 Welcome to our annual lecture. We acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay our respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present. I'm Maggie Shapley, the university archivist, and I'm pleased to welcome you to our annual lecture. It's organized in conjunction with the friends of the Noel Butler Archive Centre, who are a great help to us, particularly through their conservation fund. The archives has many records relating to indigenous people, particularly in company station records. One of our treasures is the improvements book for the Wave Hill Station. And this is one of the few records that still exist for Wave Hill Station. It has photographs for every building, every fence, every dam, and every bore on that station. And though there are a few people in it. Our records for Victoria River Downs and other stations record information about indigenous workers and their families. And these have been used by link-up workers. We also hold the files of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. And it's one of our largest collections. As there are as many files as there are entries in the ADB, which is about 12,000 last count. So the topic of the lecture is of particular interest to us. And I hope to you too. And I'm pleased to invite Dr. Shino Kanishi from the University of Western Australia to speak to us this afternoon about indigenous lives and the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Thank you, Shino. OK. Oh, thank you very much for coming. Thank you to Maggie for organizing this. And especially thank you to the Friends of the Knoll Butland Society for inviting me and for thinking of this project. And I'd also like to pay my respects to the Ngunnawal Elders past and present. So I'm going to talk to you about this new project that we've only just started. It formally started in July. I'm called an Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography. It's led by Malcolm Albrook from the ADB, as well as Professor Tom Griffiths and myself. Our aim for this project is to redress the longstanding underrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Our aim is to double the number of Indigenous biographies within the online ADB and then produce a standalone volume comprising Indigenous short biographies. But our aim isn't only just to produce 190 new entries, but also to rethink the way in which we can conceptualise Indigenous biography. Oh, sorry. It's like a real one. Sorry, I'm getting comfortable. That's for close caption, yeah. OK. Do you want me to speak louder instead? No, just hearing a bit. OK. OK. OK. OK. Sorry, this is my first time holding a microphone as opposed to wearing one of these little ones. OK. Yes. So we want to not just produce new entries, but to think about how we can reconceptualise Indigenous biography and what it is that makes Indigenous biography distinct. What are the kind of concerns we need to address? And why have Indigenous people been so long marginalised and excluded from the national imaginary? So we feel that by thinking these things through, we can better incorporate Indigenous people in the ADB. And given that the ADB is such an important repository of Australia's story with an incredibly wide readership, then we also feel that the ADB provides an excellent way or an excellent vehicle for better incorporating Indigenous people into the national story. In this talk, I'll trace the history of the ADB, highlighting how it originated during the period known as the Great Australian Silence. And the various efforts that have been made since that time to improve its representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives. I'll also discuss how Indigenous people had been... or the ways in which Indigenous people had been selected for inclusion in the ADB in the past in order to sort of get some insights into how we move forward in the future with our project. And I will... Sorry, acknowledging that the ADB is guided by autonomous working parties which is overseen by an evolving editorial board. I'll finish the paper by drawing inspiration from other national dictionaries of biography and suggesting a range of different directions for the IADB as we embark on this new project. Okay. All right, so the first section's called the ADB in the Great Australian Silence. In 1957, at an Australian History Conference here at the ANU, the idea for a national biographical dictionary project was officially endorsed. The project had been driven by historian Keith Hancock who envisaged that the ADB would be a voluntary and cooperative venture with the states and territories each having autonomous working parties to decide on subjects and authors. By 1966, the first volume was ready for publication, comprising short biographies of noteworthy figures who passed away between 1788 and 1850. The next year, the second volume was published which covered the same period. Of these original 1,182 biographies, only nine were of Aboriginal people. This degree of exclusion, which seems so unthinkable today, was commonplace at the time and typified what the esteemed anthropologist William Stanner described as the Great Australian Silence. In his 1968 Boyer lecture series entitled After the Dreaming, Stanner discussed his deep uneasiness about the past, present and future place of Aboriginal people in Australian society. For his second lecture, Stanner consulted a wide array of books on Australian's history and current affairs in order to identify the, quote, outlook of socially conscious people between 1939 and 1955. Disappointed