tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/aboriginal-history-9257/articlesAboriginal history – The Conversation2024-03-24T23:52:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2257922024-03-24T23:52:18Z2024-03-24T23:52:18ZWe have revealed a unique time capsule of Australia’s first coastal people from 50,000 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582751/original/file-20240319-18-jmngyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C20%2C1649%2C1256&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">West coast of Barrow Island, overlooking the submerged northwestern shelf.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Ditchfield</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Barrow Island, located 60 kilometres off the Pilbara in Western Australia, was once a hill overlooking an expansive coast. This was the northwestern shelf of the Australian continent, now permanently submerged by the ocean.</p>
<p>Our new research, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379124000489">published in Quaternary Science Reviews</a>, shows that Aboriginal people repeatedly lived on portions of this coastal plateau. We have worked closely with coastal Thalanyji Traditional Owners on this island work and also on their sites from the mainland.</p>
<p>This use of the plain likely began 50,000 years ago, and the place remained habitable until rising sea levels cut the island off from the mainland 6,500 years ago. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-once-lived-in-a-vast-region-in-north-western-australia-and-it-had-an-inland-sea-219505">People once lived in a vast region in north-western Australia – and it had an inland sea</a>
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<h2>A unique time capsule</h2>
<p>The northwestern shelf and the submerged coastlines of Australia are immensely significant for understanding how and where <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379122003377">First Nations people</a> lived before and during the last ice age.</p>
<p>When the last ice age was at its coldest (24,000 to 19,000 years ago), sea levels worldwide were about 130 metres below current levels. As the ice melted, the sea rose rapidly, eventually flooding the connection between Barrow Island and the mainland.</p>
<p>Since Aboriginal people did not occupy the island after this time, the human archaeological record of Barrow Island is a time capsule, unique in Australia. Most other coastal occupation areas from this period are now beneath the sea, but these drowned landscapes were once vast and habitable.</p>
<p>The largest rock shelter on the island is <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379117302640">Boodie Cave</a>, one of Western Australia’s oldest archaeological sites. Excavations here revealed evidence of Aboriginal occupation dating back at least 50,000 years.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cave-dig-shows-the-earliest-australians-enjoyed-a-coastal-lifestyle-77326">Cave dig shows the earliest Australians enjoyed a coastal lifestyle</a>
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<p>As sea levels fluctuated through time, the distance from Boodie Cave to the seashore varied significantly. Aboriginal people brought shellfish back to Boodie Cave even when it was many kilometres from the coast.</p>
<p>As the sea rose, people’s diets changed. The quantity of shellfish, crabs, turtles and fish consumed in the cave increased through time.</p>
<p>Aboriginal people here mainly used local, silica-rich limestone for crafting their stone tools. While this material was readily accessible, it blunted easily. Instead, people used thick and hard shells from large Baler sea snails to make knives for butchering turtles and dugong.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a high vis jacket stands in a red rocky cave with archaeology tools in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581911/original/file-20240314-30-7m01mt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One of the authors, Peter Veth, excavating a 7,000-year-old rich layer with shell knives, turtle, fish and wallaby remains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Ditchfield</span></span>
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<h2>43,000 years of exchange</h2>
<p>In contrast to the cave deposits, the open-air archaeological sites present a different picture. Three years of systematic field surveys recorded over 4,400 flaked and ground stone artefacts from nearly 50 locations.</p>
<p>Excluding one limestone source, most of these stone tools represent geological sources not found on the island. This means they were made out of rocks more typical of the west Pilbara and Ashburton regions.</p>
<p>The artefacts we’ve found on Barrow Island show that Aboriginal people transported and exchanged stone materials from inland or places now under the sea for over 43,000 years.</p>
<p>We don’t yet know why the artefacts in the cave are so different to the ones found in the open air.</p>
<p>The numerous open sites leave a record of how Aboriginal people adapted to sea-level changes. Both the surface and cave records suggest that Aboriginal people used more local limestone and shell tools as rising sea levels cut off access to the mainland or drowned sources.</p>
<p>Imported stone tools were precious and therefore conserved and heavily used for grinding seeds, working harder materials such as wood, and likely for cutting softer materials such as skins and plant fibre.</p>
<p>While early Aboriginal people continued to use coastal resources, they maintained social networks and exchanges with the mainland. The open sites from Barrow Island provide one line of evidence connecting contemporary Aboriginal people to the now-drowned coastal plains, coastlines and continental islands.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dark cavern with a single light source illuminating a rectangular excavation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583633/original/file-20240322-26-4nwr5g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Researchers working at Boodie Cave.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Ditchfield</span></span>
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<h2>An ancestral connection for Thalanyji peoples</h2>
<p>Despite the distance of Barrow Island from the mainland for most of the last 6,500 years, Thalanyji knowledge holders refer to the use of the island from both historic-era fishing activities and as forced labourers in the early pearling industry.</p>
<p>They know the Sea Country between the islands, and the songline connections linking the mainland to the islands. Traditional Owners involved in our project see the artefacts as evidence of their ancestral connection to the island, old coastlines and now drowned coastal plain.</p>
<p>The Barrow Island open-air sites are a significant time capsule, offering unique insights into coastal Aboriginal lifeways over tens of thousands of years.</p>
<p>These sites, combined with the cave records, provide scientists and Traditional Owners with invaluable opportunities to understand and preserve Australia’s rich and deep history.</p>
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<p><em>The authors would like to acknowledge the Buurabalayji Thalanyji Aboriginal Corporation, recognised communally according to their cultural preference, as co-authors of this study.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Veth receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kane Ditchfield receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Kendrick was previously employed by the government of Western Australia, and assisted in implementation of the Barrow Island Archaeology Project throughout its field work period. He consults part time as a zoologist and ecologist to Biota Environmental Sciences.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David W. Zeanah and Fiona Hook do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Barrow Island off the coast of Western Australia holds a unique record of First Nations people. For millennia, they lived on vast plains that are now drowned by the sea.Peter Veth, Laureate Professor in Archaeology, The University of Western AustraliaDavid W. Zeanah, Professor, California State University, SacramentoFiona Hook, Adjunct associate, The University of Western AustraliaKane Ditchfield, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Western AustraliaPeter Kendrick, Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169882023-11-09T19:09:40Z2023-11-09T19:09:40ZFarmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558543/original/file-20231109-21-a2kns6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C7%2C5254%2C3500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For almost ten years, debate has raged over the book <a href="https://www.foreground.com.au/culture/decolonising-agriculture-bruce-pascoes-dark-emu/">Dark Emu</a> by Aboriginal historian Bruce Pascoe. In it, Pascoe argues many pre-colonial Aboriginal groups were farmers, pointing to examples like eel aquaculture in Victoria, and grain planting and threshing of native millet in the arid centre.</p>
<p>The debate has drawn in everyone from academics to Aboriginal communities invested in food futures to shock jocks claiming it is a warping of history. </p>
<p>For our group of archaeologists and First Nations people, the fact this debate has raged so long suggests there are shortcomings in how we think of food production and how we investigate it in Australian archaeology.</p>
<p>Farmers versus foragers is a huge oversimplification of what was a mosaic of food production. After all, Australian landscapes differ markedly, from tropical rainforest to snowy mountains to arid spinifex country. For many Aboriginal people, the terms “farming” and “hunter-gatherer” do not capture the realities of 60 millennia of food production. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1558/aff.18161">new research</a> published in the <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/AFF/article/view/18161/28231">Archaeology of Food and Foodways</a>, we argue that to better understand millennia-old systems, archaeologists must engage deeply with fields such as plant genetics, ethnobotany, archaeobotany and bioarchaeology as well as listening more carefully to the views of Aboriginal people. Here’s how. </p>
<h2>We need to use better methods</h2>
<p>For decades, archaeologists have grappled with the task of understanding ancient food production. We are by no means the first to point to the lack of appropriate methods as a reason why this has proved hard.</p>
<p>Archaeobotanists <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618216302816">Anna Florin</a> and Xavier Carah have observed that food production systems in northern Australia are very similar to those in Papua New Guinea. While we accept Papuan food gardens, Australian archaeologists have been less eager to embrace this idea for Australia. </p>
<p>In part, this is a failure of terminology. Aboriginal food production was enormously varied. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="map of australia showing Aboriginal grainlands in the centre, yam country in the south east and many other food production systems" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558468/original/file-20231108-23-ttevb8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">This map shows the complex and diverse types of food production and settlement systems documented by researchers across Australia, ranging from arid grainlands to rainforest seed processing to yam harvesting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>The solution lies in better methods. For instance, many Aboriginal groups lived semi-permanently in gunyah (bark hut) villages, as Dark Emu demonstrates by quoting colonial observers. </p>
<p>These settlement sites are vital to gaining a better understanding of how people lived. By excavating gunyah sites and fireplaces where food was prepared, we can recover seeds by sieving dirt and ash to find out which plants people used. The problem? Many of the sieves used were not fine enough to capture the tiny seeds of vital plants such as native millet. Most seeds used by Aboriginal groups were less than 1mm in radius. </p>
<p>This can be fixed. In south-west Asia, archeobotanists have long used fine mesh sieves to recover ancient seeds. You also need reference collections of seeds to be able to identify them from fireplaces. </p>
<h2>Genetics – and archaeology?</h2>
<p>It might not sound like a natural fit. But around the world, combining plant genetics with archaeology has dramatically changed our understanding of how people used plants, how they moved them about the landscape and how they changed these plants into forms better suiting our use. The wild precursor of corn, for instance, <a href="https://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2022/02/02/teosinte2022">looks almost nothing</a> like what we moulded it into through selection. </p>
<p>Combining these approaches is only in its infancy in Australia. But early applications together with Aboriginal knowledge of plant use has revealed dramatic new insights into how Aboriginal people moved important species such as <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186663">black bean</a> <em>Castanospermum australe</em> around the landscape and cultivated them. </p>
<p>The legacy of these food production techniques may still be visible today. For instance, when we look at the four species of native rice, we would not expect them to have large seeds. But all four species do. For millennia, Aboriginal groups in Australia’s wet north farmed these floodplain grasses. They may well have provided some selective pressure that resulted in larger grains, as early farmers did elsewhere. </p>
<p>To date, we don’t know this for sure. But we can find out. Careful genetic analysis of remaining wild populations should tell us if these large grains came from human rather than natural selection. We can also analyse genetic diversity between wild rice populations, to see if Aboriginal groups were involved in spreading these useful plants further. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-our-new-archaeological-research-investigates-dark-emus-idea-of-aboriginal-agriculture-and-villages-146754">Friday essay: how our new archaeological research investigates Dark Emu's idea of Aboriginal 'agriculture' and villages</a>
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<h2>Stories from ancestral remains</h2>
<p>Every bone tells a story. In your bones lie traces of how fast you grew, what you ate and how hard your life was. </p>
<p>Studying ancestral remains is a very sensitive issue due to the colonial practice of collecting Aboriginal remains for research. But when done sensitively and respectfully, it yields fresh insights.</p>
<p>Bones and teeth can tell us many things about life in Aboriginal Australia. Tracking <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-you-grow-up-how-strontium-in-your-teeth-can-help-answer-that-question-112705">changes in isotope ratios in teeth</a> can tell us if people were shifting to a more sedentary way of living. Stress in bones can tell us about difficult food production techniques such as labour-intensive seed grinding. </p>
<h2>The past can shape the future</h2>
<p>Aboriginal culture is 60 millennia old, during which time the climate shifted several times. Sea levels rose, flooding the Bass Strait and the coastal plains connecting Cape York to Papua New Guinea. </p>
<p>For a culture to survive that long means it had to rely on sustainable food production. Finding out how exactly this was done could yield lost knowledge and make it possible for current-day Aboriginal groups to recapture these methods and crops. </p>
<p>To date, renewed interest in bushfoods has not spread far beyond boutique food industries such as gourmet breads and specialised plant foods like Kakadu plum and quandongs. </p>
<p>Learning more about drought-resilient crops such as native rice and native millet (<em>Panicum decompositum</em>) could help farmers adapt to climate change and diversify food production. In central Victoria, the Dja Dja Wurrung group is exploring the potential for kangaroo grass (<em>Themeda triandra</em>) for use as a food and as drought-resistant cattle fodder. </p>
<p>The better we understand ancient food production, the more likely we are to be able to bring this knowledge to bear on today’s challenges – and give a fuller answer to the questions raised by Dark Emu. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man holding kangaroo grass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558545/original/file-20231109-19-kyr3up.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dja Dja Wurung man Rodney Carter inspects kangaroo grass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877">Book review: Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate rigorously critiques Bruce Pascoe's argument</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Crowther receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Henry receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Carter is the CEO of the Dja Dja Wurrung Corporate Group, the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aborginal Corporation and Dja Dja Wurrung Enterprises. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Wright does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For a decade, debate has raged over Dark Emu’s account of Aboriginal agriculture. But ancient food production in Australia is more complex than labels like farming or hunter-gathering suggest.Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of QueenslandAlison Crowther, Senior Lecture in Archaeology, The University of QueenslandNathan Wright, Lecturer in archaeology, University of New EnglandRobert Henry, Director, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of QueenslandRodney Carter, Traditional Owner, Indigenous KnowledgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149492023-11-02T22:49:19Z2023-11-02T22:49:19ZIn the 1800s, colonial settlers moved Ballarat’s Yarrowee River. The impacts are still felt today<p>The discovery of gold in Ballarat in 1851 transformed its landscape to a staggering degree. Within days, and despite the news being initially suppressed, hundreds of men had gathered along the Yarrowee River. </p>
<p>They sluiced the clay and soil, turning the once pristine waters into what writer William Bramwell Withers <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/2937612">described</a> as</p>
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<p>liquid, yellow as the yellowest Tiber flood, and its banks grew to be long shoals of tailings.</p>
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<p>Over the next few weeks, the waterways of the Yarrowee River and of Gnarr Creek were diverted into water courses to support the search for gold.</p>
<p>The river was moved to make way for the town population boom, which was driven by a lust for gold. The end result was that the original, serpentine path of the river – originally across floodplains equipped to handle the natural ebb and flow of water and seasonal flooding – eventually came to be a much straighter line. Part of the river now runs underground through a tunnel.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-953" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/953/c2d23cd95a72326c661068837565617ee1bd0f41/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Our new interactive map, <a href="https://yarrowee.cerdi.edu.au/">Yarrowee River History: Peel to Prest</a> (which takes its name from the two streets that serve as borders for the mapping), interrogates the long-term effects of this water diversion on community and Country.</p>
<p>A collaboration between Federation University, the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation and the city of Ballarat, our project overlays historical maps with Google Maps to illustrate how the area changed.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-952" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/952/5616d6e1226fe77e975d562937b50a1c71283eee/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/victorias-gold-rush-ended-in-the-19th-century-so-why-are-people-still-finding-so-much-gold-202846">Victoria’s gold rush ended in the 19th century. So why are people still finding so much gold?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘We inherit the scars of this trauma’</h2>
<p>In Ballarat, water is deeply significant to the culture of the area’s First Nations inhabitants, the Wadawurrung people, who stewarded these lands and waterways for millennia.</p>
<p>So we wanted people using our interactive map to ponder the cultural significance of these gold rush impacts to the Wadawurrung people and the environment.</p>
<p>For the Wadawurrung people, the watercourse now known as the Yarrowee River carries profound historical meaning. </p>
<p>This river bore the names Yaramlok and Narmbool, and these names were used interchangeably to reference different segments of the Yarrowee. </p>
<p>The river wasn’t merely a physical entity – it was a symbol of spiritual and cultural significance, the life force which flows through Country.</p>
<p>It supported fishing, agriculture and food gathering. It symbolised the deep and harmonious connection with dja (Country) and the precious resource of ngubitj (water). </p>
<p>The river diversion affected the Wadawurrung profoundly. As two of us (Shannen Mennen and Kelly Ann Blake) write on the <a href="https://yarrowee.cerdi.edu.au/">Yarrowee River History: Peel to Prest</a> site:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Colonisation and mining in Ballarat led to devastation and destruction of Wadawurrung dja, including the Yarrowee River. Settlement was built upon our living spaces and as a result Wadawurrung people were displaced. </p>
<p>The withholding of cultural rights and obligations further increased the dispossession of our people, who were unforgivingly forced to adapt to change. Still today we inherit the scars of this trauma.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Colonial settlers altered the river</p>
<blockquote>
<p>in a way which excluded the knowledge Wadawurrung people had built upon for many thousands of years […] The habitat surrounding the Yarrowee was removed or altered, damaging animal, fish and insect populations.</p>
<p>The destruction of the waterway continues to impact our people today. However, the spirit of this land remains within us and we continue as Wadawurrung people to live alongside the Yarrowee whilst working to restore its health and vitality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Wadawurrung people involved in this project hope it fosters interconnectedness between the waterway, our human ancestors, creator beings and all living things. </p>
<p>It is also crucial in working towards reconciliation by helping people understand the devastating environmental destruction wrought by the gold rush for the First Nations people of the region and the deep connection between culture, heritage and the landscape.</p>
<h2>Effluent, flooding and typhoid</h2>
<p>When one looks at the sheer scale of the transformation of Ballarat and district wrought by the gold rush, the level of environmental destruction is almost beyond comprehension.</p>
<p>Vast forested tracts of land were felled of trees, the topsoil dug up and blown away, the earth ripped open by deep tunnelling. Imported sheep began to harden the soil (disrupting native plants) and consuming the Murrnong plants, whose roots were a staple of the Wadawurrung people.</p>
<p>Moving the river made the area prone to disastrous flooding as water was diverted away from floodplains. Land was polluted by effluent and chemical residue from mining. This led to multiple outbreaks of disease. As one contributor to the Ballarat Star wrote at the time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The smell from this creek for a quarter of a mile on each side is most frightful — the bed of the creek looking and smelling like the refuse pigs’ droppings mixing with their liquid manure. Nearly one-half of the children, and even adults, have been swept off between the Gnarr Creek and the Cemetery, from typhoid fever.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This project aims to draw attention to the absolute centrality of the waterways to Australia’s history and continual sustainable environmental management. </p>
<p>Mapping the transformation of Australia’s waterways since colonisation is crucial to understanding the long term effects of changes we make to our environment.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flashers-femmes-and-other-forgotten-figures-of-the-eureka-stockade-20939">Flashers, femmes and other forgotten figures of the Eureka Stockade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Ann Blake works for Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation as a Biodiversity Project Officer.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannen Mennen works for Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation as a Project Officer.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Waldron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The river wasn’t merely a physical entity – it was a symbol of spiritual and cultural significance, serving as the life force which flows through Country.David Waldron, Senior Lecturer in History, Federation University AustraliaKelly Ann Blake, Gherrang/Biodiversity Project Officer, Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, Indigenous KnowledgeShannen Mennen, Project Officer Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, Indigenous KnowledgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137562023-10-12T02:05:43Z2023-10-12T02:05:43Z3 key moments in Indigenous political history Victorian school students didn’t learn about<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552706/original/file-20231009-15-5i6241.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=385%2C0%2C4999%2C3039&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/elderly-high-teacher-conducting-lesson-classroom-2268629467">shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>I never learned about this in school!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an all-too familiar response from those learning Indigenous histories in Australia. </p>
<p>The recent take-up of false claims – such as that a Voice to Parliament would result in “<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-two-sides-to-the-no-campaign-on-the-voice-who-are-they-and-why-are-they-opposed-to-it-212362">special privileges</a>” — suggests large gaps in public understanding of the Indigenous political movements that preceded the Voice.</p>
<p>Considering what children have learnt in our schools in the past, this should not surprise us.</p>
<p><a href="https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/scholarlywork/1815069-does-curriculum-fail-indigenous-political-aspirations%3F-sovereignty-and-australian-history-and-social-studies-curriculum">Our research</a>, soon to be published in the <a href="https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/njedh/index">Nordic Journal of Educational History</a>, shows that for over 100 years, the Victorian school curriculum has failed to give generations of students the chance to learn about Indigenous political movements.</p>
<h2>What we did</h2>
<p>Given Australia didn’t have a national curriculum until 2010, we looked at Victorian curriculum documents from the past 120 years to get a sense of what children have been taught over this time. We compared this with what Indigenous political campaigns were expressing at the time.</p>
<p>We found Indigenous political movements were largely missing from Victorian curriculum materials.</p>
<p>When they were included, it was in very limited ways that did not accurately reflect the diversity and depth of Indigenous standpoints, methods, and objectives. </p>
<p>We found the Victorian curriculum had routinely failed to grapple with Indigenous sovereignty.</p>
<p>In particular, we noticed there were three key moments in Indigenous political history that were missing.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-1881-maloga-petition-a-call-for-self-determination-and-a-key-moment-on-the-path-to-the-voice-197796">The 1881 Maloga petition: a call for self-determination and a key moment on the path to the Voice</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>1. 1880s Coranderrk Campaign</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.coranderrk.com/our-history">Coranderrk</a> was an Aboriginal reserve established by the colony of Port Philip in 1863 on Wurundjeri land.</p>
<p>The Wurundjeri community at Coranderrk, which also included people from other Kulin nations, cultivated a highly successful farm. Because this farm was coveted by settlers, they pressured the colonial government to shut down the reserve and sell the land. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Coranderrk Aboriginal Station sketch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C14%2C613%2C189&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=192&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552468/original/file-20231006-29-8jj01t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=242&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, 1889 sketch. Wikimedia Commons.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Coranderrk community staged a sustained <a href="http://www.minutesofevidence.com.au/the-coranderrk-story/">public campaign</a> to protect their land. They wrote letters and petitions to ministers and newspapers and sent deputations to Melbourne. </p>
<p>Their efforts culminated in the <a href="http://www.minutesofevidence.com.au/the-coranderrk-story/#:%7E:text=The%201881%20Parliamentary%20Coranderrk%20Inquiry%20marked%20the%20only%20occasion%20in,to%20give%20evidence%20on%20matters">1881 Parliamentary Coranderrk Inquiry</a>.</p>
<p>The inquiry drew sustained attention to Aboriginal peoples’ aspirations for land and for the end of policies of “protection”. While ultimately unsuccessful, the inquiry and campaign created a lasting public record of Aboriginal activism and testimony. The Coranderrk campaign is crucial for understanding Aboriginal experiences of political processes.</p>
<p>Yet we found the Coranderrk campaign was not included at all in the historical Victorian curriculum documents we examined. </p>
<p>Instead, curriculum documents from this period tended to depict Aboriginal people as a “dying race”. They tended to justify settler violence as a “natural” response to adverse conditions on the colonial frontier.</p>
<h2>2. 1960s-ending assimilation</h2>
<p>The momentum of Aboriginal political movements grew in the post-war era. </p>
<p>There was the 1965 <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/1965-freedom-ride">Freedom Ride</a> (modelled on those in the US) through New South Wales, and the fight to retain the sole remaining Aboriginal reserve at <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-21/lake-tyers-history-piece/5170896">Lake Tyers</a> in Victoria in the same year. These exposed how assimilation legislation that claimed to enable Aboriginal people’s access to economic and social “equality” in fact only denied them those rights. </p>
<p>The modern land rights movement was born when in 1966, <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/wave-hill-walk-off">Vincent Lingiari</a> – a Gurindji man upon whose lands the Wave Hill cattle station was located – led a strike in protest of the poor working conditions the Gurindji people endured. This came to be known as the Wave Hill Walkoff.</p>
<p>It became a struggle for control over the land. The Gurindji people who were strikers remained for seven years as illegal “occupiers” of their own Country.</p>
<p>We found these growing aspirations for rights and land were not reflected in the curriculum. Through the mid-20th century until the late 1960s, the curriculum focused mainly on British history. </p>
<p>We found celebratory narratives of figures like Captain Cook, William Dampier and Major Mitchell, and the growth of industry and the Australian “nation”.</p>
<p>Where Indigenous people were present in the curriculum, they were presented as relics of the past rather than political agents in their own right.</p>
<h2>3. 1988 Treaty campaign</h2>
<p>On January 26 1988, as Australia celebrated the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the first fleet into Kamay (now Botany Bay), over 40,000 people <a href="https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/The_1988_Bicentenary_Protest">marched</a> through the streets of Sydney with red, black and yellow protest banners and chants of “White Australia has a black history”.</p>
<p>A few months later, on Jawoyn country east of Katherine in the Northern Territory, the Northern and Central Land Councils presented the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/barunga-statement">Barunga Statement</a> to then-prime minister Bob Hawke. It called for a treaty between the Commonwealth and Indigenous nations, and for the recognition of sovereignty. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/before-the-barunga-declaration-there-was-the-barunga-statement-and-hawkes-promise-of-treaty-206613">Hawke committed</a> to work towards a treaty, but recognising prior Indigenous sovereignty proved a major stumbling block. </p>
<p>A later <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/7832149">Senate Standing Committee</a> tasked with investigating the feasibility of a treaty recommended focusing on education and attitudinal change first.</p>
<p>Unfortunately this history was not well represented in the curriculum material we studied. This history is crucial for understanding how national representation and treaty have long been a part of Indigenous demands for political change. After the bicentenary protests, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/education/the-great-history-debate-20040209-gdx9x8.html">curriculum shifted</a> to include more Indigenous perspectives, but this was followed by backlash known as the “<a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-history-wars-paperback-softback">history wars</a>” (a divisive public debate about whether or not acknowledging past violence against Aboriginal people represented a “black armband view” of history).</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1703764849979785586"}"></div></p>
<h2>Is Australia’s curriculum changing?</h2>
<p><a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/">A new version</a> of the Australian curriculum (which is used by the states to guide their own curricula), was released in 2022 and will be implemented in coming years. </p>
<p>It includes a focus on “truth-telling” within the broader history of Australia. This could signal an important shift from past practices. (Unfortunately, this shift will occur after the Voice referendum).</p>
<p>But it may address some of the failings our research identified.</p>
<p>The new Year 10 course in the national curriculum suggests class discussion of the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/day-of-mourning">Day of Mourning</a>, the <a href="https://pilbarastrike.org/">Pilbara strike</a>, the Wave Hill walk off, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-the-aboriginal-tent-embassy-an-indelible-reminder-of-unceded-sovereignty-174693">1972 Tent Embassy</a>, and more.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/history-7-10/year-10/content-description?subject-identifier=HASHISY10&content-description-code=AC9HH10K10&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0&view=quick">revised content</a> also lists for discussion key historical individuals, organisations, and the <a href="https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/learning-areas/history-7-10/year-10/content-description?subject-identifier=HASHISY10&content-description-code=AC9HH10K11&detailed-content-descriptions=0&hide-ccp=0&hide-gc=0&side-by-side=1&strands-start-index=0&subjects-start-index=0&view=quick">methods used</a> to campaign for change.</p>
