Biographical note
Professor Ghassan Hage is the professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Anthropology and Social Theory, Social and Political Sciences. Professor Hage is best known for his work on the enduring presence of race in our contemporary world and most recently for his critical stance on the genocide happening in Palestine. Professor Hage’s writings on the political dimensions of critical anthropology will add a provocative and timely dimension to this year’s conference.

The other settler-colonial prejudice
When we speak of racism and prejudice in relation to settler colonialism we immediately think of the racism and prejudice of the settlers towards the indigenous occupants of the land. In this presentation, while not wanting to de-centre this phenomenon, I wish to concentrate on another relation marked by prejudice and sometimes even racism, it is a relation between the decision makers of the metropolis and the actual settlers who do the colonising. Saying that Britain colonised Australia, or that France colonised Algeria, leaves out this important relation between the elite colonisers of London and Paris, and those who did the actual ‘dirty colonial work’ for them. I suggest that this relation and its evolution gives us a different set of insights into the nature and transformation of colonial culture. I suggest that this relation is also important for thinking the future of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine that is unfolding before our very eyes today.

09:00-10:30 Wednesday, 27 November, 2024, UWA Physics G41 Ross Theatre
In addition to the keynote, Professor Hage and conference co-chair Dr Gretchen Stolte will also hold a conference workshop on the intersections of anthropology and activism.

Biographical note
Dr Jessyca Hutchens, a Palyku woman living and working on Noongar boodja, is a lecturer at the School of Indigenous Studies and a co-director at the Berndt Museum, University of Western Australia. Jessyca is an art historian, curator and writer who has previously worked as a curator at the Berndt Museum, a curatorial fellow at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia, a curatorial assistant to the artistic director for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, and as a lecturer in global art history at the University of Birmingham.

Belonging to the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group, Stephen Gilchrist is Associate Professor at the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia. He has worked with the Indigenous Australian collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the British Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Stephen has curated numerous exhibitions in Australia and the United States and, from 2012 to 2016 was the Australian studies visiting curator at Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University. He is the co-director of the Berndt Museum at the University of Western Australia.

Undisciplining the Museum
As academics with doctorates in art history, who teach in an Indigenous Studies major, and who are Co-Directors of a (formerly) anthropological museum, this presentation takes the conference's call to reclaim a discipline in crisis as an incitement to reshape institutional cultures in ways that are aligned to Indigenous forms of governance, sovereignty, care and value.

09:00-10:30 Thursday, 28 November, 2024, UWA Physics G41 Ross Theatre