by the disregard shown to Aboriginal people and issues, he turned to later works and found that this lack of interest ran on into the 1960s. From this study, Stanner concluded that, I'll read a lengthy quote, he concluded that, A partial survey is enough to let me make the point that inner tension on such a scale cannot possibly be explained by absent-mindedness. It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun the simple forgetting of other possible views turned into habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale. We have been able for so long to dismember the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so. So we can see this kind of exclusion as an effect of the colonial fantasy that Aboriginal people would simply melt away and play no role in Australia's future. And we can see that this then meant that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were then excluded from the story of our past. Stanner deeply lamented this great Australian silence and proposed the kinds of histories which he thought could break the silence. So here's another quote. The history I would like to see written brings into the main flow of its narrative the life and times of men like David Uniapon, Albert Namajira, Robert Tadawalli, Domegum, Douglas Nichols, Daniel Dexter, and many others. Not to scrape up significance for them but because they typify so vividly the other side of a story over which the great Australian silence reigns. So notably, these histories which Stanner thought could cut through were all biographical in nature suggesting that for Stanner Indigenous history could be brought to life through the lives of individuals. He concluded his second lecture predicting that this silence would be shattered by the young researchers who were working actively to end it. He was right as in the 1970s we saw the emergence of Aboriginal history as a distinct field led by anthropologists, archaeologists and historians such as Diane Barwick, Jeremy Beckett, Charles Rowley, Sylvia Hallam, John Mulvaney, Peter Chorus, Peter Reid, Bob Reese, Henry Reynolds, Lyndall Ryan, many of whom will be here next week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Aboriginal History Journal. So, which was established in 1977. Nine years after Stanner's Boyer lectures. Yet despite this flourishing scholarship on Aboriginal history the great Australian silence continued to resound within the ADB throughout the 1970s and 1980s. While the general editors during this period Bidnan and Jeff Searle investigated changes to the ADB selection processes predominantly how to include more women which was also imperative they did not seem to engage with this new emerging Aboriginal historiography which is perhaps also because Aboriginal history is largely seen as a distinct and separate field from Australian history. The first world volumes tracing the lives of 7,851 significant Australian individuals who passed away between 1788 and 1940 contained a mere 32 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or 0.4%. It was not until 1996 that the first ADB volume which approached parity with the present day Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander proportion of the population was published. So that volume contained 2.6% Indigenous entries. Finally in the mid 1990s and early 2000s the ADB achieved a more representative 2.35% of entries covering individuals who passed away between 1940 and 1980. This improvement was not just a consequence of the ADB catching up to the historiographical shift that had begun in the 1970s and was fuelled by the bicentenary charge that white Australia has black history. Aboriginal history had also become incorporated into school and university curricula. So the editorial board was part of this reflection of this sort of mainstreaming of Aboriginal history also recognised that the ADB needed to change and acknowledged the many groups that were under represented in the ADB. So editorial board members Beverly Kingston, Stephen Garten and Jill Rowe. In 2001 they won an ARC grant to fund a supplementary volume of the Australian Dictionary of Biography 1770-1980. With Chris Canine as the managing editor they produced the 2005 Missing Persons supplementary volume comprising 565 new biographies including 50 on Indigenous people or 8.9%. However the result of this restorative initiative was not unanimously praised. Sorry one of their other aims was to include many more women in the ADB. So some critics said that in attempting to include more women the volume the supplementary volume merely proliferated entries on community and charity workers and nurses amplifying how the ADB already represented Australian women's experiences. Then during the early 2000s there were increasing calls to not only include more Indigenous people in the ADB but also to change the ADB's editorial protocols to better accommodate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests. Aboriginal historians Francis Peter Little and Gordon Briscoe criticised the ADB for failing to identify and include enough Indigenous subjects and for not considering Indigenous conventions of narration and remembrance. In response the ADB created an Indigenous Working Party in 2004 comprising Francis Peter Little as the chair and eight other Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canberra based scholars. But unlike the State Working Parties their role was mainly limited to providing advice on Indigenous cultural protocols to the then-general editor Dylangmore. This Working Party voluntarily disbanded