Abstract

The Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, when published in 2005, was the first of its kind in the world. In 21 wide-ranging chapters it covered everything from the arrival of the First Australians on the continent to issues of social justice in the present. Close to 30 authors, all experts in their fields, achieved the difficult task of translating research and data normally locked away in academic publications and the reports of government agencies, making it accessible to the general public and, most importantly, to Australia’s high school and college students. The overriding emphasis – what made it different – was on what could be mapped. This spatial representation of Indigenous Australia through time revealed, in graphic form, the dynamism, diversity and complexity of Indigenous societies and cultures, in the past and in the present. The atlas was recognised as an outstanding publication, receiving the 2006 Award for Excellence in Educational Publishing.

The first edition was derived from a model conceived in 2000 by Bill and developed further with Frances and the publisher, Macquarie Dictionary. In 2014, then Director of CAEPR Matthew Gray suggested the preparation of a second edition, an idea that received continuing support from subsequent CAEPR Directors: Jerry Schwab, Janet Hunt and Tony Dreise. In its broad structure Atlas 2 is modelled on Atlas 1, but much else has changed. This is truly a second edition, not simply a revision. In this seminar we will discuss the genesis and value of the initial model, the changes – in content, perspective and structure – made for Atlas 2, and consider how, and in what ways, the model might be further adapted for a third edition (Atlas 3).

Biographies

BILL ARTHUR began researching Indigenous affairs in the early 1980s. Much of his initial work was land-related and was carried out for Indigenous organisations such as the Kimberley Land Council and Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation in Fitzroy Crossing. Since 1990, his research has focused more on issues of economic development, autonomy and policy for Torres Strait Islanders in the Centre for Aboriginal for Aboriginal Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University, and with the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Bill initiated the first edition of the Atlas at CAEPR, and was a Visiting Fellow there during the preparation of the second edition.

FRANCES MORPHY is an honorary Associate Professor at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. She was, with Bill Arthur, one of the general editors of the first edition of the Atlas. Her research interests have encompassed linguistics, anthropology and anthropological demography in a variety of Australian settings, most particularly in north-east Arnhem Land where she has worked with Yolngu people since the 1970s. Her publications include ‘Djapu: a Yolngu dialect’ (in Handbook of Australian Languages, vol. 3, 1983) and she co-edited (with Benjamin R. Smith) The social effects of native title: recognition, translation, coexistence (2007) and edited Agency, contingency and census process: observations of the 2006 Indigenous Enumeration Strategy in remote Aboriginal Australia (2008).