<p>While highlighting Indigenous political movements can help build understanding of Indigenous aspirations, the curriculum still does not directly grapple with Indigenous sovereignty as a concept. </p>
<p>This is why organisations such as the <a href="https://www.niyec.com/">National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition</a>, through the <a href="https://learnourtruth.com/">Learn Our Truth campaign</a>, have called for schools to reflect on what Indigenous sovereignty means and to teach the history of colonisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mati Keynes receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Archie Thomas receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Marsden receives funding from the Australian Centre.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samara Hand receives funding from the Australian Centre and is also a co-founder and director at the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition.</span></em></p>For over 100 years, the Victorian school curriculum has failed to give generations of students the chance to learn about Indigenous political movements.Mati Keynes, McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of MelbourneArchie Thomas, Chancellor's Research Fellow, University of Technology SydneyBeth Marsden, Postdoctoral Research FellowSamara Hand, PhD Candidate - UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2083682023-07-26T20:05:43Z2023-07-26T20:05:43ZFusing traditional culture and the violin: how Aboriginal musicians enhanced and maintained community in 20th century Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536462/original/file-20230710-17-vmrqa5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2845%2C1855&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aboriginal man playing violin to a group outside a tin shack, Moore River Native Settlement, Western Australia, ca. 1920.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b5600627_1">State Library of Western Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The European violin was initially an imposition on Indigenous culture. But Aboriginal engagement with the violin cannot be exclusively seen as a means of cultural loss. </p>
<p>To only report the brutality and destruction of the British empire in Australia is to miss seeing how Indigenous people engaged, influenced, rejected and survived the forces of empire.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08145857.2023.2170079">As my new research shows</a>, Indigenous violin playing throughout 20th century Australia saw Aboriginal people adapting the European violin to fit within ongoing cultural practices. </p>
<p>As an Aboriginal violinist, I have always been fascinated by the way Western instruments have been adapted to become an expression of culture and Indigenous identity.</p>
<p>By studying the ways Aboriginal people of this era played the violin, we can better understand how Aboriginal people have responded to interventions in their lives with varying degrees of accommodation and resistance. </p>
<h2>Cultural continuation</h2>
<p>As colonial governments made more concerted efforts to “civilise” Aboriginal people in 20th century Australia, many were segregated from society on missions or reserves. </p>
<p>Missionaries taught European activities and regularly forbade Aboriginal people from practising traditional customs. Western music was often taught to Aboriginal people as a means of demonstrating civility and as preparation for assimilation into white Australian society. </p>
<p>One of the first missions to explicitly use the violin in attempts to “civilise” Aboriginal people was on the <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article166997170">New Norcia Mission</a>, north of Perth, in operation from 1848 until 1974.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="8 young Aboriginal boys with violins, a bearded man with a cello." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536479/original/file-20230710-17-33v20y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Spanish teacher and his Aboriginal pupils at the Mission at New Norcia, West Australia, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71246042">Trove</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aboriginal people continued to play the violin even when not prescribed. This does not mean the “civilising” mission was a success. Aboriginal people used music in the creation and preservation of individual, cultural and collective identities. </p>
<p>The violin was used on their own terms.</p>
<p>Peter Jetta was a Nyungar man born around 1872 who lived on the New Norcia Mission. Jetta used the violin as a hybrid expression of his own traditional culture. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An Aboriginal man plays the violin. Text reads: A minstrel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1234&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536459/original/file-20230710-21-cw4d8i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Jetta, photographed for the Western Mail, 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/37694524">Trove</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As historian <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/dancing-in-shadows-histories-of-nyungar-performance">Anna Haebich writes</a>, Jetta played the violin for local dances, weddings and Nyungar-only campfire gatherings in the bush. </p>
<p>“Old and new songs and dances mingled together reviving flagging spirits with the healing joy of being together as they had for millennia,” she says.</p>
<p>With this fusion of music, Jetta used the violin to enhance and maintain a sense of community. </p>
<p>The need for community would have been particularly acute on missions where many aspects of traditional life had been removed. Community and connection is an intrinsic element of Indigenous culture and its continuity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-ode-to-my-grandmother-remaking-the-past-using-oral-histories-theatre-and-music-180575">An Ode To My Grandmother: remaking the past using oral histories, theatre and music</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An Aboriginal jazz band</h2>
<p>In 1933, the Singleton Argus <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article81683811">published</a> a story on the wedding of Robert Silva and Mildred Bartholomew. The couple were living at Yellow Rock, a reserve at the base of the Blue Mountains near Sydney.</p>
<p>Music was provided by an Aboriginal jazz band playing locally made violins, banjos, steel guitars and gum leaves. </p>
<p>This couple walking down the aisle as these musicians played the Wedding March provides a rich evocation of the way western instruments were incorporated into Aboriginal music and events on their own terms. </p>
<h2>Violins at a corroboree</h2>
<p>An article <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162145633">from the Northern Champion</a> in 1934 recounts a concert and corroboree that occurred in Purfleet, New South Wales, for the local “townspeople”. We can assume many in the audience were white.</p>
<p>The first part of the program was devoted to songs and native dances, followed by a corroboree which illustrated elements of native lore. A <a href="https://midcoaststories.com/2022/01/purfleet-gum-leaf-band/">gumleaf band</a> and orchestra concluded the program. Each instrument was homemade and included single-string fiddles, violins and ukuleles made from tea chests.</p>
<p>These musicians combined their familiar traditions and cultures with European instruments. They were not only keeping cultural practices alive and carrying traditional knowledge forward, but also educating the broader population.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536745/original/file-20230711-28-514lz3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Band from Purfleet, NSW, about 1909. Bert Marr, violin; Fred Dumas , accordion; Bob Bungie, Banjo; Minnie and Hazel Dungie, vocals; Harry Dumas , auto-harp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Aboriginal Studies</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While some performances by Aboriginal people were organised to protest the repressive governmental policies of 20th century Australia, other performances were organised as a willingness to share cultural diversity to both educate and engage non-Indigenous audiences. </p>
<p>These performances acted as a channel for cultural continuation within changing social and political agendas.</p>
<h2>Indigenous players today</h2>
<p>These historical violinists are the predecessors of creative and innovative Indigenous string players who enrich our contemporary cultural life today. </p>
<p>Noongar violist, composer and conductor Aaron Wyatt made history in 2022 as the first Indigenous <a href="https://limelightmagazine.com.au/news/history-will-be-made-tonight-at-the-mso/">conductor of a state orchestra</a>. </p>
<p>Wyatt’s <a href="https://limelightmagazine.com.au/features/aaron-wyatt-the-coming-dawn/">compositions</a> draw on the tone colour of Western string instruments and Didgeridoo to reflect the beauty of Australian landscapes and convey an Indigenous connection to Country.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w30IR3kCSKk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Ngiyampaa, Yuin, Bandjalang and Gumbangirr violinist <a href="https://ericavery.com.au/about/">Eric Avery</a> creates starkly original pieces for voice and violin that evoke a powerful connection to his ancestors, culture and identity.</p>
<p>Both Wyatt and Avery exceed and surpass the archetype of classical string playing to create immensely original and modern compositions. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tasmanian-requiem-is-a-musical-reckoning-and-a-pathway-to-reconciliation-95435">A Tasmanian Requiem is a musical reckoning, and a pathway to reconciliation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208368/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Case receives funding from the Henderson Postgraduate Scholarship.</span></em></p>Western music was often taught to Aboriginal people as preparation for assimilation into white Australian society – but Aboriginal people continued to play the violin even when not prescribed.Laura Case, PhD Candidate, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2085962023-07-06T20:21:23Z2023-07-06T20:21:23ZFriday essay: we knew we were Bundjalung – but I was shocked to discover a pardoned convict slave trader among my ancestors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535722/original/file-20230705-23-3ss8n5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’re a superstitious mob, but I don’t think it’s an exclusively Aboriginal reaction to instantly think <em>Who’s died?</em> when the phone unexpectedly rings late at night. </p>
<p>That night in 2008, my trepidation rose quickly when I heard it was my Uncle Gerry from Sydney who was on the line. But instead of sounding mournful, he sounded strangely … incredulous. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve just been on the phone with a Bostock woman, a “white” Bostock woman from A.J.’s side of the family. You won’t believe what she told me about the white side of the family!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Immediately I knew he was referring to Augustus John Bostock, my non-Indigenous great-great-grandfather, whom Uncle Gerry had long ago nicknamed “AJ”. Uncle Gerry explained the elderly caller’s name was Thelma Birrell, but her family name, like ours, was Bostock. </p>
<p>He told me Thelma was an avid genealogist who had been researching the Bostock family tree for over 30 years. She told him she knew of her family’s rumour that her great-grandfather’s cousin, Augustus John Bostock, had taken up with an Aboriginal woman in the 1800s, but she didn’t know if there were any descendants from that union.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/he-was-horrific-nearly-two-thirds-of-family-historians-are-distressed-by-what-they-find-should-dna-kits-come-with-warnings-207430">'He was horrific!': Nearly two thirds of family historians are distressed by what they find – should DNA kits come with warnings?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘They were slave traders!’</h2>
<p>Incredibly, after seeing <a href="https://www.fnawn.com.au/members/gerry-bostock-1942-2014/">Uncle Gerry</a>’s photograph online, an obviously Aboriginal man with the Bostock family name, she somehow tracked him down. Uncle Gerry was a writer and film producer who participated in the political struggle surrounding the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra and helped establish the Black Theatre in Sydney. In their long conversation, Thelma told him she had traced the Bostock family line back to the 1600s in England.</p>
<p>“Guess who our white ancestors were?” Chuckling to himself, Uncle deliberately paused for dramatic effect before he blurted out: “They were slave traders! A couple of generations of slave traders! Can you believe it? Imagine that!” </p>
<p>A deep, loud belly laugh erupted down the line, and he snorted as he added, “Those white ancestors of ours must be rolling in their graves knowing we turned out to be a mob of blackfellas!”</p>
<p>Up until that time, Augustus John Bostock was known to us only as “the whitefella who gave us our family name”, but on hearing this new information about his family history, a burning desire to find out more was suddenly ignited in me. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535298/original/file-20230703-257464-edbjvx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A late night phone call sparked Shauna Bostock’s desire to learn more about her family history.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thelma had given Uncle Gerry her phone number, and I was surprised to find she lived only a little over an hour’s drive away from me on the Sunshine Coast. When I rang Thelma we chatted easily on the phone. And by the end of the call, she kindly invited me to come and visit her next time I was up that way.</p>
<p>Thelma was a lovely elderly lady who, years earlier with her husband Matthew, had travelled to England and to Australia’s southern states many times to collect her treasure trove of historical, archival and church records. </p>
<p>We spoke on the phone many times, and I enjoyed my face-to-face meetings with her over several cups of tea and delicious sweet treats. She was thrilled that I was interested in her work, and so proud to gift me a copy of her self-published book <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Mariners_Merchants_Then_Pioneers.html?id=SdIOtwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Merchants, Mariners … then Pioneers</a>.</p>
<p>Thelma thoroughly enjoyed telling me all about the history of the non-Indigenous Bostock family prior to Augustus John’s birth. </p>
<p>She had been able to trace the Bostocks back to an ironmonger called Jonathan Bostock who lived in Chester in late 17th-century England. Jonathan Bostock was the father of Peter, Peter was the father of Robert, and Robert Snr was the father of Robert Jnr. The two “Roberts” were the slave traders.</p>
<p>Thelma explained that after slave trading was abolished, the British government arrested Robert Bostock Jnr and his business partner John McQueen, and sentenced them to “transportation” to the colony for 14 years. </p>
<p>She was quick to tell me that not long after they arrived here, “Governor Lachlan Macquarie pardoned them”. I had never heard of “pardons from the Governor” in Australian history, until Thelma showed me her transcription of the colonial secretary’s documents, in which the last sentence of the pardon declared:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By virtue of the power and authority Given and Granted unto me the Governor in Chief of the said Territory of New South Wales under such Warrant and conformally to the tenor thereof I do hereby order and direct that Robert Bostock therein named be forthwith discharged out of custody accordingly and he is hereby […] restored to all rights and privileges of a free subject. Signed, L. Macquarie, 1st January 1816.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Confused by the pardon, I remember asking Thelma for confirmation. “But Robert Bostock really was a slave trader, right?” She patted my hand and answered in a hushed voice, “Ooh yes, he was a very naughty boy.” </p>
<p>Silently, Thelma handed me the pretty floral matching teacup and saucer and busied herself pouring us more tea. Then once seated, she enthusiastically told me tales of Robert Bostock’s exploits after he arrived in Australia – about how he became an excellent merchant in Sydney, married a beautiful maiden, then moved to Van Diemen’s Land and expanded his business interests in Hobart, became a very wealthy landowner and lived in a grand mansion.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535300/original/file-20230703-274753-azdorj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pardoned slave trader Robert Bostock became a wealthy landowner in Hobart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most precious to Thelma were the stories about his children, who left Van Diemen’s Land and settled in southern Victoria. She was so proud of the white Bostocks’ narrative of dashing pioneers and nation-building settlers – but I wanted to pause the story and go back to understand more about the two “Roberts” who were slave traders. </p>
<p>I had so many questions, but her reluctance to discuss them was palpable. </p>
<p>In her book, she explained that even though Robert Snr had a number of ships and was successful to some degree, he was regarded as a small operator. Thelma wrote that “he exhorted his captains to treat the slaves well at all times” and she pointed out that “Robert [Snr] died 20 years before slave trading was actually abolished”, and that “trading in slaves continued up to the 1860s in different parts of the world”.</p>
<h2>Befriending a slave-trade historian</h2>
<p>Thelma’s writing moved on to present her outstanding genealogical research, and her proud narrative of the pioneering lives of the non-Indigenous Bostocks. </p>
<p>After the initial excitement of finding Uncle Gerry and connecting with me over cups of tea, Thelma and I continued to chat on the phone every now and then, but unfortunately a year or so later contact between us gradually faded away. </p>
<p>But before we lost touch, she introduced me to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-caribbean-to-queensland-re-examining-australias-blackbirding-past-and-its-roots-in-the-global-slave-trade-158530">slave-trade historian Emma Christopher</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535455/original/file-20230704-27-eqh5ac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Christopher's book includes the story of the Bostock slave traders</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Emma’s field of expertise is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-leaders-in-sierra-leone-played-a-key-role-in-ending-the-transatlantic-slave-trade-207382">transatlantic slave trade</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-caribbean-to-queensland-re-examining-australias-blackbirding-past-and-its-roots-in-the-global-slave-trade-158530">Pacific Islander labour</a>, West African and historical slavery, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-the-boko-haram-headlines-slavery-in-africa-is-the-real-crisis-26379">modern slavery</a>. When a fellow historian told her that a mansion built by a convict transported for slave trading still existed in Tasmania, Emma was astonished. After years of extensive research, she had never heard of any slave traders in Australia.</p>
<p>Her response was like mine: she was gripped by the need to know more about the two Roberts. As the Australian expert on Bostock genealogies, Thelma was a major contributor to a website for Bostock descendants all over the world, and that is how Emma found her.</p>
<p>Being a spiritual person, I paid close attention to the intriguing way we all connected with each other. Seemingly out of the blue, Thelma found Uncle Gerry on the internet, then Uncle Gerry contacted me, and this led to my contact with Thelma. Emma was told about Robert Bostock, then found Thelma on the internet, and this led to her contact with me. My intuition was telling me this synchronicity was somehow orchestrated, that it was all part of God’s plan that I met Thelma and Emma.</p>
<p>Back then, I was focused on filling in the gaps in my family tree chart and finding out how Robert was related to my great-great-grandfather, <a href="https://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/bostock-john-augustus-135">Augustus John Bostock</a>, whereas Emma, an established PhD historian and a published author, wanted to know all about the global legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. </p>
<p>Despite our contrasting levels of academic knowledge at that time, our common interest in the history of the Bostocks quickly led to us becoming good friends. She helped me to see how interesting history can be when you push through the surface level and delve more deeply.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-caribbean-to-queensland-re-examining-australias-blackbirding-past-and-its-roots-in-the-global-slave-trade-158530">From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia's 'blackbirding' past and its roots in the global slave trade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘I feel numb about it’</h2>
<p>When Emma and I met, she was compiling research for a book about Robert Bostock Jnr and his business partner John McQueen, who were the only two convicted slave traders to have ever been transported to Australia. Emma was surprised when Thelma told her about the Aboriginal branches of the Bostock family. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535449/original/file-20230704-17-gd7xns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uncle Gerry (left) with George Bostock, 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I say the plural “branches” because George Bostock, the cousin of my great-great-grandfather Augustus John Bostock, lived in the Northern Territory of Australia and had children with a Jingili woman, who, in the historical record, was only recorded as “unknown F/B” (“F/B” meaning “full-blood”; a child with traditional Aboriginal parents). So, it turned out that my family are not the only Indigenous descendants of Robert Bostock.</p>
<p>In 2018, Emma’s book <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/125/1/204/5721711?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Freedom in Black and White: A lost story of the illegal slave trade and its global legacy</a> was published. It is a meticulous examination of the lives of the two Roberts, their tragic human merchandise and their captive African workers. As with Thelma’s book, I devoured every word. </p>
<p>The fates of the African captives who worked for Robert Bostock Jnr, and his Aboriginal descendants, are essential to Emma’s final discussion on the global legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.</p>
<p>Out of the blue, Emma said, “It must be a shock to be an Aboriginal Australian, a woman of colour, and find out that your ancestors were slave traders.” After what seemed like an excruciatingly long time, I realised I simply did not have the words to describe how I felt. Frowning, I lamely said, “I don’t know what to say … I feel numb about it – I just wish I had better words to say.”</p>
<p>That was over 12 years ago. After advancing my education, and undertaking intense study and archival research, it is only now that I am in the position to be able to present my research and provide answers to complex questions such as the one Emma posed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535301/original/file-20230703-187037-sofqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This group photograph (circa 1920) of the people who lived at Box Ridge Aborigines Reserve includes the author’s great-grandmother Mabel Yuke, and other extended family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the beginning of my research journey, I imagined my future book would be exclusively limited to my Aboriginal family history and would not include any of the non-Indigenous side of the family. </p>
<p>It was only when I was completing my PhD, and had read Emma’s extraordinary book, that I realised how integral my slave-trading ancestors are to the conclusion of this history of my multi-generational Aboriginal family.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-didnt-we-know-is-no-excuse-non-indigenous-australians-must-listen-to-the-difficult-historical-truths-told-by-first-nations-people-208780">'Why didn't we know?' is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Our ‘mob of blackfellas’</h2>
<p>It is not known when Augustus John Bostock travelled north to Bundjalung Country, but at around 27 years of age he married my great-great-grandmother, an Aboriginal woman called One My. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535303/original/file-20230703-268117-ub4u9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>I know this because on his death certificate, in the section marked “Marriages: Where, at what age and to whom deceased was married”, the corresponding details recorded were “Tweed River … about 27, One My otherwise Clara Wolumbin”. Her name, this record and other archival documents (which name her), as well as confirmation from Bundjalung Elders, indicate that she was a traditional Aboriginal woman from the Wollumbin/Mount Warning people. </p>
<p>Finding One My was incredibly exciting for me, because I actually had the name of one of the traditional Aboriginal ancestors from whom our “mob of blackfellas” is descended.</p>
<p>We always knew we were Bundjalung, and my father had frequently told us, “Our mob are from the Tweed”, but he didn’t know much else. Now I had a starting point.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Shauna-Bostock-Reaching-Through-Time-9781761067983/">Reaching Through Time</a> by Shauna Bostock (Allen & Unwin, $34.99).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shauna Bostock-Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Shauna Bostock began researching a book on her family, she thought it would be limited to her Aboriginal ancestry. But then a late-night phone call led her down a surprising path.Shauna Bostock-Smith, ANU PhD, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087802023-07-03T20:07:36Z2023-07-03T20:07:36Z‘Why didn’t we know?’ is no excuse. Non-Indigenous Australians must listen to the difficult historical truths told by First Nations people<p>Big things are being asked of history in 2023. Later this year, we will vote in the referendum to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative body – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-questions-about-the-voice-to-parliament-answered-by-the-experts-207014">Voice to Parliament</a> – in the Australian constitution. </p>
<p>The Voice was introduced through the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which outlines reforms to advance treaty and truth, in that order. And it calls for “truth telling about our history”. </p>
<p>Truth-telling has been key to restoring trust and repairing relationships in post-conflict settings around the world. Historical truth-telling is increasingly seen as an important part of restorative justice in settler-colonial contexts. </p>
<p>The UN recognises the “<a href="https://www.un.org/en/observances/right-to-truth-day">right to truth</a>”. It’s important to restore dignity to victims of human rights violations – and to ensure such violations never happen again. But there’s also a collective right to understand historical oppression.</p>
<p>The Uluru Statement, too, <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-have-made-a-plea-for-truth-telling-by-reckoning-with-its-past-australia-can-finally-help-improve-our-future-202137">sees truth-telling</a> as essential for achieving justice for Australia’s First Nations people.</p>
<p>A successful “Yes” referendum outcome has the potential to make history. The Voice will structure a more effective relationship between Aboriginal nations or peoples and government. It will better represent Indigenous interests and rights in Australia’s policy development and service delivery. </p>
<p>However modest this reform, the Voice is outstanding business for the nation. </p>
<p>But the Uluru statement’s call for “truth-telling about our history” will prove more difficult.</p>
<h2>Barriers to ‘truth hearing’</h2>
<p>“Why didn’t we know?” non-Indigenous Australians still lament when confronted with accounts of past violence and injustice against Indigenous Australians, despite decades of curriculum reform.</p>
<p>Our current research reflects on the barriers to “truth hearing”. The barriers are not just structural. Negative attitudes need to be overcome, too. Researchers have noted <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340480495_NEW_Preface">the levels of</a> “disaffection, disinterest and denial of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history”. They’ve also lamented the piecemeal nature of current educational approaches. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/historys-children_history-wars-in-the-classroom/">Anna Clark’s research</a> on attitudes in schools towards learning Australia history – particularly Indigenous history – shows that students experience Australian history as both repetitive and incomplete, “taught to death but not in-depth”.</p>
<p>Bain Attwood has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48554763">convincingly argued</a> that early settler denial of the violence of Indigenous dispossession was followed by a century of historical denial. History as a discipline, he argues, needs to reckon with the truth about its own role in supporting <a href="https://theconversation.com/truth-telling-and-giving-back-how-settler-colonials-are-coming-to-terms-with-painful-family-histories-145165">settler colonialism</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-have-made-a-plea-for-truth-telling-by-reckoning-with-its-past-australia-can-finally-help-improve-our-future-202137">First Nations people have made a plea for 'truth-telling'. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>50+ years of Aboriginal history</h2>
<p>For more than 50 years, historians have produced an enormous body of work that’s brought Aboriginal perspectives and experiences into most areas of Australian history – including gender, class, race, <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-when-did-australias-human-history-begin-87251">deep history</a> and global histories. </p>
<p>Until the late 1970s, academic interest in Aboriginal worlds was led by mostly white anthropologists and their gaze was set to the traditional north. But historians were then challenged to address the “silence” of their profession when it came to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They needed to write them into history. </p>
<p>This meant “restoring” the Aboriginal worlds omitted in the Australian history texts of the 20th century. This called for new ways of doing research: oral history, re-evaluating the archive, drawing on a wider range of sources than the official and written text. </p>
<p>Today, some historians work with scientists and traditional knowledge holders to tell stories over much longer time periods. For example, Australian National University’s <a href="https://re.anu.edu.au/">Centre for Deep History</a> is exploring Australia’s deep past, with the aim of expanding history’s time, scale and scope. </p>
<p>And the <a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/monash-indigenous-studies/global-encounters-and-first-nations-peoples">Global Encounters and First Nations Peoples</a> Monash project, led by Lynette Russell, applies interdisciplinary approaches to consider a range of encounters by First Nations peoples over the past millennium, challenging the view that the Australian history “began” with British colonisation. </p>
<p>On the other side of the sandstone gates, an incredible flourishing of historically informed Aboriginal creative works has taken centre stage in Australian cultural life. This includes biographies, memoirs, literature, painting, documentary and performance: often with large audiences and readerships. They are all forms of truth-telling.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535217/original/file-20230703-192977-95aav6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/black-words-white-page">Black Words, White Page</a> (2004), Adam Shoemaker details the extent of Aboriginal writing focused on Australian history from 1929 to 1988: writers like <a href="https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/noonuccal-oodgeroo-18057">Oodgeroo Noonuccal</a>, <a href="https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/davis-jack-17788">Jack Davis</a>, <a href="https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/gilbert-kevin-john-18569">Kevin Gilbert</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/charles-perkins-forced-australia-to-confront-its-racist-past-his-fight-for-justice-continues-today-139303">Charles Perkins</a>. </p>
<p>This body of work – and much more since – conveys an Aboriginal interpretation of past events, through oral history and veneration of leaders and heroes, drawing together the past and future. </p>
<p>Some early examples include Wiradjuri man Robert (Bobby) Merritt’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-australian-plays-the-cake-man-and-the-indigenous-mission-experience-88854">The Cake Man</a> (1975), set on a rural mission, which explores causes of despair, particularly for Aboriginal men. It was performed by the then newly formed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Black_Theatre_(Australia)">Black Theatre</a> in Redfern in the same year it was published. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/535214/original/file-20230703-255807-kpnylj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Indigenous autobiographies, like Ruby Langford Ginibi’s <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/dont-take-your-love-to-town-2">Don’t Take Your Love to Town</a> (1988), just reissued in UQP’s First Nations Classics series, and Rita Huggins’ biography <a href="https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/products/auntie-rita-revised-edition">Auntie Rita</a> (1994) are realist accounts of Aboriginal lives, devoid of moralism or victimology. </p>
<p>Many more have followed, including Tara June Winch’s novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yield-wins-the-miles-franklin-a-powerful-story-of-violence-and-forms-of-resistance-142284">The Yield</a> (2019), winner of the 2020 Stella prize for literature. Through Wiradjuri language, she gathers the history of invasion and loss – and survival in the present. </p>
<p>Indigenous artists are exploring ways to represent the past in the present: overlaid, but still present and continuous. Jonathon Jones’ 2020 <a href="https://mhnsw.au/whats-on/exhibitions/untitled-maraong-manaouwi/">artwork</a> to commemorate the reopening of the Sydney Hyde Park Barracks, built originally in 1817 to house convicts, is one example. </p>
<p>Jones <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=374269496789482">explained</a> the installation’s interchangeable use of the broad arrow and maraong manaóuwi (emu footprint) as a matter of perspective: one observer will see the emu print, another the broad arrow. </p>
<p>Each marker, within its own sphere of significance, served similar purposes. The emu print is known to be engraved into the sandstone ledges of the Sydney basin and marked a people and their place. The broad arrow inscribed institutional place and direction. Jones wants to show how the landscape can be written over – but never lost – to those who hold its memory.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WPGcFDw5c_s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jonathan Jones’ artwork is part of an incredible flourishing of historically informed Aboriginal creative works.</span></figcaption>
