2006 Dr Gordon Briscoe: Repeating the mistakes of the past? Aborigines and the Pastoralists in the Northern Territory 1914-67

About the lecture

What is happening to records of aboriginal people today? Will these archives survive?  Are we repeating the mistakes of the past?  These are the questions that Dr Gordon Briscoe will address in the Noel Butlin Archives Centre lecture, explaining what history teaches us about retaining sources and understanding our past.

Dr Briscoe knew the economic historian Noel Butlin as a man who was passionate about writing history and about how indigenous people have been treated.  Dr Briscoe will speak about his own people from Central Australia, revealing a history about pastoralist and their impact on the indigenous past.

About the speaker

Dr Gordon Briscoe is a Research Fellow in the History Program's Australian Centre for Indigenous History at ANU. He was born in a native institution in the Northern Territory in 1983.  He was removed from his Marduntjara mother as a boy and spent his youth in the care of the state.  In 1973 he joined the public service and worked in reforming Aboriginal health service delivery, becoming involved with Professor Fred Hollows as his Assistant Director in the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program.

Dr Briscoe was awarded a Master's 1991 and a PhD in 1996.  In 2004, he was awarded the Order of Australia for his role in founding Indigenous health legal and educational services.

See the flyer.