The Bennelong Society was a conservative think-tank dedicated to Indigenous Australian affairs. The society was named after the Eora man, Bennelong, who served as an interlocutor between the Indigenous Australian and British cultures, both in Sydney and in the United Kingdom almost from the start of British settlement of Australia in 1788. [1] It was affiliated with conservative commentators in debates on Indigenous affairs. [2] [3] The society was established to:
The Bennelong Society website was officially launched by Senator the Hon. John Herron with a speech at Parliament House, Canberra on 15 May 2001. [4]
It was one of a number of groups, including the H. R. Nicholls Society, Samuel Griffith Society and Lavoisier Group, promoted by Australian business leader and political activist Ray Evans. The president was Gary Johns.
The Society was wound up in 2011 [5] but its work was partly continued by a "Bennelong papers" section of the Quadrant magazine website. [6]
The Society held an annual conference and awarded the Bennelong Medal from 2002. Recipients of the medal have been:
The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals of those referred to as "half-caste" children were conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1967, although in some places mixed-race children were still being taken into the 1970s.
Woollarawarre Bennelong, also spelt Baneelon, was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal Australian people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia in 1788. Bennelong served as an interlocutor between the Eora and the British, both in the colony of New South Wales and in the United Kingdom.
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Barangaroo was the second wife of Bennelong, who was interlocutor between the Aboriginal people and the early British colonists in New South Wales. Barangaroo was a member of the Cammeraygal clan. While Bennelong spent considerable time in the British settlement in Sydney, Barangaroo maintained her way of life with her people.
Diane Robin (Di) Bell is an Australian feminist anthropologist, author and activist. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C, USA and Distinguished Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra. Her work focuses on the Aboriginal people of Australia, Indigenous land rights, human rights, Indigenous religions, violence against women, and on environmental issues.
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