'Tragedy of the Inarticulate': Exploring the politics of Indigenous knowledge

Presented by Professor Sana Nakata, University of Melbourne.

Associate Professor Sana Nakata delivers the 2020 Japanangka errol West Lecture for NAIDOC Week. Sana will reflect on the difficult entanglements between the construction of Indigenous peoples as a not-knowing people and the academy’s sustained desire to know Indigenous peoples.

Associate Professor Sana Nakata is Associate Dean, Indigenous and co-director of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Trained as a lawyer and political theorist, her research is centred on developing an approach for thinking politically about childhood in ways that improve the capacity of adult decision-makers to act in their interests. She has recently completed an ARC Discovery Indigenous Research Fellowship examining Representations of Children in Australian Political Controversies (2016-2019). She is the author of Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy (2015) and, along with co-director Sarah Maddison, edits the Springer book series Indigenous Settler Relations in Australia and the World.