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<p><a href="https://www.uapcompany.com/projects/the-eyes-of-the-land-and-the-sea">The Eyes of the Land and the Sea</a>, by artists Alison Page and Nik Lachajczak, commemorates the 250th anniversary of the 1770 encounter between Aboriginal Australians and Lt James Cook’s crew of the <em>HMB Endeavour</em> at Kamay Botany Bay National Park. This work, too, represents the duality of interpretation and meaning. The monumental bronze sculpture takes the form of the rib bones of a whale – and simultaneously, the hull of the <em>HMB Endeavour</em>.</p>
<p>This body of work by dedicated educators, researchers, artists and families has been highly contested.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-black-lives-matter-movement-has-provoked-a-cultural-reckoning-about-how-black-stories-are-told-149544">The Black Lives Matter movement has provoked a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Truth-telling, healing and restorative justice</h2>
<p>Many non-Indigenous Australians are interested in – but anxious about – truth-telling, our early research findings suggest. They don’t know how to get involved and are unsure about their role. Indigenous respondents are deeply committed to truth-telling. But they have anxieties about the process, too. </p>
<p>Only 6% of non-Indigenous respondents to Reconciliation Australia’s most recent <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/publication/2022-australian-reconciliation-barometer/">Reconciliation Barometer report</a> had participated in a truth-telling activity (processes that seek to engage with a fuller account of Australian history and its ongoing legacy for First Nations peoples) in the previous 12 months. However, 43% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents had participated in truth-telling.</p>
<p>Truth-telling is seen as an important part of healing, but there is uncertainty about its potential to deliver a more just future for First Nations peoples. And it’s acknowledged that <a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-is-promising-truth-telling-in-our-australian-education-system-heres-what-needs-to-happen-191420">truth-telling</a> might emphasise divisions and differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. There are also concerns about <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-australians-will-experience-trauma-most-before-they-turn-17-we-need-to-talk-about-it-159801">trauma</a> and issues of cultural safety.</p>
<p>But during the regional dialogues that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the demand for truth-telling was unanimous from the Indigenous community representatives. Constitutional reform should only proceed if it “tells the truth of history”, they agreed. This was a key guiding principle that emerged from the process.</p>
<p>Why does truth-telling remain a central demand? The final report of the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/constitutionalrecognition">Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples</a> described its multiple dimensions. </p>
<p>Truth-telling is a foundational requirement for healing and reconciliation. It’s also a form of restorative justice – and a process for Indigenous people to share their culture and history with the broader community. It builds wider understanding of the intergenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous Australians. And it creates awareness of the relationship between past injustices and contemporary issues.</p>
<p>“Truth-telling cannot be just a massacre narrative in which First Nations peoples are yet again dispossessed of agency and identity,” <a href="https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q6316/teaching-as-truth-telling-a-demythologising-pedagogy-for-the-australian-frontier-wars">argue</a> educators Alison Bedford and Vince Wall. Indigenous agency and the long struggle for Indigenous rights need to be recognised. </p>
<p>And there is an ongoing need to deconstruct Australia’s national foundational myths. A focus on military engagements overseas has obscured the violent dispossession of First Nations Australians at home. As Ann Curthoys argued more than two decades ago, white Australians positioned themselves as heroic strugglers to cement their moral claim to the land. This myth overlooked their role in dispossessing First Nations people.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-voice-what-is-it-where-did-it-come-from-and-what-can-it-achieve-202138">The Voice: what is it, where did it come from, and what can it achieve?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Makarrata Commission</h2>
<p>The Uluru Statement called for <a href="https://theconversation.com/response-to-referendum-council-report-suggests-a-narrow-path-forward-on-indigenous-constitutional-reform-80315">a Makarrata Commission</a> to be established to oversee “agreement-making” and “truth-telling” processes between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. </p>
<p>As part of its commitment to the full implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the current federal government committed $5.8 million in funding in 2022 to start the work of establishing the Commission. </p>
<p>Yet few details have been provided so far about the form truth-telling mechanisms might adopt. And there’s been little acknowledgement that the desire to “tell the truth” about the past runs counter to the contemporary study of history, which sees history as a complex and ongoing process – rather than a set of fixed “facts” or “truths”. </p>
<p>Worimi historian <a href="https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/john-maynard">John Maynard</a> describes Aboriginal history research as generative: the work reinforces and sustains Aboriginal worlds – and it reflects a yearning for truth by Aboriginal people that was denied. </p>
<p>The impact of colonisation not only targeted the fracturing of Aboriginal people but, as Maynard says, “a state of forgetting and detachment from our past”. Wiradjuri historian <a href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/bamblett-l">Lawrence Bamblett</a> develops a similar theme. “Our stories are our survival,” <a href="https://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/discovery/fulldisplay?vid=61SLQ_INST:SLQ&search_scope=Everything&tab=All&docid=alma9915551944702061&lang=en&context=L&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&query=sub,exact,Australia%20--%20Race%20relations%20--%20History,AND&mode=advanced&offset=10">he says</a>, in his account of Aboriginal approaches to history. </p>
<p>Consider the dedicated labour to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/heidi-norman-bob-weatherall-weve-got-to-bring-them-home/13962068">return Ancestral Remains to their country</a>. Consider the the work of Aboriginal people to restore the graves of their family and community on the old missions. And the work to document sites, such as <a href="https://youtu.be/gTh2rV_VuwQ">Tulladunna cotton chipping Aboriginal camp</a>, on the plains country of north west New South Wales. </p>
<p>Some of this dedicated labour to care for the past is made possible by the recognition of Aboriginal land rights. Aboriginal communities are documenting their history in order to communicate across generations – and to create belonging, sustain community futures and know themselves. </p>
<p>These processes of documenting and remembering Aboriginal stories of the past are less concerned with the state, and settler hostility. They are <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">unburdened by categorising time</a>. The “old people” or “1788” appear irrelevant in the enthusiasm for living social and cultural history.</p>
<p>That history is not confined to the “fixed in time” histories called upon in Native Title litigation, or the debates among historians and their detractors over method and evidence. Nor is it confined to the moral weight of such accounts in the national story. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ancestral-remains-of-first-nations-people-were-once-stolen-for-trophies-now-they-will-have-a-national-resting-place-174537">Ancestral Remains of First Nations people were once stolen for trophies. Now they will have a national resting place</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>History and political questions</h2>
<p>When discussing Aboriginal history, there is an unbreakable link between the history being studied and the present. </p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)">Presentism</a> – the concern that the past is interpreted through the lens of the present – and the concept of the “activist historian” can both impact on the way Aboriginal history is perceived or judged. Disdain for “presentism” has leaked into contemporary discussions recently. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2022/is-history-history-identity-politics-and-teleologies-of-the-present">widely criticised column</a> by the president of the American Historical Association – James Sweet, a historian of Africa and the African diaspora – is a recent example. </p>
<p>He argued that the increasing tendency to interpret the past through the lens of the present, plummeting enrolments in undergraduate history courses and a greater focus on the 20th and 21st centuries all put history at risk of being mobilised “to justify rather than inform contemporary political positions”. </p>
<p>These are not new debates. They have taken place within and outside the academy across the world, including in Australia. </p>
<p>But the realities of the histories of <a href="https://theconversation.com/eliza-batman-the-irish-convict-reinvented-as-melbournes-founding-mother-was-both-colonised-and-coloniser-on-two-violent-frontiers-206189">colonisation</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/unpapering-the-cracks-sugar-slavery-and-the-sydney-morning-herald-202828">slavery</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/empire-of-delusion-the-sun-sets-on-british-imperial-credibility-89309">imperialism</a> mean they continue to have an impact in the present. Reparations and apologies happen because of the work of historians and others. They are real-world, present impacts of the work being undertaken.</p>
<p>It’s the role of historians to understand the past on its own terms – <em>and</em> to produce work relevant to contemporary political questions. </p>
<p>Applied (or public) history produces this work. In this work, particularly historical work that sits outside the academy, we do often find “truth telling”. For example, in the important work done for the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997">Bringing them Home</a> Commission, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-deaths-in-custody-inquests-can-be-sites-of-justice-or-administrative-violence-158126">Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission</a> and Native Title claims in courts. </p>
<p>But somehow, these efforts at truth-telling – and other historical research conducted since colonisation – seem not to have impacted on the overall “history” of Australia.</p>
<h2>Forgetting and resistance</h2>
<p>As the referendum vote edges closer, Australians are being asked to make provisions for the First Peoples to have a role in the political process – and the decisions that impact them. </p>
<p>The challenge to address the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-great-australian-silence-50-years-on-100737">Great Australian Silence</a>” – to include First Peoples in the stories of the nation, where they were otherwise omitted – has been largely addressed by the significant body of historical work added over the last 50 or more years. That work, and the correction it has delivered, has generated discomfort and hostility. </p>
<p>Yet Australians’ appreciation – and even awareness – of the history of its First Nations people remains deeply unsatisfactory. </p>
<p>There is now little justification for the laments <em>Why weren’t we told?</em> or <em>How come we didn’t know?</em>. Our undergraduate students continue to ask these questions, though.</p>
<p>Australia has a difficult relationship – a kind of historical amnesia; a forgetting and resistance – to hearing those First Nations stories. That resistance is much deeper than simply being <em>told</em>. </p>
<p>The current focus on truth-telling will once again draw our attention to dealing with difficult history. This time, different questions need to be asked.</p>
<p>Not <em>why didn’t I know</em>? But <em>how can I find out</em>? </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Heidi Norman and Anne Maree Payne will be presenting their research at the upcoming 50th Milestones Anniversary of the Australian Historical Association. Heidi will deliver the keynote address, <a href="https://web-eur.cvent.com/event/f99aac02-b195-46e5-b1d9-bf5183aea6fc/websitePage:150e8a3c-395b-4de3-bf2b-98ac8be5929e">The End of Aboriginal History?</a></em> </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: this article originally stated incorrectly that educators Alison Bedford and Vince Wall are Indigenous. The article has been amended.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Norman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Reconciliation Australia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Maree Payne receives funding from Reconciliation Australia. </span></em></p>Non-Indigenous Australians need to actively seek the truth about past violence and injustice against Indigenous Australians.Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology SydneyAnne Maree Payne, Senior Lecturer, Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045382023-05-31T20:07:33Z2023-05-31T20:07:33ZIn the 1800s, colonisers attempted to listen to First Nations people. It didn’t stop the massacres<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528472/original/file-20230526-21-xlo9ut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C2%2C780%2C566&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benjamin Duterrau, The Conciliation 1840, oil on canvas. Purchased by the Friends of TMAG and the Board of Trustees, 1945. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, AG79.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images. Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain. Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence.</em></p>
<p>As we head toward the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament later this year, it is worth considering the long history of how governments have tried and failed to authentically listen to First Nations people. </p>
<p>And not just post-federation governments. During Australia’s colonial period in the 19th century, the office of the Protector of Aborigines was established in an effort to hear to the “wants, wishes and grievances” of Aboriginal people, as the secretary for the colonies, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/glenelg-baron-2101">Lord Glenelg</a>, put it in 1838.</p>
<p>However, this office not only failed to genuinely listen to First Nations peoples, it led to policies that actually underpinned the erasure of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the Australian Constitution of 1901. </p>
<h2>Spotlight on the treatment of Indigenous people</h2>
<p>During the 1830s, <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/baptist-war-1831-1832/">slave rebellions</a> in Britain’s colonies and a growing humanitarian movement in the UK pushed the government to abolish slavery. The spotlight was then turned on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, both within and on the edges of the rapidly expanding British Empire. </p>
<p>In 1836, the British government established a <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kbfbmq5m">Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines</a> to hear testimony from church leaders, missionaries and colonial officials about the situation of Aboriginal people in the Australian colonies. </p>
<p>The hearings focused particular attention on the conduct of militia forces in the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmanias-black-war-a-tragic-case-of-lest-we-remember-25663">Black War</a> in Tasmania, where roving parties of white men hunted down and killed Palawa people and massacres were seen as part and parcel of occupying Aboriginal lands. </p>
<p>In January 1838, Glenelg <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-442186184">wrote to the governor</a> of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, that the British government </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[had] directed their anxious attention to the adoption of some plan for the better protection and civilisation of the native tribes. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527938/original/file-20230524-22-etp9on.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photographic reproduction of a 1837 portrait of Charles Grant, the first Baron Glenelg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Glenelg told Gipps that as part of the scheme, the British government had decided to “appoint a small number of persons qualified to fill the office of Protector of Aborigines”. The chief protector, a non-Indigenous person, was to be aided by four assistant protectors and to “fix his principal station at Port Phillip” (later to become Melbourne), only recently occupied by the British.</p>
<p>According to Glenelg, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-george-augustus-2596">George Augustus Robinson</a> was bestowed with the office of chief protector as he had </p>
<blockquote>
<p>shewn [sic] himself to be eminently qualified by his charge of the Aboriginal Establishment at Flinders Island. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Robinson’s so-called “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13688790902887155">Friendly Mission</a>” - a series of journeys around Tasmania in the early 1830s to convince Palawa of Governor George Arthur’s humane intentions - was lauded by Gipps as a success, as it had peacefully convinced some people to move to a reserve at Flinders Island. Historians now consider this mission to be nothing more than <a href="https://www.academia.edu/40714375/Entanglement_ethnic_cleansing_in_Australia">ethnic cleansing</a>. </p>
<p>For Glenelg, appointing Robinson to the new position of chief protector appeared to be the only plan available that did not involve military or police, or armed settlers dispensing their own “justice”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528984/original/file-20230530-23-io2k3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of George Augustus Robinson, 1853, by Bernardino Giani.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An aim to convey ‘wants, wishes or grievances’</h2>
<p>The plan for establishing Aboriginal protectorates followed Robinson’s Friendly Mission model in Tasmania. </p>
<p>Protectors were to “watch over the rights and interests of the natives” and protect them from “acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice”. The protector was also to be a kind of conduit to express the “wants, wishes or grievances” of Aboriginal peoples to the colonial governments. For this purpose, each protector was commissioned as a magistrate. </p>
<p>Protectors were encouraged to learn the “language of the natives” and “obtain accurate information” on the “number of the natives within his district”. </p>
<p>On paper at least, the “plan for the better protection and civilisation of the native tribes” seemed a remarkable step forward from previous years. Indeed, there was no plan prior to this that attempted to deal with the situation in Aboriginal lands beyond the official boundaries of the colonies – boundaries that were being increasingly crossed by hundreds of squatters and stockmen, and tens of thousands of cattle and sheep.</p>
<p>The establishment of the role of protectors, who would live among Aboriginal people and learn their languages, was arguably an early attempt at a conduit for an Aboriginal voice to government. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/90-years-ago-yorta-yorta-leader-william-cooper-petitioned-the-king-for-aboriginal-representation-in-parliament-198396">90 years ago, Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper petitioned the king for Aboriginal representation in parliament</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A failure from the beginning</h2>
<p>But the scheme did not stop the conflicts and massacres. Shortly after the commission’s report appeared in print in Australia, dozens of Gamilaraay people were killed at <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=577">Waterloo Creek</a> and <a href="https://myallcreek.org/the-massacre-story/">Myall Creek</a> in northern inland New South Wales in January and June 1838. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C5%2C1231%2C741&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527939/original/file-20230524-27-bgjkqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A tinted lithograph depicting the Waterloo Creek massacre by the New South Wales Military Mounted Police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The scheme also did little to stop the resistance warfare that broke out across the entire length of the frontier in the late 1830s and early 1840s – a counteroffensive that has been described by some contemporary observers as a “general uprising”. </p>
<p>The protectorates scheme was also bound up in the supposed superiority of the colonisers’ race and Christian religion. The ultimate goal was for Aboriginal people to become “civilised” and Christian – just like white people apparently were. It was a paternalistic concept that ultimately turned humanitarian ideals into an even more violent and coercive colonial system. </p>
<p>The protectors, as they had been directed to, could report to the government the “grievances” of Aboriginal people. These were often found to be, as <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flanagan-roderick-3535">one observer at the time</a> wrote, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[an] explosion of long-pent feelings of revenge and hatred towards the whites, resulting from a long course of violence and injustice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attempt by the colonial authorities to understand the “wants, wishes and grievances” of Aboriginal people, however, failed in its mission to actually protect people. The system was abandoned in 1849. </p>
<p>From the 1860s, the various colonial governments developed even more coercive policies of “protection”, which controlled peoples’ lives and corralled them into missions and reserves, so their lands and children could be taken from them. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-lived-history-of-the-aborigines-protection-board-while-we-still-can-46259">Capturing the lived history of the Aborigines Protection Board while we still can</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How this history feeds into failed policies today</h2>
<p>The Protector of Aborigines office was an important historical moment that embedded this idea of government control over First Nations’ people’s lives into the social and political fabric of this nation. These supposedly moral standards around “protection” and “civilisation” ultimately forced Indigenous people to become less Indigenous. </p>
<p>These beliefs continue to permeate our government today through failed paternalistic policies such as Closing the Gap. Such racialised policies draw on Australia’s history of containment of Aboriginal land and the ongoing colonial violence of “protection”. </p>
<p>Because of this, we have yet to generate new possibilities of truly meaningful dialogue. </p>
<p>The long struggle for rights and recognition by Aboriginal people has been punctuated by (all too few) moments of support by non-Aboriginal people. As the referendum for the Voice approaches, another such moment beckons. Will this be history repeating itself?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204538/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gapps is an Historian with Artefact Heritage Services and a member of The Greens. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynda-June Coe is a current member of the Greens NSW.</span></em></p>The office of the Protector of Aborigines was established in an effort to hear to the ‘wants, wishes and grievances’ of Aboriginal people. It failed almost immediately.Stephen Gapps, Historian and Conjoint Lecturer, University of NewcastleLynda-June Coe, PhD Candidate, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033422023-05-01T03:03:22Z2023-05-01T03:03:22ZIsotope analysis helps tell the stories of Aboriginal people living under early colonial expansion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523157/original/file-20230427-644-yjanau.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C3%2C796%2C550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Queensland Police Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Acknowledgement: we would like to extend our thanks to the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People who invited us to work on this sensitive project through the lens of truth-telling – particularly Phillip George, Richie Bee and Francine George – whose insights have formed a key pillar of the work.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In 2015, Gkuthaarn and Kukatj community members of Queensland’s Gulf Country invited us to excavate, analyse, and rebury the skeletal remains of eight young Indigenous people who died near the town of Normanton in the late 1800s.</p>
<p>The remains were acquired by Walter Roth (1861-1933). Roth was a medical doctor, anthropologist, and the first Northern Protector of Aboriginal people. He eventually sold the remains to the Australian Museum in Sydney, which held them for almost a century before repatriating them to the Traditional Owners in the 1990s. </p>
<p>The remains were reburied, but later exposed by erosion – which prompted Gkuthaarn and Kukatj community members to invite us to collaborate with them.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11759-023-09469-2">research</a> published in Archaeologies, we show how <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/bioarchaeology">bioarchaeological</a> techniques have helped shed light on the experiences of these young Indigenous people who were displaced by European colonisation.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, we only know the name of one of the eight individuals – a young woman named Dolly. Roth’s records indicate Dolly was a member of the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, and was working at the police barracks (shown in the banner image) in the town of Cloncurry, about 382km south of Normanton, when she died.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523148/original/file-20230427-14-bp7bl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gkuthaarn and Kukatj rangers reburied the remains in the Normanton Aboriginal Cemetery in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Driven from their lands</h2>
<p>In 2018, we <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11759-018-9354-x">published</a> a study that showed these individuals had experienced nutritional stress and, in some cases, syphilis. These findings are consistent with other evidence relating to the experience of Aboriginal people living on the Gulf Country during colonial expansion.</p>
<p>Archaeological data and historical documents indicate Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country lived as foragers until the mid-1800s, when their lands were occupied by Europeans and stocked with cattle. The cattle depleted resources that were critical for a foraging lifestyle, and conflict ensued.</p>
<p>As a result of the violence and loss of resources, many Aboriginal people on the Gulf Country became refugees in their own land. They had little choice but to move into camps on the fringes of towns such as Normanton. These camps were overcrowded and unhygienic, and many occupants died from infectious diseases as a result.</p>
<p>We spoke to several Gkuthaarn and Kukatj people during the course of our research. One senior person expressed feeling relief when the remains were safely retrieved and reburied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Researchers] put a tarp over and dug it [the remains] up real steady. [They were] fragile from the sun […] We felt like we was just welcome [by the spirits of the people connected with these remains], like they wanted to get reburied. [We] just had that feeling they wanted to get reburied; was a couple of times they had been exposed.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Insight into displacement, disease and diet</h2>
<p>In our recent study, we analysed strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes from the teeth of six of the eight individuals. </p>
<p>Measuring isotope ratios in human bones and teeth can reveal information about an individual’s diet and geographical movements prior to their death. When we compare strontium isotope values from tooth enamel to an isotope map (called an “isoscape”) constructed <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Malte-Willmes/publication/331549418_A_strontium_isoscape_of_north-east_Australia_for_human_provenance_and_repatriation/links/5c8efa30299bf14e7e82798f/A-strontium-isoscape-of-north-east-Australia-for-human-provenance-and-repatriation.pdf">for this project</a>, we can see where the six individuals grew up.</p>
<p>Dolly’s strontium value suggests she grew up near the Gulf of Carpentaria. This is consistent with Roth’s suggestion that Dolly was a member of the Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, as their traditional territory extends to the coast. The strontium results for the other individuals suggest they grew up some distance to the east or northeast of Normanton.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522940/original/file-20230426-140-t6jgr.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maps showing the location of Normanton relative to the Gulf Plains region and Cape York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Carbon isotope results indicate that in their early years, all six individuals had diets dominated by tropical plants and/or marine foods. However, Dolly’s carbon value suggests her diet was especially high in such foods. This is again consistent with her having lived near the Gulf of Carpentaria when she was young.</p>
<p>The oxygen isotope results we obtained are also high when compared to international samples. We suspect these elevated values can be explained by a combination of the environmental conditions in the Gulf Country, and the effects of infectious diseases that spread into the region with European settlers.</p>
<p>Based on the formation times of Dolly’s tooth samples, and her strontium and oxygen values, we estimate she moved from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Cloncurry area sometime between the age of 2.5 and 10. Our analyses also suggest she was a young adult when she died.</p>
<p>These assessments are in line with <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/63371.pdf">Roth’s reports</a> from the Gulf Country, which state that Indigenous girls were often taken from their families and made to work for Europeans, and that it was common for such individuals to succumb to diseases early in life.</p>
<p>Speaking on the findings, one Gkuthaarn and Kukatj person told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am sad to learn of our people getting horrible diseases and, with the study completed, these were young people who left behind such a sad story that needs to be told so non-Indigenous people, not just throughout Australia
but particularly in our region, know and understand that these traumas still
impact on our people 120 years later.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-have-made-a-plea-for-truth-telling-by-reckoning-with-its-past-australia-can-finally-help-improve-our-future-202137">First Nations people have made a plea for 'truth-telling'. By reckoning with its past, Australia can finally help improve our future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Voice</h2>
<p>Combined with historical documents and information from contemporary Gkuthaarn and Kukatj People, our results provide new individual-level insight into the devastating impact of European colonisation on Aboriginal people of the Gulf Country.</p>
<p>Australians are currently debating a constitutional amendment to create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. The proposed amendment is a key recommendation of the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>. Another key recommendation is that of “truth-telling” about the experiences of Aboriginal people during European colonial expansion. </p>
<p>Science can’t tell us whether the Voice is the correct course of action. Yet our findings about these individuals – whose remains we have been honoured to analyse – reveal that scientific work conducted with and by First Nations people has an invaluable role in the process of truth-telling.</p>
<p>We hope such work will help reveal more truth of the experiences of those rendered voiceless by the violence of colonisation. As one Gkuthaarn and Kukatj person explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My old grandmother was one of those people who said they was horrible
and didn’t want to repeat it [i.e. they did not want to tell accounts of colonial violence to subsequent generations], but I believe it should be repeated [to] help us understand more about what really happened. <br><br> People [are] just listening to one side of it. You’ve got people who say Aboriginals just live off the welfare, but there was a reason why that happened. Aboriginal people fought for this country. You’ve got people who say you’ve gotta get over that [colonial violence], but what I say is: lest we forget.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>We would like to thank our co-author Susan Phillips for her involvement in this research.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaun Adams receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Collard receives funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund, and Simon Fraser University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Martin receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Dr Martin has also undertaken commissioned research relating to native title claims and cultural heritage protection for Aboriginal organisations around the Gulf Country. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David McGahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research conducted with Gkuthaarn and Kukatj community members helps paint a picture of the lives of eight young Aboriginal people who lived during early colonial expansion.Shaun Adams, Archaeologist, Griffith UniversityDavid McGahan, Visiting Researcher, Griffith UniversityMark Collard, Canada Research Chair in Human Evolutionary Studies, and Professor of Archaeology, Simon Fraser UniversityMichael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of QueenslandRichard Martin, Senior lecturer, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1980642023-02-19T19:09:36Z2023-02-19T19:09:36ZLong before the Voice vote, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association called for parliamentary representation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508005/original/file-20230203-19611-85lvkb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=113%2C11%2C3778%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Maynard</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and/or images of deceased people.</em></p>
<p>The most startling point on the referendum for a Voice to parliament is the fact the majority of people in this country have no idea of history. And I mean both Black and white people. </p>
<p>Australian history, as written for nearly two thirds of the 20th century, glorified discoverers, explorers, settlers, and Gallipoli. We as Aboriginal people had been conveniently erased from the historical landscape and memory. Most Australians gave Aboriginal people little or no consideration.
