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Dr Liz Dean talks on the importance of country, storytelling and truth telling



Dr Liz Dean is a Lecturer/Teaching Specialist in Sociology, in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her current research interests include investigating the potential social impacts of the Victorian government’s Yarra River Protection Wilip-gin Birrarung murron Act 2017. Liz spoke to 3KND about the importance of country, storytelling and truth telling and the stories music tells which interrupts the National narrative. (For example see, Liz Dean with Roger Knox (2020), ‘Roger Knox and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Stranger in My Land and Give it a Go: Shaping the Narrative through Song’, in Jon Stratton and Jon Dale with Tony Mitchell, An Anthology of Australian Albums: critical engagements.



I have attached a couple of images that I used in the talk too which if you put online, could you say that they held at the University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Gallery and Museum? So I looked at early representations of Naarm Melbourne, to show how much the Birrarung Yarra has changed in the CBD through colonisation/ occupation – settlement and how this relates to questions of belonging and the Yarra River Protection Wilip-gin Birrarung murron Act 2017 tabled at Vic. Parliament in 2017 by Wurrundjeri Woi-wurrung and read by Alice Kolasa in 2017. See photo here of Youtube clip and quote:. I am also interested in what this actually means for the Birrarung too.

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