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Project Launch
Our Story: Aboriginal Chinese people in Australia - A new research and arts project will explore Aboriginal Australians' family connections to China. Across Australia, there are many Indigenes families with Chinese heritage, and this project tells their stories.
The project was officially launched at the China Museum in Melbourne on March 26, 2022 by Peter Yu. More than 70 people attended the event, including speakers Mark Wang (CEO of Chinese Museum), Rodney Carter (CEO of Dja Dja Wurrung Group), Professor Peter Yu (Vice-President First Nations ANU), Dr Mathew Trinca (Director of National Museum Australia), Zhou Xiaoping (Project Leader), Kwong Lee Dow (Chairman of Australian Multicultural Foundation), Margo Neale (Senior Indigenous Curator & Principal Advisor to the Director at the National Museum Australia), followed by a research lecture with speakers Fred Cahir (Researcher at Federation University Australia), Stephen Loo (one of families from WA), and David Walker (Historian of University of Melbourne. There were about 80 people from across Australia who watched the event live online. The Australian newspaper, ABC Kimberly, SBS Mandarin TV and radio broadcasters also reported the event.
Chinese Aboriginal connections explored in new heritage project
By Vanessa Mills on Kimberley Breakfast
Artist and social researcher Zhou Xiaoping is no stranger to outback Australia.
He has also been intrigued for many years by the family heritage and connections of Aboriginal people to China, through relationships formed by early migrants to Australia.
A sweeping history and arts project has begun, to map the Chinese-Aboriginal families and maybe even trace their links back to China.
And Broome's multi-culturalism continues to be a focus of Zhou's work.
Duration: 6min 59sec
Broadcast: Tue 29 Mar 2022, 9:35am
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/kimberley/programs/breakfast/chinese-aboriginal-connections/13817364
Project Launch Lecture
March 22, 2022
Chinese Museum
PART 1
PART 2
On Saturday 9th of July 2022, the progress of Our Story was presented through a panel
discussion mediated by Mark Wang, CEO of the Chinese Museum. Present for the panel discussion were Zhou Xiaoping, Jenna Lee and her father Chris Lee, both of Aboriginal Chinese descent, and Professor Fred Cahir of Federation University.
During Saturday’s event, Xiaoping spoke extensively about the two years of research he and his team have so far undertaken, during which they have ranged across Australia interviewing descendants of Aboriginal Chinese people. Professor Fred Cahir, a specialist in early Aboriginal Chinese history and a researcher on Our Story, reinforced Xiaoping’s comments from the perspective of his historical field of study. Xiaoping signalled his intention, ultimately, to follow Aboriginal Chinese familial lineages into China – as well as to present part of his findings in the form of a contemporary art exhibition that will directly engage modern Australians and peoples of Chinese heritage.
Chris Lee spoke from a deep wealth of experiences about the interaction between Aboriginal and Chinese peoples in his own life. In respect of Saturday’s inclusion in events associated with NAIDOC week, it was especially important to hear present Aboriginal Chinese voices remembering and speaking to personal knowledges. Jenna Lee followed her father to speak about her artistic practice.
In the Q&A section, audience members were especially interested to better understand the present cultural experiences of Jenna and her father and to ask about ways that Chinese Australians can contribute to efforts aimed at deeper intercultural understandings and to reconciliation between the wider Australian community and First Nations peoples.