The majority of Aboriginal people were trapped in a historical vacuum through the fact that great numbers of our people had been confined to heavily congested and controlled missions and reserves.</p>
<p>As part of this confinement, we were encouraged to forget our past. Everyday decisions were removed from people; they were told what to eat, what to wear, who you could marry, and their movement was severely restricted. There was a process of historical erasure and memory. </p>
<p>We were to be severed from any sense of past or inspiration. We could not participate in ceremonies, speak our language, tell our stories, practice songs and dances or conduct our everyday hunting and living experiences. Over time our people could only remember the controlled life on the reserve. It became the pattern of misery.</p>
<p>In his 1968 Boyer lecture, <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C695416">After the Dreaming</a>, anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner exposed Australia’s failure to regard, record or acknowledge Aboriginal people in the country’s history. Australian history, he said, had been constructed with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a view from a window which had been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What is critically important in history understanding is that the call for a Voice to parliament is not a new initiative. Aboriginal activists nearly 100 years ago first called for a voice to parliament as part of their political platform and demands during the 1920s.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1410897711633616898"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-1881-maloga-petition-a-call-for-self-determination-and-a-key-moment-on-the-path-to-the-voice-197796">The 1881 Maloga petition: a call for self-determination and a key moment on the path to the Voice</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association</h2>
<p>The first Aboriginal political organisation, the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/formation-of-the-aapa">Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association</a> (AAPA), was formed in Sydney in 1924 and led by my grandfather Fred Maynard. </p>
<p>It advocated several key demands in protecting the rights of Aboriginal people, centring on:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a national land rights agenda</p></li>
<li><p>protecting Aboriginal children from being taken from their families</p></li>
<li><p>a call for genuine Aboriginal self-determination</p></li>
<li><p>citizenship in our own country</p></li>
<li><p>defending a distinct Aboriginal cultural identity</p></li>
<li><p>and the insistence Aboriginal people be placed in charge of Aboriginal affairs. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The call for Aboriginal rights to land was explicit. Leader Fred Maynard <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24046334">declared</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The request made by this association for sufficient land for each eligible family is justly based. The Australian people are the original owners of the land and have a prior right over all other people in this respect.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The association’s conference in Sydney was front page news in the Sydney Daily Guardian. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C263%2C1914%2C931&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C263%2C1914%2C931&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507778/original/file-20230202-5920-1iaiaf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The AAPA’s first conference front page news in Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image supplied by John Maynard.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over 200 Aboriginal people attended this conference held at St David’s Church and Hall in Riley Street, Surry Hills.</p>
<p>In the space of six short months the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association had expanded to 13 branches, four sub-branches and a membership in excess of 600.</p>
<p>Its established offices in Crown Street, Sydney and a state-wide network of information regarding Aboriginal people.</p>
<h2>Calls for direct representation in parliament</h2>
<p>Late in October 1925, the association held a second conference in Kempsey, New South Wales. It ran over three days with over 700 Aboriginal people in attendance. </p>
<p>It was noted in press coverage of the conference that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>pleas were entered for direct representation in parliament.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two years later in 1927, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association produced a manifesto. It was delivered to all sections of government – both state and federal – and published widely across NSW, South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland.</p>
<p>One of the significant points was for an Aboriginal board to be established under the Commonwealth government, and for state control over Aboriginal lives be abolished. It envisioned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The control of Aboriginal affairs, apart from common law rights shall be vested in a board of management comprised of capable educated Aboriginals under a chairman to be appointed by the government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This board would not be comprised of government-selected or handpicked individuals but would be Aboriginal elected officers. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"867677727121326080"}"></div></p>
<p>This push for an Aboriginal board or place in parliament continued in 1929, when Fred Maynard spoke to the Chatswood Willoughby Labour League in NSW on Aboriginal issues. A report in the The Labor Daily newspaper in February that year mentioned his call for:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal representative in the federal parliament, or failing it, to have an [A]boriginal ambassador appointed to live in Canberra to watch over his people’s interests and advise the federal authorities.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Surveillance, threats, intimidation, abuse</h2>
<p>The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association disappeared from public view in late 1929. </p>
<p>There is strong <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24046334">evidence</a> the organisation was effectively broken up through the combined efforts of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board, missionaries, and the police. </p>
<p>The state government and the Protection Board had been embarrassed by the exposure of their unjust policies in the media and wanted the organisation broken up.</p>
<p>Fred Maynard, in a newspaper interview in late 1927 in The Newcastle Sun revealed the level of surveillance, threat, intimidation, and abuse he and the other Aboriginal activists were subjected to. The report noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He said that he had been warned on many occasions that the doors of Long Bay were opening for him. He would cheerfully go to jail for the remainder of his life, he declared if, by so doing he could make the people of Australia realise the truly frightful administration of the Aborigines Act. He knew cases where children had been torn from their mothers and sent into absolute slavery.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When one ponders upon the legacy of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association the sad reality is that if the demands of these early activists had been met nearly a century ago, we would not be suffering the severe disadvantage that hovers over Aboriginal lives still today.</p>
<p>Imagine if enough land for each and every Aboriginal family to build their own economic independence had been granted.</p>
<p>Or that we would not have suffered another five decades of Aboriginal child removal and the shocking impact of that policy on generations of Aboriginal lives. </p>
<p>If the demand to protect a distinct Aboriginal cultural identity had been taken up, we would not today be working to piece together the shattered cultural pieces of language, stories, songs, and dances. </p>
<p>And finally, if Aboriginal people had been placed in a position to oversee Aboriginal policy and needs, the history of our people would have been vastly different. </p>
<p>The reality today is we continue to fight for the demands that the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association established nearly 100 years ago.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-lived-history-of-the-aborigines-protection-board-while-we-still-can-46259">Capturing the lived history of the Aborigines Protection Board while we still can</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Maynard received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) grants program examining Aboriginal political protest back in 2003-2010.</span></em></p>The sad reality is that if the demands of these early activists had been met nearly a century ago, we would not be suffering the severe disadvantage that hovers over Aboriginal lives still today.John Maynard, Director/Chair of Aboriginal History - The Wollotuka Institute, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1918632022-10-18T19:03:36Z2022-10-18T19:03:36Z20 years in the making: witnessing the ‘Dwoort Baal Kaat’ songline’s incredible return to Noongar Country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490289/original/file-20221018-16-c797sk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C7%2C5160%2C3437&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Festival guests viewing Dwoort Baal Kaat rock formation at East Mount Barren, Western Australia. Photo by Gaylene Galardi (2022)
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Hopetoun Community Resource Centre is a hive of activity this sunny morning in mid-September. It is the height of the <a href="https://wildflowersravensthorpe.org.au/">Ravensthorpe Wildflower Show</a>, an event that attracts thousands of visitors to small agricultural towns on Western Australia’s south coast each year. </p>
<p>Hopetoun sits on the doorstep of the Fitzgerald River National Park, an ecological wonder and one of 35 crucial <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320714002237">Global Biodiversity Hotspots</a>. </p>
<p>The park is also a region of great cultural significance to the traditional custodians of the land, the south coast Noongar people. </p>
<p>This morning’s festival patrons are about to see a cultural presentation 20 years in the making. A songline that has been on a journey away from Country, to the northern hemisphere and back, to be sung in public once again by its people.</p>
<p>I’m a Noongar woman and a member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation. The songlines criss-crossing Noongar Country connect us to our ancestors and the powerful knowledges that make us who we are. </p>
<p>These cultural stories are impossible to adequately render in the written word alone. The tones of human voices singing and the thrum and cadence of Country are vital parts of a songline’s impact and perseverance. </p>
<p>Here today the Wirlomin community is sharing the text, song and location of a story nearly lost to us.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488872/original/file-20221009-44863-s9ti53.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Royal Hakea framing the Dwoort Baal Kaat rock formation at East Mount Barren, Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Cass Lynch (2022)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/google-earth-is-an-illusion-how-i-am-using-art-to-explore-the-problematic-nature-of-western-maps-and-the-myth-of-terra-nullius-187921">Google Earth is an illusion: how I am using art to explore the problematic nature of western maps and the myth of 'terra nullius'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2><em>Dwoort Baal Kaat</em></h2>
<p>The Songline is <a href="https://www.wirlomin.com.au/stories/books/dwoort-baal-kaat/"><em>Dwoort Baal Kaat</em></a>, a tale of hunting dogs who transform into seals, which was told by Noongar man George Nelly to American linguist Gerhardt Laves in 1931.</p>
<p>The story follows a Wirlomin ancestor who takes his dogs and his brother’s dogs out hunting for tucker. This hunter thinks he’ll have lots of luck with so much help, but every time the dogs take down a <em>kwoor</em> (wallaby), <em>kwoka</em> (quokka) or <em>wetj</em> (emu) by the time he catches up there is none left for him. He’s so hungry he sets fire to the dogs, who run away to escape him, fleeing down into the ocean. </p>
<p>The brother who lent his dogs is further down the coast, and he hears his dogs barking. He looks around then out toward the ocean and sees them swimming towards him. When the dogs emerge from the sea they have smooth glossy bodies, tiny ears and stumpy legs. He says “<em>Dwoort Baal Kaat</em>” (“Dog His Head”), then rolls the words together to say “<em>dwoortbaalkaat</em>”: “seal”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488869/original/file-20221009-44863-kpx0vx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fitzgerald River National Park is a Global Biodiversity Hotspot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flora photo by Gaylene Galardi (2022)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1931, Laves recorded south coast Noongar people speaking the Noongar language. He took these field notes back to the United States where they sat unpublished in his lifetime. </p>
<p>In 1985, the Laves estate returned the language documents to Australia. In 2002 the notes were given over to the descendants of those original Noongar speakers, the Wirlomin Noongar community. In 2006, the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation was formed to oversee the consolidation and enhancement of this and other archival material.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488871/original/file-20221009-59048-ed0ihw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dwoort Baal Kaat (2013, UWA Publishing)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Noongar author Kim Scott and others developed the Laves language material in collaborative family workshops, where family members gathered around with pens and butcher paper to activate the stories together. </p>
<p>In 2013, <em>Dwoort Baal Kaat</em> was published in English and Noongar. But this was just the first step. The book didn’t reveal any of the songline locations nor the music associated with them.</p>
<p>Now, on this September morning, Scott narrates the story in front of a multimedia presentation, the public debut of a digital songlines map, following the hunter and the dogs moving across the national park. </p>
<h2>Returned to Country</h2>
<p>In recent years, workshops have cross-referenced the Laves material with surviving songs and stories. </p>
<p>Up on stage, and as Wirlomin community members move up from the audience to join him, Scott reads the last line of Dwoort Baal Kaat:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yey, maam dwoort baalap boya nyininy kalyakoorl<br>
Now, man dog they rock sitting/being forever</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488863/original/file-20221009-84657-e4mr3r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dwoort Baal Kaat rock formation at East Mount Barren in Western Australia, the ‘giant’s head’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Gaylene Galardi (2022)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A photo of a rock formation at East Mount Barren appears on the screen. It is the head and shoulders of a giant, looking down at smaller stone figures: the brother who has turned his head to see his dogs, transformed into seals. </p>
<p>The Wirlomin mob on stage burst into the old song of the dogs leaping through the flames, igniting and fusing story, place, song and people in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time. </p>
<p>This region is infamous for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0725513616657886">massacre</a> and <a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/millionacresayeara">overclearing</a>. But cultural heritage has still been passed down via oral storytelling from the Elders. Now, the combination of the oral history and the return of Laves’ material means this song can once again be sung on Country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488867/original/file-20221009-44863-nlnn6y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wirlomin Noongar youngster Xavier helps with the smoking ceremony under the Dwoort Baal Kaat rock formation at East Mount Barren, Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Gaylene Galardi (2022)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the presentation, wildflower show guests and VIPs catch a bus with the Wirlomin mob to the carpark at East Mount Barren. The mob conduct a smoking ceremony and everyone stands in a circle of beach sand and smoke. </p>
<p>Looking up at the head and the seals, the Wirlomin hosts have led their audience to a place where culture, community and landscape intersect to offer a deeper sense of identity and belonging. </p>
<p>The singing of this songline today is just a glimpse of what the appropriate revitalisation and consolidation of Noongar culture can contribute to the wider communities of the southwest. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488868/original/file-20221009-77889-b0dd0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wirlomin Noongar community members Kim Scott, Gaye Roberts, and Cass Lynch under the Dwoort Baal Kaat rock formation at East Mount Barren, Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Gaylene Galardi (2022)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/singing-up-country-reawakening-the-black-duck-songline-across-300km-in-australias-southeast-167704">'Singing up Country': reawakening the Black Duck Songline, across 300km in Australia's southeast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191863/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cass Lynch is a postdoctoral research fellow at Curtin University. She is a Wirlomin Noongar woman and a member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation. </span></em></p>A 20-year cultural revitalisation effort has led to a songline being sung again on Country, to an audience of 140 people.Cass Lynch, Postdoctoral research fellow, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1909672022-09-21T00:57:49Z2022-09-21T00:57:49ZIn The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485440/original/file-20220919-14345-deaukn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5472%2C3637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dylan River/SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.</em></p>
<p>The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.</p>
<p>Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.</p>
<p>The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil. </p>
<p>It sets out to understand why the war was never declared, why the British didn’t follow their own laws, and the tactics and strategies Aboriginal people deployed defending their land and survival. </p>
<p>Perkins asks us to consider this difficult history, why there are only a handful of monuments to this warfare, and how it should be memorialised.</p>
<p>To ask these questions, Perkins deploys stunningly shot re-enactments, archives, artefacts, biography, expert evidence and uses place to great effect. </p>
<p>The series treats the viewer with the ability to critically reflect and ask why we still struggle to come to terms with this history.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5hmPmjUzPTA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The frontier wars</h2>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/what-are-the-frontier-wars/6ym0q6ic9">frontier wars</a>” were the conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people over access to land the British sought to occupy exclusively without any agreement, treaty or settlement. This series emphasises Aboriginal people resisted these wars in multiple ways, including warfare. Aboriginal people are still <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-13/gomeroi-fight-santos-narrabri-gas-project-climate-change/101428862">resisting these wars today</a>, in the courts. </p>
<p>The Australian Wars is an important contribution to truth-telling. Perkins provides a public reckoning with the means by which the British Empire – followed by independent democratic Australian governments – managed to grab the entirety of the land assets of the continent. </p>
<p>The dominant narrative of Australian settler colonialism was once sunny tales of possession, sustained by hard toil. Aboriginal acts of resistance, refusal and warfare were somehow miraculously omitted. </p>
<p>Only in recent decades has a more truthful account of the past emerged. New conversations and responsibility are slowly navigating the realities of the frontier, the shared history of “both sides” and how the past can be remembered. </p>
<p>Reconciliation Australia’s “Reconciliation Barometer” survey identified <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Australian_Reconciliation_Barometer_2020_-Full-Report_web.pdf">only 64%</a> of non-Indigenous Australians believed the frontier wars occurred. Some 30% of respondents were unsure and 6% rejected the factual accuracy of significant aspects of Australia’s colonial history. </p>
<p>The Australian War Memorial, once tasked with considering how to reflect frontier wars in Australia’s story, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/12/australian-war-memorial-ignores-frontier-war">rejected</a> any inclusion of the frontier wars in its exhibitions.</p>
<p>The documentary returns to the theme of rejecting this part of Australia’s history and asks: how can the frontier wars be remembered and memorialised? </p>
<p>Perkins reminds us that as many people – both black and white – died in the frontier wars as did in overseas conflicts featured at the Australian War Memorial. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialisms-final-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275">Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The moving frontier</h2>
<p>The Australian Wars draws together experts of Australian history, detailed studies of the expansive colonial records, the oral testimony of survivors’ descendants and new archaeological research. </p>
<p>With this trove of references, Perkins reveals the extent and breadth of violence, the global networks of military men and the strategies they honed on the frontier, and the technology that came to enable this. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we learn unfettered access to the land resource was the driving factor. The rule of law, claims of humanitarianism and Christianity were readily dispensed with in pursuit of land.</p>
<p>Perkins begins this story in the nation’s capital at the War Memorial. She then follows the moving frontier from the Sydney settlement to Tasmania and crossing Bass Strait. The story then moves with rapid pace from south to north and across the top end to the Kimberley, as settlers expanded across landscapes in always violent encounters. </p>
<p>She dispenses with the abiding myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/csNH4y-UQO0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In each location Perkins focuses on, we see different strategies deployed, tactical advantage held at times by Aboriginal people, the fear and terror struck in the settlers, and the military actors and strategy that underpinned the colonial settlements. </p>
<p>By the third episode, as the frontier heads north, settlers take lessons from Sydney, Tasmania and the New South Wales grasslands country. Moving with much greater speed aided now by horses, the settlers recruited skilled Native Mounted Police, used repeating rifles and developed systems and infrastructure to confine Aboriginal people to prisons. </p>
<p>But the Aboriginal peoples whose lands were being invaded were fast developing new tactics.</p>
<p>In Queensland alone it is estimated 72,000 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed.</p>
<h2>How do we remember?</h2>
<p>The series prompts us to ask: if not war, then what do we call the process by which the land, once all carefully delineated and peopled, is occupied by settlers? </p>
<p>How do we remember this and memorialise those who died? </p>
<p>Perkins tells us this violence was often very well documented. This violence was acted against people whose eyes you could see. Yet from Lake George, just outside the nation’s capital, to the Sydney wars and massacres, Tasmania, Queensland and to the Kimberley, sites of violence are overwhelmingly unmarked, unobserved, save for colonial names: “Blackfellows Bones”, “Victory Hill”. </p>
<p>The silence continues.</p>
<p>Leading Australian historian Henry Reynolds says the frontier wars are our most important war because of where they were fought and what they were about: the outcome determined the ownership and sovereign control of a whole continent. </p>
<p>As he comments in the series “what can be more important than that to us?”</p>
<p><em>The Australian Wars is on SBS and SBS on Demand from today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-new-museum-dedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299">Friday essay: it's time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In her new SBS documentary, Rachel Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years.Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology SydneyAnne Maree Payne, Lecturer, Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1888352022-08-23T02:13:01Z2022-08-23T02:13:01ZMysterious marks on boomerangs reveal a ‘forgotten’ use of this iconic Aboriginal multi-tool<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480279/original/file-20220822-53525-f39mn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C54%2C906%2C663&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yinika L. Perston</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alongside kangaroos and Akubra hats, boomerangs are one of the most iconic symbols of the Australian continent. They are also widely misrepresented.</p>
<p>Apart from hunting and fighting, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-022-09561-x">boomerangs have many functions</a> in the daily activities of Aboriginal communities, including digging, cutting, and making music.</p>
<p>These multiple functions are something Aboriginal people have always known, but the rest of the world has been none the wiser – until now.</p>
<p>In a recently published study <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0273118">in the journal PLOS One</a>, we have “rediscovered” a function of boomerangs in Australian Aboriginal culture – shaping stone tools.</p>
<h2>A child’s toy for a tourist</h2>
<p>Made from hardwoods, boomerangs are usually shown to return to your hand when thrown into the distance. This common depiction of the boomerang isn’t always true, however. </p>
<p>There is actually a variety of boomerang types, with the returning ones typically being children’s toys used for games and learning. (And, after European incursion, for selling to tourists.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-cultural-appropriation-what-not-to-do-86679">Indigenous cultural appropriation: what not to do</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/boomerangs/">Most boomerangs</a> are significantly larger than a child’s symmetrical, returning item – this increased size is required for their function as hunting and fighting weapons. But there’s an array of other functions, not all of them widely described in the literature.</p>
<p>We meshed Indigenous knowledge and experimental archaeology to produce scientific proof of a previously unrecognised (to science) use of these iconic objects: the manufacture of stone tools.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two brown, slightly curved 'sticks' on a white surface, one decorated with an Indigenous art style" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C9%2C2005%2C1002&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480228/original/file-20220822-3952-5k2t4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two traditional style boomerangs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Manufactured by Paul Craft. Photo by Eva F. Martellotta</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Nothing ‘primitive’ about working stone</h2>
<p>When we think about stone tools, we associate them with “primitive” technology. Nothing could be further from the truth. </p>
<p>Manufacturing stone tools requires an advanced understanding of fracture mechanics, extensive planning, and years of hands-on practice to produce even the most basic of tools. </p>
<p>Not unlike the contents of today’s kitchen drawers and garden sheds, human groups living in the deep past had access to an assortment of tools for all sorts of everyday activities. </p>
<p>The ability to carefully modify the edge of stone tools was crucial not only to produce the variety of utensils designed, but to resharpen them when they blunted. In modern terms, we can think about butcher knives and bread knives: their blades have different shapes – one straight, the other serrated – each used to effectively cut different materials.</p>
<p>Archaeologists call the careful shaping of a tool edge “retouching” – repeatedly touching (or working) the stone edge until it reaches the shape we want.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OTxaj8hzIU4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yinika L. Perston using a boomerang to shape a stone flake. Griffith University.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wood shapes stone</h2>
<p>For Australia, there is very little published evidence surrounding the retouching techniques used by various peoples across the continent. A <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-022-09561-x">deep dive into early European accounts</a> of Aboriginal technologies suggested wooden tools – especially boomerangs – were used to shape their stone technology.</p>
<p>If true, this would be a retouching approach thus far unknown elsewhere in the world.</p>
<p>To investigate this idea, we designed an experiment to discover if boomerangs really could shape stone tools. Most archaeologists would have thought wooden items would not be suitable for such a tough task. </p>
<p>Expert hands infused with Aboriginal knowledge manufactured four hardwood boomerangs to be used in the experiment. These weapons were then put to repeatedly striking stone tool edges. During this process, small, thin pieces of stone detached from the edge – perfectly shaping the stone tool.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person sitting on the ground working a stone tool with a boomerang, and close-up images of the marks the process created" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480167/original/file-20220821-27416-i4l0ig.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boomerangs and stone tools used during the retouching experiment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PLOS One</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The impact of the sharp stone edge against the boomerang’s wooden surface left microscopic marks on the latter. Such marks are not new in archaeology. They have previously been found on bone fragments recovered from prehistoric archaeological sites in Europe dating back as far as <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0076780">roughly 500,000 years ago</a>.</p>
<p>To document these marks, we used a powerful high-definition microscope to get a closer look. A great number of micro-flakes were found to have got stuck within the retouching marks – another trait in common with the bone tools from Europe.</p>
<p>These experimental results <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X21001796?via%3Dihub">allowed us to identify</a> distinctive marks on boomerangs curated by The Australian Museum in Sydney, some of them collected as far back as 1890.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-identified-39-000-indigenous-australian-objects-in-uk-museums-repatriation-is-one-option-but-takes-time-to-get-right-172302">We identified 39,000 Indigenous Australian objects in UK museums. Repatriation is one option, but takes time to get right</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Preserving a diverse and rich past</h2>
<p>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples across the country made and used hundreds of multifunctional utensils. Among these, the throwing stick known as “boomerang” sits high on the list.</p>
<p>Our work aims to join Indigenous knowledge and Western-based scientific investigation to explore Australia’s diverse and rich past. Sadly, with the passing of Elders, oral histories and ancient knowledge bases are being threatened. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Various grey and brown scratch marks in close up visible on a red surface, a set of six images" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/480168/original/file-20220821-14088-8gqndo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Microscopic fragments of stone embedded in the use marks produced on the boomerangs’ surface during the retouching experiment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PLOS One</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As communities join with archaeologists in examining artefacts, art, stories, songs, dances, languages, we can learn more about the past and the present. This process is empowering – discovering more about our past and our origins can only strengthen identity.</p>
<p><em>We are grateful to the Milan Dhiiyaan mob for sharing their Traditional knowledge and supplying bubarra/garrbaa/biyarr (boomerangs) representative of the cultural and spiritual beliefs of the Wailwaan and Yuin people.</em></p>
<p><em>The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of study co-authors <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jayne-wilkins-444361">Dr Jayne Wilkins</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/yinika-l-perston-1227725">Yinika L. Perston</a> – who is also seen in the video using the boomerang to retouch the stone tools.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/food-tools-and-medicine-5-native-plants-that-illuminate-deep-aboriginal-knowledge-145240">Food, tools and medicine: 5 native plants that illuminate deep Aboriginal knowledge</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188835/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eva Francesca Martellotta received funding from the 2021 EXARC Experimental Archaeology Award.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Langley is a Senior Research Fellow in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Craft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a new study, archaeologists have re-discovered the role boomerangs played in retouching stone tools.Eva Francesca Martellotta, PhD candidate in Archaeology and Human Evolution, Griffith UniversityMichelle Langley, Senior Research Fellow, Griffith UniversityPaul Craft, Owner Operator, Burragun Aboriginal Cultural Services, Indigenous KnowledgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812402022-05-04T20:07:12Z2022-05-04T20:07:12Z65,000 years of food scraps found at Kakadu tell a story of resilience amid changing climate, sea levels and vegetation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460525/original/file-20220429-26-gdije7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4608%2C3035&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">May Nango sharing stories about Mamukala wetlands with her grandson, in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Florin (courtesy of GAC)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For 65,000 years, Bininj – the local Kundjeihmi word for Aboriginal people – have returned to Madjedbebe rock shelter on Mirarr Country in the Kakadu region (in the Northern Territory). </p>
