Introduction
A resource list of materials focused on minority voices in Victoria, Australia, recommended by the PMI Victorian History Library.
About the PMI Library
The PMI Victorian History Library is a community-owned library specialising in the history of Victoria, Australia. The library collection is the only lending collection of its kind in Australia – with over 30,000 books for loan and over 40,000 items on site, including titles that are unavailable elsewhere. The Prahran Mechanics’ Institute (PMI) library was established in 1854 and is one of the oldest libraries in Victoria.
To find out more and/or visit:
- The PMI Victorian History Library
- Library Catalogue
- What is a Mechanics’ Institute
- History of the PMI Library
- Videos on Youtube
Focus on Minority Voices
As well as the focus on Victorian and Australian history, the collection has been actively shaped to ensure that minority voices are included. Read more in the PMI Collection Policy.
The PMI collection aims to represent all voices that make up the multifaceted history of Victoria. The core of this principle is a focus on minority voices to ensure they are recorded as part of Victoria’s history. Examples of minority voices are: First Nations peoples, LGBTQIA+ Australians, people of colour, immigrants and refugees, non Christian religions and any other groups who may be underrepresented in general collection items.
The PMI is actively seeking these stories by working with communities to write their histories for the collection, the collection of ephemera and oral history. It is also recognised that marginalised groups may have different ways of telling their stories so an emphasis on own voice narratives, especially in the fiction collection is paramount, this includes collecting works in languages other than English. – Source
Resource List
Materials that represent minority voices are actively sought in many formats, including books, zines, movies, periodicals, ephemera, and more. Here are some highlights from these collections.
Books – Non Ficton
Poverty, law and social change: The Story of the Fitzroy Legal Service / John Chesterman
In Poverty Law and Social Change, John Chesterman traces the evolution of the Fitzroy Legal Service from a thorn in the side of the legal profession to a valued contributor to legal debate and a powerful advocate of pragmatic reform. In this process, he provides an entertaining and perceptive account of the forces that have prompted legal reform in Australia from the early 1970’s particularly in the development of legal aid.
Fighting Hard: The Victorian Aborigines Advancement League / Richard Broome
This book tells a history of the Aborigines Advancement League, the oldest Aboriginal organisation in Australia. As both a welfare and activist body, the League can be seen as the ‘mother’ of all Aboriginal Victorian community organisations, having spawned a diverse range of organisations. The League influenced the fight for civil rights and took a stand against the governments assimilation policy. Its activism with government and the United Nations predates the better known Tent Embassy and provided a Victorian, national and international perspective on Aboriginal affairs. Begun as a coalition of all Australians, in 1969 a black power takeover changed its management to Aboriginal community control — something which was managed peacefully and fruitfully. Its national significance is marked by the League’s leadership where, from the 1970s, many community heroes became role models for Aboriginal youth. Over the years the League has proven that despite the pervasive mythology, Aboriginal people can successfully govern their own organisations. In particular, the League has proven its capacity for managing good governance while maintaining Aboriginal cultural values.
Housing first: A path to Social Justice : The Story of St Kilda community activism and the Port Phillip Housing Association
A history of housing activism in St Kilda that lead to the creation of an innovative housing association that has become a successful provider of affordable housing now also outside of St Kilda. Port Phillip Housing Association’s community housing program, incubated by St Kilda Council and later nurtured by Port Phillip Council, remains unique. It is a testament to successive local governments and community resolve that three decades later there is still no equivalent local government-initiated program elsewhere in Australia. From its beginnings in the politicised 1970s, the story of PPHA is the story of the power of community engagement and a record of what can be achieved through an enduring partnership with local council. Set amidst the magic and drama that is St Kilda and then fanning out into other municipalities, it is a uniquely Melbourne story. The accounts of rock & roll, protests, turf wars and vested interests create an historically based page tuner that will inspire.
The Catalysts: Change and Continuity 1910-2010 / Anne Longmire
The Centenary history of the women’s club The Catalysts. Formed in 1910 at a time when women were breaking free from expected patterns, speaking out, driving their own motorcar … riding bicycles or taking up rifle shooting. Early members included doctors, scientists, historians and Victoria’s first woman lawyer – one of them was a daughter of Alfred Deakin. And Longmire’s fascinating history sketches the lives of some extraordinary women as well as tracing their passions and concerns through the monthly discussion papers. It is at once an encounter with some of Melbourne’s most influential women, and a marker of social changes in the years 1910 – 2010.
Brazen Hussies: A Herstory of Radical Activism in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Victoria 1970 – 1979 / Jean Taylor
Brazen Hussies documents the actions, conferences, collectives, publications and demos as well as the stories of feminist activists who took an active role in the WLM in the 1970s. The book also traces the innovative shifts of consciousness and the social and legislative changes that were instigated in Victoria as radical feminists fought long and hard for Women’s Liberation. It also includes some of the actions the Aboriginal and Islander people too to challenge racism.
Books – Fiction
Nothing but my Body / Tilly Lawless.
