tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/cook250-78244/articles
Cook250 – The Conversation
2022-02-03T03:30:57Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176363
2022-02-03T03:30:57Z
2022-02-03T03:30:57Z
Has Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour been found? Debate rages, but here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a shipwreck
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444204/original/file-20220203-17157-okuidt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1424%2C1018&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour#/media/File:HMS_Endeavour_off_the_coast_of_New_Holland,_by_Samuel_Atkins_c.1794.jpg">WikiCommons/Illustration by Samuel Atkins </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian National Maritime Museum has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-03/endeavour-found-in-us-after-22-year-search/100800894">announced</a> a shipwreck found in Newport Harbour, off Rhode Island in the United States, has been confirmed as Captain Cook’s ship, HMB Endeavour. </p>
<p>There have been very similar <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/captain-cook-endeavour-boat-intl/index.html">announcements</a> made over the years but have they finally made a definitive case?</p>
<p>By making its <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-03/captain-james-cook-endeavour-found-museum-says/100800894">announcement</a>, the Australian National Maritime Museum seems to have decided so, and there does seem to have been significant recent progress, centred on one shipwreck that matches the known details of the Endeavour closely.</p>
<p>However, reports soon emerged lead investigator on the Endeavour discovery – Dr Kathy Abbass from the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project – described the announcement as “premature” and that there “has been no indisputable data found.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1489044348151169024"}"></div></p>
<p>The announcement by the museum includes <a href="https://youtu.be/3QPqxsRYjm4">recognition</a> that there is not, and may never be, definitive proof but they appear satisfied the case has been made within reasonable doubt. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3QPqxsRYjm4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Video: Australian National Maritime Museum.</span></figcaption>
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<p>I wasn’t part of this particular investigation so it’s not for me to say if this ship is Endeavour or not. But I have worked on many shipwreck investigations and have been involved in the discovery of a couple of shipwreck sites of this period. </p>
<p>So I can share a little bit about what’s usually involved in trying to piece together the identity of a ship when a wreck is found.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sunken-history-how-to-study-and-care-for-shipwrecks-6450">Sunken history: how to study and care for shipwrecks</a>
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<h2>From the survey site to the lab</h2>
<p>The first thing you will need is a detailed survey of the site. The process is similar to an archaeological survey on land, but for most shipwrecks you will be underwater. That makes it more difficult to take measurements precisely. Nowadays we also use 3D imaging techniques, high-resolution sonar and other specialist equipment to achieve a survey that is objective and highly accurate.</p>
<p>We focus on identifying “diagnostic features”, things that can identify the site and tie it to a particular period and ship-building tradition. </p>
<p>This could be the way the keel is built and how it is attached, or dimensions of timber frames. Often it is the smallest details that can hint at a certain ship-building tradition. One really useful indicator is the way the wood has been fastened together. Is it done with iron nails? In layers? Or tied with rope in a certain way?</p>
<p>Once your survey is complete, you might undertake some sampling to recover artefacts. We generally try to remove as little as possible of a shipwreck. The gold standard is to leave as much in-situ as possible but it is common to recover some material for analysis in the lab, such as bricks, cannon balls, timber, coins; anything that can help establish a chronology for a shipwreck.</p>
<p>Once you have got your evidence from the site, you can move onto analysis in the lab.</p>
<p>For timber, we often use a technique called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/dendrochronology">dendrochronology</a>, which is analysis of tree growth patterns. If you have enough timber of the right type, you can work out almost to the year when the timber was felled and even where it was grown.</p>
<p>We might x-ray metal materials, trying to work out what the objects originally looked like.</p>
<h2>Sifting through historical records</h2>
<p>Then we move onto historical research, analysing records of all ships lost in that general area. </p>
<p>We may draw on newspaper reports from the time, salvage records and marine insurance claims. Indeed, marine insurance was the original insurance because shipwreck was once so common and so costly.</p>
<p>We might look for court records to see if there was a dispute about the disposal of shipwreck material in that area at some point.</p>
<p>Historical attempts to salvage valuable material may also leave a paper trail and it was common to try to recover brass cannons (which were extremely valuable).</p>
<p>Shipwreck survivor accounts can be very valuable – these were often published as a popular reading material from the 17th century onward.</p>
<p>One of the best sources can be oral traditions and community memories; the story of a significant shipwreck can survive in local memory for generations. Just talking to local people can provide quite a lot of unique information.</p>
<h2>It isn’t easy</h2>
<p>Identification of a shipwreck is not easy.</p>
<p>In any given area, there are likely to be multiple records of shipwrecks. The task is usually to eliminate those recorded ship losses that don’t match up with the clues you have collected. </p>
<p>And there are often close similarities between ship types that make it hard to identify an exact ship. The Spanish Armada, for instance, resulted in the loss of many ships from the same area at the same time, so if you find one, it is easy to know it is an Armada ship, but much harder to say which one. </p>
<p>Working in a marine environment complicates matters greatly. Wooden shipwrecks tend to be poorly preserved on the seabed. If they are quite old, what you really get is the survival of the non-wooden parts; cannon balls, cannons, metal objects and glass. </p>
<p>That makes it difficult because shipwrecks are a huge collection of material and some of the material may be much older than the shipwreck itself, which can suggest a wreck is older than it really is.</p>
<p>You can also have shipwrecks that have more recent material on the site that has drifted there from elsewhere in the sea or even from another shipwreck. In Iceland we investigated a <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8812007/">17th century shipwreck</a> which had been partially covered by a later shipwreck.</p>
<p>Identifying ships is a long, arduous and painstaking process that usually takes many years and involves a host of challenges along the way. At all times, it is vital as a maritime archaeologist to remain objective and not fall into the trap of trying to bend evidence to fit a theory you have fallen in love with. </p>
<p>The repeated headlines about the Endeavour may have made some of the project team wary about definitive claims, but there will also be sites that we cannot prove the identity of with absolute certainty, and we will be forced to make our best judgement call.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-happens-now-weve-found-the-site-of-the-lost-australian-freighter-ss-iron-crown-sunk-in-wwii-115848">What happens now we've found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John McCarthy receives funding from the ARC and the Dutch Embassy in Australia. He is a regional councillor for the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology and assistant editor of their journal.</span></em></p>
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.
John McCarthy, ARC DECRA Fellow, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144065
2020-08-17T20:12:13Z
2020-08-17T20:12:13Z
Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky: the ‘view from the shore’ told through songlines, with generosity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353086/original/file-20200817-22-wj6g9y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C8%2C2820%2C1326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steven Oliver on location at Kurnell, NSW, in the film.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky, screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival and on NITV and SBS Viceland.</em></p>
<p>This year marks the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explorer-navigator-coloniser-revisit-captain-cooks-legacy-with-the-click-of-a-mouse-137390">250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first landing</a> on the east coast and his claim of territory for the British Empire. Like most scheduled events of 2020, commemorations of this milestone were scuttled by the pandemic. </p>
<p>For some, the cancellation of Cook events relieved a simmering trepidation. But many Aboriginal communities had worked hard to consider their engagement in the 250-year commemoration and communicate the “view from the shore” among themselves and to wider audiences. </p>
<p>The film <a href="https://2020.miff.com.au/film/looky-looky-here-comes-cooky-special-preview-screening/">Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky</a>, directed by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2341237/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Steven McGregor</a>, canvasses Indigenous Australian accounts of, and responses to, Captain Cook’s arrival. </p>
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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>
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<h2>The length of the east coast</h2>
<p>Sweeping coastline shots remind us of the changing landscape away from the buttery sandstone cliffs of Dharawal country at that place Kamay, which Cook renamed Stingray Bay and we now call Botany Bay. </p>
<p>Host <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6460320/">Steven Oliver</a> – known previously as an actor and as creator of comedy sketch show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3697996/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk3">Black Comedy</a> (2014) – guides us the length of the east coast. </p>
<p>At La Perouse we hear the testimony of Dharawal elder and intellectual <a href="https://www.burraga.org/governance-2">Shayne Williams</a> and Aboriginal Land Council chair <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-re-still-here-250-years-after-cook-landing-aboriginal-community-reflects-20200428-p54nzb.html">Noeleen Timberry</a>, whose family were witnesses in 1770. We journey through to the Torres Strait, where the story of the planting of a stick and cloth at so called Possession Island is disputed. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSBSVICELAND%2Fvideos%2F654813665137988%2F&show_text=0&width=476" width="100%" height="476" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-drop-effect-review-infusing-the-present-moment-with-layers-of-the-past-129785">Black Drop Effect review: infusing the present moment with layers of the past</a>
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<p>Along the way, artists yarn, dance, slam and sing on a specially created “<a href="https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/songlines">songline</a>”. Songlines are not just oral histories or “anthropological footnotes”, Oliver reminds us. They </p>
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<p>tell the real story in different, but essentially complementary ways; to really belong you’ve got to embrace the songlines. They are the story of this land. </p>
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<p>Singer <a href="https://www.kevcarmody.com.au/">Kev Carmody</a> narrates the movements of warriors organising in his ballad of Multuggerah, a resistance leader and warrior of the Darling Downs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.mojojuju.net/">Mo’Ju</a> sings of a medicine woman with predictive powers who “can see them coming from far away, I know that they are bringing us pain”. </p>
<p>Rapper <a href="https://badapplesmusic.com.au/artist/birdz/">Birdz</a> imagines a moment</p>
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<p>standing on the shoreline, Cook man coming, Patiently waiting for someone I haven’t seen before, They say they came in peace. </p>
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<p>While <a href="https://www.maupower.com/">Mau Power</a> vocalises “anger and loss, pain and hurt”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C12%2C2823%2C1282&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man stands of beach, points at camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C12%2C2823%2C1282&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=276&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352870/original/file-20200814-14-1apgpob.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=347&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">Mau Power on location in North Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
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<h2>A more truthful engagement</h2>
<p>The voices in Looky Looky offer the possibility of a different Australia with a more truthful engagement with its history. </p>
<p>At one point Oliver declares, “Uncle Jimmy James [Cook] sailed up the north coast, no shame, naming places that all the way along the coast”. </p>
<p>Cook pubs, Cook streets, roads, parks, bridges and even a university reveal an enduring mark. </p>
<p>Calling in at the Captain Cook Hotel, Oliver feels duty bound to order the kitchen’s “special”, <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2019/02/14/how-foolish-rumour-hawaiians-ate-cook-began">a macabre joke</a> not lost on Indigenous peoples of the Pacific. It is a Captain Cook steak (on ciabatta). </p>
<p>There is arguably greater generosity about the Cook story now than there was when the bicentenary was celebrated. The current NSW State Library exhibition <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/eight-days-kamay">Eight Days in Kamay</a> includes 1970 footage from the counter-commemoration protest of poet <a href="https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/noonuccal-oodgeroo">Oodgeroo Noonuccal</a> in which she recites:</p>
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<p>Peace was yours Australian man with tribal laws you made, till white colonial stole your peace with rape and murder raid … they shot and poisoned and enslaved, until a scattered few, only a remnant now remain, and the heart dies in you. </p>
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<p>Also featured is activist and Aboriginal Legal Service co-founder <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/sydney-elders/paul-coe/">Paul Coe</a>, who then challenged the crowd: </p>
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<p>… the only way you are going to get anywhere is to come out and demand your rights, showing that you want your rights, not begging. </p>
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<p>But in Looky Looky, Guugu Yimithirr Traditional Owner and Bama Historian <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response">Alberta Hornsby</a> explains Cook didn’t know he was looking at a nation of peoples who had scientists, lore, language. Eventually, she says, he did develop an admiration for her people. </p>
<p>Hornsby reminds us of the resolution of a dispute over stolen harvests by Cook’s men, who had broken the lore/law of the land. At this location in far north Queensland, Guugu Yimithirr men conducted a <a href="https://nationaltrustqld.org.au/news/Reconciliation-Rocks">process of reconciliation</a> with Cook and several of his crew, to settle their differences. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Indigenous man sings with guitar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=279&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353090/original/file-20200817-24-vksjrw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=351&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">Kev Carmody tells a warrior tale near Table Top Mountain, Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
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<h2>Being seen</h2>
<p>Hornsby and Shayne Williams are strong voices throughout the film. Both speak of the complexity of commemorating Cook while acknowledging our own people and history.</p>
<p>As Hornsby says: </p>
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<p>I do have respect for Captain Cook, but I have far greater respect for my ancestors. </p>
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<p>Williams adds: </p>
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<p>If we’re going to move forward let’s own our history. The time has come to make ourselves visible again. We’re the only ones who can do that. Australian history and Aboriginal history, are synonymous. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Oliver enlivens songlines to connect people over Country with his earnest blend of engaging humour and bold fact. Within the pastiche of animation, dance, poetry and interviews, it is the generously offered reflections about commemoration, past and present that provide the most compelling elements. </p>
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<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>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Singer Mo'Ju stands on a busy street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353088/original/file-20200817-20-1cwzn7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&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">Not just a coastal story. Mo'Ju on location in Coburg, Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Any commemoration of the British claim to the territory of Australia that unleashed loss and disruption on an unrelenting scale, is fraught. Looky Looky is part comedy, part a tale of survival and resistance, part poetry and dance. </p>
<p>The intention of the songlines as narrative is powerful, but the most disruptive forces are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices who are working through ways to carry stories of the past gently but firmly into the present. </p>
<p>The film is worth watching as one contribution to the commemoration of white settlement made difficult by unyielding historical narratives and experience of disadvantage. Much more work is still needed. </p>
<p><em>MIFF is <a href="https://miff.com.au/">online</a> until 23 August 2020. Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky will be simulcast on NITV and SBS VICELAND on Thursday 20 August at 8.30pm.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Norman receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Jennifer Newman contributed to the writing of this review.</span></em></p>
A new film canvasses Indigenous Australian accounts of, and responses to, Captain Cook’s arrival.
Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130322
2020-05-01T03:57:33Z
2020-05-01T03:57:33Z
Cook commemorations are mute on intimate encounters and their profound impact on Indigenous women
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331654/original/file-20200430-42908-4h3fmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C269%2C4559%2C3180&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artist: John Pickles</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>History is always selective, particularly when it is tied up with national identity. Certain stories are recovered, while others remain silent. </p>
<p>Intimate encounters are often muted, even though we know they played a central part in first encounters during the colonial era.</p>
<p><a href="https://mch.govt.nz/tuia250">Tuia 250</a>, a government-sponsored series of events to commemorate 250 years since Captain James Cook arrived in New Zealand, focused on Pacific voyaging and first onshore encounters between Māori and Pākehā (non-Māori) during 1769–70, at the expense of reconsidering private history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-ancestors-met-cook-in-aotearoa-250-years-ago-for-us-its-time-to-reinterpret-a-painful-history-128771">My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it's time to reinterpret a painful history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Colonial comfort</h2>
<p>The laborious maps and longhand entries in explorers’ journals, their sketches of specimens gathered during their long journeys - these can all be seen as skillful antiques of a bygone era. But they also represent potent past tools of imperialism.</p>
<p>Tuia 250 was about both voyaging and encounter histories, but it seems that re-enacting traditional sailing was easier than restaging the intimate encounters that were <a href="https://www.justice.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Publications/sex-industry-in-nz.pdf">central to the colonial enterprise</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314353/original/file-20200210-27519-nzw1ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captain Cook charted New Zealand during his voyage in 1769.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_of_New_Zealand,_explored_in_1769_and_1770_by_Lieut._I-_Cook,Commander_of_His_Majesty%27s_Bark_Endeavour._RMG_D9254.tiff">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Commemorations of voyages across the open oceans sailed clear of the awkward topic of intimacy. The history of intimate encounters remained consigned to a private space, perceived as outside of the making of history and national identity.</p>
<p>But as <a href="http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/people/msal020">historian Anne Salmond</a> has written, bodily contact involved Cook’s sailors <a href="https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/the-trial-of-the-cannibal-dog-captain-cook-in-the-south-seas-9780141021331">exchanging items such as nails for sex with women</a>. </p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/the-trial-of-the-cannibal-dog-captain-cook-in-the-south-seas-9780141021331">The Trial of the Cannibal Dog</a>, Salmond describes the Endeavour’s arrival at Anaura Bay, where Cook’s party went ashore, and the expedition’s official botanist Joseph Banks commented about Māori women being less accessible than Tahitian women. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Banks remarked ruefully that they ‘were as great coquettes as any Europeans could be and the young ones as skittish as unbroke fillies’. If the local women were reluctant to make love with the strangers, however, they were wise, because by Cook’s own reckoning several of his men had stubborn venereal infections, and at least half of the rest had contracted venereal diseases in Tahiti. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-james-belich">historian James Belich</a>’s view, described in his book Making Peoples, sexual contact became the <a href="https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/making-peoples-a-history-of-the-new-zealanders-from-polynesian-9780143007043">initial intercultural trade in New Zealand</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sex industry began at first contact in 1769, and from the 1810s it became large and important - very probably preceding wool, gold and dairy products as New Zealand’s leading earner of overseas exchange. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But <a href="https://aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/authors-and-editors/hazel-petrie/">Hazel Petrie</a> has argued that intimate encounters have to be considered within the context of <a href="https://aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz/chiefs-of-industry-maori-tribal-enterprise-in-early-colonial-new-zealand/">cultural practices that emphasised hospitality</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Contemporary Western attitudes sometimes led to characterisations of more casual sexual activity between Māori women and visiting Pākehā men as ‘prostitution’, and in our own time such liaisons have been deemed to represent a ‘sex industry’. But these perceptions may be in large part the result of the different moral codes of the narrators and seeing sexual relationships through different lenses. Māori society may have more typically viewed short- to medium-term relationships with sailors or other visitors in terms of manaakitanga or the normal extension of hospitality with expectations of a courteous material response. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-honest-reckoning-with-captain-cooks-legacy-wont-heal-things-overnight-but-its-a-start-130389">An honest reckoning with Captain Cook's legacy won't heal things overnight. But it's a start</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Women as agents of history</h2>
<p>According to historians, Cook <a href="http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BeaCapt.html">disapproved of the sexual behaviour</a> of his officers and men, but was unable to stop it. In his journal, Cook wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A connection with Women I allow because I cannot prevent it, but never encourage tho many Men are of opinion it is one of the greatest securities amongst Indians, and it may hold good when you intend to settle amongst them; but with travelers and strangers, it is generally otherwise and more men are betrayed than saved by having connection with their women, and how can it be otherwise since all their Views are selfish without the least mixture of regard or attachment whatever; at least my observations which have been pretty general, have not pointed out to me one instance to the contrary. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sailors embodied the complex, disease-ridden, sexual shipboard culture of the 18th century, combined with western <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/science/xantippa/wee/weetext/wee214.html">unequal attitudes towards women</a> and the perception of Polynesian women as exotic. </p>
<p>As indigenous and cultural studies scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville <a href="http://oncewerepacific.blogspot.com/">puts it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Gender is so central to the story of Cook. And how Cook, and everything that came after, has done so much to gender in this region. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Māori women were entangled in the encounters as two worlds met. First contact marked the beginning of changes to customary processes (tikanga Māori), ended pre-colonial balance and had profound effects on Māori women’s lives, as the work of <a href="https://www.waikato.ac.nz/law/research/waikato_law_review/pubs/volume_2_1994/7">indigenous scholar Ani Mikaere</a> has shown. </p>
<p>Mikaere has argued that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is often assumed that, according to tikanga Māori, leadership was primarily the domain of men and that men in Māori society exercised power over women. However, evidence abounds which refutes the notion that traditional Māori society attached greater significance to male roles than to female roles. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It came to pass that Māori women, white women missionaries and settlers were all integral to history. As <a href="https://gss.princeton.edu/anne-mcclintock">feminist scholar Anne McClintock</a> pointed out of women in imperialism, they were not “hapless onlookers”. They were variously colonisers and colonised. </p>
<p>Just as women were a central part of those first encounters in 1769-70, they continued to be <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0308653042000329003">agents of history</a>. Some women, as the helpmeets of Empire, taught generations of schoolchildren about Cook the hero as part of an imperial curriculum. </p>
<p>Navigating a shared future needs to recognise women’s part in colonial encounters. It needs to consider that in the present, as with the past, public and private spaces are interconnected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles receives funding from Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi. </span></em></p>
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.
Katie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury and current Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi James Cook Research Fellow, University of Canterbury
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126673
2020-04-28T20:33:15Z
2020-04-28T20:33:15Z
A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330591/original/file-20200427-145503-xqinw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=523%2C94%2C3433%2C3084&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Crosling/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In 1970, the bicentenary of the Endeavour’s voyage along the east coast of Australia contributed to a renaissance of storytelling about Captain James Cook. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://theconversation.com/re-enactments-of-cooks-landing-in-australia-fantasies-of-founding-the-nation-126751">government-sponsored commemorations</a> celebrated Cook as an Enlightenment explorer and national founder, Aboriginal people provided their own viewpoints on Cook and his legacy.</p>
<p>During this commemorative period, Indigenous stories about Cook were recorded in the Kimberley region, Arnhem Land and the Wave Hill region in the Northern Territory, along with places on the Queensland coast.</p>
<p>Coinciding with an emerging national movement for Indigenous land rights, these renditions of Cook provided radically different accounts of colonisation and its enduring structures and effects. </p>
<p>These stories questioned the settler mythologising that rendered Cook’s actions as heroic, benign or of historical interest only. And they politicised in unprecedented ways the figure of Cook and the longstanding traditions around the ways Australians remember and celebrate him.</p>
<p>In time, these alternative accounts transformed the ways we understand Cook in Australia – both his own time here in 1770, as well as the cultural production of him as a historical figure in the 19th and 20th centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311302/original/file-20200122-117933-1vslnca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captain Cook’s Landing Place Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Beach_(Kurnell)#/media/File:Captain_Cooks_Landing_Place_Park_-_panoramio_(4).jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The stories told by Hobbles Danaiyarri</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311266/original/file-20200122-117958-rijj2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deborah Bird Rose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Bird_Rose#/media/File:Deborah_Bird_Rose.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I began thinking quite differently about <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/history/australian-history/captain-cook-was-here?format=HB&isbn=9780521762403">my own research on Cook’s encounters at Botany Bay in 1770</a> after reading the stories told by <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/danayarri-hobbles-12397">Hobbles Danaiyarri</a>, a senior Aboriginal lawman and knowledge holder, to the ethnographer <a href="http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0591b.htm">Deborah Bird Rose</a>.</p>
<p>Danaiyarri considered Bird Rose a consummate listener, faithful recorder, intelligent interlocutor, incisive interpreter and generous executor. And as Bird Rose later recounted, almost from the moment she arrived to do anthropological fieldwork at Yarralin in the Northern Territory in 1980, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hobbles had been telling me about Captain Cook and the hidden history of the north. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For nearly three decades, she wrote about the gifts of knowledge – and ways of knowing – he shared with her. Danaiyarri’s spoken-word poetic history – which focused quite extensively on Cook – is one of the great pieces of Australian literature, yet it is still not as widely known as it should be.</p>
<h2>The power of a greeting</h2>
<p>There’s one section in Danaiyarri’s epic narrative – or saga, as Bird Rose calls it – in which he describes Cook’s failure to say “hello” to the people whose territory he had entered on the east coast. He explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Cook] should have asked him – one of these boss for Sydney – Aboriginal people. People were up there, Aboriginal people. He should have come up and: ‘hello’, you know, ‘hello’. Now, asking him for his place, to come through, because [it’s] Aboriginal land. Because Captain Cook didn’t give him a fair go – to tell him ‘good day’, or ‘hello’, you know.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316966/original/file-20200224-24664-ttzgal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&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 Hobbles Danayarri 1980, from the book Balls and Bulldust.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Håkan Ludwigson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This sharp accusation that Cook’s monumental failing during his initial trespass into Aboriginal territory was “not saying hello” – rather than, for instance, opening fire – draws attention to the social and cultural expectations, values and dynamics that should have governed such an event. </p>
<p>Danaiyarri’s account peeled back the curtain to show us how this first encounter might have looked from “the other side of the beach”.</p>
<p>Until this time, such critical Indigenous knowledge had not penetrated the vast amount of settler storytelling devoted to Cook’s first landing on the shores of Botany Bay. </p>
<p>The stories we inherited of this episode had cast the Aboriginal people Cook encountered as either ferocious warriors or pathetic cowards. They were not properly seen as bosses for the country, who would expect a stranger to recognise them in that way and act accordingly. </p>
<p>Without acknowledgement of that fundamental principle, our interpretations of Cook’s landing were lacking a full understanding of this moment, specifically what motivated the local people’s responses to his forceful entry onto their land.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/captain-cook-wanted-to-introduce-british-justice-to-indigenous-people-instead-he-became-increasingly-cruel-and-violent-127025">Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Responding to the crew’s presence</h2>
<p>What does it mean to accuse Cook of failing to say hello? Why was this such a blunder and what were the implications of this impolite behaviour? </p>
<p>Curious about the implications of what Danaiyarri said, Bird Rose asked Yarralin people what would have happened if Cook had asked properly to enter the local people’s land. She explained,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was told that either he would have been denied permission and therefore would have gone way, or he would have been allowed to stay but only on terms decided by the owners of the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cook was in Botany Bay for eight days, and throughout that time, the local people sought to impose the terms on which the crew stayed. </p>
<p>They kept their distance from the strangers and never opened up direct communication with them. But they also did not abandon the country to Cook’s crew. Rather, they orchestrated as best they could the crew’s presence – keeping them contained within a limited space. </p>
<p>They behaved, as Danaiyarri would put it, as bosses should.</p>
<h2>Understanding why the ‘beach’ is so important</h2>
<p>One of the <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/honouring-captain-james-cooks-voyage">marketing slogans</a> for this year’s (now <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/captain-cook-250th-anniversary-voyage-suspended-due-to-coronavirus">suspended</a>) 250th anniversary of Cook’s voyage along the east coast was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the view from the ship and the view from the shore. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While it implies equal weighting would be given to understanding both sides of the story of Cook’s landing, it’s a wrong-headed idea. It suggests each party remained – and can remain still - suspended in their own separate worlds: on the ship or on the shore. </p>
<p>Missing from the tagline is the “beach” - the literal and metaphorical space where cross-cultural encounters, misunderstandings and, too often, violence has taken place.</p>
<p>As Danaiyarri reminds us, Cook did come ashore and the way he did set some of the terms for future colonial-Indigenous relations. </p>
<p>These encounters are challenging and complex to understand. Aboriginal stories, like those told by Danaiyarri, tell us what ought to have happened on the beach. And they ensure none of us forget where, how and why the troubles between Indigenous and other Australians began.</p>
<p>This year’s 250th commemoration provides yet another occasion to grapple with this difficult history – but the opportunity will be lost if we remain blinkered in seeing things only from one, or other, vantage point.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311300/original/file-20200122-117962-19ixlcz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captain Cook’s Landing Place Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Beach_(Kurnell)#/media/File:Captain_Cooks_Landing_Place_Park_-_panoramio_(2).jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126673/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Nugent receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
Indigenous story-telling of Cook’s landing has transformed the way we understand his legacy in Australia. And the way he came ashore set some of the terms for future colonial-Indigenous relations.
