Aboriginal Communities as Sites of Experiment: Making Research Subjects

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

How did Aboriginal Australians come to be treated as research subjects in the twentieth century? This project aims to examine six exemplary cases where Aboriginal communities became sites of medical investigation and scientific experiment. It is designed to explore different patterns of sympathy and exploitation, intimacy and objectivity, in the interactions of scientists and Aboriginal people. The sites range from Brewarrina to Hermannsburg, Palm Island and Groote Eylandt; the time period is from the 1910s through the 1990s. The research will endeavour to translate the history of Australian science into a series of Indigenous local histories. Such an approach is unprecedented and is expected to serve as a model for the study of the entanglements between science and Indigenous peoples.