Homelands: Indigenous Australia
Amy Toensing / National Geographic Magazine
Aboriginals have inhabited Australia for over 40,000 years and have the oldest, continuous culture on Earth. Yet for the last 200 years the indigenous people of Australia have been dominated by a society greatly at odds with their own. Only 37% of Aboriginal children reach the final year of high school, and average life expectancy is ten years less than for non-indigenous Australians. In 2007 the Australian government implemented a policy which the United Nations condemned for discriminating against Aboriginals. Yet, on their ancestral lands – their homelands – families hunt and gather their food, elders pass on sacred stories and traditions, and there, connected to their land and culture, they can thrive.
Amy Toensing
Amy Toensing, an American photojournalist committed to telling stories with sensitivity and depth, is known for her intimate essays about the lives of ordinary people.
Toensing received a BA in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Maine where she spent her senior year studying photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Field Studies in Portland, Maine. In 1994, Toensing was hired as a staff photographer at her New Hampshire hometown paper, The Valley News, where she covered the community she grew up in. She then worked for The New York Times, Washington D.C. bureau covering the White House and Capitol Hill during the Clinton administration. In 1998, Toensing left D.C. to get her Master’s Degree from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University. In 1999 she was awarded the National Geographic photographic internship. Since then she has been a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine and recently completed her thirteenth feature story. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time Magazine, and National Geographic Traveler.
Toensing’s work has been exhibited throughout the world and recognized with numerous awards. She has covered stories close to home, from Maine and the Jersey Shore to places on the other side of the globe, including the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea and the Australian outback. She has also covered news worthy issues such as the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and Muslim women living in western culture.
Toensing lives in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Homelands: Indigenous Australia – Amy Toensing
From september 1st to september 21st
Ancienne Université
66000 Perpignan – France
