This unit of study is the first stepping stone in the Indigenous Australian Studies (IAS) Major. Structured around three themes - representation and identity, invasion and colonisation, and resistance and agency - the unit critically examines the historical, social and political contexts of the survival and growth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies and cultures. Students will gain a critical awareness of traditional and contemporary Indigenous Australia, and develop a decolonised critical framework which underpins the IAS major.

This unit of study traces Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander relationships to country and place, and the continuities and dynamism of contemporary Indigenous Australian cultures. It will celebrate the fact that, despite the impact of colonisation, Indigenous Australian peoples have maintained unique identities and connections to land and sea. Through the themes of Indigenous Sydney, Connections to Place, and Cultural Continuities, we will examine Indigenous belief systems, art, language, performance, and film. This unit of study will include excursions to cultural sites around Sydney.

This unit of study is the first of three units that form part of the Health and Wellbeing Stream of the Indigenous Studies Major. This unit aims to give an historical and contemporary understanding of the diverse range of issues impacting on Aboriginal Health. Students have the opportunity to examine sociological and Indigenous health frameworks and identify a range of strategies which work towards improving the health of Indigenous Australians. A highlight of this unit is the opportunity to hear from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who are passionate about contributing to such improvements. Students will also explore the ways in which they may work with Aboriginal people and communities to facilitate self-determination in Aboriginal health.

This unit of study will provide students with grounding in contemporary theories of Indigenous identity and an understanding of current critical writings on identity formation in colonised societies. It will enable students to formulate strategies and methods for understanding and working with notions of identity in relation to Indigenous peoples. In this unit students explore the history and formation of Indigenous identity. Combining contemporary theoretical and historical approaches they will explore the ways in which Indigenous Australians were constructed by colonial discourses. Students explore the multi-layered facets of identity that are held in and on the Indigenous body and identify and critically analyse sites of power, Indigenous knowledges, processes of cultural dissemination and transmission and consider how Indigenous identities were racialised, gendered and subordinated. Students will explore the arena of cultural politics and investigate the ways in which Indigenous agency has manifested, for example, through innovative critical perspectives and through creative re-presentations in a variety of media, in film, documentary, photography and prose.

This unit of study aims to give students the opportunity to critically engage with a variety of artistic and creative practices undertaken by Indigenous Australians. It's envisaged that students will be encouraged to critically examine and understand the role of Indigenous performance/theatre, writing, dance, film, visual arts and music in Indigenous Australian cultural maintenance.

This unit of study examines how community development approaches can influence health and wellbeing outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Students will examine past approaches, current trends and theories underpinning community development. Students will reflect on their role in working with Aboriginal communities to develop processes that build capacity in health delivery and support Indigenous self determination. This unit also considers the nature of ethical research practice within an Indigenous community setting.

This unit explores the key issues and debates that have shaped the development of Indigenous History in Australia. You will examine how Indigenous responses to colonialism have been variously interpreted, explore Indigenous perspectives on the writing and representation of Indigenous History in historiography, documentary and feature film and literature, and examine the legacy of the past in the present. The unit also considers questions of historical evidence, the uses of evidence and the different ways of presenting history.

This unit of study provides an introduction to the literature of Aboriginal Australia. It surveys
a range of texts from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, including early letters and chronicles, works of fiction, poetry and plays, and political manifestos and song-lyrics. These texts are read in the light of Aboriginal cultural and political life, the specificities of tradition, colonisation, resistance and survival, and Aboriginal interpolations of modernity, postmodernity and postcolonialism.

This unit explores theories of race and racism focussing on Indigenous Australian race relations. Opportunity is provided to understand the development of Racism as an impact on individuals - victim and perpetrator; and systemic systems at local, national and international levels. The unit explores what racism means in the social justice agenda through issues such as: equity and anti-racism; in particular the direct impact of racism as a tool in the creation of social and economic disadvantage in Australian Indigenous communities.

The representation of nature has been central to human expression for thousands of years. Contemporary transnational ecopoetics situates nature and culture amidst present-day ecological catastrophes and political environmentalisms. This unit examines a uniquely Australian contribution to this field -Country - which for Australian Indigenous peoples denotes special cosmological, filial and custodial relations to land. Surveying a range of Indigenous and non-Indigenous works of poetry, non-fiction and art, 'Writing Country' defines an Indigenous poetics of nature and explores its broader ecopoetical promise.

Colonised peoples are often classified according to Western intellectual, political and historical priorities. This unit of study critically evaluates Western classifications of Indigenous Australia and the Pacific by investigating three key themes: Indigenous histories and representation, colonising and decolonising Indigenous peoples, and the Pacific in international contexts. It presents revised understandings of the lived realities of Indigenous cultures through exploring regional and cultural identities of Oceania, neocolonialism, nuclear testing, gender relations, dietary colonialism, anthropological reasoning, resistance and overpowering colonialism.

This unit of study is underpinned by an assumption that the statistical life expectancy gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians will be closed through a range of diverse actions that include but are not limited to the health sector. A series of Indigenous health case studies will be explored through an interdisciplinary approach. Students will develop an understanding of effective ways to collaborate across disciplines to address the goal of improving health and wellbeing outcomes for Indigenous people.

This unit of study will explore the cultural texts of Indigenous Australian film. It will draw upon knowledge situated within Indigenous content and contexts as they are presented on screen and interpreted. Students will critically examine the role of Indigenous film and conduct a comparative study of films with Indigenous stories by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous filmmakers, taking an analytical approach to reviewing cinematic language and meaning.

Australian contact history is usually expressed in terms of the last 200 years, consequent cultural loss, economic and social devastation. For Central Australia people this history is much shorter, and the coming of the 'whitefella', its consequences and the times before remain strong in living memory and oral history. Through preparatory seminars and guided fieldwork (at additional cost) this unit allows students to directly experience and understand the culturally and politically dynamic post-invasion world of the desert people.

Formal schooling has been a critical frontier of engagement for Indigenous peoples in both colonial and postcolonial states and societies. This course examines in comparative and historical perspective both the school institution and Indigenous schooling experience across a variety of social and political contexts, including those in Australia and the Americas. Critical consideration is given to school curriculum and culture as well as Indigenous socio-cultural conceptions and practice, for identity, including Indigeneity, citizenship, power, resistance, agency, and contemporary circumstance.