FRONTLINE: Place-makers of the mind: Symbolic reconstruction of an inner city park

Abstract

In 2016, a specialist unit of study that teaches university journalism students how to report in partnership with Indigenous community organisations extended its story range to an exclusive news feature produced in collaboration with members of the wider Nyoongar community of Perth, Western Australia. The story asked and answered the question of what happened to a stalled proposal to co-badge a major inner city park with a Nyoongar name. In conceiving the story, and producing it with assistance from our students, we intervened to achieve clarity on a local government decision where due process had not been followed. With the help of Nyoongar sources, we sought to explain the cultural importance of the park, and raise awareness of the decolonising potential of Indigenous place names. The story is appended after an exegesis that melds sense of place theory with Bourdieusian field theory to situate the story and its producers in social space.

Keywords

• Aboriginal affairs reporting
• Australia
• Bourdieu and journalism
• decolonisation
• Indigenous affairs journalism
• Indigenous place names