Dhoombak Goobgoowana Book Launch

The Vice-Chancellor's speech  at the public launch of Dhoombak Goobgoowana was delivered on Tuesday 28 May 2024.

Thank you, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Judd.

I thank Uncle Bill Nicholson for his generous welcome to country, and I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which the University works and learns.

I also pay my respects to Indigenous Elders and leaders, past, present and emerging.

Chancellor Jane Hansen; colleagues, guests and friends:

This evening it is my honour to launch an important book, Dhoombak Goobgoowana: a History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne.

This book has been long awaited by many people, both by those present here and by many others who are not present in person.

As a University, we are conscious of our responsibility within the Australian nation of today, and of our responsibility to future generations. A strong sense of these responsibilities has guided the work of compiling and editing the work.

I have often said that the University is ‘foundational’ – not just in the sense that we have been here since 1853, but because we seek to build a strong foundation for the future, through the quality of our education, our research and our ability to encourage critical thinking.

We need to be an institution of outstanding scholarship. And in the course of being such an institution, we must be capable of critiquing ourselves.

Dhoombak Goobgoowana represents all these things. It turns attention to the long, complex and troubled relationship between the Indigenous people of Australia and this University.

It is a book that will be painful for many who have long valued the reputation of the University of Melbourne.

Dhoombak Goobgoowana will not destroy the reputation of the University. But it does reveal a troubling record of how academics have wielded power and justified its use against Indigenous populations.

It also reveals some of the disturbing ways in which knowledge, including Indigenous knowledge, was used during earlier periods of the University’s history in connection with research projects and collections.

Before now, the full story of this use of Indigenous knowledge has not been reflected in many biographies, and institutional histories often excluded race from their accounts of the University’s achievement. That changes with Dhoombak Goobgoowana.

Volume 1 is a substantial work of more than 500 pages, and there is much more to come in Volume 2. It is impossible to single out any one section or one contribution as being more important than all the others in a work of this magnitude. It is in the collective work of contributors, from Indigenous leaders to scholars both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, that the power of Dhoombak Goobgoowana lies.

But I will highlight the importance of the research included here that documents a history of eugenics and scientific racism at the University. This involves some famous names from the University’s past, and certain attitudes towards Indigenous people on the part of University students and staff that are regrettable and shameful.

Certain parts of Dhoombak Goobgoowana make for hard reading, indeed.

Yet this is a step forward, certainly for the University and I hope for the nation. Australia today is in need of truth-telling about the past.

Dhoombak Goobgoowana speaks to optimism and hope for a more honest and productive future, by taking a critical lens to the work and past contributions of one important institution within the nation, the University of Melbourne.

I hope it will stand as a positive model of truth-telling about the past between Indigenous Australia and non-Indigenous Australia, one that might influence other universities in their thinking, and not just universities but many other institutions too.

I congratulate the editors, Ross Jones, Marcia Langton, and James Waghorne, for their fine work in bringing this publication to fruition. I thank everyone at the University and beyond the University for their work in bringing it about.

I especially thank the Indigenous Elders and contributors who have been a key part of the process of publishing this volume, and Uncle Jim Berg in particular, without whose challenge to the University to engage in a process of deeper truth-telling, this book would not have happened.

Without further ado, it is an honour for me as Vice-Chancellor to declare the launch of:

Dhoombak Goobgoowana: a History of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne, Volume 1:Truth.