Maria Nugent, Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132098
2020-04-28T20:33:09Z
2020-04-28T20:33:09Z
250 years since Captain Cook landed in Australia, it’s time to acknowledge the violence of first encounters
<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware the podcast accompanying this story contains the names of people who are deceased.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>It’s 250 years since Captain James Cook set foot in Australia, and there’s a growing push to fully acknowledge the violence of Australia’s colonial past.</p>
<p>On today’s episode of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/podcasts/trust-me-podcast">podcast</a>, historian Kate Darian-Smith of the University of Tasmania explains that 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.</p>
<p>Now, though, a more nuanced debate is required, she says, adding that it’s time to discuss the violence that Cook’s crew meted out to Indigenous people after stepping ashore at Botany Bay.</p>
<p>“I think discussing those violent moments is quite confronting for many Australians, but also sits within wider discussions about Aboriginal rights and equality in today’s Australia,” Darian-Smith told The Conversation’s Phoebe Roth. </p>
<p>In her companion essay <a href="https://theconversation.com/cooking-the-books-how-re-enactments-of-the-endeavours-voyage-perpetuate-myths-of-australias-discovery-126751">here</a>, co-authored with Katrina Schlunke, Darian-Smith argues many of the popular “re-enactments” of national “foundation moments” in Australia’s past have elements of fantasy, compressing time and history into palatable narratives for mainstream Australia. </p>
<h2>New to podcasts?</h2>
<p>Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-podcasts-130882">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/trust-me-im-an-expert/id1290047736?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D8"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL2F1L3BvZGNhc3RzL3RydXN0LW1lLXBvZGNhc3QucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/trust-me-im-an-expert"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/Trust-Me-Im-An-Expert-p1035757/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-Wa3E5A"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/7myc7drbLJVaRitAMXLB7V"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> </p>
<p><strong>Additional audio credits</strong></p>
<p><em>Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from <a href="https://www.elefanttraks.com/">Elefant Traks.</a></em></p>
<p><em>Podcast episode recorded by Phoebe Roth and edited by Sophia Morris.</em></p>
<p><em>Tasfilm <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcnI2g_wxOw">report</a> on the 1970 commemorations of Cook’s arrival.</em> </p>
<p><em>1970 news <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6WqGDhn7XU">report</a> of protest.</em></p>
<h2>Lead image</h2>
<p><em>David Crosling/AAP</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-we-celebrate-the-rediscovery-of-the-endeavour-lets-acknowledge-its-complicated-legacy-103524">As we celebrate the rediscovery of the Endeavour let's acknowledge its complicated legacy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
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.
Sunanda Creagh, Senior Editor
Phoebe Roth, Deputy Health Editor
Sophia Morris, Editorial Intern
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128771
2020-04-28T20:32:57Z
2020-04-28T20:32:57Z
My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it’s time to reinterpret a painful history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312666/original/file-20200129-93030-1lq8cte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=125%2C269%2C5865%2C3718&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tuia 250</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Commemorations of Captain James Cook’s 1769/70 Pacific voyage began late last year in New Zealand, marking the first encounters between Māori and Cook’s crew 250 years ago.</p>
<p>A flotilla of traditional twin-hulled ocean voyaging vessels and tall ships, including a replica of Cook’s Endeavour, sailed along the coast for more than two months as part of <a href="https://mch.govt.nz/tuia250">Tuia 250</a>, a government-sponsored series of events framed around New Zealand’s voyaging heritage.</p>
<p>The events have polarised many communities. Māori in several areas protested, while others took part enthusiastically. The community to which I belong - Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne and Ngāti Apa - made up the latter. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-tmZKG8jiXs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Local Māori perform a formal welcome ceremony (pōhiri) as the Tuia 250 flotilla arrives in Gisborne.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For us, Tuia 250 was about many things, but least of all about James Cook. We inverted the “Cookfest” in the same way our ancestors took European technologies and put them to customary use. </p>
<h2>Insight into our world</h2>
<p>My ancestors were present in Tōtaranui/Queen Charlotte Sound, at the top of the South Island, when James Cook arrived in 1770. Fifty years later, the area was invaded by tribes from the north, armed with muskets. </p>
<p>The inter-tribal conflicts that occurred in New Zealand during the 1820s and 1830s are known as the <a href="http://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/document/?wid=191&page=0&action=searchresult&target=">“musket wars”</a>. While the weapon technology was new, the causes for conflict between tribes were customary and many were settled in accordance with custom, primarily through marriage.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-significance-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi-110982">Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312663/original/file-20200129-92949-75k0g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by tribal chiefs and Crown representatives in 1840.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The musket wars led up to 1840, the year tribal chiefs and representatives of the Crown <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-treaty/english-text">signed the Treaty of Waitangi</a>. By then, the geo-political situation in the northern South Island was quite different from 1770. </p>
<p>I mention these events - Cook’s expeditions, the <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealands-19th-century-wars/the-musket-wars">musket wars</a> and the treaty - because they have framed our historical experience and influence our contemporary response. When the government announced its plans for Tuia 250, we saw an opportunity to revisit the past, re-imagining it in order to create a new reality in the present. </p>
<p>We knew that our ancestors had met Cook, but more importantly, they had established a relationship with <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6t2/tupaia">Tupaia</a>, the Ra’iātean navigator who had joined the expedition in Tahiti. The <a href="https://www.totaranui250.co.nz/tupaea-and-the-people-of-totaranui">intensity of that relationship</a> is reflected in the <a href="https://www.totaranui250.co.nz/tupaea-and-the-people-of-totaranui">lament</a> composed by our ancestors when they heard of Tupaia’s death. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C296%2C5919%2C3700&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312658/original/file-20200129-92954-1a23hl0.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">A traditional ocean voyaging canoe sails into Wellington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Custom goes to court</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/musket-wars">muskets wars</a> certainly influenced the history of the northern South Island. From that point on the area was occupied by new tribes whose “take whenua” (occupation rights) were based on “raupatu” (conquest). But my tribal community soon faced a far more formidable opponent - the Crown and British settlers.</p>
<p>Following the signing of the treaty, the Crown imposed its <a href="http://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/document/?wid=1446&page=0&action=searchresult&target=">native policy</a>. Fundamentally this meant relieving Māori of their “idle” lands. Through the <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/native-land-court-created">Native Land Court</a> system, judges were asked to determine who held rights to certain areas according to native custom. Despite having heard evidence from my tribes, the court decided that they had been conquered and had therefore lost their rights to land they claimed through “take tupuna” (ancestry). </p>
<p>These issues were revisited 110 years later. The <a href="https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/">Waitangi Tribunal</a>, a specialist commission of inquiry, found that Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne and Ngāti Apa had retained rights following the invasion and that the Crown had failed them. The Crown subsequently apologised and <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/50HansD_20140418_00000008/ng%C4%81ti-apa-ki-te-r%C4%81-t%C5%8D-ng%C4%81ti-kuia-and-rangit%C4%81ne-o-wairau">compensated the tribes</a> in 2014. </p>
<p>All of these factors influenced why and how my tribes engaged with Tuia 250. The fact that the flotilla included voyagers from East Polynesia reminded us of the relationship our ancestors forged with Tupaia 250 years earlier. Cultural imperatives demanded that our guests be received in an appropriate manner. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C80%2C3788%2C2075&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/306465/original/file-20191211-95115-5umcp1.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 Tuia 250 flotilla sailed along New Zealand’s coast for more than two months.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tuia 250</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pragmatic solutions</h2>
<p>The events following Cook’s arrival and the musket wars were significant but did not constrain the aspirations of coming generations. The boundaries that were later imposed on us through Crown policy were both artificial and ultimately temporary.</p>
<p>Few people had the opportunity to witness the pōhiri (traditional welcome) for the flotilla at Meretoto/Ships Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound last November. It was an interesting example of custom whereby tribal leaders worked to accommodate each other’s cultural practices. </p>
<p>Despite a history of conflict and ongoing disputes, the pōhiri demonstrated that Māori are also pragmatic and search for solutions that maintain the mana (status, authority) of all - at least on this occasion.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TBtH7RgPwWQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A waka festival signified the Tuia 250 voyage’s final stop at the Mahia peninsula.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tuia 250 also showed that Māori history continues to unfold, both in relation to the Pākehā (non-Maori) world, and independent of it. With the government’s recent announcement that New Zealand history will be made compulsory in schools, it will be interesting to see how these diverse realities are incorporated into the curriculum.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-time-for-new-zealanders-to-learn-more-about-their-own-countrys-history-123527">Why it's time for New Zealanders to learn more about their own country's history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Another theme of Tuia 250 is the notion of shared futures. The rekindling of a relationship that began 250 years ago was strengthened through the retelling of oral traditions, and the creation of new ones. This was a reminder that we are a Pacific island nation and our shared future is here, not in London or Whitby.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter N. Meihana 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>
New Zealand’s commemorations of James Cook’s arrival 250 years ago were least about the British explorer himself, but instead focused on Polynesian voyaging heritage and encounters with Māori.
Peter N. Meihana, Lecturer, Massey University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128002
2020-04-28T20:32:51Z
2020-04-28T20:32:51Z
From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314391/original/file-20200210-52356-svzc68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C243%2C1209%2C779&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Founding of Australia 1788', an oil painting by Algernon Talmage</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a>, and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>After Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1770, the east coast of Australia was drawn on European maps of the globe for the first time. Yet, in terms of European contact with the continent, there was an 18-year lull in between Cook’s 1770 landings and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. </p>
<p>The main reason for this was Britain’s preoccupation with subduing its rebellious colonists in the War of American Independence from 1776-83. </p>
<p>Britain’s defeat in that war brought forth an urgent problem that eventually led to the colonisation of Australia: what it saw as a need to dispose of convicts who were overflowing the available prisons at home. </p>
<p>Previously, many British convicts were transported to the American colonies but after independence this option was no longer available. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.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">Cook’s chart of Botany Bay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-chart-of-botany-bay-by-james-cook">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The next penal colony: let the search begin</h2>
<p>Discussions about alternative penal colonies meshed with Britain’s larger strategic and commercial goals at the time. Many hoped a new convict settlement would provide a base for extending British power in the wake of the American debacle and be “<a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">advantageous both to navigation and commerce</a>”.</p>
<p>The search began in 1779 when the House of Commons established a committee under the chairmanship of British politician Sir Charles Bunbury. Various locations were considered, in particular, Senegal and Gambia on the west African coast. </p>
<p>But a new destination soon emerged with the testimony of Joseph Banks, the botanist on board the Endeavour, who had recently been elected president of the Royal Society. Botany Bay on the Australian coast, he contended, would be the best site for a penal colony since it had a Mediterranean climate and would be fertile. <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">Banks added</a>, too, that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there would be little Probability of any Opposition from the Natives</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a prediction that would ultimately prove <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/pemulwuy">incorrect</a>.</p>
<h2>Why Botany Bay?</h2>
<p>The search for a penal settlement lost momentum during the war, but regained some sense of urgency with its end in 1783. </p>
<p>James Matra, an American-born seaman aboard the Endeavour, circulated a proposal among policy-makers about establishing a new settlement at Botany Bay. It was based on his own first-hand knowledge of the coast, as well as his discussions with Banks, who remained the most influential advocate for the site. </p>
<p>Matra’s most immediate concern was to provide a home for the American loyalists – those, like his own family, who had lost their property in the new United States because of their loyalty to the British crown during the war. </p>
<p>Matra’s proposal also appealed to some key strategic and commercial concerns:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>flax and timbers could be brought from New Zealand to grow in the new colony, providing the British navy with much-needed supplies;</p></li>
<li><p>the planting of spices and sugarcane would reduce Britain’s reliance on the Dutch East Indies; </p></li>
<li><p>the site could be used as a base for those engaged in the lucrative fur trade in America; and </p></li>
<li><p>the settlement could act as a strategic base to challenge the Dutch in the East Indies and the Spanish in the Philippines and even South America. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Another serious contender emerges</h2>
<p>After Matra submitted his proposal, another House of Commons committee was established in 1785, chaired by Lord Beauchamp. Both Matra and Banks gave evidence in favour of Botany Bay, with Banks <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">arguing</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>from the fertility of the soil, the timid disposition of the inhabitants and the climate being so analogous to that of Europe I give the place the preference to all that I have seen</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The committee, however, opted for an African site. It believed Das Voltas Bay, in southwest Africa, could reduce British dependence on the Dutch Cape of Good Hope in what is now South Africa and serve as a refuge for the American loyalists. </p>
<p>Before venturing down the path of establishing a colony, however, an exploratory voyage was sent to the African coast. It concluded the site was unsuitable as it lacked an effective harbour and fertile land. </p>
<p>Botany Bay was back in serious contention.</p>
<h2>Dreams of Pacific trade</h2>
<p>Other supporters soon emerged to sing the praises of Botany Bay. </p>
<p>Sir George Young, a naval officer and former East India Company officer, argued a colony at the site could serve as a base for trade with South America and underlined its strategic importance. If war broke out with Spain in the region, Botany Bay could be a place of refuge for British naval vessels. </p>
<p>Another advocate, John Call, an engineer with the East India Company, saw the advantages of a secondary settlement on nearby Norfolk Island. Flax grew in abundance on the island, he said, and the mighty Norfolk pine tree would be ideal for the masts of ships.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These observations were based on reports from Cook’s second and third Pacific voyages. The second included a visit to Norfolk Island, while the third ventured to the northwestern coast of America and traded furs in China, further fuelling British aspirations for Pacific trade.</p>
<p>Such arguments eventually led Prime Minister William Pitt and his Cabinet to accept the proposal to establish the settlement at Botany Bay.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing by John Webber depicting the arrival of Cook’s ship in Nootka Sound in April 1778 on his search for the Northwest Passage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A costly endeavour</h2>
<p>Such a settlement demanded an unprecedented degree of state planning and financing. </p>
<p>The First Fleet, for example, consisted of 11 ships (no larger than the <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime-history/ott1788/index.html">Manly ferry</a>) that carried, among other things, a supply of seeds from Banks to help establish a “new Europe” on the other side of the Earth.</p>
<p>The convicts sent to New South Wales also incurred considerable state expense compared to those sent to America. From 1788-89, the new colony accumulated expenses of over 250,000 pounds, which equated to 100 pounds per convict per annum.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cooking-the-books-how-re-enactments-of-the-endeavours-voyage-perpetuate-myths-of-australias-discovery-126751">Cooking the books: how re-enactments of the Endeavour's voyage perpetuate myths of Australia's 'discovery'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The fact it cost considerably more to transport a convict to New South Wales than to keep him or her in a British jail supported the view held by some in England that the penal colony was a subterfuge for broader strategic goals. </p>
<p>Rival nations also thought the British were trying to deceive them. Alejandro Malaspina, who captained a Spanish expedition that visited Sydney in 1793, thought the settlement could be a potential naval base for an attack on Spanish America.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A list of female convicts onboard the Lady Penrhyn in the First Fleet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A repository for convicts</h2>
<p>And yet, in the end, the settlement at New South Wales did little to advance British strategic goals.</p>
<p>The site lacked a naval base and its defences were so weak, François Péron, a naturalist aboard the French <a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/fc/aos/dj">Baudin expedition</a> that circumnavigated much of Australia from 1801-03, thought it could be easily captured.</p>
<p>In fact, no naval expedition was mounted from New South Wales during the Napoleonic wars of 1803-15. Nor did New South Wales live up to the commercial benefits some had invested in it. Tropical fruits and spices would not grow in Sydney, and Norfolk Island proved a disappointment as a source for naval supplies. </p>
<p>The American loyalists also chose to resettle in nearby Canada instead of distant New South Wales. </p>
<p>But New South Wales proved to cater to the most immediate reason for British settlement: a repository for convicts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gascoigne is the author of several books on James Cook and Joseph Banks. His most recent book is Encountering the Pacific in the Age of the Enlightenment. </span></em></p>
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.