in 2008 largely because they didn't have the same purpose responsibilities and autonomy as the other Working Parties. So even though this Working Party was short-lived these changes did ultimately contribute to an increase in Indigenous entries in the volumes covering 1940 to 1980 which each had between 15 and 26 entries representing between 2.2 and 3.8% of each volume. So we've had this increase over time yet there's still more work to be done. Today there's only 210 biographies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people amongst the more than 13,000 ADB entries. This represents only one and a half percent which is half the current Indigenous proportion of the Australian population. Furthermore these 210 entries are unevenly distributed throughout the volumes. Only 17 of the entries of people who passed away before 1840 are of Indigenous people. Even though according to Boyd Hunter and John Carmody's recent demographic study at that time the Aboriginal population still outnumbered the Indigenous population. Moreover, like the overall inclusion rate of women, only 46 out of the 210 Indigenous subjects are women. Thus Indigenous Australians are not only vastly underrepresented in the ADB, were also unevenly represented with the ADB depicting a skewed snapshot of Indigenous historical experience. So who are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people already represented in the ADB? So now I'll move on to discussing the current ADB and how it's included Indigenous people. The first two volumes, as previously stated covered 1788 to 1850 and it only included nine Aboriginal people. Arabanu, Benelong, Biriban, Bungary and Colby in volume one and Jackie Jackie, Wiley, Yagin and Urini in volume two. Sorry I have pictures that I will just intermittently move there. So these are all images of people currently included in the ADB. More over the online ADB, which includes entries from that 2005 supplement I mentioned before, still only lists 20 Aboriginal people for this period. In addition to those mentioned above, Broga and Broughton, Kalyut, Yumara, Makare, Daniel Mawatin, Muller-Wiriburka, Mosquito, Pemaway, Teruna-Rera and Windradine. This group is not only small in number, but it also reflects a narrow spectrum of Aboriginal society at that time. We can set the Palawa woman, Teruna-Rera, a men and 13 lived in what is now New South Wales. Four in Western Australia, two in Tasmania and one in South Australia. Moreover, these 18 individuals are primarily defined as Aboriginal leaders, guides, different variants on Aborigines and one as a warrior. The individuals in this group are further divided into eight occupational categories with some ascribed multiple vocations. So we have six leaders, seven guides, five resistance fighters, three executed criminals, two cultural informants, two murderers, one stockman, two trackers and one dualist. Significantly, these descriptors suggest that this group was significant because of their interaction with the British, be it through seemingly positive contributions to colonial enterprises such as exploration or due to their hostility to British colonists and as transgressors of British law. Yet it's not only the narrow conceptualisation of Aboriginal subjects, noteworthy qualities that we now see as problematic, but also the interest and tone of the biographical narratives which reflect now outdated representational practices. In volume one, Arabenu, Benelong and Colby were all primarily discussed as British captives. While Arabenu passed away from smallpox before returning to his people, Benelong and Colby eventually became mediators between the British and the Eora people. The biographies also over emphasise that Aboriginal men seemingly tragic, degraded and brutal proclivities. Despite being the first Indigenous intermediary, Benelong was portrayed as quote, so fond of drinking that he lost no opportunity of being sophisticated, because he no longer found contentment or full acceptance either among his countrymen or the white men. Likewise, Bungaree's biography focuses on his role as a leader of the Sydney Aboriginal people which is described as quote, a pathetic remnant who spent their days giving exhibitions of Bimmerang throwing, doing odd jobs and begging for bread, liquor, tobacco and cash. Lynette Bred was said to be Bungaree's favoured approach. Of course we know in recent scholarship for example by Lynette Russell and Fred Kihia we can see we can really kind of critically unpack this Eurocentric notion of begging accommodating loss of sovereignty, different ways of participating in colonial economies. So this by minimising it simply as begging is I guess what historians wouldn't do now. And finally Colby's entry describes his quote, quarrelsome behaviour detailing his particularly violent treatment of women. So we see that while the Aboriginal men included in Volume 1 might have been deemed worthy of inclusion because they were mediators, guides or leaders, they were ultimately portrayed as victim, alcoholic, beggar and abuser of women. The next ADB period which covers 1851 to 1890 differs significantly. Firstly it includes a more diverse group with seven Indigenous men and six women. I won't list all their names. Oh no I will okay. So we have Walter George Arthur, Lucy Beaton, Dick Cubbagey Mary Ellen Cooper Dolly Dale Rimpel, Dundali Cora Guzbury, Kaowen Kunawon Margaret Maria Locke Nathaniel Pepper, Truganana Tulaba and Tommy Windage. All of the states except South Australia are represented by this group and they're also defined more