following roughly the tribal idea of "two spirit" people who inevitably feel they are a combination of the two gender "spirits".   If I have some sympathy to people in a traditional quasi-religious system calling themselves "third gender", why should I object to your (typically dismissive of religious belief) modern woman or man using "non-binary" as very similar category?   

I feel there is a difference here, somehow, but have yet to put my finger on it!

A Mark Steyn moment

Toon-deaf Europe is taking the wrong stand

Tim Blair has already extracted a bit from the above Mark Steyn column, but the concluding paragraphs are more important:

"The issue is not "freedom of speech" or "the responsibilities of the press" or "sensitivity to certain cultures." The issue, as it has been in all these loony tune controversies going back to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, is the point at which a free society musters the will to stand up to thugs. British Muslims march through the streets waving placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM." If they mean that, bring it on. As my columnar confrere John O'Sullivan argued, we might as well fight in the first ditch as the last.

But then it's patiently explained to us for the umpteenth time that they're not representative, that there are many many "moderate Muslims.''

I believe that. I've met plenty of "moderate Muslims" in Jordan and Iraq and the Gulf states. But, as a reader wrote to me a year or two back, in Europe and North America they aren't so much "moderate Muslims" as quiescent Muslims. The few who do speak out wind up living in hiding or under 24-hour armed guard, like Dutch MP Ayaab Hirsi Ali.

So when the EU and the BBC and the New York Times say that we too need to be more "sensitive" to those fellows with "Behead the enemies of Islam" banners, they should look in the mirror: They're turning into "moderate Muslims," and likely to wind up as cowed and silenced and invisible."