John Gascoigne, Emeritus Professor, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129688
2020-04-28T20:32:43Z
2020-04-28T20:32:43Z
Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311023/original/file-20200121-69535-lot4sr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vincent Namatjira, Western Arrernte people, Northern Territory, born 1983, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Close Contact, 2018, Indulkana, South Australia, synthetic polymer paint on plywood; Gift of the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation for the Ramsay Art Prize 2019</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, photo: Grant Hancock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In Vincent Namatjira’s <a href="https://www.adelaidereview.com.au/arts/visual-arts/2019/05/24/vincent-namatjira-2019-ramsay-art-prize/">Ramsay Award winning</a> Close Contact (2018), the artist construes Captain James Cook as the reverse image of his own self-portrait. The colonising presence of Cook looking toward a colonial future is satirised by making another present: Vincent Namatjira’s self-portrait looks out in a diametrically different direction. </p>
<p>Towards what, exactly?</p>
<p>Australia’s link to Cook has always been mediated by iconography. Cook was a promise recollected in pigment, bronze and stone to a nation at war with its first inhabitants and possessors. </p>
<p>Cook, and the violence of colonisation in his wake, embodied a claim to a vast inheritance: of Enlightenment and modernity at the expense of peoples already here.</p>
<p>Since his foundational ritual of possession, First Nations people have called for a reckoning with Cook’s legacies, and in recent years First Nations artists have reinvigorated this call.</p>
<p>By invoking the presence of Cook, they ask their audience to recognise how colonisation and empire rendered them all but absent – and his celebration today continues to do so. </p>
<h2>Taking possession</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/3971/">Samuel Calvert</a>’s 1865 print, Cook Taking Possession of the Australian Continent on Behalf of the British Crown, the noisy presence of the newcomers’ industry and weapons drives two huddled Aboriginal men into the bush. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309367/original/file-20200109-80144-173vy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British Crown A.D. 1770 (c. 1853-1864), colour process engraving.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wathaurung Elder <a href="https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6337673/the-gilson-family-are-telling-wathaurung-stories-to-thousands-at-white-night-melbourne/">Aunty Marlene Gilson</a> re-worked Calvert’s image in The Landing (2018): widening the lens to show peoples living in the landscape. </p>
<p>Gilson imaginatively runs together Calvert’s imagery with accounts of Governor Phillip’s <a href="https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/arthur-phillip-bicentenary">later landing</a>. As the flag is hoisted ships hover in the bay. Colonisation was a process of denying who was already there, the First Nations families and figures Gilson captures in lively habitation on land and water. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311718/original/file-20200124-162240-vhmbl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The landing, 2018, Marlene Gilson, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Marlene Gilson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gilson challenges the mythology of empire: that empty territory needed no treaty.</p>
<p>Gilson’s image is also a homage to <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/gordon-bennett/">Gordon Bennett</a>’s earlier reworking of Calvert in <a href="http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2007/important-aboriginal-art-au0712/lot.100.html">Possession Island</a> (1991). Bennett deliberately obscured Cook and his companions, with the exception of one dark-skinned servant. The presumptuous act of possession is only glimpsed behind a <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-blue-poles-by-jackson-pollock-51655">Jackson Pollock</a>-like forest of lines. Visual static intervenes. Terra nullius interruptus. </p>
<p>This obscurity stands in marked contrast to <a href="https://www.christianthompson.net">Christian Thompson</a>’s Othering the Explorer, James Cook (2015). Part of his Museum of Others series, his images invite us to consider the effacement of First Nations people by colonial authority and knowledge. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311890/original/file-20200125-81336-e9e19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr Christian Thompson AO, Museum of Others (Othering the Explorer, James Cook), 2016. c-type on metallic paper, 120 x 120 cm, from the Museum of Others series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist & Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Thompson superimposes Cook’s head and shoulders on the artist’s own. His choice of images is deliberate, the 1775 <a href="https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/14102.html">Nathaniel Dance</a> portrait of Cook in full naval regalia glowering over his Pacific “discoveries”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311024/original/file-20200121-69559-13qugo9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Official portrait of Captain James Cook, c 1776, by Nathaniel Dance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Maritime Museum, United Kingdom</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since European colonisation, the assertion of the discoverer’s right to possess has erased the rich tapestry of prior ownership and belonging. In Thompson’s wry self-effacement, Cook’s superimposition is a reminder of someone already there. This was always the coloniser’s ploy. Presence as absence is a conceit of colonisation.</p>
<p>The presence of absence informs <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/daniel-boyd/">Daniel Boyd</a>’s re-imagination of Cook’s landing in We Call Them Pirates Out Here (2006), a re-working of <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/fox-e-phillips/">E. Phillips Fox</a>’s Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay (1902). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311025/original/file-20200121-69568-wbcnm7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">E. Phillips Fox, Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770, c1902.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Phillips Fox portrayed Cook restraining his men from shooting the distantly pictured “natives”. This was empire as it wished to be seen: peaceful, British, white and triumphant. </p>
<p>Boyd plays on the flattery of imperial self-imagining by exposing the wilful piracy of colonial possession. Boyd’s Cook cuts the same imperial dash, but with an eye patch and skull and crossbones on the Union Jack behind him empire is revealed as the pirate’s resort. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311309/original/file-20200122-117943-1yvwuxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Boyd, We Call them Pirates Out Here, 2006, oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the Coe and Mordant families, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Daniel Boyd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Challenging mythologies</h2>
<p>The growing First Nations challenge to Cook’s iconography highlights his continued presence in our nation’s colonial mythology. </p>
<p>It is a challenge to Cook’s elevation as hero of the modern Australia built on Indigenous erasure. Jason Wing’s bronze bust of a balaclava-wearing <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/25.2019/">Captain James Crook</a> (2013) symbolises that challenge. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312184/original/file-20200128-81395-u39p2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jason Wing, Captain James Crook, 2013, bronze, 60 x 60 x 30cm, edition of 5. Photograph by Garrie Maguire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of the Artist and Artereal Gallery.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wing’s addition of the balaclava forces us to confront Cook’s legacy not as the projected shining icon of Enlightenment, but as a mythic presence built on deliberate theft, dispossession and violence. </p>
<p>These are only a small collection of artists reconsidering the place of Cook in our collective memory. Provocative, challenging, arresting, often satirical and sometimes funny, First Nations artists powerfully challenge us to reconsider Cook and our nation’s iconography.</p>
<p>Within the art lies an open invitation to reflect on who we have become and where we are headed. </p>
<p>This invitation is highlighted in Fiona Foley’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/artist-fiona-foley-explores-how-opium-was-used-to-control-aboriginal-labour-20191230-p53niv.html">most recent retrospective</a>, named for a song by Joe Gala and Teila Watson performed in Badtjala and English: Who are these strangers and where are they going? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tall-ship-tales-oral-accounts-illuminate-past-encounters-and-objects-but-we-need-to-get-our-story-straight-129978">Tall ship tales: oral accounts illuminate past encounters and objects, but we need to get our story straight</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The song weaves together the narratives of the First Nations people who first saw the Endeavour make its way along the coast. Together with the photographs and installations drawn from across Foley’s long career, the retrospective is a powerful affirmation of continuing presence: in 1770, in 1788, and today. </p>
<p>As we confront the Cook commemorations, Foley’s and the Badtjalas’ question, like Namatjira’s double-sided self-portrait, is a nudge to our nation’s future. Who are these strangers and where are they going? </p>
<p>By reminding us that the question was asked of Cook’s sudden presence in 1770, we must ask it again of ourselves to confront the absence his possession still makes present for us 250 years on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Buchan receives research funding from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and from the Swedish Research Council, for two projects with Dr Linda Andersson Burnett: ‘The Borders of Humanity: Linnaean Natural Historians and the Colonial Legacies of Enlightenment’ (P15-0423:1) 2016-19, and 'Collecting Mankind: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific Travelers’, circa 1750-1850' (2019-03358) 2020-24.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eddie Synot 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 too long, Cook was a promise recollected in pigment, bronze and stone. Contemporary First Nations artists are challenging this imagery.
Bruce Buchan, Associate Professor, Griffith University
Eddie Synot, Centre Manager, Indigenous Law Centre, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129064
2020-04-28T20:32:32Z
2020-04-28T20:32:32Z
‘I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box’: teachers say they lack confidence to teach Indigenous perspectives
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313481/original/file-20200204-41507-5qyleb.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">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Australian government has <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-captain-cook-became-a-contested-national-symbol-96344">allocated tens of millions of dollars</a> to commemorate the anniversary of Cook’s voyage to the South Pacific and Australia in 1770. Though several events have now been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, others will take place online.</p>
<p>This could also be an opportunity for teachers to disrupt the same white-washed versions of colonisation (brave, heroic and necessary) taught in Australian schools for centuries.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There is a plethora of <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-histories-and-cultures/">education policy</a> mandating teachers incorporate Indigenous perspectives across year levels and subject areas. But in practice, this is much harder to do without Indigenous perspectives becoming trivialised or tokenistic. </p>
<h2>Policy isn’t enough</h2>
<p>Many teachers <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286450721_Aboriginal_education_More_than_adding_different_perspectives">don’t feel confident or capable</a> to include Indigenous perspectives in their classrooms. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TVIJZWVUZUIBFH32JMIM/full?target=10.1080/14681366.2019.1704844">our recent study</a> in a cluster of primary and secondary schools, teachers were paired with Aboriginal community members to plan and deliver lessons. Initially, teachers reported feeling ill-equipped to genuinely include an Aboriginal perspective. </p>
<p>One teacher said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve always felt that I wasn’t very good at embedding Aboriginal perspectives in my lessons. It was always, for me, seen as a tick-box, and I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box, and that’s it[…] you didn’t want to step on any toes, and you didn’t want to offend anyone, so you just touched – you just skimmed the surface.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Teachers involved in the project had the best of intentions and a fierce willingness to learn. Some had been teaching for more than 20 years and openly admitted their ignorance towards Indigenous dispossession and the way schooling was used as a vehicle of colonisation. </p>
<p>Another teacher expressed the problem of not having adequate skills to teach Indigenous perspectives: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m blatantly aware how Anglo the room looks. But I guess I don’t want to do something that is tokenistic […] I don’t agree with tokenistic things. I think you’ve got to do it and do it well and I think to just have an Aboriginal flag in the corner, oh and now we’re going to do dot painting and, oh, right, now we’re going to do – you know? It’s kind of a bit insulting, really.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Without Indigenous perspectives in the classroom, or with only tokenistic inclusion, students’ views on Aboriginal peoples, colonialism and “Australian history” are more susceptible to negative media and social attitudes. </p>
<p>This leaves many non-Indigenous students ill-equipped to think critically about the world they live in.</p>
<p>As one teacher said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If at school we teach it as tokenistic and then the media teaches it as, you know, stereotypical, then how are we going to produce the next generation of people that will work towards reconciliation and recognise the things of the past but move forward without these stereotypes, you know?</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
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>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>I’m just following the syllabus</h2>
<p>Some teachers feel protective of the formal curriculum. In this instance, Indigenous perspectives become a tick-the-box policy, something to add into the lesson, but not so much that it interferes with the “real” learning outcomes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314385/original/file-20200210-52389-1t5hr9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many Indigenous students feel frustrated at the way ‘Australian history’ is being taught.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what are these “real outcomes”? </p>
<p>In the NSW curriculum, the stage two (years three and four) unit “First Contacts”, provides the earliest comprehensive glimpse of world exploration and the colonisation of Australia. The <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/hsie/history-k-10/content/803/!ut/p/z1/tVPLbsIwEPyWHnK0vHZCkh5ToLzLqwHiC3KCAVNwQrCg9Ovr9HWDtEL1wZK1szOz9hgzPMNM8aNccS1TxbfmHDF37rSaADbQbqMzrMKwMR55fr3V7U4cPP0A0IC4pOmQTr_hEw">key questions for inquiry include</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>why did the great journeys of exploration occur?</p></li>
<li><p>what was life like for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples before the arrival of the Europeans?</p></li>
<li><p>why did Europeans settle in Australia?</p></li>
<li><p>what was the nature and consequence of contact between Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples and early traders, explorers and settlers?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Note the use of presumptive (“great”) and passive (“settle”, “explorers”) language in these questions. The last dot point also raises concerns about how teachers will challenge entrenched whitewashed versions of history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673">A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783318794295">Research</a> with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students highlights the frustration Indigenous students feel, particularly during history lessons. </p>
<p>As one student said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You always have to learn from a white perspective, especially in history. Why don’t they learn from us for once?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another student described the tension in the classroom as their teacher downloaded information from the internet:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Usually half of the class would get into a very heated racial discussion, which we had to sit through. Because the teacher had no idea what he was going on about. Some of the stuff he had on the board, because he just copies it from the Internet, so some of the stuff he has got on the board is racist, and he is teaching us. So it’s like very […] uncomfortable.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What will it take?</h2>
<p>Teachers must critically reflect on their own identity and how it potentially influences their personal bias and worldview. They must also be willing to confront the ongoing effects of colonialism in and outside the classroom and listen to Indigenous people. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/they-are-all-dead-for-indigenous-people-cooks-voyage-of-discovery-was-a-ghostly-visitation-126430">'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Teachers must aspire to adequately and systemically overturn the harm schooling continues to inflict on many Indigenous people. A critical dialogue of Cook’s arrival that familiarises students with topics like racial hierarchies and white supremacy is long overdue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Bishop's research with the 'Culture, Community and Curriculum Project' (CCCP) received funding from the Ian Potter Foundation. She is a Gamilaroi woman from Western NSW and grew up on Dhawaral Country in south-west Sydney. Her PhD focuses on Indigenous education sovereignty.</span></em></p>
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.