broadly. So in addition to those same identifiers we had in the previous period we also have teachers, landowners, cultural brokers and evangelists. Their occupations also include rights activists, post-bistras, telegraphists, farmer, explorer and Moravian lay preacher as well as resistance leaders, cultural informants and executed criminals as per the earlier period. So in some respects this broader spectrum of Indigenous lives included in the 1850 to 1890 volumes reflects the evolving history of colonisation. As Aboriginal people became more entangled with Western society and institutions forming intimate relationships with colonists and former convicts and engaging more actively with colonial ministries, governments and commercial interests. So Lucy Beaton for example was born on Guncarriage Island in the Bass Strait in 1829 the daughter of a Palawa woman and a Jewish sealer in Shane Breen's ADB biography of Lucy Beaton. He explains that her father was evicted when George Augustus Robinson established the Aboriginal settlement on the island. But he eventually gained permission to reunite with his family after Robinson relocated the settlement to Flinders Island. Lucy Beaton then served as the teacher on Guncarriage Island providing religious instruction for the local community children. Eventually her work was recognised and she was given a lifetime lease of Badger Island becoming a prominent and influential trader of mutton bird products and an advocate of Indigenous interests. So while the historical context of the second half of the 19th century has some considerable differences from the earlier period, arguably the key reason why these entries differ so significantly is due to changing historiographical approaches. Tellingly of these 13 entries in this period only two come from the original entries produced in the 70s that of Truganana and Tomi Windiches. The remaining 11 entries are from the 2005 supplement so it reveals that stronger commitment from the ADB over time to Indigenous inclusion and attentiveness to culturally sensitive representational practices as we'll see in the difference between Lucy Beatons and Intry and say the earlier one of Benelon which I understand the ADB is revising. The next key ADB period is 1891 to 1939. There are only 30 Indigenous biographies in this period 19 of which were included in the original six volumes published largely in the 80s. This represents 0.78% of the 3,813 entries. In contrast to the more even gender balance of the previous period this one has 24 men and six women. The geographic spread is also more skewed towards New South Wales and Victoria which reflects the ADB's policy inaugurated in 1975 to base their quotas on the census data. So we have this so the larger states have a larger quota which gives them more space I guess for more marginalised subjects such as Indigenous people, women, working class etc. Whereas the smaller states have fewer discretionary quota. However this census data doesn't match the Indigenous census data. In the 20s the Indigenous population was more numerous in Queensland than New South Wales with Victoria having one of the lowest populations in Western Australia and Northern Territory not far behind Queensland. So at this time in which Queensland Western Australia and Northern Territory have sizeable, relatively sizeable populations there are only given three entries which for that period. So we can kind of see all our ways of trying to include Indigenous people and on what rationale can be tricky. Okay. If you get a limited time I'm not going to go into the remaining periods in any significant detail. That's because these later periods from 1940 to 1980 and then 1981 to 1990 that these periods have much improved Indigenous representation already that have between 1.6% of entries and 3.29% which is actually above the Indigenous proportion of the population. So we can kind of see the effects of not only the historiographical changes but also the way that ADB has responded to these calls for broader representation and inclusion. So we also see in these later examples the effects of the ADB's charter to not only commemorate Australian luminaries but also the nation's ordinary people. So what's interesting about this period is we start to see Indigenous people participating in a wider array of areas. So we have factory workers, carpenters, public servants, soldiers which is a sort of a... So this broader spectrum of occupations reflects the changing historical context of the mid-20th century. As we see the effects of assimilation which both enabled and coerced Indigenous people to move off missions and reserves and to participate more in paid work whilst at the same time still being employed in unpaid and underpaid work in the pastoral industry as Maggie mentioned earlier and to a lesser and not really the maritime industry that much then. But we also see at this time an increase in the number of people identified as political activists and resistance leaders. So here we can also see through the ADB the kind of political activism and the way that's mobilised in the mid-20th century through national protest events such as the 1938 Day of Morning 1972 Tent Embassy. So the ADB with its large readership is a way is a vehicle of providing these important developments in Aboriginal history to a wider audience. Okay. We also see in the volumes covering the 1980s there are also biographies of Lloyd James Boney Edward James Murray and John Peter Pat who all tragically died in police custody or at the hands of police and which led to