<p>Over this immense span of time, the environment around the rock shelter has changed dramatically. </p>
<p>Our paper, <a href="https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ezuT-4PS2FMJ">published last week</a> in Quaternary Science Reviews, uses ancient scraps of plant foods, once charred in the site’s fireplaces, to explore how Aboriginal communities camping at the site responded to these changes. </p>
<p>This cooking debris tells a story of resilience in the face of changing climate, sea levels and vegetation.</p>
<h2>A changing environment</h2>
<p>The 50-metre-long Madjedbebe rock shelter lies at the base of a huge sandstone outlier. The site has a dark, ashy floor from hundreds of past campfires and is littered with stone tools and grindstones. </p>
<p>The back wall is decorated with vibrant and colourful rock art. Some images – such as horsemen in broad-brimmed hats, ships, guns and decorated hands – are quite recent. Others are likely many thousands of years old. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460929/original/file-20220503-19-bm7449.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">May Nango sharing cultural knowledge about bim (rock art) with Djurrubu rangers Axel Nadjamerrek, Amroh Djandjomerr and Cuisak Nango at Madjedbebe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lynley Wallis (courtesy of GAC)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, the site is situated on the edge of the Jabiluka wetlands. But 65,000 years ago, when sea levels were much lower, it sat on the edge of a vast savanna plain joining Australia and New Guinea in the supercontintent of Sahul. </p>
<p>At this time, the world was experiencing a glacial period (referred to as the Marine Isotope Stage 4, or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379118305067">MIS 4</a>) . And while Kakadu would have been relatively well-watered <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-01379-8">compared with other parts of Australia</a>, the monsoon vine forest vegetation, common at other points in time, would have retreated.</p>
<p>This glacial period would eventually ease, followed by an interglacial period, and then another glacial period, the Last Glacial Maximum (MIS 2).</p>
<p>Cut to the Holocene (10,000 years ago) and the weather became much warmer and wetter. Monsoon vine forest, open forest and woodland vegetation proliferated, and sea levels rose rapidly. </p>
<p>By 7,000 years ago, Australia and New Guinea were entirely severed from each other and the sea approached Madjedbebe to a high stand of just 5km away. </p>
<p>What followed was the rapid transformation of the Kakadu region. First the sea receded slightly, the river systems near the site became estuaries, and mangroves etched the lowlands. </p>
<p>By 4,000 years ago, these were partially replaced by patches of freshwater wetland. And by 2,000 years ago, the iconic Kakadu wetlands of today were formed.</p>
<h2>Unlikely treasure</h2>
<p>Our research team, composed of archaeologists and Mirarr Traditional Owners, wanted to learn how people lived within this changing environment. </p>
<p>To do this, we sought an unlikely archaeological treasure: charcoal. It’s not something that comes to mind for the average camper, but when a fireplace is lit many of its components – such as twigs and leaves, or food thrown in – can later transform into charcoal.</p>
<p>Under the right conditions, these charred remains will survive long after campers have moved on. This happened many times in the past. Bininj living at Madjedbebe left a range of food scraps behind, including charred and fragmented fruit, nuts, palm stem, seeds, roots and tubers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461213/original/file-20220504-14-kb15tm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scanning electron microscope image of charred waterlily (Nymphaea sp.) stem found at Madjedbebe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Florin (courtesy of GAC)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using high-powered microscopes, we compared the anatomy of these charcoal pieces to plant foods still harvested from Mirarr Country today. By doing so, we learned about the foods past people ate, the places they gathered them from, and even the seasons in which they visited the site. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/burnt-ancient-nutshells-reveal-the-story-of-climate-change-at-kakadu-now-drier-than-ever-before-152760">Burnt ancient nutshells reveal the story of climate change at Kakadu — now drier than ever before</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460367/original/file-20220428-14-605qf8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Researchers worked hard to collect comparative reference material, including the fruit of andjalbbirdo (white bush plum, <em>Syzygium eucalyptoides</em> subsp. <em>bleeseri</em>) near Mudjinberri, on Mirarr Country, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elspeth Hayes (courtesy of GAC)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ancient anme</h2>
<p>From the earliest days of camping at Madjedbebe, people gathered and ate a broad range of anme (the Kundjeihmi word for “plant foods”). This included plants such as pandanus nuts and palm heart, which require tools, labour and detailed traditional knowledge to collect and make edible. </p>
<p>The tools used included edge-ground axes and grinding stones. These were all found in the oldest layers at the site – making them the oldest axes and some of the earliest grinding stones in the world.</p>
<p>Our evidence shows that during the two drier glacial phases (MIS 4 and 2), communities at Madjedbebe relied more on these harder-to-process foods. As the climate was drier, and food was probably more dispersed and less abundant, people would have had to make do with foods that took longer to process.</p>
<p>Highly prized anme such as karrbarda (long yam, <em>Dioscorea transvera</em>) and annganj/ankanj (waterlily seeds, <em>Nymphea</em> spp.) were significant elements of the diet at times when the monsoon vine forest and freshwater vegetation got closer to Madjedbebe – such as during wetland formation in the last 4,000 years and earlier wet phases. But they were also sought from more distant places during drier times.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460371/original/file-20220428-26-1mv68h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">May Nango following the vine of a karrbarda (long yam, <em>Dioscorea transversa</em>) to dig for its yam near Djurrubu, on Mirarr Country, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Florin (courtesy of GAC)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A change of seasons</h2>
<p>The biggest shift in the plant diet eaten at Madjedbebe occurred with the formation of freshwater wetlands. About 4,000 years ago, Bininj didn’t just start to include more freshwater plants in their diet, they also began to return to Madjedbebe during a different season.</p>
<p>Rather than coming to the rock shelter when local fruit trees such as andudjmi (green plum, <em>Buchanania obovata</em>) were fruiting, from Kurrung to Kunumeleng (September to December), they began visiting from Bangkerrang to Wurrkeng (March to August). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-seasonal-calendars-of-indigenous-australia-88471">Explainer: the seasonal 'calendars' of Indigenous Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is a time of year when resources found at the edge of the wetlands, now close to Madjedbebe, become available as floodwaters recede. With the emergence of patchy freshwater wetlands 4,000 years ago, communities changed their diet to make the best use of their environments. </p>
<p>Today, the wetlands are culturally and economically significant to the Mirarr and other Bininj. A range of seasonal animal and plant foods feature at dinner time, including magpie geese, turtles and waterlilies.</p>
<h2>The burning question</h2>
<p>It’s likely the First Australians not only responded to their environment but also shaped it. In the Kakadu region today, one of the main ways Bininj modify their landscape is through cultural burning. </p>
<p>Fire is a cultural tool with a multitude of functions – such as, hunting, generating vegetation growth, and cleaning up pathways and campsites. </p>
<p>One of its most important functions is the steady reduction of wet season biomass which, if left unchecked, becomes fuel for dangerous bushfires in Kurrung (September to October), at the end of the dry season.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460770/original/file-20220502-19-zkvimp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Djurrubu rangers Amroh Djandomerr and Deonus Djandomerr burning Mirarr Country, not far from the Madjedbebe site, in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lynley Wallis (courtesy of GAC)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our data demonstrates the use of a range of plant foods at Madjedbebe during Kurrung, throughout most of the site’s occupation, from 65,000 to 4,000 years ago. </p>
<p>This points to an ongoing practice of cultural burning, as it suggests communities managed fire-sensitive plant varieties, and reduced the chance of high-intensity bushfires by practicing low-intensity cultural burns before the hottest time of the year. </p>
<p>Today, the Mirarr still return to Madjedbebe. Their knowledge of local anme is passed down to new generations, who continue to shape this incredible cultural legacy. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgment: we would like to thank the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, the Mirrar, and especially our co-authors May Nango and Djaykuk Djandjomerr.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Florin received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and the Dan David Foundation for this research. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Fairbairn receives funding from Wenner-Gren and AINSE for this research</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Clarkson has received funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). </span></em></p>The Kakadu region has gone through immense transformation throughout history. How can archaeological food scraps tell us about how the First Australians adapted?Anna Florin, Research fellow, University of CambridgeAndrew Fairbairn, Professor of Archaeology, The University of QueenslandChris Clarkson, Professor in Archaeology, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1698272021-11-09T03:45:17Z2021-11-09T03:45:17ZWe revisited Parramatta’s archaeological past to reveal the deep-time history of the heart of Sydney<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427435/original/file-20211020-26249-x9jcxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C44%2C1309%2C823&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian paintings by J.W. Lewin, G.P. Harris, G.W. Evans and others, 1796-1809; State Library of NSW</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We know quite a lot about the past 200 years of history in Parramatta. Located in Sydney’s geographical centre, on the Parramatta River, it was the first township to be established outside Sydney Cove’s penal colony after the First Fleet arrived at Port Jackson in 1788.</p>
<p>Parramatta became the breadbasket of the early European colony, with land clearing and farming dispossessing the Darug people of the Cumberland Plain. This formed the focus of Aboriginal resistance, culminating in the 1797 Battle of Parramatta led by the great freedom fighter <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/pemulwuy">Pemulwuy</a>. </p>
<p>Parramatta’s European history is evident to those who wander through it today — with the remains of old buildings and signs of historical events on almost every corner. </p>
<h2>But what about before 1788?</h2>
<p>Parramatta has seen intensified development in recent years. High-rise buildings, light rail, road upgrades and landscaping have all impacted the remaining archaeological record of both its deep history and more recent colonial past. </p>
<p>New South Wales’s current state planning laws require each new development to have an archaeological investigation conducted before it proceeds. The aim is to identify archaeological evidence before development starts, and make sure it is managed appropriately. </p>
<p>Where sites are of high cultural or scientific significance, there is an emphasis on protection. Otherwise, the evidence is recorded and recovered before development proceeds. There have been more than 40 such studies in the past 15 or so years. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X21004375">article published today</a> we review these studies to provide a definitive understanding of their results, and reiterate the importance of Parramatta’s culturally significant deep-time history.</p>
<h2>14,000 years of Indigenous history</h2>
<p>Paramatta’s urban centre has grown upon a more than 3-metre-thick layer of sand. This sand began to be deposited by the Parramatta River 50,000-60,000 years ago as a result of massive floods and other extreme environmental conditions. It continued to be deposited sporadically until about 5,000 years ago. </p>
<p>It’s estimated about 800,000 tonnes of sand were deposited across two kilometres of the CBD, where it is still found today. This is all the more impressive when you consider the Parramatta River is fed by only a relatively small catchment upstream. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427362/original/file-20211019-17-17nkul6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Parramatta River has been subject to significant flooding in the past, with nearly a million tonnes of sand having been deposited below the CBD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laressa Barry</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sand was blown around during the last Ice Age (or the “Last Glacial Maximum”) between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago. Ultimately this reworking resulted in a sand sheet of about 70 hectares, or roughly 100 football fields. Unfortunately, our study found some 29% of these deposits have been destroyed through development over the past 15 years or so. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427369/original/file-20211019-15-1jypvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map showing the distribution of the sand body, and areas where sand deposits have been disturbed or removed (in red).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sand body has been in place since the First Nations people arrived on the continent 50,000 (or more) years ago. It retains an amazing archive of evidence that reveals their use of the landscape in deep time, and also records major climatic changes.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-did-aboriginal-people-first-arrive-in-australia-100830">When did Aboriginal people first arrive in Australia?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So far, our earliest evidence for Aboriginal people in the Sydney region is from along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River around <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2742">36,000 years ago</a>. </p>
<p>While the Parramatta sand sheet does provide glimmers of evidence for people using it back then, our analyses show they mostly visited this part of the Parramatta River after the Ice Age, which is supported by layers of artefacts in the area dated to this time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430605/original/file-20211107-10695-e75uo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excavation at the corner of Charles and George Street revealed Indigenous and historic remains survived the construction of a factory here in the 1950s. The site has now been destroyed by subterranean car parking for apartments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jo McDonald CHM 2005 report</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Moving with the tide</h2>
<p>Specifically, our paper explores three archaeological projects on the sand sheet at George Street, Hassall and Wigram Streets, and in the grounds of the Bayanami School. All of these sites show increased human use at a time of significant sea-level change. </p>
<p>About 14,000 years ago, the large ice sheets that characterised the glacial period began to melt rapidly. By 9,000 years ago, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379117305267">sea level</a> in Australia went from 125 metres below current levels to current levels.</p>
<p>This inundation of more than 2 million square kilometres drove people off the continental shelf all around Australia, including from the Sydney Basin. We find fewer sites in Sydney, or indeed the entire southeast corner of Australia, that date to before this sea-level rise.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-coastal-living-is-at-risk-from-sea-level-rise-but-its-happened-before-87686">Australia's coastal living is at risk from sea level rise, but it's happened before</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A previous <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03122417.2020.1823086?scroll=top&needAccess=true">study</a> of one of these key archaeological sites showed people were highly mobile as a result of this sea-level rise beginning 14,000 years ago.
One stone artefact dated to 14,000 years ago was sourced from the Megalong Valley, west of the Blue Mountains, 70km from Parramatta. Most earlier artefacts were sourced from the Hawkesbury River gravels, about 40km away. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427363/original/file-20211019-20-owvhoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An andalusite hornfels stone tool found on the north side of Parramatta River was dated to 14,000 years ago, more than 70km away from the CBD.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laressa Barry</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then, over the past 10,000 years, we see a massive increase in local site use and visitation. People used a different stone material for artefacts sourced widely from across the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X21004375">Cumberland Plain</a>
(western Sydney), reflecting greater local knowledge of stone resources, longer occupations and likely different trade and exchange networks. </p>
<p>A range of tools have also been found, including grindstones, axe-heads, backed artefacts (such as spear barbs), hearths with heat retainers and heat-treated raw materials — all of which indicate repeated residence over long periods. </p>
<p>Similarly, parts of the sand body with more artefacts also show evidence of camping sites which have retained their structure, demonstrating repeated use. One rare finding at the corner of Charles and George Streets was a pierced shark tooth that was probably used as a hair decoration. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430730/original/file-20211108-16752-1jrlie9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharks tooth ornament overlain on an image painted at Port Jackson of an Aboriginal man with fishing gear and fish teeth hair ornaments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Excerpt from a work by the Port Jackson Painter 1788-1792.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our analysis fills an important gap in the Indigenous past of one of the oldest townships in Australia. It reinforces the importance of undertaking heritage assessments in areas which are thought to already be “disturbed”. </p>
<p>It also provides a timely reminder these archaeological and cultural landscapes are finite, and are being lost at an unprecedented rate.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-last-ice-age-tells-us-why-we-need-to-care-about-a-2-change-in-temperature-126923">The last ice age tells us why we need to care about a 2℃ change in temperature</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan N Williams is an associate director and the National Technical Leader, Aboriginal heritage for EMM Consulting Pty Ltd, an international employee owned company specialising in environmental investigation and assessment</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo McDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A review of studies of Parramatta demonstrates an extensive deep-time archive of Indigenous activity extending over 14,000 years.Alan N Williams, Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW SydneyJo McDonald, Director, Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1633662021-07-29T00:47:57Z2021-07-29T00:47:57ZHistory made the world we live in: here’s what you’ll learn if you choose it in years 11 and 12<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413511/original/file-20210728-15-14j0qqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Temple of Edfu temple, Egypt.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/egypt-edfu-temple-aswan-passage-flanked-1286767600">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/senior-subjects-series-107516">series</a> providing school students with evidence-based advice for choosing subjects in their senior years.</em></p>
<p>History is for students curious about the world. It involves discovery, evaluation and imagination. </p>
<p>Around 40% of Australian senior students <a href="https://growingupinaustralia.gov.au/research-findings/annual-statistical-reports-2018/shaping-futures-school-subject-choice-and-enrolment-stem">chose to study</a> year 11 and 12 history in 2016. It was more popular than other humanities subjects such as geography and psychology and more girls chose to enrol (23%) than boys (18%).</p>
<p>Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering taking history in the senior years.</p>
<hr>
<p><iframe id="OAORi" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OAORi/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<hr>
<h2>What kinds of history subject are there?</h2>
<p>There are a variety of history subjects offered across Australia. For example, Victoria’s history subjects include <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/australianhistory/Pages/index.aspx">Australian history</a>, <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/history/Pages/index.aspx">20th century history</a>, <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/ancienthistory/Pages/index.aspx">ancient history</a> and <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/revolutions/Pages/index.aspx">revolutions</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Australian history</strong> is only available in Victoria. It investigates Aboriginal history and contact with colonialists, through to Federation and 20th century nation building. But the subject is losing popularity. The number of students who completed Australian history <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/making-it-sexy-teachers-hope-revamp-will-save-vce-australian-history-20210625-p5848d.html">almost halved</a> between 2014 and 2019, from 1,245 in 2014 to just 632 in 2019.</p>
<p>Teachers are aiming to make it more interesting and the structure of Australian <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/making-it-sexy-teachers-hope-revamp-will-save-vce-australian-history-20210625-p5848d.html">history will change next year</a>. Instead of learning the entire span of Australian history chronologically, Victorian students will conduct two semester-length investigations of themes including creating a nation, power and resistance, and war and upheaval.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Old map of Australia with Nouvelle Hollande written across the landmass." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413507/original/file-20210728-19-170wpyg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian history explores how we got to the present, from Aboriginal history to building the nation of Australia as we know it today. (Map of Australia published in Le Tour du Monde journal, Paris, 1860)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/australia-old-map-created-by-vuillemin-83042866">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Ancient history and revolutions</strong> explores societies such as Ancient Egypt, classical Rome and Greece with a focus on politics, military and social history. Revolutions includes an in-depth study of French, American and Russian revolutions.</p>
<p>Year 12 student Taylah told us she took ancient history because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I always had a fascination with the ancient Egyptian civilisation. I was especially interested in how civilisations have or haven’t learned from the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Modern history</strong> is available in <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/hsie/modern-history-2017">New South Wales</a> and <a href="https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/senior/senior-subjects/humanities-social-sciences/modern-history">Queensland</a>. This generally focuses on prominent topics and events from the French Revolution to the present. It covers major conflicts such as the world wars, the Cold War, the Vietnam war, international race relations and peace initiatives such as the beginnings of the United Nations.</p>
<p>Modern history was the most popular course in NSW in 2020, with similar numbers of boys and girls choosing it.</p>
<hr>
<p><iframe id="KXvzq" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/KXvzq/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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<p>Uniquely, NSW offers an <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/stage-6-learning-areas/hsie/history-extension-2017">extension history</a> course, which examines historical theory and the uses of history today. This course features a major research project that places students in the role of a historian, extending learning beyond content to communicate conceptual understandings. </p>
<h2>What will I be learning?</h2>
<p>History is for students interested in understanding the origins of the present and who like to see beyond simple, right-or-wrong answers.</p>
<p>Samantha who is studying teaching at university told us she chose history in years 11 and 12 because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It always fascinated me how history made the world we live in. I also thought it was interesting how in Australia we are so tied to the Western world, considering geographically we are quite removed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>History isn’t just about learning facts like names and dates. Senior history opens up knowledge to be questioned and explored in depth. For example, students can compare and contrast the revolutions of France and Russia and investigate whether and how the first world war was a precursor to the second.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Russian men marching in the street with banners." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413504/original/file-20210728-27-8ia7jj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students can compare the Russian the French revolutions. (Funeral of people killed by Czarist police on Feb 26, 1917 St. Petersburg, Russia)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/russian-revolution-funeral-182-persons-killed-248215225">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jack who has a bachelor in business studies told us he:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>enjoyed the combination of skills involved in studying history: writing, critical analysis and assessment of a range of different sources such as books, film and interviews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A major skill students learn is historical inquiry. This means finding out about the past by researching information from different perspectives, locations and times. Students synthesise information to form a historical evidence-based argument. </p>
<p>Let’s take <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dark-emu-debate-limits-representation-of-aboriginal-people-in-australia-163006">competing perspectives</a> on Aboriginal civilisation before the British arrived in Australia. For years, our <a href="https://theconversation.com/secondary-school-textbooks-teach-our-kids-the-myth-that-aboriginal-australians-were-nomadic-hunter-gatherers-133066">history textbooks told us</a> Aboriginal people were hunter gatherers moving from place to place. But more recent evidence claims many Aboriginal people cultivated the land for farming and aquaculture. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/secondary-school-textbooks-teach-our-kids-the-myth-that-aboriginal-australians-were-nomadic-hunter-gatherers-133066">Secondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/forensic-critique-of-bruce-pascoe-s-dark-emu-presents-a-different-view-20210719-p58ayt.html">still debate</a> about this in the media and in the classroom. Students could research the topic for themselves, read up on the different types of evidence and present their own conclusions.</p>
<p>History is best suited to students who enjoy research as well as reading and writing an argument in response to a question. Students need to be prepared for assigned reading and extended writing tasks.</p>
<h2>Where history takes you after school?</h2>
<p>Many careers are open to those who study history in senior school and later at university. Some careers that come directly from history study include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>historian, genealogist (family history researcher) or archaeologist</p></li>
<li><p>school teacher</p></li>
<li><p>museum guide, curator, or education officer (someone who develops education materials and experiences in museums and other public history sites) </p></li>
<li><p>research officer for a policy institution, a member of parliament or industry think tank</p></li>
<li><p>librarian or archivist (including in conservation and preservation).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Senior curator at a rail museum, Jennifer, told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>History was the only subject I liked. I chose modern and ancient history for senior because I hoped to have a career in history. I loved learning, analysing and evaluating, finding different sources and opinions, and deep discussions in class. Still choosing history today. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But you don’t just have to take history for a career in it. History also helps develop a range of employment-related skills. </p>
<p>Many employers appreciate skills such as being able to write and communicate effectively and persuasively, to think critically, to consider multiple perspectives and to logically consider consequences based on evidence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-the-government-listened-to-business-leaders-they-would-encourage-humanities-education-not-pull-funds-from-it-141121">If the government listened to business leaders, they would encourage humanities education, not pull funds from it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These skills are vital for careers such as in journalism, law, human resources, policy, diplomacy, and other jobs that require critical thinking and clear communication skills. </p>
<p>Rebecca, who studied modern and ancient history in school in Brisbane and then at university told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Studying social sciences gives a greater understanding and interest of the wider world […] I work in the UK public service now, and history provides you with excellent analytical, investigation and communication skills. Lots of people in my office have history degrees.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman taking books down from a shelf in the library." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/413510/original/file-20210728-13-1are2n3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You can use the research and analytical skills you learn in history in careers like archiving, being a librarian or a researcher in parliament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/african-american-female-librarian-dressed-casual-1096209932">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When selecting subjects for senior school, there is one important consideration that is often overlooked or set aside. The senior years are hectic. Students should choose at least some of their school subjects for themselves, because they like them and they think the subject is valuable for them. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/choosing-your-senior-school-subjects-doesnt-have-to-be-scary-here-are-6-things-to-keep-in-mind-160257">Choosing your senior school subjects doesn't have to be scary. Here are 6 things to keep in mind</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For many students, history is one of these subjects. By investigating the past, students discover insights about humans and the world they have inherited. These can help them find the paths they will take beyond school.</p>