Michelle Bishop, Associate Lecturer, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137390
2020-04-28T19:56:24Z
2020-04-28T19:56:24Z
Explorer, navigator, coloniser: revisit Captain Cook’s legacy with the click of a mouse
<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today.</em></p>
<p><em>Click through below to explore Cook’s journey through the Pacific, his interactions with Indigenous peoples and how that journey led to Australia becoming a penal colony 18 years later.</em></p>
<p><em>You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://cook250.netlify.app"><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1017/launch-gif.gif?1588047472" alt="Click through to explore the interactive." width="100%"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Explore Cook’s journey through the Pacific, the orders that brought him in search of the ‘Great Southern Land’ and the impact of his arrival in our new interactive.
Sunanda Creagh, Senior Editor
Wes Mountain, Social Media + Visual Storytelling Editor
Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130389
2020-04-28T19:56:10Z
2020-04-28T19:56:10Z
An honest reckoning with Captain Cook’s legacy won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a start
<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of an interview with John Maynard for our podcast <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/trust-me-im-an-expert-43810">Trust Me, I’m An Expert</a>. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>There are a multitude of Aboriginal oral memories about Captain James Cook, right across the continent.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/events/cooks-treasures/papers/Deborah-Rose-Captain-Cook.pdf">research</a> from Deborah Bird Rose shows, many Aboriginal people in remote locations are certainly under the impression that Cook came there as well, shooting people in a kind of Cook-led invasion of Australia. Many of these communities, of course, never met James Cook; the man never even went there. </p>
<p>But the deep impact of James Cook that spread across the country and he came to represent the bogeyman for Aboriginal Australia. </p>
<p>Even back in the Protection and Welfare Board days, a government car would turn up and Aboriginal people would be running around <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/audio/professor-john-maynard">screaming</a>, “Lookie, lookie, here comes Cookie!” </p>
<p>I <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Maynard">wrote</a> about Uncle Ray Rose, sadly recently departed, who’d had a stroke. Someone said, “How do you feel?” And he said, “No good. I’m Captain Cooked.” </p>
<p>Cook, wherever he went up the coast, was giving names where names already existed. <a href="https://www.redbilby.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/East_Coast_Encounter_Sample.pdf">Yuin oral memory</a> in the south coast of NSW gives the example of what they called <a href="https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/south-coast/batemans-bay-and-eurobodalla/tilba/attractions/mount-gulaga-mount-dromedary-walk">Gulaga</a> and Cook called “Mount Dromedary”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] that name can be seen as the first of the changes that come for our people […] Cook’s maps were very good, but they did not show our names for places. He didn’t ask us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cook has been <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Maynard">incorporated</a> into songs, jokes, stories and Aboriginal oral histories right across the country. </p>
<p>Why? I think it’s an Aboriginal response to the way we’ve been taught about our history. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/captain-cook-wanted-to-introduce-british-justice-to-indigenous-people-instead-he-became-increasingly-cruel-and-violent-127025">Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Myth-making persists but a shift is underway</h2>
<p>I came through a school system of the 50s and 60s, and we weren’t weren’t even mentioned in the history books except as a people belonging to the Stone Age or as a dying race. </p>
<p>It was all about discoverers, explorers, settlers and Phar Lap or Don Bradman. But us Aboriginal people? Not there. </p>
<p>We had this high exposure of the public celebration of Cook, the statues of Cook, the reenactments of Cook – it was really in your face. For Aboriginal people, how do we make sense of all of this, faced with the reality of our experience and the catastrophic impact?</p>
<p>We’ve got to make sense of it the best way we can, and I think that’s why Cook turns up in so many oral histories. </p>
<p>I think wider Australia is moving towards a more balanced understanding of our history. Lots of people now recognise the richest cultural treasure the country possesses is 65,000 years of Aboriginal cultural connection to this continent. </p>
<p>That’s unlike anywhere else in the world. I mean no disrespect, but 250 years is a drop in a lake compared to 65,000 years. From our perspective, in fact, we’ve always been here. Our people came out of the Dreamtime of the creative ancestors and lived and kept the Earth as it was in the very first day. </p>
<p>With global warming, rising sea levels, rising temperatures and catastrophic storms, Aboriginal people did keep the Earth as it was in the very first day to ensure that it was passed to each surviving generation. </p>
<p>There was going to be a (now-<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/captain-cook-250th-anniversary-voyage-suspended-due-to-coronavirus">cancelled</a>) <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-22/endeavour-replica-to-sail-around-australia/10734998">circumnavigation</a> of Australia in the official proceedings this year, which the prime minister supported. But James Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia. He only sailed up the east coast. So that’s creating more myths again, which is a senseless way to go.</p>
<h2>‘With the consent of the Natives to take possession’</h2>
<p>Personally, I have high regard for James Cook as a navigator, as a cartographer, and certainly as an inspiring captain of his crew. He encouraged incredible loyalty among those that sailed with him on those three voyages. And that has to be recognised. </p>
<p>But against that, of course, is the reality that he was given <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/content/secret">secret instructions</a> by the Navy to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With the consent of the Natives to take possession of the convenient situations in the country in the name of the king of Great Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, consent was never given. When they went ashore at Botany Bay, two Aboriginal men <a href="https://www.bl.uk/the-voyages-of-captain-james-cook/articles/an-indigenous-australian-perspective-on-cooks-arrival">brandished spears</a> and made it quite clear they didn’t want him there. Those men were wounded and Cook was one of those firing a musket.</p>
<p>There was no gaining any consent when he sailed on to Possession Island and planted that flag down. Totally the opposite, in fact.</p>
<p>And the most insightful viewpoint is from Cook himself, who <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook/17700430.html">wrote</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>all they seem’d to want was for us to be gone.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Cook’s background gave him insight</h2>
<p>James Cook wasn’t your normal British naval officer of that time period. To get into such a position, you normally had to be born into the right family, to come from money and privilege. </p>
<p>James Cook was none of those things. He came from a poor family. His father was a labourer. Cook got to where he was by skill, endeavour, and, unquestionably, because he was a very smart man and brilliant at sea. But it’s also from that background that he’s able to offer insight. </p>
<p>There’s an incredible quotation of Cook’s where he <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook_remarks/092.html">says</a> of Aboriginal people:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition… they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now, Cook is comparing what he is seeing in Australia with life back Britain, where there is an incredible amount of inequality. London, at the time, was filthy. Sewerage pouring through the streets. Disease was rife. Underprivilege is everywhere. </p>
<p>In Australia, though, Cook sees what to him looks like this incredible egalitarian society and it makes an impact on him because of where he comes from. </p>
<p>But deeper misunderstandings persisted. In what’s now called Cooktown there are, at first, amicable relationships with the Guugu Yimithirr people, but when they <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/banks/banksvo2.pdf">come aboard the Endeavour</a> they see this incredible profusion of turtles that the crew has captured. </p>
<p>They’re probably thinking, “these are our turtles.” They would quite happily share some of those turtles but the Bristish response is: you get <em>none</em>. </p>
<p>So the Guugu Yimithirr people go off the ship and set the grass on fire. Eventually, there’s a kind of peace settlement but the incident reveals a complete blindness on the part of the British to the idea of reciprocity in Aboriginal society.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/they-are-all-dead-for-indigenous-people-cooks-voyage-of-discovery-was-a-ghostly-visitation-126430">'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A collision of catastrophic proportions</h2>
<p>The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions. The whole impact of 1788 – of invasion, dispossession, cultural destruction, occupation onto assimilation, segregation – all of these things that came after 1770.</p>
<p>Anything you want to measure – Aboriginal health, education, employment, housing, youth suicide, incarceration – we have the worst stats. That has been a continuation, a reality of the failure of government to recognise what has happened in the past and actually do something about it in the present to fix it for the future. </p>
<p>We’ve had decades and decades of governments saying to us, “We know what’s best for you.” But the fact is that when it comes to Aboriginal well being, the only people to listen to are Aboriginal people and we’ve never been put in the position.</p>
<p>We’ve been raising our voices for a long time now, but some people see that as a threat and are not prepared to listen.</p>
<p>An honest reckoning of the reality of Cook and what came after won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a starting point, from which we can join hands and walk together toward a shared future. </p>
<p>A balanced understanding of the past will help us build a future – it is of critical importance.</p>
<h2>New to podcasts?</h2>
<p>Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-podcasts-130882">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/trust-me-im-an-expert/id1290047736?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D8"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a> <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVjb252ZXJzYXRpb24uY29tL2F1L3BvZGNhc3RzL3RydXN0LW1lLXBvZGNhc3QucnNz"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233720/original/file-20180827-75978-3mdxcf.png" alt="" width="268" height="68"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-conversation/trust-me-im-an-expert"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233716/original/file-20180827-75981-pdp50i.png" alt="Stitcher" width="300" height="88"></a> <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/Trust-Me-Im-An-Expert-p1035757/"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233723/original/file-20180827-75984-f0y2gb.png" alt="Listen on TuneIn" width="318" height="125"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://radiopublic.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-Wa3E5A"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-152" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233717/original/file-20180827-75990-86y5tg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" alt="Listen on RadioPublic" width="268" height="87"></a> <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/7myc7drbLJVaRitAMXLB7V"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237984/original/file-20180925-149976-1ks72uy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=268&fit=clip" width="268" height="82"></a> </p>
<p><strong>Additional audio credits</strong></p>
<p><em>Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from <a href="https://www.elefanttraks.com/">Elefant Traks.</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Daniel_Birch/Music_For_Audio_Drama_Podcasts_Vol1/Marimba_On_The_Loose">Marimba On the Loose</a> by Daniel Birch, from Free Music Archive.</em></p>
<p><em>Podcast episode recorded and edited by Sunanda Creagh.</em></p>
<h2>Lead image</h2>
<p><em>Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, a film by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130389/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions.
Sunanda Creagh, Senior Editor
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126430
2020-04-28T19:55:55Z
2020-04-28T19:55:55Z
‘They are all dead’: for Indigenous people, Cook’s voyage of ‘discovery’ was a ghostly visitation
<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>On a recent trip to Cape York, I was privileged to sit with Kaurareg/Gudang Yadhaykenu man Uncle Tommy Savage, on a beach in the town of Umagico.</p>
<p>We listened as he sang a song called Markai an Ghule (meaning “ghost ship”), composed by his ancestors when James Cook arrived at Possession Island in August 1770. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<p>A sad lilt permeated the song, an expression of the grief the Kaurareg people felt at having to hide their cultural system, while they determined what the arrival of this preternatural being and his big ship was all about. </p>
<p>We recorded Uncle Tommy’s song for inclusion in The Message, a film commissioned by the National Museum of Australia and opening in April to coincide with 250 years since Cook arrived.</p>
<p>While researching the film, I spent much of last year travelling Australia’s east coast interviewing historians, curators and traditional owners, piecing together stories from the ship and the shore. Here are the stories that have stuck with me.</p>
<h2>A voyage of the dead</h2>
<p>What is so often described as Cook’s “voyage of discovery” has been viewed consistently by Indigenous people as a voyage of the dead; a giant canoe carrying the reincarnation of ancestral beings.</p>
<p>At the first encounter in Botany Bay, two Gweagal warriors throw stones and spears to Cook, saying “warrawarrawa,” <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/livinglanguage_mr_120719.pdf">meaning</a> “they are all dead” (not “go away”, as it is often translated).</p>
<p>Perhaps this explains why Banks and Cook write of Aboriginal people persistently declining any of the gifts they were offered. You would have to be crazy to take gifts from the dead! </p>
<p>The warnings about these ghostly visitors were quickly and accurately sent by fire, smoke and message stick up the coast, adding a deeper meaning to the many <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Endeavour-Journal">fires</a> Banks and Cook noted as they travelled north (“Saw several smooks along shore before dark and two or three times afire in the night,” Cook <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Endeavour-Journal">writes</a>).</p>
<h2>A collision of beliefs</h2>
<p>When the Endeavour smashes into the reef in Cooktown and is forced to stay for 48 days on the river for repairs, Cook and his crew captured “<a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">eight or nine</a>” turtles (tellingly, Banks refers repeatedly to “our turtles”). </p>
<p>A contingent of local Guugu Yimithirr men board HMS Endeavour and try to take at least one turtle back, but Cook’s men soon wrest it away – refusing to share or acknowledge the possibility they’d taken too many.</p>
<p>Lamenting this environmental loss, a group of warriors light the grass fires in protest (“I had little Idea of the fury with which the grass burnt in this hot climate, nor of the dificulty of extinguishing it when once lighted”, Banks <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">writes</a>) and Cook shoots one of the Guugu Yimithirr men.</p>
<p>The rising tension is then released by an older man who stands forward in an extraordinary act of governance and breaks the tip off a spear to signify “weapons down”. </p>
<h2>‘… in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans’</h2>
<p>The incident brought together threads still relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and cultural governance. And this collision of beliefs, it seems, was not lost on Cook. </p>
<p>As he sailed off from the tip of Cape York, Cook wrote an unusual diary <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook_remarks/092.html">entry</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniencies so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. </p>
<p>They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life; they covet not Magnificent Houses, Houshold-stuff […]</p>
<p>[…] they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air, so that they have very little need of Clothing and this they seem to be fully sencible of, for many to whome we gave Cloth to, left it carlessly upon the Sea beach and in the woods as a thing they had no manner of use for. </p>
<p>In short they seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this, in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no Superfluities —</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a working class man from Georgian England to see and appreciate the cultural values of Indigenous people is remarkable, considering that clarity of understanding is only just dawning on the average Australian. </p>
<h2>The role of Joseph Banks</h2>
<p>After all the conversations I’ve had over the last year with historians, traditional owners and curators, I’ve come to believe that history has been unkind to Cook. He is blamed for the many wrongs inflicted on my people. </p>
<p>Joseph Banks, however, emerges as a much colder, unkinder figure. It was Banks who <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/barrallier-letter/index.html">convinced the British government</a> that Australia would be perfect for a penal colony, given it could no longer send convicts to America. </p>
<p>Banks’s view that Australia was “<a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">thinly inhabited</a>” (and he speaks frequently of savagery and simplicity of its people) fed directly into the declaration of <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-reynolds-australia-was-founded-on-a-hypocrisy-that-haunts-us-to-this-day-101679">terra nullius.</a></em> Banks never went inland, but declared with great hubris that it was almost certainly “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XiuKJC5Izb0C&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=joseph+banks+%22totally+uninhabited%22&source=bl&ots=lQfFdObesz&sig=ACfU3U0LLSIqhWC8D37BSZGhFuC-fseyOA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDjYvG1YbnAhXLZSsKHQXJDrEQ6AEwBHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20%22totally%20uninhabited%22&f=false">totally uninhabited</a>”.</p>
<p>In the end, the decisions made in the 18 years between Cook leaving and the First Fleet arriving have shaped modern Australia far more than those early fleeting ethereal encounters.</p>
<p>There are so many lost chapters in the story of Australia.</p>
<p>But as a nation, we can invite Uncle Tommy and his people – and all those other excluded songs and stories – to come out of hiding. </p>
<p>Revealing our shared history is the only way to make peace with those ghostly visitors of the past. But we will only find that peace in the truth and it’s the truth of our history, which will be our new voyage of discovery. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Alison Page was commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to create the film The Message for the museum’s Endeavour 250 exhibition, opening on April 8.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Page of Zakpage is a descendant of the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi people of the Yuin nation. She was commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to create the film The Message. She is a councillor on the Australian National Maritime Museum, won a sculpture commission for Kamay Commemorative Installation and is on the Indigenous Reference Group of the National Museum of Australia.</span></em></p>
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.
