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.

The aim of this unit of study is to critically explore the philosophical, legal and cultural foundations of Indigenous rights in Australia and internationally. The unit builds generic skills in philosophical and historical research and theoretical analysis, encouraging students to develop an informed and independent assessment of contemporary issues in Australian and international Indigenous rights.

This unit examines the historical and contemporary social determinants of Indigenous health. Students have the opportunity to explore sociological and Indigenous health frameworks and identify a range of successful strategies that have worked to improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing. 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 also explore ways to collaborate with Aboriginal people and communities to facilitate self-determination in Aboriginal health.

Gamilaraay is an Indigenous Australian language from the mid-northwest of NSW that is currently undergoing revitalisation. This unit of study will provide students with a basic competence in speaking, understanding, reading and writing Gamilaraay sufficient to recognise and construct simple utterances in the language, and to understand its relationships with other languages. Classes will take the form of three-hour intensive oral workshops that progressively develop each student's abilities in the language. Assessment will be by short written assignments based on lesson content and an appraisal of individual oral/aural performance together with a short essay on Gamilaraay culture or a related topic.

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.

Australia holds an unenviable record for its loss of Indigenous languages and actively pursues a de facto policy of English monolingualism. This unit examines how Indigenous communities are resisting this trend and reviving so-called extinct languages through examining the roles of language policy and planning, community activism, language centres, education, technology and the linguistic processes involved. Lecture and seminar content is supplemented by a fieldwork excursion (at additional cost) to a regional language centre and associated school programs.

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.