Nothing But My Body is an eight-day journey through the mind of a young woman, a queer sex worker in Australia, as she navigates breakups and infatuation across just over a year. The unnamed narrator’s voice is both fierce and vulnerable, defiant and tender, as she explores the interplay between her external and internal world, and the fluctuations of her emotions as love affairs intensify and wane. Her loneliness is assuaged by her beloved chosen family-her friends-and by the beauty of the natural world. Set during the cataclysmic bushfire season of 2019 and into the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, sex work is the constant backdrop of the story as it moves between Sydney, Berlin, Orange and Bellingen. The beauty of the writing and the moving and deeply engaging sense of compassion that threads through this remarkable novel give true meaning to the concepts of inclusivity and community in surprising and original ways. This stunning, unflinching and lyrical debut is both a rejection of romantic love, a euphoric celebration of the queer community and a reckoning with the body as both abject and joyous.
Dirt Poor Islanders / Winnie Dunn
Meadow Reed used to get confused when explaining that she had grandparents from Australia, Tonga and Great Britain. She’d say she was full-White and full-Tongan, thinking that so many halves made separate wholes. Despite the Anglo-Saxon genetics that gave Meadow a narrow nose and light-brown skin, everybody who raised her was Tongan. Everybody who loved her was Tongan. This was what made her Tongan. Growing up in the heat-hummed streets of Mt Druitt in Western Sydney, Meadow will face palangis who think they are better than Fobs, women who fall into other women, what it means to have many mothers, a playful rain and even Pineapple Fanta. For this half-White, half-Tongan girl, the world is bigger than the togetherness she has grown up in. Finding her way means pushing against the constraints of tradition, family and self until she becomes whole in her own right. Meadow is going to see that being a dirt poor Islander girl is more beautiful than she can even begin to imagine. Dirt Poor Islanders is a potent, mesmerising novel that opens our eyes to the brutal fractures navigated when growing up between two cultures and the importance of understanding all the many pieces of yourself.
The Boy from the Mish / Gary Lonesborough
It’s a hot summer, and life’s going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It’s almost Christmas, school’s out, and he’s hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson’s Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city – but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them… As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret – a secret he thought he’d locked away for good. Compelling, honest and beautifully written, The Boy from the Mish is about first love, identity, and the superpower of self-belief.
Zines
Amazing Australian Women of Science / Jess Dubblu
A little zine exploring key Australian women of science.
Fuzzy Robes and Despair: The Comics of 2020 by Jessdubblu / Jessdubblu
A zine looking at the lives of Melbournians during COVID lockdowns of 2021.
Love is love is love / Steph Ochonas
An anthology zine celebrating bisexual creatives.
Movies
The Lake of Scars [DVD]
Presented by the late, great Uncle Jack Charles, The Lake of Scars takes the viewer to a little-known place of outstanding natural beauty, archaeological significance, and age-old culture. But the Indigenous scarred trees and artefacts found here are at risk – until an unlikely intergenerational partnership comes forth to save the site for future generations.
The Lake of Scars is as much a portrait of a hidden facet of Australian history and environment as it is a musing on what reconciliation can look like in Australia. While exploring the beautiful, mysterious scarred trees, middens and stone scatters left at one remarkable site in country Victoria – the ephemeral Lake Boort and surrounds – we meet the people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who are working against the clock to preserve and promote what they can. With organic relics at its heart – hundred year old scarred and dying trees – the film examines the preservation of culture and environment as our protagonists fight for scarred trees to be preserved, for middens and stone scatters to be protected and recognised, for environmental flows of water to be allowed into the seasonal lake, and for a ‘keeping place’ to be built. Within the keeping place they hope to put remarkable already deceased trees, as well as dozens of artefacts stored in the former farmer Paul’s garage, with the clan’s permission.
Cosi [DVD]
A directionless young man hired as a drama teacher at a psychiatric hospital is roped by a demanding patient into helming an ambitious production of Mozart’s libretto “Così fan tutte”.
Riot [DVD]
In 1978, when the push to decriminalise homosexuality has stalled, a group of activists decide they must make one final attempt to celebrate who they are. Led by former union boss, Lance Gowland, they get a police permit and spread the word. On a freezing winter’s night, they cloak themselves in fancy dress, join hands, and parade down Oxford Street. But they have no idea that angry police lie in wait, and the courage they find that night will finally mobilise the nation. Originally produced in Australia and broadcast on television during 2018.
Periodicals
We collect and index the periodicals of pretty much all the historical societies in Victoria, so that their minutiae of Victorian history is recorded. Everything from Avoca and District Historical Society through to Walhalla Heritage and Development League
Ephemera
Collections of brochures, pamphlets, and booklets from all over Victoria, from Armadale to Zumsteins. These are the incredibly local, local stories, and we also collect on subjects including: LGBTQIA+, First Nations, Immigrants and Immigration and Art and artists.
Explore Further
- List of Radical, Alternative and Community Libraries
- Changing The World: The Women’s Political Association
- Who was Vida Goldstein?
- Documenting Social Change in Australia: A List of Archives at your Fingertips
- A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects
- Activist Archiving: Start Here
- From Little Things Big Things Grow: Events That Changed Australia
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