Date: Monday 13 May 2013
Time: 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Venue: State Library of Western Australia Theatre, Ground Floor, State Library
Keynote: Professor Sue Broomhall
In an exciting new partnership with the State Library of Western Australia, Susan Broomhall and Joanne McEwan are researching the newly acquired Robert Fairbairn archive.
This rare collection containing diaries, letters, and objects and has significant importance to the heritage of Western Australia. CHE's project, "The Affective History of Robert Fairbairn," explores the intertwined personal and professional life of Robert Fairbairn, the son of Scots migrants, whose early life was spent among the local peoples of the Bunbury region. A Resident Magistrate in various locations within the state, Fairbairn's views and personal experiences of indigenous culture were highly influential among settler authorities, leading to his authorship of the Fairbairn Report of 1882 with damaging consequences for indigenous populations.
Broomhall is presenting her research at the upcoming September CHE Collaboratory "Blood, Stone, Land: An Affective History of Heritage" in Hobart which analyses the ambiguous heritage of Robert Fairbairn (1841-1922), as a child straddling two worlds, whose views and actions proposed for the protection and of indigenous peoples would
have damaging consequences into the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
Download the press release
Admission is free but RSVP is required.
RSVP: Email: anne.chapple@slwa.wa.gov.au
Telephone (08) 9427 3105
Media contact: Susan Broomhall
