Our girl is doing us proud!

Honours Symposium 2013 Griffith University Chelsea Evans is currently completing her Honours in Sociology at Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus. An Honours Symposium is being held on Monday 16 September, and will include the Gold Coast and Nathan (South Brisbane) campuses. Chelsea’s studies are based on Norfolk Island culture and Dids and Gaye are delighted that she was one of the twelve students chosen to speak at the Symposium. Title ‘Norf’k Wetls: The use of traditional cooking practices and ingredients by young Islanders living in South East Queensland’. Abstract Food is a cultural expression that conveys ideas of comfort, familiarity and shared experience and is part of the ‘ongoing practice of culture and custom [that] serve important social functions, including the maintenance of ties’ (Lui, 2012, p.149). By doing so it emphasises the need to keep cultural practice alive. Given Norfolk Island’s history is a mixture of two distinct cultures – English and Tahitian – the Island’s food is rich in cultural meaning. Traditional foods of the Island work to reaffirm cultural and historical bonds that play a crucial role in defining island identities. This research will explore, in particular how traditional cooking practices and ingredients for Norfolk migrants living abroad in South East Queensland, provide a way for them to feel and remember what it means to be ‘at home’. This is portrayed through a series of semi-structured interviews that depict how dishes strongly convey nostalgic references, after the loss and lack of familial nourishment is created due to distance (Alexeyeff, 2004, p.69) as these foods encapsulate intimate notions of home, security, belonging and familiarity.

Postgraduate Symposium ~ 'Identities, ideas, ideologies'. The Griffith Centre of Cultural Research (GCCR) is hosting a Postgraduate Symposium titled 'Identities, ideas, ideologies' on Friday 1st November and again Chelsea has been invited to address the Symposium. Title Torken Norf’k: The use of the Norfolk Language by young Islanders living in South East Queensland Abstract Cultural identity and a sense of belonging are “forged through a variety of attachments, which include links to pasts and persons, as well as to places” (Edwards 1998, p.144). For young people from Norfolk Island who have moved to Australia these connections could not be stronger. By using the Norfolk language or Norf’k they are able to retain a sense of island community and identity when living overseas gaining higher education and new job opportunities. This research conveys how people from this small place use their colourful and lyrical language to affirm their deeply embedded past histories that include present links to their families, with the strong cultural traditions that make them feel at home. A series of semi-structured interviews depicts how the use of Norf’k spoken by Islanders is by force of habit, which strengthens familial ties to home, family, friends and key notions of belonging. Wael dan auwas biebi, yu se miek orl aklan hied! …en thaenk yu Maa Huge thanks to Miss Alice I. Buffett OAM for publishing her book Speak Norfolk Today in November 1988. Chelsea, a Norfolk Islander, is completing her Honours and is able to write her language because of you. Gohd Bles yuu Maa. Wi lauw yuu f’aewa. Gieh en Didams.