The Canoe Project: Stories from the Collection

This collection display brings together objects from the Koorie Heritage Trust collection and Victorian Aboriginal community members to share the historical, cultural and social significance of our collection items in their lives, their practice and their community.

 

 

This project has been established in partnership with the ARC Centre Of Excellence For The History Of Emotions (CHE) at the University of Melbourne. CHE is a multi-sited, interdisciplinary humanities research centre involving 5 universities and key stakeholders from across Australia and internationally. Its broader mission has been to deepen understandings of how emotions have shaped individual, communal and national identities over time. Core to its research has been the question: how have the legacies of past emotional understandings and practices continued to influence politics, society and culture in today’s Australia?

This project and display explores shared interests of the Koorie Heritage Trust and CHE, in particular how artefacts and objects play a key role in symbolising interactions and relationships, making tangible links to community, continuing cultures and connection to country, and shape identities past and present through embodied memories. It shares the historical, cultural, social and emotional significance of selected items from the Koorie Heritage Trust in the lives, practice and communities of 5 Victorian Aboriginal community members.