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HUS1DAU 2020 Final Task Reflective Essay

Due 11.55 pm on Monday 20 April 2020. Monday June 1^st 2020

1500 words maximum
Worth 40% of your final grade

Question:

How have you experienced Australia’s indigenous heritage? Discuss with reference to the key concepts/myth of terra Nullius raised in HUS1DAU, the course materials, and your own subject position.

Directions:

Reflective essays are designed to elicit your informed responses to the course. For this reason, you may write in the first person. They offer a broader canvas than research essays and you are encouraged to make connections across different topics/weeks.
- Terra Nullius (weeks 2 & 3)
You are to write about a particular experience with one of the first myths covered in this course
As well as providing an answer to the question, you should demonstrate sustained engagement with course content.
This essay is not simply asking for your opinion nor does it want you to just describe what we have looked at over in the lectures, rather, it is asking you to critically examine your own experience, understanding or position. Your discussion should be informed by some of the key concepts or the first two myths covered in this course, and your own learning experience.
To do this, you need to demonstrate a consciousness of your own subject position – that is, how your background and life experience impact on how you approach and make sense of key concepts such as national identity and global citizenship.
International students may well reflect on how tensions around their home country’s foundation myths impact on national identity and global citizenship, and relate these to the Australian example.
You are expected to draw on subject materials from across HUS1DAU, including the tutorial readings and online materials.
This task is concerned with your ability to critically analyse and make links between both the myths that make us, and your own learning journey.

Research guidelines

You do not need to do extra research for this essay. You should answer the question and support your arguments using the course materials: weekly readings, online tasks, lectures and tutorials.
You may do extra research if you wish.

Citation guidelines:

Please use the Oxford (footnoting) system.
This is not a formal research essay with the accompanying stringent requirements of citation, so you do not necessarily need to give precise page numbers or quotations. However, it is essential that the reader knows exactly what text, film or lecture you are referring to, so this information should be supplied in footnotes.[1]
You must include a bibliography which lists, with clarity, the texts cited.
As always, the footnotes and bibliography are not included in the word count.

Grading information:

Your work will be evaluated on:

engagement with the themes of the unit and its conceptual frameworks;
engagement with and use of the unit materials (and their referencing and bibliography);
ability to make links across and between topics we have covered;
expression of your subject position and its integration into discussion;
the clarity and eloquence of your argument.

Submission:

Submit through Turnitin as a double-spaced Word document.
As this task is the equivalent of a take-home exam, no extensions will be possible unless you have been approved for Special Consideration.

PLEASE SEE THE ‘REFLECTIVE ESSAY FAQS’ DOCUMENT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

[1] For this task you are permitted to be informal in the footnotes and just say, for example, “Discussion on Adam Goodes in week 9 lecture”, “Standfield, A remarkably tolerant nation”; or “Redfern Now, viewed in week 7”. However, the texts referred to MUST be clearly identifiable, and you MUST include a bibliography which gives full details.

Expert's Answer

Heritage of Indigenous Australians is a major aspect of Australian history. History of Aboriginal settlement in Australia goes back more than 7000 years[1]. Indigenous identity is of continuing importance and also culturally important, establishing and sustaining continuous ties between land and people. Places with considerable importance and prominence to indigenous peoples involve places identified with Dreaming tales about the rules of the land and how people will respond, locations connected with their faith, sites where many communities have come into connection with indigenous peoples and cultures important to more contemporary uses.

Terra nullius is a Latin term which means "land which belongs to none." British colonialism and ensuing Australian various legislations were formed under the pretense that Australia was terra nullius, supporting the acquisition without an agreement or compensation by British invasion. This basically revoked the earlier ownership of the land by aboriginal people. Then, Justice Blackburn found in the 1971 Gove land rights case that Australia was a terra nullius previous to European invasion[2]. Court decisions cases in 1977, 1979, and 1982 strenuously defended this decision. Even so, on 20th of May 1982, on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, Eddie Koiki Mabo and four other Indigenous Meriam people started their legal ruling to possess their ancestral homelands[3]. The myth of Terra Nullius is also a conceptual story of the initial years of Aboriginal opposition and colonization interruption.

[1] P.D. Nunn & J.R. Nicholas, ‘Aboriginal memories of inundation of the Australian coast dating from more than 7000 years ago.’ Australian Geographer, vol. 47, no. 1, 2016, p. 11-47.

[2] J. Hunter, ‘Native Title in Australia and South Africa: A Search for Something That Lasts.’ U. Miami Int'l & Comp. L. Rev., vol. 22, 2014, p. 233.

[3] L.A. Knafla, L A., and W. Haijo, eds. Aboriginal Title and Indigenous Peoples: Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. UBC Press, 2011.