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Paper short abstract:

Care links continuity, resistance and optimism among First Nations Victorians. Care is essential to future flourishing envisaged in the revitalisation of Indigenous cultures. It critiques western values and demonstrates fierce femininity. An anthropology of care reveals much about being and relating

Paper long abstract:

Based on my PhD research among First Nations People in Victoria, I discuss how care is a key action linking continuity, resistance and optimism. Caring as the embodiment and performance of kinship relations is essential to notions of Aboriginality. It has been crucial to surviving colonisation and is a fundamental action through which the continuity with ancestors is practiced. Care is central to realising the future flourishing envisaged in the revitalisation of Indigenous practices and ways of being. Cycles of care link the beginning and end of life and connect the generations across time and space. Caring involves relationships between the living and dead, and humans, animals, plants and spirits. The dormant potentials of spirits housed in places are accessed through actions of caring.

I situate my discussion within histories of state removal and 'care' of children and discuss recent moves by Aboriginal controlled organisations to take control of responsibility for children placed in Out Of Home Care. Care is resistance, a critique of western neoliberal values of individualism and the resulting social isolation. Care is strong, demonstrating fierce femininity, demonstrated by the actions of mothers and grandmothers fighting for their children. From this analysis I suggest how an anthropology of care may illuminate fundamental aspects of being and relating.