About the project
Process
ANTaR Vic has endeavoured to: inform traditional owners and local
community of our aims in remembering the Treaty anniversary;check
whether this clashes with current priorities; and attune aims and
activities according to traditional owner and local community priorities
(including possibility of abandoning project).
ANTaR Vic has acted as an umbrella for the concept; generating interest
within and supporting other groups to organise their own activities
autonomously.
Clare Land has staffed the project as part of the larger Fanning
the Flames of Reconciliation project.
Email: cland@bsl.org.au
Phone: (03) 9419 3613
Batman website and animation: Esther Singer
Batman story: Mark Cunningham
Aims
1. To remember the ‘signing’ of the Batman Treaty
– using the 170th anniversary (6 June 2005) as a hook to generate
interest.
2. To question the Batman Treaty and related interactions in terms
of the way it is remembered and how John Batman is remembered in
the context of the “Founding of Melbourne” and European
occupation of surrounding areas, including raising awareness of
the impacts on and experiences of Aboriginal people in Victoria.
3. To design activities around the anniversary as a mechanism for
increasing interest in and awareness about the history of Port Phillip
District and of the ongoing complex interactions, exchanges, relationships
and power dynamics between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.
To generate a sense among people who dwell in the Port Phillip District
that they walk on land laden with stories with meanings that resonate
in the (political) present.
4. To engage with history by examining the meanings and interpretations
of events, rather than focussing on the ‘facts’ or details
of the events which are impossible to know as an exact science.
This is a tangential response to the Windschuttle/history wars debate
which is structured around a positivist, absolutist approach to
historical ‘truth’.
5. To open up a conversation about agreement-making in the political
present
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