the Commonwealth Government pointing a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1989. So we can see that these biographies also reveal that the ADB is not just focused on celebrating the nation and its elite but over time has embraced its role of shining a light on some of the nation's darker histories as well. So now I'll move on to our project. So in July we started our new project with the aim of addressing this underrepresentation in the ADB. So this means hopefully at the end we will have more than 400 entries of Indigenous people in the ADB which will roughly be about 3% which correlates with the current way Indigenous proportion of the population. Now this is just our base level target and as I said earlier Indigenous population was a much greater proportion of the population in earlier periods but we have to start somewhere. So we don't want to just amplify and repeat the kinds of biographies that already exist bearing in mind some of the criticisms that that earlier 2005 missing persons volume had received. So instead we want to make sure so we don't want to proliferate, sorry new biographies of cultural informants, guides and rights activists. Instead we want to ensure that the new biographies we produce are more emblematic of the demographic make-up of Indigenous communities that are lost and present. This means increasing the proportion of Indigenous women which is only about 20% of the Indigenous entries ensuring that more language groups and communities from across Australia are represented and considering the kinds of figures historical figures who are important to our people and not only those who are nationally recognised for their noteworthy contributions to mainstream society. To ensure that the new biographies meet this broader remit we will adopt a more systematic approach to selecting new biographical subjects. So our first task was to reconstitute a new Indigenous working party which we did last year in anticipation. This working party comprises Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander scholars from across Australia and that working party has been given by the ADB's editorial board the exact same autonomy, function and role as the other working parties. So it differs from the earlier incarnation. And the working party will be the one who decides on which subjects and which authors will go into the new IADB. The working party will also provide cultural and ethical guidance for the project. And because we're based all around Australia it's also a way that we can tap into different communities at least on a state level. The project itself will entail three preliminary stages. So the first is to analyse the ADB itself which I've sort of sketched out some of that for other national biographical dictionaries in order to understand not only how the ADB has already begun to, or not only to understand how the ADB currently decides on who should be or its criteria for inclusion but also to look to other national biographical dictionaries for inspiration of how we might do things differently. So for instance the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography has published a standalone two-volume Maori Dictionary of Biography and the American National Biography online has an American Indian Heritage Special Collection comprising 294 biographies and there's also the Dictionary of Canadian Biography which has a substantial Indigenous list. But we can also look closer to home so for instance there's the Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography published relatively recently which proportionately has a much higher percentage of Indigenous subjects. So the second stage of the project will involve consulting broadly with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in order to ascertain grassroots visions for who should be included and identify Indigenous cultural protocols in terms of how we research and write biographical entries. We'll do this through an online survey which will publicise through Indigenous media asking Indigenous people respondents to reflect on the importance of a range of different qualities and criteria identified from the current ADB and other dictionaries. So for example we could ask do you want more leaders? Do you want more local people? Should the people be nationally well known? Do you want more athletes? You know they just it's off the top of my head but we can sort of start to work out what kind of criteria do communities want and I think more importantly we would also invite nominations for local people so that we can include biographies of Indigenous people who haven't yet been subject to scholarly research or aren't yet nationally known. So the final stage will investigate new biographical methods in order to identify cutting edge life-riding approaches in Australia and elsewhere with the intention of broadening out our understanding of how Indigenous biography can be conceived. So we're considering several new lines of inquiry. So firstly we're thinking about how short form biographies exemplified by the ADB might better acknowledge and accommodate Indigenous protocols interests and sensitivities. So this might just be by including language groups including the family for many Indigenous people may not want to just be known as individuals but put in the context of who are their parents their siblings, their networks even just that kind of level. And yes, and we might also consider how we can better accommodate the communal sensibilities of many Indigenous groups. So this might mean producing collective