I undertook a CNTA Guided Writing placement in April 2021. It was a rewarding and refreshing break from my usual working life and provided a great opportunity to pursue a topic of interest without distractions. I focused my research and writing on issues of Aboriginal sacred site damage, seeking to apply what I have learned from my experiences of such events across the Northern Territory to the currently pressing issue of Native Title compensation for cultural loss.
Incidents of site damage reveal deep and often highly complicated impacts on individuals and societies which can challenge the ability of groups to reproduce themselves and their cultural practices across time. I aim to get behind the language and rhetoric of loss in order to provide some analysis how groups engage and deal with such events. Hopefully, this will inform the understandings of loss in future compensation matters.
The placement was a welcomed opportunity to re-engage with some classical anthropological literature as well as to engage with a vast amount of new materials. Of great benefit was the ability to get ideas discussed and teased out and I look forward to continuing my writing and my discussions with Nic and Julie (and others) with a view to producing a paper in the near future.