About The Author

Wiradjuri/Ngunnawal photographer, Alana Harris was born in Penrith, Sydney in 1966 and raised in Cowra NSW. She completed her Higher School Certificate at Cowra High School and went on to receive a Diploma in Photography at the ACT Institute of TAFE in 1988.

In 1989 Harris became the Senior Photographer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra. Harris is quoted in her artist statement in the Narragunnawali catalogue saying that “as an Aboriginal photographer I feel it is important to portray Aboriginal Australia whether it be in portraits, landscapes or documentary photography as I know it to be.” She was the Senior Photographer with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) for 12 years and has worked as the Access Manager in the Archives and Production Program with AIATSIS. 

Melinda Hinkson is an associate professor of anthropology at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. She also directs the independent Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne. Much of Melinda’s work is informed by longstanding research relationships with Warlpiri people.

She has published widely on Aboriginal visual culture and the politics of representation, the life work of WEH Stanner, the contested cultural politics of the Northern Territory Intervention, and processes of displacement and practices of place-making.

Among Melinda’s publications are See How We Roll: Enduring Exile Between Desert and Urban Australia (forthcoming, 2021), Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life Through the Prism of Drawing (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014), Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia (co-edited with Jon Altman, 2007) and Aboriginal Sydney: A Guide to Important Places of the Past and Present (with photographs by Alana Harris, 2001). .