ABSTRACT
The relatively little-known Indigenous Chakma minority from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh is part of Melbourne's large and diverse immigrant population from all over the world. These Australian-Bangladeshi-Chakmas place great importance in retaining and maintaining their language and culture, hoping to transmit them onto their children. This chapter takes a critical exploratory look into a group of Chakma parents’ interpretations of their lived experiences in their spatiotemporal transnational journeys from the CHT to Melbourne, and how they see themselves as (dis-)connected to the CHT, Bangladesh, and Australia while integrating into the host society. Findings from this study involving six participants show that they retain a robust sense of Chakma identity, both as Australians and Bangladeshis and as part of the diasporic Chakma community. However, their attachments are characterized by complex and often abrupt shifts between their ethnic Chakma identity, national Bangladeshi identity, and the immigrant Australian identity.
