Murdoch University
The Krishna Somers Foundation announces the sixth lecture of the year.
The presentation is by Nilanjana Deb, Centre for Advanced Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India. Please come to the talk and engage in a dialogue with Ms Deb over some excellent Western Australian wine (or orange juice).
Abstract
Can notions of diasporic identity be relevant or useful to native studies or aboriginal studies?
The violent Partition in the East of India in 1947 has very rarely received attention from writers, though it provides a classic case study in recent times of what happens when refugee populations come in to conflict with indigenous peoples who have lived on the land
before them. The troubled region also provides instances of the displacement of indigenous peoples such as the Chakmas from Bangladesh into India, where they become minority 'refugee' communities within the territories of other larger tribes, and in the complex politics of the North-East, the targets of 'ethnic' cleansing. This instance provides a point of entry into the discussion of the relationship between diasporas and indigenous peoples. The talk examines the work of aboriginal scholars who suggest cultural separatism as a viable solution in the context of the displacement of indigenous peoples and their reclamations of land.
Nilanjana Deb teaches at the Centre for Advanced Studies in English, Jadavpur
University. Her research interests include diaspora studies, colonial and post-colonial literatures, particularly Caribbean, Canadian, Australian and indigenous literatures. A Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Research Fellow affiliated to the University of Toronto in 2003-4,
she is currently in Australia as an Australia-India Council Research Fellow, doing comparative research on narratives of peoplehood, history and identity in Canadian and Australian aboriginal literature in English. At present she is Research Fellow at the Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, Perth.