<p><em>Read the other articles in our series on choosing senior subjects, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/senior-subjects-series-107516">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1417399025930698752"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History isn’t just learning facts. Students learn about the past by researching information and synthesising it to form an evidence-based argument. This skill is useful for a range of careers.Heather Sharp, Associate Professor, History and Curriculum Studies, University of NewcastleDebra Donnelly, Senior Lecturer, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1542632021-04-29T20:09:35Z2021-04-29T20:09:35ZWe mapped the ‘super-highways’ the First Australians used to cross the ancient land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397750/original/file-20210429-14-ymshqj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=646%2C0%2C2658%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided/The Conversation</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are many hypotheses about where the Indigenous ancestors first settled in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, but evidence is scarce. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-ago-at-lake-mungo-the-true-scale-of-aboriginal-australians-epic-story-was-revealed-98851">Few archaeological sites</a> date to these early times. Sea levels were much lower and Australia was connected to New Guinea and Tasmania in a land known as Sahul that was 30% bigger than Australia is today.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01106-8">latest research</a> advances our knowledge about the most likely routes those early Australians travelled as they peopled this giant continent.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-australians-grew-to-a-population-of-millions-much-more-than-previous-estimates-142371">The First Australians grew to a population of millions, much more than previous estimates</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We are beginning to get a picture not only of <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-incredible-journey-the-first-people-to-arrive-in-australia-came-in-large-numbers-and-on-purpose-114074">where those first people landed in Sahul</a>, but how they moved throughout the continent.</p>
<h2>Navigating the landscape</h2>
<p>Modelling human movement requires understanding how people navigate new terrain. Computers facilitate building models, but they are still far from easy. We reasoned we needed four pieces of information: (1) topography; (2) the visibility of tall landscape features; (3) the presence of freshwater; and (4) demographics of the travellers. </p>
<p>We think people navigated in new territories — much as people do today — by focusing on prominent land features protruding above the relative flatness of the Australian continent.</p>
<p>To map these features, we built the most complete digital elevation model for Sahul ever constructed, including areas now underwater.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map showing the landmass of Australia connected to New Guinea and Tasmania" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384382/original/file-20210216-16-1gyswkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the Sahul landmass would have looked more than 50,000 years ago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We used this digital elevation model to understand what was visible to early travellers. Essentially, from each point in the continent we asked “what can you see from here?” This moving window calculates the largest “viewshed” map ever created. When our virtual travellers move, they reorient based on visible terrain everywhere they go. The figure above shows the prominence of features across the continent as increasingly yellow shades against the blue background.</p>
<p>You can clearly make out features such as the the New Guinea Highlands, the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, the Great Dividing Range in the east, and the Hamersley Range in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.</p>
<p>But navigation using prominent landscape features isn’t enough to tell us where the most commonly travelled routes were. </p>
<p>For this we also need to take into account other factors, such as the physiological capacity of people travelling on foot, how difficult the terrain was to traverse, and the distribution of available freshwater sources in a largely arid continent.</p>
<h2>Billions and billions of routes</h2>
<p>We put all these different bits of information together into a mega-model, known as From Everywhere To Everywhere (<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440312001379" title="Geospatial modeling of pedestrian transportation networks: a case study from precolumbian Oaxaca, Mexico">FETE</a>), and created more than 125 billion possible pathways from everywhere on the continent to everywhere else. Each route represents the most efficient way to move from one location to another. This was the largest movement simulation of its kind ever attempted.</p>
<p>This gives us an idea of the relative ease or difficulty of walking across all of Sahul.</p>
<p>We cannot possibly examine every metre of the 125 billion pathways we created, so we needed a way to weight the relative importance of likely pathways. To do this, we compared all plausible pathways with the distribution of the oldest known archaeological sites in Sahul, providing weighted probabilities for each path.</p>
<p>This provided a scale going from the “most likely” to the “least likely” chosen paths.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2zLcYePhCW4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Super-highways of the initial peopling of Sahul, with known archaeological sites older than 35,000 years indicated by the grey dots. Megan Hotchkiss Davidson, Sandia National Laboratories (map) and Cian McCue, Moogie Down Productions (animation).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most likely pathways in the map above are what we are calling the “super-highways” of Indigenous movement. The next most likely paths are marked by dotted lines.</p>
<p>This allows us to discard many of the billions of paths as less likely to be chosen, helping us focus on those that were the most probable.</p>
<p>We now have a first glimpse into where Indigenous Australians likely travelled tens of thousands of years ago.</p>
<h2>Pathways well trodden</h2>
<p>These super-highways might have been more than just routes used for the initial peopling of Sahul.</p>
<p>Several of the super-highways our models identified echo well-documented Aboriginal trade routes criss-crossing the country. This includes Cape York to South Australia via Birdsville in the trade of <a href="http://entheology.com/plants/duboisia-hopwoodii-pituri-bush/">pituri</a> native tobacco, and the trade of Kimberley <a href="https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/marine/marine-parks-wa/fun-facts/402-baler-shell">baler shell</a> into central Australia.</p>
<p>There are also striking similarities between our map of super-highways and the most common trading and stock routes used by early Europeans. They followed already well-known routes established by Aboriginal peoples.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old map showing routes across Australia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384384/original/file-20210216-22-izoenn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early routes of European explorers in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Universal Publishers Pty Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These Aboriginal exchange routes and the relatively recent trade routes of early Europeans cannot be used directly to validate a map from tens of thousands of years ago. But there are strong similarities that might suggest an extraordinary persistence of routes across the entire time period of human occupation of Australia.</p>
<p>Our findings also point to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-first-discovery-of-its-kind-researchers-have-uncovered-an-ancient-aboriginal-archaeological-site-preserved-on-the-seabed-138108">now-submerged continental shelves</a> of Sahul as important conduits for human movement.</p>
<p>We infer that early populations spread across the broad plains on the western and eastern margins of the continent (now under water) and through the region that now forms the Gulf of Carpentaria, which connected Australia to New Guinea.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ancient-aboriginal-star-maps-have-shaped-australias-highway-network-55952">How ancient Aboriginal star maps have shaped Australia's highway network</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is worth noting these early people traversed and lived in all environments of Australia, ranging from the tropics to the arid zone. The ease of adaptation to all ecosystems is remarkable and one of the reasons for the success of the human species across the globe today.</p>
<p>Professor <a href="https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/lynette-russell">Lynette Russell</a> (Deputy Director of the ARC <a href="http://EpicAustralia.org.au">Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage</a> and Co-Chair of its Indigenous Advisory Committee), who was not involved directly in the study, noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[This] modelling establishes the infrastructure for detailed local and regional studies to engage respectfully with Indigenous knowledges, ethnographies, historical records, oral histories, and archives.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fundamental rules we described apply even to questions about how the first migrations of people out of Africa might have occurred, and how people ultimately proceeded to inhabit the rest of the planet. </p>
<p>This work might even have implications for humanity’s future, if climate scenarios require large-scale migrations. Learning from those who have been present in Sahul from more than 60,000 years ago could help us anticipate migration patterns in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154263/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan N Williams is an associate director for EMM Consulting Pty Ltd, an Australian employee-owned environmental consulting firm. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frédérik Saltré receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Ulm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Devin White and Stefani Crabtree do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We now have a glimpse into where early Indigenous Australians likely travelled all those tens of thousands of years ago.Stefani Crabtree, Assistant Professor for Social-Environmental Modeling @ Utah State University and Associate Investigator ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage and ASU-SFI Biosocial Complex Systems Fellow, Santa Fe InstituteAlan N Williams, Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW SydneyCorey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversityDevin White, R&D Manager for Autonomous Sensing & Perception (Sandia National Laboratories) and Research Assistant Professor of Anthropology (UTK), University of TennesseeFrédérik Saltré, Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversitySean Ulm, Deputy Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541812021-02-21T19:05:59Z2021-02-21T19:05:59ZThis 17,500-year-old kangaroo in the Kimberley is Australia’s oldest Aboriginal rock painting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384954/original/file-20210218-21-jge2dg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C72%2C6016%2C3935&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Damien Finch</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Western Australia’s northeast Kimberley region, on Balanggarra Country, a two-metre-long painting of a kangaroo spans the sloping ceiling of a rock shelter above the Drysdale River.</p>
<p>In a paper published <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01041-0">today</a> in Nature Human Behaviour, we date the artwork as being between 17,500 and 17,100 years old — making it Australia’s oldest known in-situ rock painting.</p>
<p>We used a pioneering radiocarbon dating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2019.02.007">technique</a> on 27 mud wasp nests underlying and overlying 16 different paintings from 8 rock shelters. We found paintings of this style were produced between 17,000 and 13,000 years ago.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-last-the-arts-revolution-archibald-winners-flag-the-end-of-white-male-dominance-146832">At last, the arts Revolution — Archibald winners flag the end of white male dominance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Our work is part of Australia’s largest rock art dating <a href="https://rockartaustralia.org.au/what-we-do/our-approach/rock-art-dating/">initiative</a>. The project is based in the Kimberley, one of the world’s premier rock art regions. Here, rock shelters have preserved galleries of paintings, often with generations of younger artwork painted over older work.</p>
<p>By studying the stylistic features of the paintings and the order in which they were painted when they overlap, a <a href="https://rockartaustralia.org.au/rock-art/rock-art-sequence/">stylistic sequence</a> has been developed by earlier researchers based on observations at thousands of Kimberley rock art sites. </p>
<p>They identified five main stylistic periods, of which the most recent is the familiar <a href="https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/what-are-wandjinas">Wanjina</a> period.</p>
<h2>Styles in rock art</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://rockartaustralia.org.au/rock-art/rock-art-sequence/naturalistic/">oldest style</a>, which includes the kangaroo painting we recently dated, often features life-sized animals in outline form, infilled with irregular dashes. Paintings in this style are said to belong to the “Naturalistic” stylistic period.</p>
<p>The ochre used is an iron oxide in a red-mulberry colour. Unfortunately, no current <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jasc.2001.0711">scientific dating method</a> can determine when this paint was applied to the rock surface. </p>
<p>A different approach is to date fossilised insect nests or mineral accretions on the rock surfaces that happen to be overlying or underlying rock art pigment. These dates provide a maximum (underlying) or minimum (overlying) age range for the painting. </p>
<p>Our dating suggests the main period for Naturalistic paintings in the Kimberley spanned from at least 17,000 to 13,000 years ago.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OpizrMPHfhM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The oldest known Australian rock painting</h2>
<p>Very rarely, we’ll find mud wasp nests both overlying and underlying a single painting. This was the case with the painting of the kangaroo, made on the low ceiling of a well-protected Drysdale River rock shelter.</p>
<p>We were able to date three wasp nests underlying the painting and three nests built on top of it. With these ages, we determined confidently the painting is between 17,500 and 17,100 years old; most likely close to 17,300 years old.</p>
<p>Our quantitative ages support the proposed stylistic sequence that suggests the oldest Naturalistic style was followed by the Gwion style. This style featured paintings of decorated human figures, often with headdresses and holding boomerangs.</p>
<h2>From animals and plants to people</h2>
<p>Research we <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/6/eaay3922">published last year</a> shows Gwion paintings flourished about 12,000 years ago — some 1,000-5,000 years after the Naturalistic period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382864/original/file-20210207-24-106nv5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This map of the Kimberley region in Western Australia shows the coastline at three distinct points in time: today, 12,000 years ago (the Gwion period) and 17,300 years ago (the earlier end of the known Naturalistic period).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Illustration by Pauline Heaney, Damien Finch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With these dates, we can also partially reconstruct the environment in which the artists lived 600 generations ago. For example, much of the Naturalistic period coincided with the end of the last ice age when the environment was cooler and drier than now. </p>
<p>During the Naturalistic period, 17,000 years ago, sea levels were a staggering 106 metres below today’s and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.11.030">Kimberley coastline</a> was about 300 kilometres further away, more than half the distance to Timor. </p>
<p>Aboriginal artists at this time often chose to depict kangaroos, fish, birds, reptiles, echidnas and plants (particularly yams). As the climate warmed, ice caps melted, the monsoon was re-established, rainfall increased and sea levels rose, sometimes rapidly. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382862/original/file-20210207-23-k84e6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Traditional Owner Ian Waina inspecting a painting of a kangaroo that we now know is more than 12,700 years old, based on the age of overlying mud wasp nests. INSET: an artist’s recreation of the in-situ rock painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Peter Veth / Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation. Illustration by Pauline Heaney.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the Gwion period around 12,000 years ago, sea levels had risen to 55m below today’s. This would undoubtedly have prompted long-term adjustment to territories and social relations. </p>
<p>This is when Aboriginal painters depicted highly decorated human figures, bearing a striking resemblance to early 20th-century photographs of <a href="http://davidmwelch.com.au/pdf%20Files/Welch_Bradshaw_Kimberley.PDF">Aboriginal ceremonial dress</a>. While plants and animals were still painted, human figures were clearly the most popular subject.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-things-will-outlast-us-how-the-indigenous-concept-of-deep-time-helps-us-understand-environmental-destruction-132201">'All things will outlast us': how the Indigenous concept of deep time helps us understand environmental destruction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reaching into the past</h2>
<p>While we now have age estimates for more paintings than ever before, more work is continuing to find out, more accurately, when each art period began and ended.</p>
<p>For example, one minimum age on a Gwion painting suggests it may be more than 16,000 years old. If so, Gwion art would have overlapped with the Naturalistic period but further dates are required to be more certain.</p>
<p>Moreover, it’s highly unlikely the oldest known Naturalistic painting we dated is the oldest surviving one. Future research will almost certainly locate even older works. </p>
<p>For now, however, the 17,300-year-old kangaroo is a sight to marvel at.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgements: we would like to thank the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation, the Australian National Science and Technology Organisation, Rock Art Australia and Dunkeld Pastoral Co for their collaboration on this work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damien Finch receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Rock Art Australia, an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering . </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Gleadow receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Rock Art Australia, and AuScope Ltd under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. He is a Director of Rock Art Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Hergt receives funding from The Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sven Ouzman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.</span></em></p>Some 17,000 years ago, Aboriginal artists often depicted kangaroos, fish, birds, reptiles, echidnas and plants — especially yams.Damien Finch, Postdoctoral Researcher, The University of MelbourneAndrew Gleadow, Emeritus Professor, The University of MelbourneJanet Hergt, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, The University of MelbourneSven Ouzman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1451652021-02-09T01:58:16Z2021-02-09T01:58:16ZTruth telling and giving back: how settler colonials are coming to terms with painful family histories<p>There is a quiet movement among settler colonials in Australia and the US to critically examine their family histories as a way of re-examining the impact of centuries of dispossession and slavery of Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>Critical family histories enable a shift from celebratory tropes of benign settlement to deep considerations of legitimacy. The myth of great white men and women, bravely opening new worlds and taming the wilderness, including the “savage” Indigenes, is now being challenged by a search for the truth. </p>
<p>As Diane Kenaston, an American pastor and genealogist, explains in her book <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/16TtyJTFPsPi7HWJkc4orLrC9SdpXOdGle0mfxZIvWvI/edit#">Genealogy and Anti-Racism: A Resource for White People</a>, genealogy has long been entwined with white supremacy. And family history research has been the preserve of white privilege.</p>
<p>But, she writes, critical family history can also “change the narratives within our own families”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our ancestors were works in progress, just as we are. They, like us, sometimes participated in oppressive systems and sometimes resisted them. [We need to] engage this complex legacy. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-great-australian-silence-50-years-on-100737">Friday essay: the 'great Australian silence' 50 years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/">Education activist Christine Sleeter</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2005615X.2015.1048607">first adopted</a> the use of critical family history in this way. While researching teaching methods for the multicultural classroom, she discovered that intersections of race, class, culture, gender and other forms of difference and power had shaped her own <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131940801944587">family history</a>.</p>
<p>In her research, Sleeter found </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a history and legacy of not only European American immigration, but also of Appalachia, of slave ownership, of African Americans passing as white and leaving family behind, and of Jim Crow. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her awareness led to a sense of responsibility and debt. In 2017, she <a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/returning-what-was-stolen">returned to the Ute people US$250,000</a>, which she had inherited from the sale of a homestead on land stolen from the Ute people in Colorado in 1881.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381005/original/file-20210128-17-ieiqs5.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sleeter (second from right) returning money to the Ute tribe in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Founding fathers as ancestors</h2>
<p>In Australia, David Denborough, a writer and academic, thought there would be nothing of interest in the stories of his ancestors. </p>
<p>Working alongside Aboriginal people, documenting their stories of dispossession and survival, he was challenged by <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/national-sorry-day.pdf">Jane Lester</a>, a Yangkunytjatjara/Antikirinya woman, to find his ancestors. </p>
<p>Now, 20 years later, <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/product/unsettling-australian-histories/">he is publishing a book</a> of letters to his great-great-grandfather, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffith-sir-samuel-walker-445">Sir Samuel Walker Griffith</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382147/original/file-20210203-19-1scaw7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir Samuel Walker Griffith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Queensland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Griffith, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/the-life-and-times-of-samuel-griffith/12589996">a celebrated founding father of Australia</a>, was premier of Queensland during the “<a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/conspiracy-of-silence-timothy-bottoms/book/9781743313824.html">killing times</a>” and later became the country’s first chief justice. </p>
<p>The relationships between Denborough’s ancestors and Aboriginal people were marked by colonisation, racism and often inhumane treatment. While Griffith wrote <em><a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/cook/legend-and-legacy/challenging-terra-nullius">terra nullius</a></em> into the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2020/August/Samuel_Griffith">Australian constitution</a>, another ancestor, Charles Cummins Stone Anning, was <a href="https://www.welcometocountry.org/anning-familys-murderous-frontier-history-exposed/">responsible for atrocities against Aboriginal people in Queensland</a>.</p>
<p>Denborough is determined to tell the truth as part of his healing journey and his close relationship with Aboriginal people. He has <a href="https://dulwichcentre.com.au/product/unsettling-australian-histories/">realised</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there is no sense in moral superiority towards my ancestry because colonial violence in this country has not ended; no place for hopelessness because First Nations resistance has never wavered; and, no time for paralysing shame because invitations to partnerships are still being offered by Aboriginal people … and [there is] so much to be done.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>White deaths at black hands, black deaths at white hands</h2>
<p>James Brown was 16 years old and shepherding alone on a remote sheep run near present-day Quorn, South Australia, in 1852. He was found tragically clubbed to death and mutilated in unknown circumstances. </p>
<p>An unwritten rule of the frontier was that attacks on white people, no matter the circumstances, were followed by vigilante violence. Men, women and children were often <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">massacred</a> in retribution.</p>
<p>Seventeen men, including Brown’s brothers and two Aboriginal trackers, rode out. They reported killing four Aboriginal men. Tellingly, though, two of the 15 men would not swear this on the Bible. </p>
<p>Mike Brown, a descendent of this family who took over land in the Flinders Ranges area, knew very little of the Aboriginal history of Australia. After hearing <a href="https://www.aboriginalvictoria.vic.gov.au/reg-blow">Reg Blow, a Gureng Gureng elder</a>, speak about the true history of the criminal takeover of Aboriginal lands, Brown was inspired to research his own family history. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-masters-of-the-future-or-heirs-of-the-past-mining-history-and-indigenous-ownership-153879">Friday essay: masters of the future or heirs of the past? Mining, history and Indigenous ownership</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Wanting to investigate the Aboriginal stories of the 1852 massacre, he found a lifetime friend in Ken McKenzie, a prominent Kuyani-Adnyamathana elder, from whom he received “the dignity of forgiveness”. </p>
<p>Brown is now working with others on a documentary, <a href="https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/beyond-sorry-wt/">Beyond Sorry</a>, to reveal the full story of the massacre. He told me,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s how we discover who we really are as a people and our relationship to this land […] we need to be released from the illusion we live under that affects our attitudes to ‘others’, to be free.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In NSW, playwright Clare Britton was also shocked to discover the story of brutally murdered relatives in her <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5185dd7ee4b09995885e5772/t/5b0223fb1ae6cf341ddf978b/1526866948953/Posts+essay.pdf">family history</a>. </p>
<p>The pregnant Elizabeth O'Brien and her infant son Poggy were clubbed to death by the Aboriginal “bushrangers” <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/bushrangers-new-south-wales/governor-brothers">Jimmy and Joe Governor</a> in 1900. With the help of descendents of the Governor family and Aboriginal elders, Britton’s theatre company produced a play based on this story, <a href="http://www.mydarlingpatricia.com/postsinthepaddock">Posts in a Paddock</a>. The title refers to all that remained of the O'Brien household when she visited, a stark memorial to the family tragedy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382151/original/file-20210203-15-u9agud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hunt for the Governor bushrangers in 1900: a posse of mounted police, Aboriginal trackers and district volunteers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Britton explained that elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor introduced the concept of <em>dadirri</em> “deep listening” to the ensemble. They sat with their Aboriginal collaborators and each other’s families. And listened to each other. She said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>so many Indigenous people were killed, separated from their families and taken away from their homes and you can’t read about that in the same way because those stories were not recorded. [These murders] were thoroughly documented because my family and the other victims were white. </p>
<p>The understandings I formed then have changed me. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Giving back</h2>
<p>In the US, artist <a href="http://annemavor.com/">Anne Mavor</a> was inspired to learn about her ancestors after attending a public meeting where a local Indigenous person challenged the white audience to critically examine their histories. </p>
<p>Mavor put together an exhibition, <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/03/26/i-am-my-white-ancestors-claims-legacy-of-oppression/">I Am My White Ancestors: Claiming the Legacy of Oppression</a>, comprised of 12 pieces of art depicting her ancestors. They include royal figures, a slave owner, warriors, farmers and a pilgrim — all with Mavor’s face. The life-size portraits make whiteness visible and accountable. </p>
<p>Mavor told me she seeks </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to inspire white viewers … to claim both positive and negative aspects of their own family histories to contribute to the end of racism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She says white people <a href="https://www.christinesleeter.org/legacy-of-oppression">don’t get a pass</a> by ignoring the oppression of their ancestors. They need to ask: What is the legacy of this oppression and how does this affect me now? </p>
<p>This is just one of many projects designed to give back to Indigenous peoples. In Seattle, residents can pay rent to the city’s first inhabitants, <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2019/09/10/seattle-rent-native-tribe-recognition-reparations/">the Duwamish people</a>, who have long been rejected by the US government for federal recognition as a Native American tribe. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explorer-navigator-coloniser-revisit-captain-cooks-legacy-with-the-click-of-a-mouse-137390">Explorer, navigator, coloniser: revisit Captain Cook’s legacy with the click of a mouse</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites has developed the “Real Rent” program as a means of restitution, but also to educate the broader public about the plight of the Duwamish.</p>
<p>Another project, <a href="https://www.reconciliationrising.org/">Reconciliation Rising</a>, coordinated by <a href="https://matc.unl.edu/education/2018MATCSpeakerFiles/Kevin_Abourezk.php">Lakota journalist Kevin Abourezk</a> and <a href="https://history.unl.edu/margaret-jacobs">academic Margaret Jacobs</a>, showcases the work of those engaged in confronting painful and traumatic histories as a way towards reconciliation. </p>
<p>Their website lists examples of <a href="https://omaha.com/livewellnebraska/hansen-after-more-than-years-the-mayo-clinic-finally-apologizes/article_9adcf8e0-334b-5c6a-92ca-2c40d9602372.html">apologies</a>, <a href="https://www.focusonvictoria.ca/focus-magazine-septoct-2018/marion-cummings-indomitable-spirit-r2/">notable activists</a> and many instances of the <a href="https://www.reconciliationrising.org/links-1">return of ancestral lands</a>. </p>
<p>Land hand-backs are happening in Australia, too. Tom and Jane Teniswood have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-21/tasmanian-private-land-handed-back-to-aboriginal-community/10825984">returned half of their 220-acre property</a> in Tasmania to the local Aboriginal community. The Teniswoods advocate individual action over government reconciliation efforts, saying</p>
<blockquote>
<p>reconciliation is great but it is so much talk, so many documents and so little action. This is just a symbol of action.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is easy to agree with them. While government leadership in truth-telling is vital, we will see more of these acts of profound generosity and genuine reconciliation from settler colonials. </p>
<h2>In the spirit of Makaratta</h2>
<p>Settler colonials are beginning to understand the true impacts of the criminal takeover of Indigenous lands. They are seeking to right the balance and achieve a spiritual resolution.</p>
<p>This is the Aboriginal way of approaching history, in order to move forward after a conflict. A common process across the continent, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-10/makarrata-explainer-yolngu-word-more-than-synonym-for-treaty/8790452">it is called Makaratta by the yolngu people of Arnhemland</a>. In the same way, a critical approach to family histories involves a great deal of communication between settler colonials and Indigenous peoples. It enables the forging of new relationships.</p>
<p>It is histories such as these that will change people through deep understanding and empathy. They also present an opportunity to truly and indelibly change the nature of our society and leave a meaningful legacy for our children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145165/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Grieve Williams receives funding from the ARC. </span></em></p>Settler colonials are beginning to understand the true impacts of the criminal takeover of Indigenous lands. They are seeking to right the balance and achieve a spiritual resolution.Victoria Grieves Williams, Adjunct Professor, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1517482020-12-16T05:48:18Z2020-12-16T05:48:18ZReview: Fiona Foley’s Biting the Clouds is a visceral look at opium and control on the colonial frontier<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375251/original/file-20201215-13-6u9cg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2105%2C1014&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Opiate of Opulence, from the series Horror Has A Face, Fiona Foley, 2017</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Andrew Baker Art Dealer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Biting the Clouds: a Badtjala perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act by Fiona Foley, UQP</em></p>
<p>In late 1897, the colonial Queensland parliament introduced the oddly named <a href="https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-54.html">the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act</a>, joining colonial panic about Aboriginal people’s opium use with a new regime of protective governance. </p>
