The Working Group on Emergent Indigenous Identities

 

Members of the Working Group

Photograph of Dr Bindi Bennett

Bindi Bennett is a social work lecturer at the Australian Catholic University (ACU). Her interests include trauma and Aboriginal people as well as increasing cultural responsiveness in social work education. Prior to her appointment with ACU, Bindi was a senior social worker with experience in the fields of child and adolescent mental health, schools and health. Bindi is a Gamilaraay woman, raised on Ngunnawal land and currently living on Darkinjung land. Bindi is a highly regarded social work academic within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Since 2003 Bindi has been publishing and undertaking research in the area of Indigenous social work. Many of these projects have been in collaboration with Associate Professor Joanna Zubrzycki. Bindi is the primary editor of the first Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Work text book (published by Palgrave Macmillan). In 2011 Bindi, along with her colleagues. Associate Professor Joanna Zubrzycki and Violet Bacon won the prestigious Australian social work award, the Norm Smith Prize for best research publication. Since 2011 this article remains the most read publication in the leading Australian social work journal.

 
Photograph of Jeff Berglund

Jeff Berglund is a professor of English at Northern Arizona University where he is a President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow and affiliate faculty with Ethnic Studies and Applied Indigenous Studies. He is the author of articles on the band Blackfire, Diné/Navajo filmmakers, the poet Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo), poet Esther Belin (Diné/Navajo), the pedagogy of American Indian literature, and a co-authored article in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education on Indigenous terminologies. He is the editor and contributor of essays to Sherman Alexie: a Collection of Critical Essays (Utah UP, 2010) as well as the author ofCannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and Sexuality (Wisconsin UP, 2006). His newest edited book, Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop (U of Arizona P), will be published in 2016.

 
Photograph of Bronwyn Carlson

Bronwyn Carlson is an Aboriginal woman who was born on and lives on D’harawal Country in NSW Australia. In 2013 she was awarded the prestigious Stanner Award by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies for her doctoral research on the politics of identity. She went on to be the first Indigenous Australian at the University of Wollongong to be granted an Australian Research Council, Discovery Indigenous award in 2014 for her research on Aboriginal identity and community on social media. She is one of the original members of the WGEII and co-editor on the group’s first publication, The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity (2013).

 
Photograph of Andrew Farrell

Andrew Farrell is a PhD student at the University of Wollongong, Indigenous Studies Unit. His thesis is on Indigenous gender diversities focusing on transgender and gender diverse Indigenous identities within Australia. Andrew is a Queer identified Indigenous person from the South Coast of NSW who is interested in researching the development of alternative Aboriginal gender and sexual identities and experiences.

 
Photograph of Ricardo Guthrie

Ricardo Guthrie is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Northern Arizona University and Faculty in Residence for the Ernest Calderón Learning Community. He examines political narratives of the Black Press, African-Diaspora studies, and writes about cinema as cultural political artifacts. He is an editor of the Journal of Global Indigeneity, and The International Journal of Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts. Recent publications include: “Reading Radmilla: The Semiotics of Self (Black and Navajo),” in The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity (2013); “Minstrelsy and Mythic Appetites: The Last King of Scotland’s Heart of Darkness in the Jubilee Year of African Independence,” in Hollywood’s Africa After 1994 (2012); and "The Real Ghosts in the Machine: The Haunting of Racial Space in DETROPIA and I, Robot," in Afrofuturism 2.0, Vol. I (forthcoming: 2015).

 
Photograph of Michelle Harris

Michelle Harris is the director of the Institute for Global Indigeneity and a Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at The University at Albany – SUNY. She is the convener of Working Group on Emergent Indigenous Identities and a Co-editor and contributor to the volume, The Politics of Identity: Emergent Indigeneity (2013). Her scholarship explores Indigennous identity construction and expression and the Internationalization of Indigenous Studies.

 
Photograph of David Kampers

David Kampers is a Nyoongar man and his people are from the South West of Western Australia. He is currently a lecturer in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in the School of Medicine at the University of Wollongong. David is also the undergraduate course director for Indigenous health programs. He has been lecturing in Indigenous health since 2006, and is currently situated in the faculty of Science, Medicine and Health.

 
Photograph of Evan Poata-Smith

Evan Poata-Smith belongs to the Te Rarawa and Ngati Kahu people of the Far North of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

He has taught sociology at the University of Canterbury and the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. In 2009 and 2010 he was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Northern Arizona University in the United States where he taught courses in the Applied Indigenous Studies and Sociology programmes. He currently teaches Indigenous Studies at the University of Wollongong in Australia.

Research interests/Areas of Expertise
Evan’s research lies at the intersection of political science and sociology and focuses primarily on contemporary Indigenous politics and society. To date he has published research in the areas of contemporary Indigenous identity politics; the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process; Indigenous social, economic and political inequalities; public policy in relation to Māori; and contemporary Māori politics and the struggle for tino rangatiratanga (indigenous self-determination).

 
Photograph of Acushla Sciascia (O'Carroll)

Acushla Sciascia has tribal affiliations to Ngaruahine Rangi, Ngāti Ruanui and Te Āti Awa tribes based in the Taranaki region of Aotearoa New Zealand. She recently completed her doctorate in 2013 and has widely published findings from her doctoral research that looked at Māori peoples’ use of social media and was awarded the Fulbright Harkness New Zealand Fellowship where she disseminated her doctoral research findings throughout the U.S. More recently, her research has extended into online Indigenous citizenship and the expression and actions of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) by Indigenous communities through socially mediated spaces. Dr Sciascia aims to bring a Kaupapa Māori (Māori philosophical approach) lens to the working group through collaboration and co-creation with other Indigenous and scholarly colleagues.