biographies of families or clans or organisations. And when we think about addressing the ostensible achievements of an Indigenous individual we might be more attentive to the instrumental role played by skin groups and Indigenous networks for example. So when we look at the ADB currently has three separate biographies of people who were involved in the Pindan Mining Cooperative which followed the 1946 Pilbara strike but those biographies are all quite separate. We can think about how to integrate those kind of collectives and also as Penny Vantorn found in her study of Korin Dirk to be more sensitive about how Indigenous communities view leaders. She identified people who speak to the colonists in the 19th century doesn't mean they're necessarily the leaders. They could instead be a spokesperson for the group. So again it's sort of being attentive to these kinds of cultural experiences in our biographies sorry. We might also consider titles positions and occupations of significance to Indigenous world views. So here we look for example to the dictionary of New Zealand biography and in its online search interface it has a whole range a pull down menu of different occupations and so one of those occupations is a tahanga or is a Maori term for expert or priest. So you know could we incorporate Indigenous terminology. So currently the ADB has in the biography for Pemoy in the body of the biography he's described as a courage you're a term for someone who or you know for what we now might call a clever man so someone who kind of mediates between the mundane and the spiritual worlds. So you know we could consider now obviously there's a difference in New Zealand having one essentially one Maori language whereas here we have many but here we can look to the National Museum of Australia they have an online biography under their old masters exhibition which was about Bach painters and in their biographies they call people so they'll use an Indigenous term as well as the English translation. So for example the Borobah artist Willy Manduk he's described as both a machibu which is translated as clever man. So you know we could the ADB could also just adopt a kind of recognition of Indigenous terminology as well and you know use dual naming because obviously across the many Indigenous Australian languages there would be many different terms. Another question to consider is how to broaden the interests in the lives of Indigenous individuals beyond the question of colonial impact. So we know that the constraints of using Western documentary sources has led to many Indigenous biographies turning on the question of how the state intervened in Indigenous lives be it through interventionist protection policies the removal of children from families or for historic biographies how Indigenous people were physically and politically resisted colonialism or asserted their rights. So we might think how can we investigate the lives of Indigenous people on their own terms and frame Indigenous lives within our own cultural milliers. So for instance the Canadian Dictionary of Biography includes an entry on the legendary figure who was an Iroquois cultural hero and commemorated as the founder of the Five Nations Iroquois Confederacy. So the history of Deccanuita predates European contact and he's known for bestowing the great law and that he will return when he's called upon. So this example in another national dictionary of Biography suggests that here we might also include Aboriginal and Torres Torres Strait Islander people whose lives live outside of colonial contact and concern but also how we might look to Indigenous law and include biographies of ancestral beings or other legendary figures who shaped the landscape across the continent and created the natural world as we know it. So a particular example of an ancestral being might be the rainbow serpent who again has many names across Australia often associated with waterways and billabongs. So in Nungau Country in Perth where I live, he's known as the Woggle. Another figure is Byrmy a sky god who created people and is widely known to many different language groups across the southeastern Australia such as Leroy, Darkinjong, Wannarua, Waradjuri people and so on. So you know we can kind of broaden out our concept of you know who with personhood I guess. Another question that we could consider is how do we acknowledge the lives of non-Indigenous people who may have been incorporated into Indigenous communities? So the American National Biography online for instance includes in its American Indian heritage list the figure Abraham also known as Prophet. So Abraham was an early 19th century runaway slave who was taken in by the Seminole of Florida and after, so the Seminole had been part of the Muscogee Nation driven out of their lands in Georgia and then they kind of reconstituted in Florida and they were known for taking in runaway slaves adopting them into their society and they also faced many skirmishes with slave owners seeking to recapture their slaves. So Abraham was one of these figures who became very much incorporated into the Seminole and then went on to sort of fight skirmishes against the state and then he was a mediator when they eventually or you know he was a mediator when they surrendered. So although Abraham was not Indigenous Native American historian Ashley Glassburn Falsetti she argues about another non-Indigenous figure Francis Slocum who was incorporated into the Miami people Miami people in Indiana and she argues that these people while they may not be