<p>Concern about this — especially the use of <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p71311/pdf/article024.pdf">charcoal opium</a>, the toxic ash left in pipes — had been growing since the 1870s, and there was evidence opium was being used as payment for Aboriginal labour and sex. </p>
<p>Penalties for opium supply to Aboriginal people were included in the new legislation, but the Act was mainly designed as a program of protection, structured around establishing a series of large reserves to which Aboriginal people were forcibly removed. </p>
<p>Aboriginal people throughout the colony were placed under an intrusive and destructive regime. Few escaped the tendrils of the legislation into their lives during the 20th century. It affected every Aboriginal family in the state. </p>
<p>Memories of being “Under the Act” (the title which Willie Thaiday gave to his <a href="https://nqheritage.jcu.edu.au/774/">powerful memoir</a> published in 1981) still remain strong.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/enforcing-assimilation-dismantling-aboriginal-families-a-history-of-police-violence-in-australia-140637">Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Making the hidden visible</h2>
<p>Badtjala woman and visual artist Fiona Foley has re-searched and re-presented the 1897 Act through her art and, more recently, in her doctoral studies. </p>
<p>This has involved creating a series of public artworks that engage with the Act and what she describes as a “hidden history” of the use of opium as payment to Aboriginal people. </p>
<p>One such a work is <a href="https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/plan-my-visit/spaces-visit/black-opium-fiona-foley">Black Opium</a> (2006): 777 cast aluminium poppy heads arranged in an infinity shape hang from the ceiling at the State Library of Queensland. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375252/original/file-20201215-21-j4siba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Opium, commissioned by the State Library of Queensland, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UQP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Foley describes the work’s effect as “stunning and sombre”. </p>
<p>Located in a void in the building and looking down over four stories, she says the piece references a “collective amnesia” about opium in colonial Queensland. </p>
<p>Foley spells out her long engagement with colonial and Badtjala history and The 1897 Act in her new book, <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/biting-the-clouds">Biting the Clouds</a>, a euphemism for opium use. </p>
<p>Based on Foley’s doctoral thesis, Biting the Clouds is designed to accompany the short films, public art installations and other creative works she has produced over her career. Taken together, they provide powerful interpretations and accounts of a history so violent, so elusive, and so destructive it takes a mammoth effort to fathom. </p>
<p>This is Foley’s gift: she refuses to turn away from this difficult-to-detect and hard-to-face past. </p>
<h2>Grasping for truth</h2>
<p>In her photographic series <a href="https://www.art-almanac.com.au/fiona-foley-horror-face/">Horror Has A Face</a> (2017), Foley creates vividly and opulently imagined scenes of opium dens. </p>
<p>“As I am not bound by accuracy”, she writes, “here I have allowed this scene to be as rich and flamboyant as I dare imagine”. These creatively reenacted scenes open out onto new understandings of Aboriginal people on Queensland’s colonial frontiers. </p>
<p>In other images in the series, she uses models to re-photograph notorious historical figures in Queensland, such as erstwhile politician and protector <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/meston-archibald-4191">Archibald Meston</a> and Anglican missionary <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gribble-ernest-richard-bulmer-ernie-10367">Ernest Gribble</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375253/original/file-20201215-19-1jl1z8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Protector, from the series Horror Has a Face, Fiona Foley, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Andrew Baker Art Dealer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In these images, Foley prompts the viewer to see beneath the casual respectability presented by their faces to the world, and to bring to mind the part the archetypal “protector” and “missionary” played in determining Aboriginal people’s lives and futures. </p>
<h2>History’s hurts</h2>
<p>One of Foley’s themes throughout the book is the ways in which history hurts — and not only history in the sense of what has happened in the past. Rather, history as the accumulated and authorised body of knowledge: knowledge subsequently produced and consumed as a truthful account of what happened. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-aboriginal-artists-personal-stories-matter-113029">For Aboriginal artists, personal stories matter</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For Foley — as for others — the silences, obfuscations, mistakes, denials and rationalisations of history have the power to produce a new set of harms, experienced by later generations as a form of re-traumatisation. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375255/original/file-20201215-23-1s0i6ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Biting the Clouds is an eloquent example of the ways in which the visual arts — through a deep and visceral engagement with memory, experience, emotion and story — can mediate and remediate the force of inherited histories on contemporary experience. </p>
<p>In this regard, the book’s title takes on another meaning: an evocative metaphor for the experience of trying to reach back into the past and grasp its truths. Like clouds, the complex reality which one tries to grab dissipates or shifts shape the closer one gets to it. </p>
<p>That is the quality of the frontier. </p>
<p>The historian Tom Griffiths once <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/art-time-travel-0">remarked</a>: “When, as historians, we get close to the ‘frontier’ — that dangerous site of cultural encounter — we often find it evaporating either into intimacy or distance.”</p>
<h2>Facing horrors</h2>
<p>This work of approaching the frontier is not the preserve of professional historians alone. We all must turn to face the colonial past. When we do, the challenge is to see it with the clear-eyed and steely gaze it requires. </p>
<p>That is what Foley offers us in this book: a candid account of her own monumental effort to look and to see. </p>
<p>And by giving colonial horror a face that appears at once familiar and strange, she challenges us all to do the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151748/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Nugent does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Badtjala woman and visual artist Fiona Foley looks back at Australian history, and her own art making, in this powerful new book.Maria Nugent, Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1495442020-11-11T00:28:41Z2020-11-11T00:28:41ZThe Black Lives Matter movement has provoked a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told<p>When the Black Lives Matter movement re-emerged powerfully this year, it encouraged a cultural reckoning about how Black stories are told, <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2020/07/18/remaking-our-newsrooms/159499440010130">reaching deep into Australia’s mainstream media</a>. Once more, <a href="https://www.mediadiversityaustralia.org/research/">research showed</a> just how unselfconsciously white Australian media is.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/products/does-the-media-fail-aboriginal-political-aspirations-45-years-of-news-media-reporting-of-key-political-moments#productid">study</a> of 45 years of mainstream print news reportage of Aboriginal self-determination found the media overwhelming reports from and assumes a white standpoint. </p>
<p>Published in a book titled <a href="https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/products/does-the-media-fail-aboriginal-political-aspirations-45-years-of-news-media-reporting-of-key-political-moments#productid">Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments</a>, our findings signal that the media’s problems go deeper than representation. </p>
<p>A podcast series based on the book has now been released. In this five-part series, titled <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/black-stories-matter/id1529997578">Black Stories Matter</a>, we bring together media researchers, historians, policy makers, a former Aboriginal Affairs minister and members of the growing cohort of Aboriginal journalists, to discuss how we can disrupt the negative patterns of the past. </p>
<iframe src="https://webplayer.whooshkaa.com/episode/755705?theme=light&visual=true&enable-volume=true&iframe-height=190" height="190" width="100%" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<p>What emerges from our research — and from the podcast — is the degree to which a white lens distorts Black stories. Aboriginal political aspirations for treaties, self-determination and agreement-making have been met with procrastination and denial from successive Australian governments — and, as we discovered, Australian media. </p>
<p>This matters because reporting shapes the way Aboriginal political worlds are understood and talked about in public discourse.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialisms-final-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275">Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji</a>
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<h2>A media failure to take Aboriginal efforts seriously</h2>
<p>Our study systematically examined the history of media coverage of moments where Aboriginal people have claimed their rights. It comes at a time when the Victorian government is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/03/victorian-government-and-first-peoples-assembly-to-begin-momentous-treaty-negotiations">negotiating a treaty</a>, and when the NSW government, among others, has adopted policies in support of self-determination and agreement-making.</p>
<p>A majority Aboriginal research team undertook 11 case studies. We examined 90 mainstream news print stories, and compared them to Aboriginal community media coverage.</p>
<p>We began in Darwin, Larrakia country, in 1972, just prior to the victory of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party in the federal election. The Larrakia nation’s attempt to deliver a petition to visiting Princess Margaret was symbolic of the growing confidence of the national land rights movement. Yet, in the reporting surrounding this, activism was described as failing and change was considered unlikely, unpopular and unnecessary.</p>
<p>Fast forward to a crucial event in 2017, when more than 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives came together in the red centre of the country. After decades of consultation, inquiries, reports and recommendations, the Aboriginal polity arrived at a cohesive position and communicated the Uluru Statement from the Heart. </p>
<p>Initially, the reporting appeared sympathetic. But it dissolved once more into constraining narratives after the immediate rejection by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and the systematic reassertion by most media that reform was doable only if it did not challenge the subordination of Aboriginal sovereignty.</p>
<p>Over 45 years of Aboriginal people explaining and agitating with patience and persistence, the media almost always failed to take Aboriginal efforts seriously.</p>
<p>We found a failure to understand key concepts, such as the distinction between treaty, agreement-making, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-10/makarrata-explainer-yolngu-word-more-than-synonym-for-treaty/8790452"><em>Makarrata</em></a> and compact. If it was not for the Aboriginal media’s effective communication of Aboriginal demands, the historical record would be much impoverished.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-media-has-been-too-white-for-too-long-this-is-how-to-bring-more-diversity-to-newsrooms-141602">Australia's media has been too white for too long. This is how to bring more diversity to newsrooms</a>
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<p>The coverage we reviewed in our study revolved around three dominant and repeated narratives. </p>
<p>The first, what we termed a “White Mastery narrative”, sees Aboriginality as a problem to be solved through assimilation, and Aboriginal political demands as an obstacle to a cohesive society. Present in the reporting on the Larrakia petition, it re-emerged around the time of Prime Minister John Howard’s emphasis on “practical reconciliation”. </p>
<p>The second, which we termed the “irreconciliation narrative”, was strongest in reporting on Aboriginal demands for a treaty through the 1980s. Here, great sympathy was undercut by the idea that Aboriginal calls for self-determination are impossible, “irreconcilable” demands, unpopular with the Australian populace. This narrative promotes a politics of procrastination on the one hand, and hopelessness on the other.</p>
<p>The third, which we termed the “subordination narrative” seeks to reposition Aboriginal desires for self-determination into frames of disadvantage and deficit. It sees the socioeconomic uplift of Aboriginal people as the most pressing concern. In this narrative, if addressing statistical inequality and “closing the gap” means subordinating Aboriginal self-determination, it’s justifiable.</p>
<p>The three dominant narratives demonstrate how a white lens distorts Black stories.</p>
<p>Another narrative, which we called the “sovereignty/nationhood narrative” only appeared in glimpses. It recognises the growing depth and strength of the Aboriginal polity, and acknowledges aspirations to self-governance as legitimate. In particular it validates the Aboriginal polity as an equal negotiating partner with the state. </p>
<p>Some examples of real headlines we came across in our study — and the narratives we identified across the reportage of each moment — are highlighted in the table at the end of this article.</p>
<h2>Nuanced and complex representations of the Aboriginal polity</h2>
<p>Over time, there were increasing invitations for opinion pieces in the mainstream media from Aboriginal voices. The Aboriginal polity engaged more deliberately with the media. </p>
<p>Yet, the media’s focus remained on parliamentary fracas, scandal and conflict. In the reports we examined, predominantly from Fairfax/Nine and News, we could not identify a single Aboriginal journalist at work.</p>
<p>We also examined Aboriginal media, such as Koori Mail or Land Rights News, for example. We found that, with far fewer resources, these outlets achieved nuanced and complex representations of the Aboriginal polity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person speaks on stage at a Black Lives Matter protest in Australia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368211/original/file-20201109-21-9ymaae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By understanding how the mainstream media has failed, we can also see the pathways to telling the Black stories that can change Australia’s future.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It should be a given for mainstream media outlets to place Aboriginal journalists at the centre of any attempt to tell Black stories. That, on its own, however, is not enough. Australia’s media landscape requires a transformation that needs to go much deeper than issues of representation.</p>
<p>By understanding how the mainstream media has failed, we can also see the pathways to telling the Black stories that can change Australia’s future. It is only by reconsidering its white standpoint that the media can give due justice to Black stories. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=2176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=2176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368531/original/file-20201110-13-1pwv72x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=2176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p><em>Subscribe to the Black Stories Matter podcast on your favourite podcast app: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/black-stories-matter/id1529997578">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/7egMh24OXJVtTIU0zx5dh2?si=JZkumMHfTsucbH3JdpZQ4g">Spotify</a>,<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-new-social-contract/black-stories-matter"> Stitcher.</a></em></p>
<p><em>Black Stories Matter was made by <a href="https://impactstudios.edu.au/podcasts/666-2/">Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney</a> — an audio production house combining academic research with audio storytelling for real world impact. The podcast was made with the support of Aboriginal Affairs NSW as part of a strategy to improve the dynamics between Aboriginal people and governments.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Thomas received funding from Aboriginal Affairs NSW. They co-authored the book, 'Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments', released in February 2020. They are currently a member of the Australian Historical Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Jakubowicz has received funding from Aboriginal Affairs NSW. He co-authored the book 'Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments', released in February 2020.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Maree Payne has received funding from Aboriginal Affairs NSW to contribute to the book, 'Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments'. She is currently a member of the Australian Historical Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Norman has received funding from Aboriginal Affairs NSW. She co-authored the book 'Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments', released in February 2020.</span></em></p>Over the last 45 years, Aboriginal political aspirations for treaty or treaties have been met with procrastination, refusal, and denial.Archie Thomas, Research assistant, University of Technology SydneyAndrew Jakubowicz, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Technology SydneyAnne Maree Payne, Sessional academic, Social and Political Sciences, University of Technology SydneyHeidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1330662020-08-02T19:54:51Z2020-08-02T19:54:51ZSecondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350551/original/file-20200731-15-1t3dnq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aboriginal-australia-landscape-build-on-traditional-1384429946">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his book Dark Emu, <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dark-emu-and-the-blindness-of-australian-agriculture-97444">Bruce Pascoe</a> writes that settler Australians wilfully misunderstood, hid and destroyed evidence of Aboriginal Australians’ farming practices. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405904.2019.1637760">My analysis</a> of secondary school textbooks shows this behaviour isn’t restricted to the past — it is ongoing. </p>
<p>In Australia, pre-invasion Aboriginal peoples tend to be portrayed as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">nomadic hunter-gatherers</a>. For example, a 1979 textbook titled <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9632898?selectedversion=NBD1665592">Australia’s frontiers: an atlas of Australian history</a> by J.R.J. Grigsby and T.F. Gurry said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The people of this distinctive race were hunters and gatherers […] They were constantly on the move, following game or seeking new sources of plant food. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, <a href="https://australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/journal/thesis-abstract-lake-condah-revisited/">physical evidence</a> as well as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dark-emu-and-the-blindness-of-australian-agriculture-97444">journals of early colonists</a> show Aboriginal peoples farmed and built large villages, meaning many groups stayed in one place.</p>
<h2>Sophisticated farmers</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, evidence of Aboriginal farming in southwest Victoria recorded by white archaeologists confirmed what the local Gunditjmara people had always known: rather than living off whatever they came across, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-detective-work-behind-the-budj-bim-eel-traps-world-heritage-bid-71800">the Gunditjmara actively farmed the landscape</a>. As in other areas in the world, intensive farming was accompanied by permanent dwellings.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-detective-work-behind-the-budj-bim-eel-traps-world-heritage-bid-71800">The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid</a>
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<p>Writings of early colonists show Aboriginal agriculture was practised Australia-wide. In 2011, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">Bill Gammage</a> used historical writings to explain how Aboriginal peoples created the park-like landscape “discovered” by early colonists. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia</a>
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<p>Bruce Pascoe’s recent book Dark Emu extends Gammage’s research. Writing about the journals of the early colonists, Pascoe wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I read these early journals I came across repeated references to people building dams and wells, planting, irrigating and harvesting seed, preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds or secure vessels, creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape – none of which fitted the definition of hunter-gatherers.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What are school children taught?</h2>
<p>I analysed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405904.2019.1637760">Australian history narratives</a> in secondary school textbooks from 1950 to the present. Up until the 2000s, these textbooks repeated the myth that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers. For example, a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Their_Ghosts_May_be_Heard.html?id=47vuAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">1984 text</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Aborigines were nomads or wanderers. The wandered from place to place as they searched for food and water. But each tribe has its own special territory and members of the tribe did not move outside this area […] The Aborigines knew the places where they would be most likely to find water and things to eat and they visited each place in turn […] The Aborigines did not farm the land. They didn’t plant and harvest crops or herd animals.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although factually incorrect, it’s likely the authors of these accounts believed them to be accurate. </p>
<p>Over time, the textbooks I studied gradually improved as various errors and omissions were corrected. However, it took until the early 2000s before the myth of hunter-gathering was corrected. In 2005, one <a href="http://www.jaconline.com.au/sosealive/sahistory2/toc.html">text</a> for middle school students openly refuted the traditional narrative: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has generally long been accepted that Australia’s Indigenous people were traditionally all nomadic […] Archaeological evidence recently discovered in Victoria seems to suggest, however, that at least some Indigenous people might have had fixed settlements. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">SOSE Alive History p10.</span>
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<p>This change seems to reflect the impetus to correct misinformation. Remarkably however, this change was short-lived. The publisher reverted to the traditional narrative of Aborigines as hunter-gatherers the very next year. This is the only example I found where textbooks reverted to a previous account that was known to be incorrect. The publisher’s comparable <a href="http://www.jaconline.com.au/humanitiesalive/ha3/">2006</a> text stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Collecting food and the natural resources needed to provide shelter and weapons typically took up most of the day […] Indigenous people took only the resources they needed to live. When a particular territory became too pressured by over-use, the people moved camp, allowing landscapes and resource stocks to be restored. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This pattern continued in subsequent years. For example, the same publisher’s <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Retroactive+9+Australian+Curriculum+for+History+eBookPLUS+%28Online+Purchase%29-p-9780730338765">2012</a> textbook claimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The arrival of the British began the process that saw the Gadigal lose their lands and their self-sufficient, hunting and gathering way of life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most recent textbooks omit this topic entirely, which means the widely-held myth of hunter-gatherering persists. </p>
<h2>Why aren’t our kids taught about Aboriginal farming?</h2>
<p>In Dark Emu, Pascoe explains that denying Aboriginal farming practices enabled the colonisers to reject Aboriginal peoples’ rights to land, shoring up their own claims to legitimacy instead. The invasion and colonisation of Australia was based on the self-justifying legal doctrine <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1468796806061077">terra nullius</a> — land belonging to no one. A key aspect of this claim was that Aboriginal peoples supposedly didn’t farm. </p>
<p>European political thinking in the 1800s linked “industriousness” with rights to land. For example, in 1758, Swiss jurist <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p70821/html/Text/ch05.html?referer=&page=12">Emmerich de Vattel</a> argued societies based on the “fruits of the chase” (rather than agricultural production) “may not complain if more industrious Nations should come and occupy part of their lands”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/captain-cook-discovered-australia-and-other-myths-from-old-school-text-books-128926">Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia, and other myths from old school text books</a>
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<p>This line of thought allowed the British colonists to reassure themselves the continent was there for the taking and justify their dispossession of Aboriginal peoples. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to understand why a contemporary publisher of school textbooks would publish misleading or incorrect material. However, we do know changes to secondary school history textbooks have occurred in the context of the “history wars” in Australia. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1270703045/robert-manne/comment">history wars</a>” refers to the conservative backlash to the increasing democratisation of Australian history. </p>
<p>From the 1970s, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-history-wars-paperback-softback">complexity was introduced to Australian histories</a>. The traditional tale of heroic, elite, white men was moderated by including the perspectives and voices of Aboriginal peoples, non-white immigrants and white women and workers. The “history wars” is an attempt to marginalise these voices and return to traditional narratives.</p>
<p>Textbooks record the dominant understandings and values of the society in which they are published. The intrusion of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697">history wars</a> into the school curriculum reveal a struggle to define these dominant understandings. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697">'Western civilisation'? History teaching has moved on, and so should those who champion it</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Why-History-Matters/?K=9781137604071">History textbooks</a> are crucial to students’ understanding of our nation. In colonised nations such as Australia, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Conquest.html?id=STlYGwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">foundational narratives</a> are fashioned to establish the legitimacy of the nation. In Australia, it seems as if this fashioning requires Aboriginal peoples to be portrayed as hunter-gatherers. </p>
<p>Most of us who’ve been educated in Australia hold racist stereotypes of Aboriginal society as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">primitive and savage</a>. We’ve imbibed these stereotypes as part of our education. Resistance and refusal to acknowledge Aboriginal agricultural practices supports these stereotypes and leads to discriminatory attitudes which continue to impact Aboriginal Australians. Shattering these stereotypes is crucial to improving the lives of Aboriginal Australians. Our textbooks need to do better.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">Why our kids should learn Aboriginal history </a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of Australian history narratives in secondary school textbooks shows many still repeat the myth that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers.Robyn Moore, Social Researcher, School of Social Sciences, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1381082020-07-01T20:12:21Z2020-07-01T20:12:21ZIn a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333638/original/file-20200508-49569-1w0b5l0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C301%2C6709%2C4164&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">S Wright</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and there was extra dry land where people lived.</p>
<p>Archaeologists could only speculate about how people used those now-submerged lands, and whether any traces remain today.</p>
<p>But in a study published today in <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233912">PLOS ONE</a>, we report the first submerged ancient Aboriginal archaeological sites found on the seabed, in waters off Western Australia. </p>
<h2>The great flood</h2>
<p>When people first arrived in Australia as early as <a href="https://theconversation.com/buried-tools-and-pigments-tell-a-new-history-of-humans-in-australia-for-65-000-years-81021">65,000 years ago</a>, sea levels were around 80m lower than today.</p>
<p>Sea levels fluctuated but continued to fall as the global climate cooled. As the world plunged into the last ice age, which peaked around 20,000 years ago, sea levels dropped to 130m lower than they are now.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-coastal-living-is-at-risk-from-sea-level-rise-but-its-happened-before-87686">Australia's coastal living is at risk from sea level rise, but it's happened before</a>
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<p>Between 18,000 and 8,000 years ago the world warmed up. Melting ice sheets caused sea levels to rise. Tasmania was cut off from the mainland around 11,000 years ago. New Guinea separated from Australia around 8,000 years ago.</p>
<p>The sea-level rise flooded 2.12 million square kilometres of land on the continental shelf surrounding Australia. Thousands of generations of people would have lived out their lives on these landscapes now under water.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333900/original/file-20200511-31175-1njt57h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These ancient cultural landscapes do not end at the waterline – they continue into the blue, onto what was once dry land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jerem Leach, DHSC Project</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Landscapes under water</h2>
<p>For the past four years a team of archaeologists, rock art specialists, geomorphologists, geologists, specialist pilots and scientific divers on the Australian Research Council-funded <a href="https://deephistoryofseacountry.com">Deep History of Sea Country Project</a> have collaborated with the <a href="https://www.murujuga.org.au/">Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation</a> to find and record submerged archaeological sites off the Pilbara coast in WA.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338656/original/file-20200530-78897-162u5wr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Location of the finds in northwest Australia (left) and the Dampier Archipelago (right).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Copernicus Sentinel Data and Geoscience Australia</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We studied navigation charts, geological maps and archaeological sites located on the land to narrow down prospective areas before surveying the seabed using <a href="https://deephistoryofseacountry.com/2017/12/04/dhsc-project-team-professor-jorg-m-hacker-and-ms-shakti-chakravarty-airborne-research-australia-and-flinders-university/">laser scanners mounted on small planes</a> and <a href="https://deephistoryofseacountry.com/2019/09/19/tow-fishing-for-submerged-cultural-landscapes-in-the-dampier-archipelago-murujuga-western-australia/">high-resolution sonar towed behind boats</a>.</p>
<p>In the final phase of the research, our team of scientific divers carried out underwater archaeological surveys to physically examine, record and sample the seabed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333632/original/file-20200508-49542-jf5oel.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeologists working in the shallow waters off Western Australia. Future generations of archaeologists must be willing to get wet!</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jerem Leach, DHSC Project</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We discovered two underwater archaeological sites in the Dampier Archipelago. </p>
<p>The first, at Cape Bruguieres, comprises hundreds of stone artefacts - including <a href="https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cultural-objects/grindstones/">mullers and grinding stones</a> - on the seabed at depths down to 2.4m. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338657/original/file-20200530-78897-19zvy9h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A selection of stone artefacts found on the seabed during fieldwork.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John McCarthy and Chelsea Wiseman</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the second site, in Flying Foam Passage, we discovered traces of human activity associated with a submerged freshwater spring, 14m below sea level, including at least one confirmed stone cutting tool made out of locally sourced material. </p>
<p>Environmental data and radiocarbon dates show these sites must have been older than 7,000 years when they were submerged by rising seas.</p>
