I have worked on many shipwreck investigations and have been involved in the discovery of a couple of shipwreck sites of this period. Here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a ship.
Stone tools, clubs, boomerangs, decorative shellwork: a survey of 45 museums in the UK has found a vast number of Indigenous Australian objects. Not all were stolen; some were gifted or traded.
The Philippines is taking an Indigenous-led approach to remembering European colonialism in the Pacific — a refreshing contrast to the dominant stories about James Cook in Australia and New Zealand.
Captain Cook’s sailors traded nails for sex, but the history of intimate encounters and their impact on women throughout the Pacific is still largely ignored.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation; Phoebe Roth, The Conversation, dan Sophia Morris, The Conversation
250 years since Captain Cook landed in Australia, it’s time to acknowledge the violence of first encounters
The Conversation, CC BY63 MB(download)
The way Australia has commemorated Cook's arrival has changed over time – from military displays in 1870 to waning interest in Cook in the 1950s, followed by the fever pitch celebrations of 1970.
Britain had an urgent problem after it lost its American colonies: where to send its convicts. It settled on NSW after rejecting other options, but the new spot didn’t exactly live up to its billing.
Many teachers want to teach Indigenous perspectives but often lack confidence or know-how. Teachers must be willing to confront the ongoing effects of colonialism in and outside the classroom.
Incidents from Cook’s first voyage highlight themes relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and governance. This collision of beliefs, it seems, wasn’t lost on Cook.
Re-enactments of James Cook’s arrival in Australia have served only to gloss over the violence of his interactions with Indigenous people and elevate Australia’s imperial and British connections.
Over the course of his three voyages, Cook was frustrated by the refusal of Indigenous people to embrace Western ways. He grew increasingly punitive, embodying the ‘savagery’ he ostensibly despised.
Every European ship that voyaged the Pacific was, in the first instance, a floating fortress, an independent command that could send out small shore parties or to concentrate firepower as needed.
Unpicking the threads of the stories told about Captain Cook’s arrival is vital to find agreement on the provenance of materials that changed hands during colonisation.
If we want to conserve ecosystems that escaped European exploitation and mismanagement, we must start listening to environmental histories to compliment scientific research.
Playwright Jane Harrison’s The Visitors shows audiences how a group of Indigenous leaders might have debated what to do when the First Fleet landed in 1788 - but where are the women?
An image of a ship on a rock in Western Australia’s Dampier Archipelago depicts HMC Mermaid – the main vessel of Phillip Parker King, an unsung hero of Australian exploration.
Captain Cook’s 1770 voyage is well known. But at this time, Indigenous Australians also travelled great distances - let’s recognise this in the 2020 commemorations.