Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy: Book Launch

30 August 2013 @ Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Bentley

Presented by the Centre for Culture & Technology (CCAT) @ Curtin University

Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy: A Report on Perth News Media was launched on Friday 30 August 2013 before a group of distinguished guests including members of the Nyoongar Tent Embassy, Curtin academic staff, and other members of broader community. Held in the attractive foyer of the Centre for Aboriginal studies (CAS) on Curtin’s Bentley Campus and emceed by CAS’s Lynette Mallard, the launch began with an introduction from Ben Taylor, a respected Nyoongar Elder whose commitment to social justice is well known and celebrated. Accompanied by Mingli Wanjurni and Alf Taylor, Ben welcomed participants to country, and Alf followed with a recital of one of his poems, ‘The Land’.

The report was formally launched by John Curtin Distinguished Professor John Hartley, who talked of the significance of the book in view of the struggle for native title and the sovereignty movement, before reflecting on what Aboriginal ‘affairs’ — and what media reporting on Aboriginal ‘affairs’ — would look like were Aboriginal sovereignty recognised. Authors Thor Kerr and Shaphan Cox thanked the Nyoongar Tent Embassy for their support, before formally submitting a copy of the report to Nyoongar Tent Embassy representatives. After thanking Thor and Shaphan and speaking of the ongoing struggle for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty, Maureen and Preston played a recording of Duck Corbett’s ‘Whom Am I’. Dedicated to the late Louis Johnson, the song tells the story of Louis’s tragic death in 1992 as a result of an act of racial violence and subsequent neglect at the hands of the Western Australian medical response services.

Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy is published by Ctrl-Z Press and available for free download.

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