AMplify - Conversations at the Australian Museum

Unsettled – Remembering Massacres by Australian Museum

NITV’s Yokayi Footy presenter Bianca Hunt and Professor John Maynard, Chair of Aboriginal History at the University of Newcastle, talk opportunities, barriers and responsibilities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sportspeople past and present. Sport has allowed First Nations people to compete as equals on the field. Success offers possibilities of financial reward and social acceptance fa...

Artist Daniel Boyd and Academic Dr Stephen Gilchrist discuss the legacy of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and the importance of place and ceremony in art today. When Emily Kame Kngwarreye died in 1996, she was recognised as one of the world’s great painters. Her work was inherently tied to deep, layered understanding and interpretation of her Country’s stories, and was the culmination of a lifetime of maki...

Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO and Dr Jason DeSantolo explore the legacy of David Unaipon and how traditional systems and knowledge are helping solve contemporary issues.

Arts leaders Wesley Enoch and Rhoda Roberts AO reflect on the legacy of writer Oodgeroo Noonuccal and activism in the arts. The first published Aboriginal poet in Australia, the writings of Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), captured both the strength of Aboriginal culture and the impacts of colonisation on her people. A charismatic, strong leader from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), her distincti...

Join Indigenous systems ecologist Chels Marshall and facilitator Dr Mariko Smith to discuss how deep cultural knowledge not only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius but may help reverse the damaging effects of 200 years of Eurocentric land and sea management practice into the future. Eddie Mabo’s native title claim changed the foundation of this nation’s land and sea law by proving that...

Professor Tim Flannery outlines his manifesto for humanity’s survival of the “climate emergency” in the Australian Museum’s (AM) inaugural Talbot Oration. The event was held free to the public on Thursday 3 June 2021 at 6:30PM in Hintze Hall at the Australian Museum. In his speech, Professor Flannery made the case for using Australia’s approach to COVID-19 as a model for responding to climate chan...

Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay in discussion with Professor Tim Flannery.

Glenn Murcutt AO (with Sandra Sully) Architect Glenn Murcutt is globally acclaimed for his environmentally sensitive, sustainable and quintessentially Australian designs. The sole practitioner, teacher and critic, counts his childhood in Papua New Guinea and his father’s inspiring guidance, informed by the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, as profound influences. Murcutt has received every significant...

Albert Namatjira by Franchesca Cubillo (with Tracey Holmes) Born on the Hermannsburg Lutheran mission in the Northern Territory in 1902, the life of iconic master painter and Western Arrernte man Albert Namatjira was entangled in virulent racial politics. Franchescha Cubillo, Churchill Scholar and Senior Curator Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia, offers i...

Mark Carey- The Culture and Politics of Ice University of Oregon’s Mark Carey explores the fundamental role of glacial ice in global economics and politics and within our imaginative, historical and colonial narratives. Much more than just a barometer for climate change or pristine nature, glacial ice has been an elemental force in human history, fundamental to global politics and central to the q...

HumanNature Series: Lessons on resilience from a bamboo bridge Katherine Gibson and Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University) explore life within the rhythms of nature in resilient community economies. For more than half a century, a 1.5 km handmade bamboo bridge spanned the Mekong River in Cambodia. It was constructed annually as the waters of the river subsided, and dismantled as they r...

Andrea Gaynor - Armoured histories: radical remembering for the Anthropocene Hold the past to account with Andrea Gaynor, University of Western Australia as she proposes `radical remembering’ to actively confront the challenges of the Anthropocene. Climate breakdown, annihilation of entire species, dwindling topsoil and fresh water, food shocks and plastic oceans led 16-year-old climate activist G...

Bruce Pascoe’s ground-breaking research completely reconsiders the notion of pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians as hunter-gatherers. Explore and challenge the colonial myths that have often underpinned efforts to justify dispossession in this fascinating discussion. Reading the diaries of early explorers, both with and against the grain, Pascoe retells Aboriginal history and argues that it is tim...

Environmental martyrs put their bodies and lives on the line, risking imprisonment, violence or burial in a shallow grave in the dead of night. Some activists remain anonymous, while others gain posthumous fame and power, their deaths becoming a rallying call for others to join the cause. Rob Nixon, Professor in Humanities and Environment at Princeton University, and author of the award-winning Sl...

Professor Fred Hollows AC by Gabi Hollows AO (with Sandra Sully) New Zealand born, UK trained eye surgeon Fred Hollows’ drive to end the injustice of avoidable blindness emerged from a deep commitment to social equality. The economical approach to ophthalmology – focussing on training local surgeons and reducing the cost of lens - which he and his orthoptist wife Gabi developed, has restored sight...

Dr Macarena Gomez-Barris - The Occupied Forest Venture into the cacophonous space of the forest with Macarena Gómez-Barris of the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn USA, as she considers its contested conceptual, indigenous and potentially regenerative narratives. Recorded in the Hallstrom Theatre at the Australian Museum on 25 June 2019

Live at the AM: Lunchtime Conversation Series - Terry Percival AM, representing CSIRO WLAN by Australian Museum

Live at the AM: Lunchtime Lecture Series 2019: John Maynard On Charles Perkins by Australian Museum

Google Maps began in the spare room of software engineer Noel Gordon’s Sydney apartment in 2003. Today’s instant digital information, directions and street views of almost anywhere on earth has changed our lives, our understanding of the world and how we move and interact within it. Noel Gordon is in conversation with Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim MCKay. Recorded at the Australian Museum...

Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay AO has led the transformation of the nation’s first museum into one of the world's pre-eminent natural history and cultural institutions. Kim also co-founded the Clean Up Australia and Clean Up the World campaigns, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the environment and the community. She offers reflections on...

Dick Smith in conversation with Kim McKay as part of the Australian Museum Lunchtime Lecture series. Sydney born Dick Smith is an adventurer, businessman, entrepreneur, philanthropist, political activist and 1986 Australian of the Year. The founder of Dick Smith Electronics became a household name, launching Australian Geographic magazine in 1984 to sponsor adventure and inspire a love of nature....

This talk took place on Tuesday 21 May 2019 in the Hallstrom Theatre as the first installment of the Australian Museum's Lunchtime Conversation Series. Author Thomas Keneally in conversation with Australian Museum Director & CEO, Kim McKay One of our most popular and prolific authors, Thomas Keneally has produced more than forty novels, screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction. His embrace of challeng...

This talk was presented on 14 May 2019 as part of the Australian Museum's HumanNature series. HumanNature Series: Environmental justice and the power of the Pacific word Experience the award-winning "eco-poetry" of Craig Santos Perez from the University of Hawaiʻi, as he reflects on the vital role of Pacific literature in the environmental movements of Oceania. The Pacific region is at the front l...

This talk was presented as part of the Australian Museum's HumanNature series on 30 April 2019. HumanNature Series: Is green the new white? Lesley Green (University of Cape Town) considers how environmentalism squares with anti-racism and social justice in the sourcing of `green’ commodities from the sands of South Africa. Green explores the impact of extracting titanium dioxide, used to produce l...