Alison Page, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126674
2020-04-28T19:55:37Z
2020-04-28T19:55:37Z
The stories of Tupaia and Omai and their vital role as Captain Cook’s unsung shipmates
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311022/original/file-20200121-69563-14zo3wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Mai, also known as Omai or Omai of the Friendly Isles. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Omai">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Several recent exhibitions on James Cook have sought to include discussions of the Indigenous people who journeyed with him on his Pacific voyages. </p>
<p>In exhibitions marking the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour’s departure from Britain in 2018, for example, both <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/tupaia">the British Library</a> and the <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/cook-and-the-pacific/society-islands">National Library of Australia</a> focused in part on the priest Tupaia, who travelled with Cook from Tahiti to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1769. </p>
<p>These exhibitions emphasised Tupaia’s navigational prowess, but didn’t provide extensive detail on the role he played in the British enterprises. </p>
<p>Likewise, little to no attention has been paid to the islander who journeyed with Cook the longest, Mai, who joined the captain’s second and third voyages. </p>
<p>Shining a light on the islanders who travelled with Cook is necessary to put his achievements in proper context. Cook was more reliant on their assistance for his empire-expanding project than is often acknowledged. And these islanders had more agency during the so-called Age of Discovery than is typically believed. </p>
<p>The stories of Tupaia and Mai highlight the central role Indigenous people played during this period, which for too long has been described as one of only European exploration. And they also question the way Cook has been portrayed throughout history – as a lone genius, connecting the world more closely through his unique abilities. </p>
<p>It turns out many different people contributed to globalisation in the 18th century.</p>
<h2>Tupaia’s motivations for joining the Endeavour</h2>
<p>Mai, or Omai as he was mostly known by the British, shared many characteristics with Tupaia. Both were motivated to journey with Cook because of intense dramas playing out on their home island of Ra‘iatea in what is now French Polynesia. And both became useful to the British voyagers by brokering introductions with other islanders in the Pacific. </p>
<p>But in other ways, the two men differed. They were from separate social ranks and they experienced very different fates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tupaia’s chart of the islands surrounding Tahiti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tupaia%27s_map,_c._1769.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tupaia was of the exalted ari’i rank, a leading priest of the ‘Oro sect that ruled most of the Tahitian archipelago during this era. </p>
<p>Because of his high status, he was directly involved in a tumultuous war between Ra‘iatea and neighboring Bora Bora in the 1760s, which eventually ended in defeat for the Ra‘iateans. After the war, he became a refugee in Tahiti, where he came into contact with the Endeavour and befriended the naturalist, Joseph Banks. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673">A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For Tupaia, the motivation to join the Endeavour voyage was complex and political. He saw in the British tallships an opportunity to gain arms, knowledge and possibly even men for a restorative offensive against the Bora Borans at Ra‘iatea.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/401251/tupaia-s-descendants-shed-new-light-on-cook-s-navigator">Some descendants today also suggest</a> he joined the crew as a way of continuing a long-established practice of voyaging – returning to islands he had previously visited in his own waka (canoe) and by his own navigational techniques.</p>
<p>And Banks saw in Tupaia’s adventurousness a chance to fulfill a dream to study man in a so-called “state of nature” back home in Britain. </p>
<h2>Tupaia’s assistance during the voyage</h2>
<p>Tupaia joined the Endeavour in July 1769. Cook, until now skeptical of including islanders in his crew, acquiesced partly because he saw it appeased Banks and partly because <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mIk8x6lsusQC&pg=PA262&lpg=PA262&dq=Shrewd,+Sensible,+and+Ingenious+Man+cook&source=bl&ots=wUlNNr2oOE&sig=ACfU3U34HfHEEHFnMjehTdif2BOlHFJW_Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr3bbTjqrnAhWu7HMBHawMC1YQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">he judged Tupaia</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a Shrewd, Sensible, and Ingenious Man. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The captain learned a great deal from Tupaia. Not only did Cook listen to and attempt to document all of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00223344.2018.1512369">Tupaia’s recitations on the scores of islands around Tahiti</a>, he also gained rare insight into Pacific voyaging. </p>
<p>Most of all, he had Tupaia’s help when he met wary islanders in other archipelagos. With Tupaia mediating, these encounters went smoothly.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing by Tupaia depicting trade between a Maori man and Joseph Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupaia_(navigator)#/media/File:A_Maori_man_and_Joseph_Banks_exchanging_a_crayfish_for_a_piece_of_cloth,_c._1769.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tupaia was ill through much of the Endeavour’s stay at Botany Bay. Unfortunately, his health only worsened and he died during the ship’s layover in Batavia, thwarting Banks’ long-term aim of bringing him to Britain. </p>
<p>Perhaps, though, Tupaia fulfilled at least part of his own dream to travel the Pacific once more.</p>
<h2>Mai’s fierce determination to join Cook</h2>
<p>Banks was not on Cook’s second voyage, but the captain carried with him the memory of the naturalist’s hopes to study a Pacific islander. </p>
<p>As I recount in my latest book, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300243062/warrior-voyager-and-artist">The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire</a>, Cook found that man when he encountered Mai in 1773. </p>
<p>Like Tupaia, Mai was also displaced by the Bora Boran invasion of Ra‘iatea. A generation younger than Tupaia, Mai had been a child at the time and also lost his father in the conflict. In Tahiti, his lower social rank meant he had fewer concessions as a refugee. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-ancestors-met-cook-in-aotearoa-250-years-ago-for-us-its-time-to-reinterpret-a-painful-history-128771">My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it's time to reinterpret a painful history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Arguably these conditions made Mai even more determined to join Cook’s expedition when the chance came. </p>
<p>Mai travelled to Britain on Cook’s second ship, captained by Tobias Furneaux. The Englishman admired Mai and remarked several times on his maritime and culinary skills. Mai also helped translate and mediate with other islanders they encountered. This wasn’t because he sympathised with the British; rather, he was eager to speed up their return to Britain. </p>
<h2>Mai’s mission in London and return home</h2>
<p>Arriving in London in 1774, Mai met with Banks, who assumed responsibility for his accommodation. Due to his high-profile patron, Mai <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/25/joshua-reynolds-portrait-omai-tate-john-magnier-amsterdam--row">encountered and bedazzled much of the glamorous set</a> in London, including King George III.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Omai, 1777 engraved by James Caldwall after William Hodges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2010.111/omai">Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mai seemed to enjoy himself well enough, but his mind was always focused on his larger mission. Everyone who met him recorded that his aim in Britain was not to impress or assimilate but to gain support for his mission of retaking his home island of Ra‘iatea from the Bora Borans.</p>
<p>Mai found himself aboard Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific in mid-1776, with promises from Banks and the Admiralty to take him home and provide him with British goods to help him achieve his goals. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Once again, he provided critical assistance to the captain during negotiations with other Pacific islanders, as well as with Indigenous people in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Only when the expedition neared the Tahitian archipelago did Mai start to doubt Cook’s good faith. </p>
<p>He saw Cook give away much of the livestock that had been promised to him and watched as he held long meetings with assorted elders. Mai realised Cook planned to dump him on another island rather than fulfill the Admiralty pledges to land him on Ra‘iatea. </p>
<p>Mai was devastated. After four long years away, his life project had collapsed.</p>
<h2>Grand ambitions only partly realised</h2>
<p>Historians like to recount the emotional farewell between Cook and Mai in late 1777, noting Mai’s desperate wailing and Cook’s misty eyes. It’s usually depicted as a touching example of how Mai had grown to love the British and, equally, of how Cook had a softer heart than most believed.</p>
<p>From Mai’s perspective, though, the moment likely had a far different meaning.</p>
<p>Neither Tupaia nor Mai had achieved their ultimate goals in joining the Cook voyages, but this does not discount the grandness of their ambitions. </p>
<p>Both undertook epic feats of exploration. And their missions were just as political as Cook’s had been. Instead of imperial expansion, however, these men had sought a continuation of their Indigenous ways of life.</p>
<p>And it’s worth pointing out that Cook failed in his ultimate goal in the third voyage, too. He had been tasked with finding a northwest passage for imperial trade and to deliver Mai home according to his wishes. Instead, he <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/this-day-in-history/14-february/captain-cook-killed-in-hawaii">ended up assassinated in Hawai'i</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cleveley, James, active 1776-1780. Cleveley, James fl 1776-1780 :[View of Huaheine, one of the Society Islands in the South Seas. Drawn on the spot by James Cleveley, painted by John Cleveley, London, F. Jukes aquatt. London, Thomas Martyn, 1787]. Ref: C-036-020. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22325887.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22325887">National Library of New Zealand</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Fullagar receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
Both islanders played a central role in Cook’s three voyages across the Pacific, but their contributions have largely been overshadowed in what is generally thought of as era of European exploration.
