PANEL | Dialogue Across Generations: Indigenous Scholarship and Activism
WHEN: 10 May 2025 – 6:30 pm - 8 pm
WHERE: Atrium, Spore Initiative
PANELLISTS: Tony Birch, Keith Camacho, Hereata Pereyre and Brigalow Joaquin McIntosh
ORGANIZED AND MODERATED BY: Chris Healy
Panel Description
It has largely been left to Indigenous people to repair the damage of colonization throughout Oceania, with many of our Elders and those who came before us shouldering the burden. Grassroots organising has been crucial in this respect, strengthening Indigenous communities by interweaving Elders, culture and kin through their practices of resilience. Spanning Oceania, this intergenerational panel discusses the forms that this work has taken inside and outside academic contexts. It is only through the combined efforts of our strong leaders and communities, that Indigenous people have begun to repair and prosper. Something younger generations are now continuing through circumventing colonial narratives of deficit. Join us as we discuss interdisciplinary acts of repairing across generations of Indigenous scholarship and activism.
Bios of Panellists and Speakers
Tony Birch is the Chair of Australian Literature in the School of Communication at Melbourne University. He is also a Fitzroy Blak, a historian, poet and novelist.
Keith L. Camacho is a Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a Mercator Fellow at the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms at the University of Potsdam. His research publications mainly examine histories of gender, indigeneity, militarization, and resistance in twentieth-century Oceania.
Brigalow McIntosh is a Muruwari & Kooma academic from Australia. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Potsdam in the Research-Collaborations Unit. He has a background in Aboriginal child and family welfare policy and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.
Hereata Pereyre is an islander from French Polynesia (Tahiti), born and raised. She completed a bachelor's degree in Tahiti before pursuing a master's in French and Comparative Literature. Her passion for Oceanian literature grew during her master’s research on the deconstruction of colonial myths in contemporary island writing.