Indigenous and not often thought about as Indigenous history she says for Francis Slocum she's usually the only person with any kind of connection to the Miami Indigenous people who celebrated and commemorated in local histories and archives. So she says yet her history her Native American connection because she lived with them for 32 years married had children had Miami children that history gets erased and ignored. Instead there was a settler who was captured. So Falsetti argues that if we don't acknowledge her figures like Slocum their Indigenous history and how they've been incorporated then it means you have nothing and she says then that's a way of the archives completing that settler colonial logic of elimination. So this question which I initially found quite challenging but I can see her argument and on one level it does lead us to rethink perhaps how we might also address the histories of non-Indigenous people who have been very much entangled in Indigenous communities. So for example we could consider drawing on the work the very recent book by John Maynard or by Warrior My History and John Maynard and Victoria Haskins their book Living with the Locals Early Europeans Experiences of Indigenous Life. So in that one of their chapters is on William Buckley a runaway convict who spent 32 years living with the Wutherong people of Victoria. Now the ADB also already has an entry on Buckley which was from the original 1966 volume but that doesn't really mention his Aboriginal life other than to say he was befriended by Aboriginals of the Wonterong tribe who believed that the big white stranger to be a reincarnation of their dead tribal chief he learnt their language and their customs and even a wife by whom he said he had a daughter. So in contrast Maynard and Haskins in their recent history of Buckley they argue that Buckley had evidently been incorporated into his Wutherong family and that they had renamed him Murunguk. So they see that when he identified himself as a former convict to the Settlers that he seemed very reticent to say anything about the Aboriginal cultural life and spiritual beliefs which at the time was taken as a sign that the Wutherong either had no spiritual beliefs because they were so supposedly primitive or that he was very ignorant and had no idea that Maynard argue instead that perhaps his reticence is a sign of his respect and a sign that he had been incorporated into the Wutherong and knew about the importance of secret sacred knowledge so he wouldn't identify. So this just kind of gives hints of how we can kind of broaden out our conception of and to sort of I guess start to view some of these entangled histories and individuals in a different way. Okay. So at this stage of the project we're just beginning to open up how we can consider biography in innovative ways. Some further possible lines of inquiry which we discussed in our working party is can we move beyond the person. So Daniel Heath Justice for instance has done a lot of work on The Badger Native American Deborah Miranda who's an excellent writer a Native American writer she's written a lot about the coyote or coyote as we would say as a trickster figure so we might draw inspiration on that kind of work so here I'm thinking about Torres Strait Islander historian Leah Luisa Vise who has done a lot of research on the turtle and its connection to islanders so this might provide a possible new direction in writing biographies. Finally Malcolm and Bra we can also think about the history of Lady Mungo how we can write the biography of people who lived in the deep past as she lived 42,000 years ago so all of these questions suggest new ways in which the ADB might explore Indigenous biography and new possibilities for how we can consider or for how we might measure noteworthiness or notions of noteworthiness for the nation. So to conclude over the course of its 60 year history, the ADB has arguably come to be recognised as a key repository of Australia's story it provides an overview of the lives of influential figures who've shaped our nation and it's proven to be an invaluable resource for Australian scholars teachers, journalists, writers and students as well as a general public who are fascinated by biography and family history. The ADB's user base has increased over the years especially with the advent of the online ADB which is said to regularly receive around 70 million hits each year but also we see that the ADB's biographies are republished elsewhere on education sites even on the government site which sprux Australia to the rest of the world it draws on ADB entries so we can see that inclusion in the ADB is a vehicle for inclusion in the nation's story so we want to ensure that we are also included on our own terms so this means that with this project we will be diversifying with the editorial board support the kinds of Indigenous people we include accommodating what matters to Indigenous communities and also new biographical approaches which better accord with cultural protocols our hope is that the new Indigenous ADB will enhance Indigenous people's pride in our people past and present identifying and recognising significant and interesting figures from across our communities and enhance our sense of national recognition and belonging finally given the national scale of the ADB's readership we hope that it will contribute to improving non-Indigenous understandings of the lives, experiences, cultures and contributions that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made throughout our history and thank you