Kate Fullagar, Associate Professor in Modern History, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128926
2020-04-28T19:55:20Z
2020-04-28T19:55:20Z
Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia, and other myths from old school text books
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315828/original/file-20200218-10976-1jdyuep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C91%2C998%2C788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A picture titled 'Captain Cook taking possession of the Australian continent on behalf of the British crown, AD 1770'. Drawn and engraved by Samuel Calvert from an historical painting by Gilfillan in the possession of the Royal Society of Victoria.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-135699884/view">Trove/National Library of Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a>, and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Approaching the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first journey to the Pacific, The Conversation asked readers what they remembered learning at school about his arrival in Australia. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1203872299801178112"}"></div></p>
<p>Most people said they learnt Cook “discovered” Australia – especially if they were at school before the 1990s. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=277&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314392/original/file-20200210-52405-nr1g1c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=348&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"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/ConversationEDU/photos/a.452035984824035/3047783871915887/?type=3&theater&ifg=1">Screenshot from Facebook.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Depending on when you went to school, you may have learnt differently about Captain Cook’s role in Australian history. To find out how the teaching of Cook in Australian schools has changed, I examined textbooks used in the 1950s until today. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=183&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=230&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=230&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314394/original/file-20200210-52405-1rcqf4q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=230&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"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/ConversationEDU/photos/a.452035984824035/3047783871915887/?type=3&theater&ifg=1">Screenshot from Facebook.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>School years 1950s and early 1960s</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314608/original/file-20200210-109935-13lqaos.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conquering the Continent, 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you were at school after the second world war to the mid-1960s, Australia still had strong links to the British Empire. </p>
<p>Cook was portrayed as a one of the greatest explorers in history and textbooks presented clear messages Cook “discovered” Australia and “took possession” of the land for England.</p>
<p>The 1959 Queensland text Social Studies for Standard VIII (Queensland) by G.T Roscoe said Cook “landed on Possession Island, hoisted the Union Jack, claiming the country for the King of England”.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<p>In Conquering the Continent (1961), C.H. Wright mentions some contact with Indigenous people at Botany Bay, but there is no mention of conflict. Wright writes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The blacks offered little resistance; they quickly stood off after being frightened by gun shots.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314110/original/file-20200207-43084-p0cabx.png?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">C.H. Wright, 1961. Conquering the Continent: The story of the Exploration and settlement of Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>School years 1965 to 1979</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314606/original/file-20200210-109891-17u0p0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&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">Birth of a Nation, 1974.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you went to school between 1965 and 1979, you were learning during the era of the Menzies, Whitlam and Fraser governments (among a few others). </p>
<p>This was when awareness was beginning to grow of the negative impact of colonisation on Australia’s Indigenous people.</p>
<p>E.S. Elphick’s 1974 <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9406903?selectedversion=NBD1631494">Birth of a Nation</a> continued the “discovery and possession” narrative, but acknowledged Indigenous people were in Australia beforehand: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first Australians came here at least 30,000 years ago, and for all but the last 200 years of this period enjoyed uninterrupted possession of the land they came to[…] The white man, in fact, took a very long time to arrive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul Ashton’s chapter in David Stewart’s <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1350865">Investigating Australian History Using Evidence</a> (1985) encouraged students to “work as historians” by examining primary sources (in this case old maps) and evaluating interpretations of history. </p>
<p>Ashton emphasised the importance of the scientific “discovery”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cook’s achievements were indeed great, as were his talents as a navigator. At last, a reasonably accurate chart of the east coast of Australia could be added to European knowledge of the continent, along with a mass of natural and scientific discoveries. However, the discovery was not as yet completed […] </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>School in 1981 to 1995</h2>
<p>If you went to school in the 1980s and early to mid ‘90s, you may have learnt history from a more inclusive perspective that included the lived experiences of those who were largely left out of the traditional narrative, such as children, women and Indigenous people.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-spoke-about-dreamtime-i-ticked-a-box-teachers-say-they-lack-confidence-to-teach-indigenous-perspectives-129064">'I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box': teachers say they lack confidence to teach Indigenous perspectives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But in <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1646582">Australia: All Our Yesterdays</a> (1999), author Meg Grey Blanden presented a benign account of Cook facing no resistance from Indigenous people: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>On a small island now named Possession Island, Cook performed the last and most important official task of his entire voyage. Like others of his time, Cook was undeterred by the presence of native people on the island. He noted that they obligingly departed and left the Europeans to get on with their ceremony.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>School in 1996 to 2015</h2>
<p>In the first decade of the 21st century, history was embedded into social studies in all states and territories, except New South Wales. Australian colonial history focused on “discovery”, foundation and expansion was relegated to years four to six.</p>
<p>Some teachers may have chosen to use critical inquiry to teach about Cook’s expedition in year nine. Most tended to focus on the more complicated 20th century history of world wars and progress in year nine and ten syllabuses. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314399/original/file-20200210-52346-1xqy84i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=247&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"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/ConversationEDU/photos/a.452035984824035/3047783871915887/?type=3&theater&ifg=1">Screenshot from Facebook.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Australian Curriculum, which was implemented in all schools from 2012, has maintained this chronological divide of historical knowledge. In year four, students <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vkc-uvbLy8EC&oi=fnd&pg=PA223&dq=memories+of+learning+history+at+school&ots=O1FOAnCKKj&sig=qWRgyRrstW-inquPTrEgZnIY09Y&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=memories%20of%20learning%20history%20at%20school&f=false">learn about Cook</a> by “examining the journey of one or more explorers of the Australian coastline … using navigation maps to reconstruct their journeys”.</p>
<p>It would be unusual for secondary teachers these days to teach their students about Cook because the topic is not in the secondary curriculum. </p>
<p>This means if children do not learn about Cook’s achievements in the primary years it’s quite possible if they were asked what they learnt about Cook in school, they may not know anything about him. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: this article previously included the Hawke government in the years 1965-1979, while leaving out Menzies. This has now been corrected.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Zarmati 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>
To find out how the teaching of Captain Cook in Australian schools has changed, I examined textbooks used in the 1950s until today.
Louise Zarmati, Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128469
2020-04-28T19:55:09Z
2020-04-28T19:55:09Z
Botany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315880/original/file-20200218-10985-kndbtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3494%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Botanist Joseph Banks recommended Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/botany-bay-new-south-wales-ca-1789-watercolour-charles-gore">Charles Gore (1788) / State Library of NSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>James Cook and his companions aboard the Endeavour landed at a harbour on Australia’s southeast coast in April of 1770. Cook named the place Botany Bay for
“the great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place”.</p>
<p>Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander were aboard the Endeavour as gentleman botanists, collecting specimens and applying names in Latin to plants Europeans had not previously seen. The place name hints at the importance of plants to Britain’s Empire, and to botany’s pivotal place in Europe’s Enlightenment and Australia’s early colonisation.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>‘Nothing like people’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Banks became one of Britain’s most influential scientists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Science/Science">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cook has always loomed large in Australia’s colonial history. White Australians have long commemorated and celebrated him as the symbolic link to the “civilisation” of Enlightenment and Empire. The two botanists have been less well remembered, yet Banks in particular was an influential figure in Australia’s early colonisation. </p>
<p>When Banks and his friend Solander went ashore on April 29, 1770 to collect plants for naming and classification, the Englishman recollected they saw “nothing like people”. Banks knew that the land on which he and Solander sought plants was inhabited (and in fact, as we now know, had been so for at least 65,000 years). Yet the two botanists were engaged in an activity that implied the land was blank and unknown. </p>
<p>They were both botanical adventurers. Solander was among the first and most favoured of the students of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and colonial traveller who devised the method still used today for naming species. Both Solander and Banks were advocates for the Linnaean method of taxonomy: a systematic classification of newly named plants and animals. </p>
<p>When they stepped ashore at “Botany Bay” in 1770, the pair saw themselves as pioneers in a double sense: as Linnaean botanists in a new land, its places and plants unnamed by any other; as if they were in a veritable <em>terra nullius</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.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">The plant specimens Joseph Banks collected were taken back to England, where they remain today in the Natural History Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/joseph-banks-scientist-explorer-botanist.html">Natural History Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Botany in ‘nobody’s land’</h2>
<p><em>Terra nullius</em>, meaning “nobody’s land”, refers to a legal doctrine derived from European traditions stretching back to the ancient Romans. The idea was that land could be declared “empty” and “unowned” if there were no signs of occupation such as cultivation of the soil, towns, cities, or sacred temples. </p>
<p>As a legal doctrine it was not applied in Australia until the late 1880s, and there is dispute about its effects in law until its final elimination by the High Court in <em>Mabo v Queensland (No. II)</em> in 1992. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cook never used this formulation, nor did Banks or Solander. Yet each in their way acted as if it were true. That the land, its plants, and animals, and even its peoples, were theirs to name and classify according to their own standards of “scientific” knowledge.</p>
<p>In the late eighteenth century, no form of scientific knowledge was more useful to empire than botany. It was the science <em>par excellence</em> of colonisation and empire. Botany promised a way to transform the “waste” of nature into economic productivity on a global scale. </p>
<h2>Plant power</h2>
<p>Wealth and power in Britain’s eighteenth century empire came from harnessing economically useful crops: tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, rice, potatoes, flax. Hence Banks and Solander’s avid botanical activity was not merely a manifestation of Enlightenment “science”. It was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Banksia ericifolia</em> was one of the many species given a new name by Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Natural History Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the Endeavour’s voyage, Banks, Solander, and their assistants collected more than 30,000 plant specimens, naming more than 1,400 species. </p>
<p>By doing so, they were claiming new ground for European knowledge, just as Cook meticulously charted the coastlines of territories he claimed for His Majesty, King George III. Together they extended a new dispensation, inscribed in new names for places and for plants written over the ones that were already there. </p>
<p>Long after the Endeavour returned to Britain, Banks testified before two House of Commons committees in 1779 and 1785 that “Botany Bay” would be an “advantageous” site for a new penal colony. Among his reasons for this conclusion were not only its botanical qualities – fertile soils, abundant trees and grasses – but its virtual emptiness. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-captain-cook-to-the-first-fleet-how-botany-bay-was-chosen-over-africa-as-a-new-british-penal-colony-128002">From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Turning emptiness to empire</h2>
<p>When Banks described in his own Endeavour journal the land Cook had named “New South Wales”, he recalled: “This immense tract of Land … is thinly inhabited even to admiration …”. It was the science of botany that connected emptiness and empire to the Enlightened pursuit of knowledge. </p>
<p>One of Banks’s correspondents was the Scottish botanist and professor of natural history, John Walker. Botany, Walker wrote, was one of the “few Sciences” that “can promise any discovery or improvement”. Botany was the scientific means to master the global emporium of commodities on which empire grew. </p>
<p>Botany was also the reason why it had not been necessary for Banks or Solander to affirm the land on which they trod was empty. For in a very real sense, their science presupposed it. The land, its plants and its people were theirs to name and thereby claim by “discovery”. </p>
<p>When Walker reflected on his own botanical expeditions in the Scottish Highlands, he described them as akin to voyages of discovery to lands as “inanimate & unfrequented as any in the Terra australis”. </p>
<p>As we reflect on the 250-year commemoration of Cook’s landing in Australia, we ought also to consider his companions Banks and Solander, and their science of turning supposed emptiness to empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Buchan receives research funding from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and from the Swedish Research Council, for two projects with Dr Linda Andersson Burnett: ‘The Borders of Humanity: Linnaean Natural Historians and the Colonial Legacies of Enlightenment’ (P15-0423:1) 2016-19, and 'Collecting Mankind: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific Travelers’, circa 1750-1850' (2019-03358) 2020-24.</span></em></p>
Botany was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions.
Bruce Buchan, Associate Professor, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126751
2020-04-28T19:54:32Z
2020-04-28T19:54:32Z
Cooking the books: how re-enactments of the Endeavour’s voyage perpetuate myths of Australia’s ‘discovery’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309582/original/file-20200113-103971-r8lxn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3468%2C2273&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) with Doug Nicholls on Frenchman's Beach, La Perouse, on April 29 1970. During the Cook bicentenary protest, activists declared a day of mourning for Aboriginal nations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from the Tribune collection from the 1970 Cook Bi-centenary protest, to be featured in the State Library of NSW's upcoming exhibition 'Eight Days in Gamay.'</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison stumbled on the word “re-enactment” when outlining his government’s (now <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/captain-cook-250th-anniversary-voyage-suspended-due-to-coronavirus">suspended</a>) plans for commemorating the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s mythologised “discovery” of Australia. </p>
<p>Certainly, the planned route of the replica HMB Endeavour with 39 stops (and funded at A$6.7 million) could not be described as such: Cook never circumnavigated mainland Australia nor visited Tasmania on the Endeavour. </p>
<p>Morrison quickly clarified that the only gesture of historical accuracy would be a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-22/endeavour-replica-to-sail-around-australia/10734998">“retracing”</a> of Cook’s voyage up the eastern seaboard. </p>
<p>Historical <a href="https://www.sea.museum/2015/05/11/commemoration-and-contestation-at-kurnell/">re-enactments</a> of Cook’s landing are not new to settler Australia. They have focused on Cook’s landfall at Botany Bay, south of Sydney, where the Endeavour’s crew first stepped onto the continent on April 29 1770. </p>
<p>His <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook/17700429.html">journal</a> recorded they were greeted by two Dharawal men “who seem’d resolved to oppose our landing”. Cook fired his musket at the men three times, including aiming directly, forcing their retreat. </p>
<p>Cook’s active role in British hostility to Aboriginal peoples was erased from subsequent performances of the Botany Bay landing. </p>
<p>These have also been embellished with Cook claiming the east coast of Australia — this actually occurred some months later at Possession Island in the Torres Strait. </p>
<p>Such popular “re-enactments” of national “foundation moments” have elements of fantasy, compressing time and history into palatable narratives for mainstream Australia. </p>
<h2>The history of Cook re-enactments</h2>
<p>Cook’s arrival was commemorated as early as 1822, when Sydney’s Philosophical Society erected a plaque at Kurnell, on the headland of Botany Bay. By 1864, the Australian Patriotic Association had located the “exact” site a kilometre away. </p>
<p>Following the 1870 centenary of Cook’s landfall, annual pro-British “celebrations” at Botany Bay involved the presence of the governor, flag-raising, gun salutes, and military displays. </p>
<p>In a society eager to erase its convict stain, Cook was a more acceptable founder than Governor Arthur Phillip, who had established the penal colony in Sydney Cove in 1788. </p>
<p>Considerable confusion existed then – and continues today — about the historical roles of Cook and Phillip. Even during the 1888 Centennial of the First Fleet, the largest triumphal arch in Sydney was adorned with Cook’s image and a model of the Endeavour. </p>
<p>The inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in January 1901 provided the impetus for a major re-enactment at Kurnell, headlined as the “Second Coming of Cook”. The spectacle attracted a crowd of over 5,000, with 1,000 enjoying a champagne luncheon in an enormous marquee. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310829/original/file-20200120-118343-9ce99k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monument of Captain Cook in Kurnell, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://maas.museum/observations/2011/10/20/when-did-captain-cook-land-in-australia-and-did-any-changes-in-the-international-date-line-lead-to-a-change-in-dates-in-australia/">Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The re-enactment began with the arrival of the Endeavour, represented by local fishing vessel “Fanny Fisher”. Once ashore, Cook and his sailors and marines encountered 25 Aboriginal men armed with spears and decorated with feathers and ochre. A gun was fired overhead, then Cook ordered a sailor to shoot at the Aborigines before making his imperial claim on the continent. Cook, Joseph Banks and a nymph symbolising Australia gave speeches on the “greatness” and unity of the Britannia of the Southern Ocean. </p>
<p>Although an Aboriginal community lived at La Perouse on the opposite shore of Botany Bay, the re-enactment involved a troupe of Indigenous men from Queensland. They were directed by parliamentarian and entrepreneur Archibald Meston, who had previously toured Indigenous performers in his “Wild Australia” show. </p>
<p>It is unknown under what circumstances the Aboriginal men were recruited for the Federation re-enactment, or if they were paid. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314889/original/file-20200212-61935-1xmhqpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770, by E. Phillips Fox (1902)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite dramatising a beach-side skirmish between the Aborigines and British, the Federation performance cemented Cook as the conquering peacemaker. This was promoted by E. Phillips Fox, who was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to paint The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770 (1902). </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/5576">monumental work</a> is a tableau – or frozen re-enactment — of Cook striding purposefully up the beach, stretching out his hand as he takes territorial possession. It was widely reproduced and circulated, becoming the best-known and influential image of Cook’s landing across Australia.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-honest-reckoning-with-captain-cooks-legacy-wont-heal-things-overnight-but-its-a-start-130389">An honest reckoning with Captain Cook's legacy won't heal things overnight. But it's a start</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The evolution of performances</h2>
<p>Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the anniversary of the Endeavour’s arrival at Botany Bay was marked by performative gestures to the past. Dignitaries arrived by steamship, coming ashore to give speeches situating Cook as founder of the nation. </p>
<p>For instance, in 1930 at the height of the Depression, spectators were exhorted to “practice self-denial and self-reliance as exemplified in Captain Cook’s exploits”. </p>
<p>Although a full-scale re-enactment was staged in 1951 for the Federation jubilee, interest in Cook waned and the formalities were abandoned. </p>
<p>This changed dramatically in 1970, with the bicentenary of Cook’s Australian landing. Cook was suddenly everywhere, with government funding supporting pageants, memorials and other Cook novelties around the nation. </p>
<p>The nationalistic climax of months of events was an elaborate re-enactment at Kurnell, performed for the visiting Queen Elizabeth and her entourage. Directed by musical theatre aficionado Hayes Gordon, the spectacle was designed for global television, with actors selected after a nationwide search. Held on “Discovery Day”, it attracted a crowd of over 50,000 people. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311315/original/file-20200122-117933-1r42hda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Re-enactment of the first fleet arrival in Domain, Sydney, in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/Stories/2018/The-Domain-Sydney-s-stage">The Royal Botanical Gardens Sydney</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Promoted as portraying the “birth of modern Australia”, this re-enactment capitalised on the groundswell of popular interest in Australia’s past. Emphasis was placed on historical accuracy, although nothing challenged the well-established nonsense of Cook’s party briefly confronting Indigenous peoples before peacefully claiming the continent. </p>
<p>To show how far the nation had progressed, “multicultural” schoolchildren and boy scouts and girl guides rose and fell in waves along the beach. </p>
<h2>Protesting and mourning</h2>
<p>Amid this “celebration”, diverse Aboriginal protests were under way, although they were little covered by the press. </p>
<p>At La Perouse, Aboriginal poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) was among hundreds of protesters who boycotted the re-enactment and released funeral wreaths into the sea.</p>
<p>A silent vigil had been held the night before, and a “day of mourning” was observed at Sydney Town Hall and in other Australian cities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309580/original/file-20200113-103994-1rkkthz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wreaths thrown into Botany Bay to mark the day of mourning, April 29 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from the Tribune collection from the 1970 Cook Bicentenary protest, featured in the State Library of NSW's upcoming exhibition, Eight Days in Gamay, opening late April.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1970, a second re-enactment was held in Cooktown, also witnessed by the queen. The original Endeavour had spent seven weeks there, undergoing repairs after running into the Great Barrier Reef. </p>
<p>Cooktown has a long record of Cook-related performances, though initially these were sporadic. But from 1960, the Cooktown Re-enactment Association organised an annual event. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6076mu47pfk">performances</a> evolved from a battle with Aboriginal people to Cook landing and taking possession and, more recently, celebrations of acts of conciliation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310832/original/file-20200120-69543-sx8ar8.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">Queen Elizabeth greeted by a group of Indigenous children at a ceremony marking the bicentenary of Cook’s arrival in Cooktown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-25/queen-in-cooktown,1970/10749604">www.abc.net.au</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future direction: same old or new path forward?</h2>
<p>Until coronavirus and social distancing made all public events impossible, the federal government had slated to spend A$5.45 million on the <a href="https://cooktown2020.com/program/">Cooktown 2020 Expo</a>, including a re-enactment of the landing of Captain Cook and his interactions with the Guugu Yimithirr bama. </p>
<p>As this historical overview of over a century of re-enactments of Cook’s landing has shown, these events have served to reinforce Australia’s imperial and British connections. They ignore the violence of Cook’s encounters with Aboriginal people and Indigenous resistance, and perpetuate the myth of Cook’s discovery of Australia.</p>
<p><em>You can hear Kate Darian-Smith discussing these ideas in an episode of our podcast, Trust Me, I’m An Expert, over <a href="https://theconversation.com/250-years-since-captain-cook-landed-in-australia-its-time-to-acknowledge-the-violence-of-first-encounters-132098">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Darian-Smith has received numerous grants from the Australian Research Council to investigatesAustralian cultural history. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrina Schlunke has received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
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.