<p>Our study shows archaeological sites exist on the seabed in Australia with items belonging to ancient peoples undisturbed for thousands of years.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-the-rock-art-of-murujuga-deserves-world-heritage-status-102100">Explainer: why the rock art of Murujuga deserves World Heritage status</a>
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<p>In Murujuga (also known as the Burrup Peninsula) this adds substantially to the evidence we already have of human activity and rock art production in this important <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/organisations/australian-heritage-council/national-heritage-assessments/dampier-archipelago">National Heritage Listed</a> place.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333633/original/file-20200508-49546-oeczje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A submerged stone tool associated with a freshwater spring now 14m under water.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hiro Yoshida and Katarina Jerbić, DHSC Project</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Underwater archaeology matters</h2>
<p>The submerged stone tools discovered at Murujuga make us rethink what we know about the past. </p>
<p>Our knowledge of ancient times in Australia comes from archaeological sites on land and from Indigenous oral histories. But the first people to come to Australian shores were coastal people who voyaged in boats across the islands of eastern Indonesia. </p>
<p>The early peopling of Australia took place on land that is now under water. To fully understand key questions in human history, as ancient as they are, researchers must turn to both archaeology and marine science.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333634/original/file-20200508-49550-1nyuy8d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archaeologist Chelsea Wiseman records a stone artefact covered in marine growth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Wright, DHSC Project</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Protecting a priceless submerged heritage</h2>
<p>Submerged archaeological sites are in danger of destruction by erosion and from development activities, such as oil and gas installations, pipelines, port developments, dredging, spoil dumping and industrialised fishing.</p>
<p>Protection of underwater cultural sites more than 100 years old is enshrined by the <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/underwater-cultural-heritage/2001-convention/">UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001)</a>, adopted as law by more than 60 countries but not ratified by Australia.</p>
<p>In Australia, the federal laws that protect underwater cultural heritage in Commonwealth waters have been modernised recently with the Historic Shipwrecks Act (1976) reviewed and re-badged as Australia’s <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/underwater-heritage/underwater-cultural-heritage-act">Underwater Cultural Heritage Act (2018)</a>, which came into effect in July 2019.</p>
<p>This new Act fails to automatically protect all types of sites and it privileges protection of non-Indigenous submerged heritage. For example, all shipwrecks older than 75 years and sunken aircraft found in Australia’s Commonwealth waters are given automatic protection.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-incredible-journey-the-first-people-to-arrive-in-australia-came-in-large-numbers-and-on-purpose-114074">An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose</a>
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<p>Other types of site, regardless of age and including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sites, can be protected but only with ministerial approval.</p>
<p>There is scope for states and territories to protect submerged Indigenous heritage based on existing laws, but regulators have conventionally only managed the underwater heritage of more recent historical periods.</p>
<p>With our find confirming ancient Indigenous sites can be preserved under water, we need policy makers to reconsider approaches to protecting underwater cultural heritage in Australia.</p>
<p>We are confident many other submerged sites will be found in the years to come. These will challenge our current understandings and lead to a more complete account of our human past, so they need our protection now.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uu9V7waH5f0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Deep History of Sea Country: Investigating the seabed in Western Australia.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Benjamin receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Honor Frost Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Bailey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jo McDonald receives funding from the Australian Research Council, as well as funds from RioTinto's Conservation Agreement with the Commonwealth to research the significant value of the Dampier Archipelago (including Burrup Peninsula) National Heritage Listed Place.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael O'Leary receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Ulm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Submerged in the waters off Western Australia lies an ancient site home to Aboriginal people thousands of years ago, when sea levels were lower than they are today.Jonathan Benjamin, Associate Professor in Maritime Archaeology, Flinders University and ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversityGeoff Bailey, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of YorkJo McDonald, Director, Centre for Rock Art Research + Management, The University of Western AustraliaMichael O'Leary, Senior Lecturer in Climate Geoscience, The University of Western AustraliaSean Ulm, Deputy Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1411922020-06-22T07:00:42Z2020-06-22T07:00:42ZHow Rio Tinto can ensure its Aboriginal heritage review is transparent and independent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343100/original/file-20200622-75505-conof2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rio Tinto has committed to an internal review of its heritage management processes in the wake of its <a href="https://theconversation.com/rio-tinto-just-blasted-away-an-ancient-aboriginal-site-heres-why-that-was-allowed-139466">destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site</a> in Western Australia last month. </p>
<p>After intense pressure from stakeholders and the announcement of a <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/federal-probe-dilutes-wa-heritage-reform/89272320-d295-4889-b8b7-652c52119f69">Senate inquiry</a>, Rio Tinto has pledged to <a href="https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20200619/pdf/44js36103sntzy.pdf">complete the review by October and make the findings public</a>.</p>
<p>The board has appointed <a href="https://www.riotinto.com/en/about/board-of-directors/michael-lestrange">Michael L’Estrange</a>, an independent non-executive director of Rio Tinto and former Australian high commissioner to the UK, to conduct the review. </p>
<p>The process will focus on Rio Tinto’s internal heritage standards, procedures, reporting and governance, and its relationship with the Puutu Kunti Kurama and Pinikura peoples in Western Australia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rio-tinto-just-blasted-away-an-ancient-aboriginal-site-heres-why-that-was-allowed-139466">Rio Tinto just blasted away an ancient Aboriginal site. Here’s why that was allowed</a>
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<p>But there are many questions about the inquiry that remain unanswered. For one, there is no indication L’Estrange will step aside from normal board duties to focus on the review, or that an independent investigating body will be created to support the process. </p>
<p>The credibility of the process hinges on a number of other factors, as well. These include the scope of the review, how it will be conducted, what will be disclosed publicly and who will be protected, and how will the company will respond to the review recommendations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343146/original/file-20200622-160694-u048vf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protester Herbert Bropho talks with Brad Haynes, Rio Tinto’s vice president of corporate relations, after handing over a list of demands outside the Rio Tinto office in Perth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How other mining companies have conducted public inquiries</h2>
<p>This is not the first time a mining giant has been thrust into the public spotlight and effectively forced to commission an independent inquiry on the impact of its operations on local communities. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.csrm.uq.edu.au/publications/company-commissioned-independent-inquiries-in-the-mining-sector-a-preliminary-paper-and-a-case-for-applied-research">preliminary research</a> indicates public-private inquiries in mining can bring much-needed transparency to the industry’s typically closed approach to investigating contentious issues. They can also bring to light information that would have otherwise been invisible to the public. </p>
<p>The impact and effectiveness of such inquiries, however, relies on transparency over the scope, process and output itself.</p>
<p>For example, the global mining industry has another, very public inquiry currently underway: the <a href="https://globaltailingsreview.org/">Global Tailings Review</a> (GTR). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/investors-push-for-positive-global-change-in-tailings-management-120904">Investors push for positive global change in tailings management</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The review was commissioned after a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vale-sa-disaster-ahome/brazilian-mine-tragedy-will-not-be-the-last-tailings-dam-disaster-andy-home-idUSKCN1Q405J">series of catastrophes involving “tailings”</a> – a byproduct of mining that comes from crushing ore before mineral extraction. In early 2019, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/21/brazil-dam-collapse-mining-disaster-charges">a tailings dam in Brazil collapsed</a>, resulting in the release of 12 million cubic metres of tailings and the deaths of some 270 people. </p>
<p>After that disaster, the International Council on Mining and Metals, representing 27 of the world’s largest mining and metal companies, the United Nations Environment Program and the Principles for Responsible Investment <a href="https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/news/2019/global-tailings-review-launches-public-consultation">agreed to co-convene the review</a>. </p>
<p>They appointed an independent chair from outside the industry to oversee the process of identifying lessons learned from past failures and developing a new industry standard. </p>
<p>The chair was given a dedicated secretariat to support his mandate and the power to appoint a multi-stakeholder advisory group and panel of disciplinary experts who were familiar with the industry, but did not work for a mining company. The inquiry also allowed for public submissions and consultations. </p>
<p>The process certainly suggests a separation of power between those conducting the review and the mining industry itself. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343141/original/file-20200622-75483-r5thp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mud and waste from the disaster caused by dam spill in Brazil in January 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yuri Edmundo/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2015, another mining company, Newmont, launched <a href="https://www.resolve.ngo/site-yiffm/default.htm">an independent fact-finding mission</a> in Peru following persistent allegations by local and international stakeholders of human rights violations as part of a land dispute with a local family. </p>
<p>Newmont and a US-based non-government organisation, <a href="https://www.resolve.ngo/about.htm">RESOLVE</a>, jointly appointed an independent mission director to head the inquiry, who in turn selected a team to collect evidence. An advisory group was also appointed to observe and provide outside perspectives on the process as it was being conducted. </p>
<p>The review was completed over a 12-month period and details were available for public scrutiny on a dedicated website during the process, <a href="https://www.resolve.ngo/site-yiffm/default.htm">including the final report</a>.</p>
<p>In a statement after the report was released, the company <a href="https://www.newmont.com/investors/news-release/news-details/2016/Newmont-Responds-to-Independent-Report-on-Land-Dispute-in-Peru/default.aspx">explained</a> why transparency and independence were so important.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While some of the findings in the report do not correspond with our view of the dispute, we recognise that in order to move beyond the current stalemate we must be open to understanding all perspectives, not just our own. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These and other inquiries have all emerged rapidly in response to pent-up public pressure for action from mining companies. But there is limited evidence they lead to lasting change. </p>
<p>This is one reason Newmont is now partnering with the University of Queensland, Australian National University and the US-based non-government organisation RESOLVE in a three-year ARC Linkage project to study the impact and effectiveness of public-private inquiries in the mining sector. </p>
<h2>What should Rio Tinto do?</h2>
<p>Calls for the public release of Rio Tinto’s review findings are important. Equally as important are calls for a sound process that guarantees independence and protects against corporate capture. </p>
<p>Here are our recommendations for what Rio Tinto needs to do to ensure its inquiry is fair and transparent:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Ensure the review is conducted independently and avoids conflicts of interest. </p></li>
<li><p>Appoint a review secretariat to guarantee a confidential avenue for informants to contribute evidence and testimony, at arms length from the company.</p></li>
<li><p>The scope should be co-designed with impacted parties – in this case, the Puutu Kunti Kurama and Pinikura peoples – and include a process for stakeholders to track the review and the company’s response.</p></li>
<li><p>The scope should include the systems and structures of Rio Tinto PLC, and not be limited to Rio Tinto Iron Ore.</p></li>
<li><p>The review should focus on identifying systemic and structural issues within the organisation, and making recommendations for improvement, rather than seeking to assign blame to individuals.</p></li>
<li><p>Interview transcripts, field reports and other evidence should be made accessible to the public (for example, via a dedicated website), where they are not deemed confidential or commercial in confidence.</p></li>
<li><p>The chair should have unfettered access to advisers and experts of their choosing in matters relating to the review.</p></li>
<li><p>The chair should issue a public report at the conclusion of the process.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If company-commissioned inquiries are to become the norm for investigating contentious issues and incidents in mining, it is essential we ask how they are conducted and to what end.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/destruction-of-juukan-gorge-we-need-to-know-the-history-of-artefacts-but-it-is-more-important-to-keep-them-in-place-139650">Destruction of Juukan Gorge: we need to know the history of artefacts, but it is more important to keep them in place</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at UQ conducts applied research with mining companies, including Rio Tinto and Newmont. Deanna Kemp is Chief Investigator of an ARC Linkage grant on public-private inquiries in mining;
Member of the Expert Panel for the Global Tailings Review (GTR);
Advisory Group member and contributing author for the Yanacocha Independent Fact Finding Mission;
Member of the ICMM's Independent Expert Review Panel;
Trustee and member of the International Advisory Council for the Institute for Human Rights and Business.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Hopkins is Chief Investigator of an ARC Linkage grant on public-private inquiries in mining and a member of the Expert Panel for the Global Tailings Review (GTR).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Owen is Chief Investigator of an ARC Linkage grant on public-private inquiries in mining.</span></em></p>There are many questions about the inquiry into the destruction of an Aboriginal heritage site, including how it will be conducted, what will be publicly disclosed and who will be protected.Deanna Kemp, Professor and Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of QueenslandAndrew Hopkins, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Australian National UniversityJohn Owen, Professorial Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1406372020-06-19T01:59:21Z2020-06-19T01:59:21ZEnforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342380/original/file-20200617-94066-103gnfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C998%2C790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This sketch depicts the Waterloo Creek massacre (also known as the Slaughterhouse Creek massacre), part of the conflict between mounted police and Indigenous Australians in 1838.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6149301/Copyright?">Godfrey Charles Mundy/National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Readers are advised the following article contains descriptions of violence that may be traumatic.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In July 2018, Western Australia’s Police Commissioner Chris Dawson formally <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-12/wa-police-commissioner-apologises-to-aboriginal-people/9984154">apologised</a> for the mistreatment of Aboriginal people at the hands of police, acknowledging the “significant role” the police played in the dispossession of Australia’s First Nations people. Dawson made particular reference to the way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>forceful removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities, the displacement of mothers and their children, sisters, fathers and brothers, the loss of family and resulting destruction of culture has had grave impacts </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Forced removal” references the unique role played by police in many settler colonies such as Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, the United States and Canada in relation to First Nations peoples: executing assimilationist policies designed to dismantle First Nations families. </p>
<p>A closer look at the history of policing in Australia helps explain some of the dynamics at play in the Black Lives Matter and First Nations Deaths in Custody movement in Australia and a growing push for alternative models of policing. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320030/original/file-20200312-116261-a6ugi0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=90&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="Sign up to The Conversation" width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>The ‘Irish Model’ of policing</h2>
<p>Mainstream histories of policing have looked to 19th century British Prime Minister Robert Peel’s London Metropolitan Police “British Model” of <a href="https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/">policing</a>, with its focus on policing through consensus and “walking the beat”. </p>
<p>There is another model of policing, however, which better reflects the Australian history.</p>
<p>Known as the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20720272?seq=1">Irish Model</a>” from its origins in suppressing dissent in the Irish colony in the 19th century, it set the police against the community, placed them in military style barracks, under a highly centralised and hierarchical chain of command. In general, they were not there to win hearts and minds. </p>
<p>Look to Chris Owen’s magnificent study of policing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia between 1882 and 1905 - titled <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/every-mothers-son-is-guilty-policing-the-kimberley-frontier-of-western-australia-1882-1905">Every Mother’s Son is Guilty</a>. Policing was based around a highly mobile horse mounted model to cope with the extraordinary distances. As Owen shows, attitudes of the police towards First Nations people were deeply influenced by contemporary beliefs that they were inferior to whites, and <em>a priori</em> criminal. </p>
<p>Many police officers in the frontier colonial era were conscious of being part of a “civilizing mission” and held highly paternalistic attitudes. </p>
<p>One officer who policed the remote regions of Western Australian in the 1920s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=qQBpAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=CONSCIENTIOUS">recalls</a> being </p>
<blockquote>
<p>conscientious in my desire for their welfare, for I looked upon them then, as I do now, as children.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Punitive attitudes</h2>
<p>Elsewhere, officers exercised often unfettered brutality in punitive frontier <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Frontier_Justice.html?id=lgKSBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">expeditions</a>. This was in pursuit of pastoral <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1330478364/tony-roberts/brutal-truth">land grabs</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=tIYR-qSLzW0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=snippet&q=land&f=false">settler occupation</a> and the <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/61774/2/Robin_Holland_Thesis.pdf">disintegration</a> of Aboriginal families. </p>
<p>This was a feature of the <a href="https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/mcs/article/view/4190/4492">Native Police Forces</a> that operated in various parts of Australia from the 1830s until the early 20th century. </p>
<p>These forces, responsible for many atrocities against Aboriginal people, consisted of Aboriginal troopers under the <a href="http://laal-espace.cdu.edu.au/eserv/cdu:6349/Thesis_CDU_6349_Wilson_W.pdf">command</a> of white officers such as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hT15UJSOEH4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Constable William Willshire</a> whose killings resulted in an unsuccessful murder <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/2018/24.html#fnB119">trial</a> in <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/198414047">1891</a> and Lieutenant Frederick Wheeler, whose massacres were <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/92123.pdf">reviewed</a> by a Queensland parliamentary inquiry in 1861 (which decided to reprimand but not dismiss him).</p>
<p>The inquiry heard <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/114963/2/b12160490.pdf">evidence</a> of the Native Police Force’s murderous contact with Aboriginal people. </p>
<p>Historical accounts of the Northern Territory’s Native Police, modelled on the Queensland’s Force, documents its <a href="http://laal-espace.cdu.edu.au/eserv/cdu:6349/Thesis_CDU_6349_Wilson_W.pdf">fatal force</a> against Aboriginal lives to allegedly defend colonists’ lives and property. </p>
<p>In Western Australia, the 1927 Royal Commission into the killing and burning of Aboriginal bodies in the Forrest River <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/93281.pdf">massacre</a> found police were brutal in effecting arrests.</p>
<p>The use of police brutality extended beyond Native Police expeditions, and was characteristic of police powers more widely. The <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">Colonial Frontier Massacres Map</a> documenting <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-24/nt-police-apologise-for-state-sanctioned-coniston-massacre/10162850">massacres</a> of First Nations families across Australia include extensive records of police killings, such as 60 Warlpiri, Anmatyere and Kaytetye women, men and children in the <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=709">Coniston Massacre</a> in 1928. </p>
<p>Police practices of <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6249008">neck chaining Aboriginal prisoners</a> continued officially into the mid-20th century in <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news75642.html">parts of Australia</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/defunding-the-police-could-bring-positive-change-in-australia-these-communities-are-showing-the-way-140333">Defunding the police could bring positive change in Australia. These communities are showing the way</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342635/original/file-20200618-41234-gihvpj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Aboriginal Protection Acts’ were used to control Aboriginal people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/52769.pdf">AIATSIS</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Protection’</h2>
<p>Ideas of <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3084196?lookfor=aboriginal%20chains&offset=1&max=54">law and order</a> formed only a fragment of the colonial police role where Aboriginal people were concerned. Much of it was taken up with implementing the “Aboriginal Protection Acts” or simply “Aboriginal Acts”, which continued well into the 20th century. Examples abound: the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/52769.pdf">Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (Western Australia)</a>, the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/54692.pdf">Aboriginal Protection Act and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Queensland)</a>, the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/num_act/apa1909n25262.pdf">Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (New South Wales)</a>, the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/54205.pdf">Aborigines Act 1911 (South Australia)</a>; <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/52396.pdf">Aboriginals Ordinance 1911 (Northern Territory)</a> and <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/hist_act/tapa1886265.pdf">The Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (Victoria)</a>.</p>
<p>Aboriginal Acts were used in practice to forcibly relocate Aboriginal people to a place of prescribed confinement, which in practice could include on <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/115146/2/b11187748.pdf">government settlements</a>, <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/54205.pdf">reserves</a>, church <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/remembering-mission-days">missions</a>, <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/54205.pdf">hospital lock ups</a>, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235306214_Isle_of_Exception_Sovereign_Power_and_Palm_Island">penal islands</a>, <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p72891/pdf/article0518.pdf">cattle stations</a> and other institutions. </p>
<p>Often police officers assumed the role of Aboriginal Protector under these Acts and exercised <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Glowczewski/publication/278754608_Warriors_for_peace_The_political_situation_of_the_Aboriginal_people_as_viewed_from_Palm_Island/links/56012e0608ae07629e52bba9/Warriors-for-peace-The-political-situation-of-the-Aboriginal-people-as-viewed-from-Palm-Island.pdf">broad powers</a> over Aboriginal lives. </p>
<p>Police also gained specific powers under legislation that allowed them to <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/4833274?lookfor=aboriginal%20mission%20%23%5Bformat:Picture%5D&offset=16&max=1003">remove</a> Aboriginal children from their families under “child welfare” legislation. <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-chapter-4">Testimony</a> from Victoria in the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-chapter-4">Bringing them Home</a> inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families reported that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From 1956 and 1957 more than one hundred and fifty children (more than 10% of the children in the Aboriginal population of Victoria at that time) were living in State children’s institutions. The great majority had been seized by police and charged in the Children’s Court with “being in need of care and protection”. Many policemen act from genuine concern for the “best interests” of Aboriginal children, but some are over-eager to enter Aboriginal homes and bully parents with threats to remove their children. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The experience of one Aboriginal child in Western Australia in 1935 was <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf">told</a> to the inquiry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we’d gone [about ten miles] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers’ backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Police still play a role in removing First Nations children from their families today. The <a href="https://www.familyisculture.nsw.gov.au/?a=726329">Family is Culture Report</a> in 2019 noted significant concerns about the use of police during removals, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when police are used for removal, especially riot police, this has historical continuity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Police powers in the first half of the 20th century extended to the forced isolation and confinement of Aboriginal people on public health grounds, such as in various <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/indigenous-lock-hospitals-onbernier-and-dorre-islands/10634122">lock-up hospitals</a>, on the basis of a diagnosis made by a police officer of syphilis or leprosy - or a decision that the person was at risk. </p>
<p>The police acted as the gatekeepers for enclosure in a ubiquity of institutions. At the same time as imposing the law, the police also acted as <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/legal_and_constitutional_affairs/completed_inquiries/2004-07/stolen_wages/report/c02">Protectors</a> of Aboriginal people, distributed <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=r9ETLG_aKbkC&q=blanket#v=snippet&q=rations&f=false">rations and blankets</a>, provided pastoralists with <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=upmGAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=police&f=false">Aboriginal workers</a> in remote areas and <a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/raparapa-stories-of-the-fitzroy-drovers-new-edition">ensured</a> that they remained on pastoral stations. </p>
<p>Aboriginal worker Hobbles Danyarri <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=upmGAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=%E2%80%9CIf+you+put+your+own+colour,+police+tracker,+that+means+he+can+bring+them+in.+He+can+bring+them+in+to+work+and+don%E2%80%99t+let+him+steal+it+%5Bbeef%5D.+Let+them+work.+Let+them+work.%E2%80%9D+Aboriginal+stockman+Barney+Barnes+remembers+the+removal+of+Aboriginal+communities+accused+of+cattle+killing+onto+Cherrabun,+Go+Go+and+Christmas+Creek+stations+in+the+Kimberley:&source=bl&ots=tgPg9szgdU&sig=ACfU3U2JqxS8_QhhF5ydoxX58n5zTF2sFg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiki5j69ozqAhWBxjgGHbgxA30Q6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIf%20you%20put%20your%20own%20colour%2C%20police%20tracker%2C%20that%20means%20he%20can%20bring%20them%20in.%20He%20can%20bring%20them%20in%20to%20work%20and%20don%E2%80%99t%20let%20him%20steal%20it%20%5Bbeef%5D.%20Let%20them%20work.%20Let%20them%20work.%E2%80%9D%20Aboriginal%20stockman%20Barney%20Barnes%20remembers%20the%20removal%20of%20Aboriginal%20communities%20accused%20of%20cattle%20killing%20onto%20Cherrabun%2C%20Go%20Go%20and%20Christmas%20Creek%20stations%20in%20the%20Kimberley%3A&f=false">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you put your own colour, police tracker, that means he can bring them in. He can bring them in to work and don’t let him steal it [beef]. Let them work. Let them work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And Aboriginal stockman Barney Barnes <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/NgiyaTLaw/2007/3.pdf">remembers</a> the removal of Aboriginal communities accused of cattle killing onto Cherrabun, Go Go and Christmas Creek stations in the Kimberley: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That manager made the police go out and bring all the people in from the desert. He reckoned that they were killing too many bullocks. So the police came out and rounded up all the Walmajarri people […] They kept going at it until nobody was left out there. They didn’t allow the Aboriginal people to live in the desert after that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal people who <a href="https://www.qhrc.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/10606/Aboriginal-timeline-FINAL-updated-25-July-2018.pdf">defied</a> Aboriginal Protection Acts and the rules of reserves and settlements - such as speaking in language, practising culture, marrying without the protector’s permission, or otherwise disobeying orders of the protector - would be sent for punishment to places such as <a href="https://www.qld.gov.au/atsi/cultural-awareness-heritage-arts/community-histories/community-histories-n-p/community-histories-palm-island">Palm Island</a>. These Acts were often <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/legal_and_constitutional_affairs/completed_inquiries/2004-07/stolen_wages/report/c02">enforced</a> by police officers.</p>
<h2>Hope for the future</h2>
<p>Moving away from a colonial and assimilationist model of policing in Australia involves restructuring police and honouring First Nations self determination. </p>
<p><a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTSLRS/2014/22.html">Community Patrol</a> models, which are embedded in First Nations communities and work towards the safety and wellbeing of women, children and families, provide a First Nations alternative. </p>
<p>It’s time to consider setting police models on a new course that abolishes force and re-imagines community relationships. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>UPDATE: This story has been updated to add more detail and quotes.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thalia Anthony receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry Blagg received funding from the ARC. </span></em></p>Police played a unique role in many settler colonies executing assimilationist policies designed to dismantle First Nations families.Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology SydneyHarry Blagg, Professor of Criminology, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.