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Australia and the Pacific: a history, is another broad sweep. I'll talk about the deep history of Australia's placement on the Pacific rim via continental drift, the arrival of the first humans, how the people we know as Aboriginal Australians developed cultures very different to those in the north (Torres Strait and PNG) and east (Polynesia). Horticulture/agriculture, so prevalent throughout the Pacific, was one of those differences. Here I disagree strongly with Bruce Pascoe's depiction of Aboriginal people as agriculturalists rather than hunters and gatherers. That very different relationship to land, I argue, carried forward Eddie Mabo's determination to secure his piece of the island of Mer - his garden plot. That case in turn forced a rethink of Aboriginal Australians' relationship to their land. I will of course talk about the arrival of Europeans and colonial and post-colonial Australia's ambivalent regard of its region as both a home and a place of threat. I end up with the issues of the Pacific Solution and Climate Change.
Dr Ian Hoskins Biography
Dr Ian Hoskins has worked as an academic, public historian, writer and curator in Sydney for more than 30 years. He held teaching positions at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology and the Australian Catholic University before joining the Powerhouse Museum as a curator in 1996. He has worked as the Historian for North Sydney Council since 2003. There, Ian specialises in architectural, local and oral history.
Outside that tenure, Ian has written four books: Sydney Harbour: a history, Coast: a history of the NSW Edge, Rivers: Lifeblood of Australia, and Australia and the Pacific: a history. His histories of Sydney Harbour, the NSW coast and Australia’s relationship with the Pacific won major awards. The most recent was the 2023 Frank Broeze Memorial Prize for Maritime History awarded to Australia and the Pacific.
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