AMplify - Conversations at the Australian Museum

This talk was presented as part of the Australian Museum's HumanNature series on 26 February 2019.

HumanNature: Connection and cooperation in a time of climate change

In his urgent call to action, Birch identifies the powerful roles that First Nations ecological knowledge, environmental activism, scholarship and creativity can play in addressing the impact of climate change, particularly on vulnerable and disempowered communities suffering human rights abuses as a direct result.

No less pressing, he argues, is the acceptance of personal responsibility towards forming respectful and humble relationships with country and the planet.

TONY BIRCH

Poet, short story writer and novelist, Professor Tony Birch is the current Bruce McGuinness Professorial Research Fellow in the Moondani Balluk Academic Centre at Victoria University, and in 2017, became the first indigenous writer to win the Patrick White Award. Tony has published key academic articles and essays concerning Climate Justice, Protection of Country and Indigenous Rights, and is currently researching and writing a book titled `The dead are the imagination of the living’: climate justice and connectivity.

This talk took place at 1pm, Tuesday 2 September in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum as part of the Australian Museum's Lunchtime Lecture Series.

Australian film legend George Miller traces his multi-award winning engagement with film to the ritual Saturday matinee in his hometown of Chinchilla, Queensland. After a stint at medical school he became a filmmaker, going on to create the Academy Award-winning Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet series among many others. In this intimate talk, George discusses his early life and career, and reveals some amazing facts about his films, such as how his wife, editor Margaret Sixel, had to edit 480 hours of footage for Mad Max: Fury Road down to just two.

Australian film legend George Miller traces his multi-award winning engagement with film to the ritual Saturday matinee in his hometown of Chinchilla, Queensland. After a stint at medical school he became a filmmaker, going on to create the Acadamy Award-winning Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet series among many others.In this intimate talk, George discusses his early life and career, and reveals some amazing facts about his films, such as how his wife, editor Margaret Sixel, had to edit 480 hours of footage for down to just two.Recorded 4th September 2018 in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum.Lunctime Lecture Series: Australians Shaping the Nation is a series of talks with six distinguished Australians who are shaping the nation across science, sport and the arts running from 21 August to 25 September 2018.

Layne Beachley is widely regarded as the most successful female surfer in history, and is the only surfer, male or female, to claim six consecutive world titles (1998-2003); she went on to win a seventh in 2006. In this inspiring conversation with AM Director Kim McKay, Layne reveals the source of her drive to be the best of the best, and opens up about her marriage to INXS rock legend Kirk Pengilly.Recorded 28th August 2018 in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum.Lunctime Lecture Series: Australians Shaping the Nation is a series of talks with six distinguished Australians who are shaping the nation across science, sport and the arts running from 21 August to 25 September 2018.

Layne Beachley is widely regarded as the most successful female surfer in history, and is the only surfer, male or female, to claim six consecutive world titles (1998-2003); she went on to win a 7th world title in 2006 before retiring in 2008. In this inspiring conversation with AM Director Kim McKay, Layne reveals the source of her drive to be the best of the best, involving the loss of her mother at age 6 and the revelation of her adoption. She also opens up about the equally strong power of love and her marriage to rock legend Kirk Pengilly.

“The fear of abandonment and the fear of rejection is essentially what drove me to become a six-time consecutive world champion. And the reason I differentiate from the seventh is because the seventh title was won in a state of love. So I proved to myself that you can do it in two different ways.

“We all experience trauma, we all perceive it in a different way and none of us can control what happens to us, but the one thing we can control is how we respond to it.”

This talk took place at 1pm, Tuesday 28 August in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum.

From copy girl to editor at the age of 23, Ita Buttrose’s boundary-pushing career at The Telegraph, Cleo, The Australian Women’s Weekly and The Sunday Telegraph won her status as a feminist icon. The legendary media trailblazer, businesswoman, best-selling author and 2013 Australian of the Year continues her active leadership role as a committed community and welfare contributor.Recorded 21st August 2018 in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum.Lunctime Lecture Series: Australians Shaping the Nation is a series of talks with six distinguished Australians who are shaping the nation across science, sport and the arts running from 21 August to 25 September 2018.

From copy girl to editor at the age of 23, Ita Buttrose’s boundary-pushing career at The Telegraph, Cleo, The Australian Women’s Weekly and The Sunday Telegraph won her status as a feminist icon. The legendary media trailblazer, businesswoman, best-selling author and 2013 Australian of the Year continues her active leadership role as a committed community and welfare contributor.

This talk took place at 1pm, Tuesday 21 August in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum.

This event took place in the Hallstrom Theatre, Australian Museum, Sydney, on 14 June 2018.

Join Alice Te Punga Somerville as she explores the histories and possibilities of Indigenous gardens in the Pacific region.

Colonial projects have long been bound up, in a variety of ways, with the movement, growth and exploitation of plants. But these projects have also traded rhetorically on particular understandings of people’s relationships with plants, like the vein of colonial storytelling in which Indigenous people frolic aimlessly in nature while Europeans busily tame the landscape. But, despite these stories, the purposeful movement of plants is also central to many Indigenous histories and practices.

Drawing on scholarship and activism connected to cultivation by Indigenous peoples, this talk examines texts by Indigenous writers alongside historical and contemporary media texts about gardens and gardening to explore the diverse ways in which relationships (human and non-human) are mediated and nurtured through acts of gardening.

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Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Atiawa, Taranaki) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Maori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato, where her research and teaching sits at the intersections of literary, cultural, Indigenous and Pacific studies. She has taught in Indigenous Studies and English in New Zealand, Hawai‘i, Canada and Australia. Her first book was Once Were Pacific: Maori connections to Oceania (2012). She is currently working on a multi-stranded research project titled ‘Writing the new world: Indigenous texts 1900-1975.’ She also writes the occasional poem.

What is the HumanNature Series?

In this landmark series of talks, we are proud to host a stellar line up of leading Australian and international scholars.

They will share with us their insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology and art to examine the significant interplay between the humanities and the environmental crisis we face today, including climate change, biodiversity loss and a wide range of other issues.

Drawing on scholarship and activism connected to cultivation by Indigenous peoples, this talk - examines texts by Indigenous writers alongside historical and contemporary media texts about gardens and gardening to explore the diverse ways in which relationships (human and non-human) are mediated and nurtured through acts of gardening.Recorded 14th June 2018.HumanNature is a landmark lecture series at the Australian Museum that offers a range of talks by leading international scholars in the Environmental Humanities. It will draw on insights from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines and explore the important roles that the humanities can play in addressing some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our day.This Lecture Series is jointly funded and coordinated by the University of New South Wales, Macquarie University, Western Sydney University, the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

This lively panel is hosted by Director and CEO of the Australia Museum Kim McKay AO and features 2017 Eureka Prize winners Associate Professor Madhu Bhaskaran, Dr. Emilie Ens and Dr. Bryn Sobott.The discussion covers a diverse range of topics including citizen science, science in challenging and remote settings, wearable technology and the profile of science in Australia.The full list of 2018 finalists is available on the Eureka Prizes’ website, with winners to be announced at a black tie award dinner at Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday 29 August.