2013 events

Find out about events held by or with the New Zealand India Research Institute in 2013.

Placing Indian Ocean travellers: Aboriginal language stories about South Asian workers in the Australian interior, 1860–1930

13 December 2013

Lecture by Dr Samia Khatun at at Victoria University of Wellington.

Late on a Tuesday afternoon in c.1895, two young Aboriginal sisters were waiting at Alberrie Creek railway siding in the South Australian desert, when two Muslim men on camels rode past on their way to the nearby dam. Upon sighting the waiting girls, the men brought their beasts to a sudden halt. To the dismay of the sisters, ‘the train was running late.’

The story of what happened that evening at Alberrie Creek railway siding remains in the oral records of Arabunna people today and is a tale of two intersecting geographies rarely examined together: An Indian Ocean world peopled by itinerant peddlers and princes and arid Australian deserts criss-crossed by paths of Aboriginal mobility.

With close attention to Arabunna language tales of sexualised encounter between distinct subject peoples of the British Empire, Dr Samia Khatun examined the space/place politics that belie Arabunna memories of Indian Ocean travellers in Australian deserts.

China, India and Asian Regionalism: A Historical Perspective on the Present

9 May 2013

Lecture by Professor Prasenjit Duara, co-organised by the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre and held at at Victoria University of Wellington.