Kate Darian-Smith, Executive Dean and Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania
Katrina Schlunke, Associate professor, University of Tasmania
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127025
2020-04-28T19:53:25Z
2020-04-28T19:53:25Z
Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314923/original/file-20200212-61941-3fsi3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Death of Captain Cook' by George Carter. 1781. Oil on canvas. The painting depicts the killing of Cook during a skirmish with Hawaiians on his third Pacific voyage in 1779.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere describes James Cook as a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=r7uMcVV0J-UC&lpg=PA30&ots=wZsXlFm9Xk&dq=shot%20an%20Indian%20in%20the%20side%20with%20small%20shot%20as%20he%20was%20escaping%20from%20the%20ships%20he%20having%20committed%20theft%E2%80%99&pg=PA11#v=snippet&q=kurtz&f=false">Kurtz-like figure</a>, inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. </p>
<p>He suggests Cook initially saw himself as an enlightened “civiliser”, bringing a new vision of the world to the so-called “savage lands” of the South Seas. </p>
<p>But over the course of his three voyages, Cook instead came to embody the “savagery” he ostensibly despised, indulging in increasingly tyrannical, punitive and violent treatment of Indigenous people in the Pacific.</p>
<p>Cook’s evolution was triggered by Indigenous people’s seeming refusal to embrace the gift of civilisation he offered, such as livestock and garden beds sown with Western crops and a justice system modelled after Britain’s. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673">A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After revisiting Tahiti on his third voyage, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hjoq16FG6mYC&lpg=PA214&dq=james%20cook%20%22neither%20new%20arts%20nor%20improvements%20in%20the%20old%22&pg=PA214#v=onepage&q=james%20cook%20%22neither%20new%20arts%20nor%20improvements%20in%20the%20old%22&f=false">he was dismayed to discover</a> that despite a decade of European encounters and exchanges, he nonetheless found </p>
<blockquote>
<p>neither new arts nor improvements in the old, nor have they copied after us in any one thing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He became increasingly frustrated by their determination to maintain their own laws and manners, especially their tendency to “steal”.</p>
<h2>‘Hints’ for fostering good relations</h2>
<p>For his first expedition on the Endeavour, Cook received a document called <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mIk8x6lsusQC&lpg=PA150&ots=wUkWPvZkPB&dq=Hints%20offered%20to%20the%20consideration%20of%20Captain%20Cooke%2C%20Mr%20Bankes%2C%20Doctor%20Solander%2C%20and%20the%20other%20Gentlemen%20who%20go%20upon%20the%20Expedition%20on%20Board%20the%20Endeavour%E2%80%99&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q=Hints%20offered%20to%20the%20consideration%20of%20Captain%20Cooke,%20Mr%20Bankes,%20Doctor%20Solander,%20and%20the%20other%20Gentlemen%20who%20go%20upon%20the%20Expedition%20on%20Board%20the%20Endeavour%E2%80%99&f=false">Hints</a> prepared by the Earl of Morton, president of the Royal Society, providing advice on how to deal with Indigenous people. </p>
<p>The earl reminded Cook’s crew that Indigenous peoples were the “legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit” and </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No European Nation has the right to occupy any part of their country … without their voluntary consent. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also advised Cook and his naturalists to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the Natives of the several lands where the ship may touch. To check the petulance of the Sailors and restrain the wanton use of Fire Arms. To have it still in view that shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cook decided the best way to prevent violence and foster good relations with Indigenous people he encountered was to demonstrate the “superiority” of European weapons, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AUw9AAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA223&ots=c9izgcMZ20&dq=once%20they%20are%20sensible%20of%20these%20things%2C%20a%20regard%20for%20their%20own%20safety%20will%20deter%20them%20from%20disturbing%20you&pg=PA223#v=onepage&q=once%20they%20are%20sensible%20of%20these%20things,%20a%20regard%20for%20their%20own%20safety%20will%20deter%20them%20from%20disturbing%20you&f=false">assuming</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>once they are sensible of these things, a regard for their own safety will deter them from disturbing you.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309609/original/file-20200113-103990-irhoth.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A passage from Hints.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nla.gov.au/cook-and-the-pacific/navigating-the-pacific">National Library of Australia, Papers of Sir Joseph Banks</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cook’s early attempts to promote British justice</h2>
<p>Cook was determined, however, to follow Morton’s instructions to the letter and ensure his crew, under threat of punishment, treated Indigenous people respectfully. </p>
<p>He enforced this rule in April 1769 during their first sojourn in Tahiti, when the ship’s butcher threatened to slit the throat of the high chief Te Pau’s wife when she refused to exchange her hatchet for a nail. </p>
<p>Outraged, Te Pau told the botanist Joseph Banks, with whom he had developed a close relationship. Cook then ordered the butcher to be publicly flogged in front of the Tahitians so they could witness British justice. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/they-are-all-dead-for-indigenous-people-cooks-voyage-of-discovery-was-a-ghostly-visitation-126430">'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Yet, instead of being satisfied, the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2TbeAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA107&ots=d-g6gVKBmq&dq=made%20a%20very%20Pathetick%20speech%20to%20the%20Ships%20Company&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q=made%20a%20very%20Pathetick%20speech%20to%20the%20Ships%20Company&f=false">Tahitians were appalled</a> to witness this form of corporal punishment. </p>
<p>A few days later, Cook’s resolve to maintain peaceful relations was tested again <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=j62v1iyuKqIC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q=was%20some%20kind%20of%20ritual%20treasure%E2%80%99&f=false">when their quadrant was stolen from a guarded tent</a>. This scientific instrument was essential for observing the transit of Venus, a central aim of the expedition. </p>
<p>According to Cook’s journal, his <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hjoq16FG6mYC&lpg=PA30&dq=seize%20upon%20Tootaha%20and%20some%20others%20of%20the%20Principle%20people%20and%20keep%20them%20in%20custody%20until%20the%20Quadt%20was%20produce%E2%80%99d&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q=seize%20upon%20Tootaha%20and%20some%20others%20of%20the%20Principle%20people%20and%20keep%20them%20in%20custody%20until%20the%20Quadt%20was%20produce%E2%80%99d&f=false">first response</a> was to “seize upon Tootaha” [Tutaha], the chief of Papara in western Tahiti, or </p>
<blockquote>
<p>some others of the Principle people and keep them in custody until the Quadt was produce’d. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But he soon realised this would alarm the Tahitians. After realising Tutaha played no role in the theft, Cook ordered his men not to seize him. And Banks, tipped off by Te Pau as to the quadrant’s whereabouts, soon retrieved it.</p>
<p>On these occasions, Cook attempted to demonstrate what he saw as the fairness of British law to the Tahitians.</p>
<p>Johann Reinhold Forster, naturalist on Cook’s second voyage, also <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=r7uMcVV0J-UC&lpg=PA30&ots=wZsXlFm9Xk&dq=shot%20an%20Indian%20in%20the%20side%20with%20small%20shot%20as%20he%20was%20escaping%20from%20the%20ships%20he%20having%20committed%20theft%E2%80%99&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q=forster&f=false">suggested Cook’s reactions were tempered</a> by the presence of the naturalists, who were not subject to his authority.</p>
<h2>A change in temperament</h2>
<p>By his third voyage on the Resolution and Discovery from 1776-80, however, Cook would no longer be so measured in his treatment of Indigenous people. </p>
<p>This was evident during his almost three-month stay in Tonga, then known as the Friendly Islands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314890/original/file-20200212-61925-xi3f7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chart of the Friendly Isles, published in 1777.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In May 1777, Cook visited Nomuka, and after exchanging gifts with the leading chief, Tupoulangi, he set up a market where the British received great stores of fresh meat and fruit.</p>
<p>Despite the efforts of both Cook and Tupoulangi to ensure order in the market, however, thefts still occurred. </p>
<p>On <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TmZQDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA865&dq=not%20releas%E2%80%99d%20till%20a%20large%20hog%20was%20brought%20for%20his%20ransom&pg=PA865#v=onepage&q=not%20releas%E2%80%99d%20till%20a%20large%20hog%20was%20brought%20for%20his%20ransom&f=false">one occasion</a>, an islander was caught trying to steal a small winch used to make rope, and Cook “ordered him a dozen lashes”. After the man was “severely flogg’d”, his hands were tied behind his back and he was carried to the market where he was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>not releas’d till a large hog was brought for his ransom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>William Anderson, a surgeon on the expedition, thought the lashes were a justifiable punishment and deterrent. However, he <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Ty4rDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA101&dq=james%20cooknot%20be%20found%20consonant%20with%20the%20principles%20of%20justice%20or%20humanity&pg=PA101#v=onepage&q&f=false">said what came after</a> would</p>
<blockquote>
<p>not be found consonant with the principles of justice or humanity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cook later complained the chiefs were ordering their servants to steal from the market and “floging [sic] made no more impression” on them since the chiefs would “often advise us to kill them”. </p>
<p>Reluctant to resort to execution for stealing, Cook’s crew soon found an alternative method of punishment: shaving the heads of offenders. This, he said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>was looked upon as a mark of infamy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A month later, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Ty4rDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA102&ots=uZrhe4pF6K&dq=cook%20journal%20we%20had%20quite%20exhausted%20the%20island%20of%20all%20most%20every%20thing%20it%20produced%E2%80%99&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q=cook%20journal%20we%20had%20quite%20exhausted%20the%20island%20of%20all%20most%20every%20thing%20it%20produced%E2%80%99&f=false">the expedition moved to the island Tongatapu</a>. Here, there was a radical shift in Cook’s conduct. As anthropologist Anne Salmond described it, he was “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=j62v1iyuKqIC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA338#v=onepage&q=guilty%20of%20great%20cruelty&f=false">guilty of great cruelty</a>” even in the eyes of his own men.</p>
<p>Historian John Beaglehole believes Cook was “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=YCQxDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT893&ots=jcvX6K7V4h&dq=james%20cook%20at%20his%20wits%E2%80%99%20end&pg=PT894#v=onepage&q=james%20cook%20at%20his%20wits%E2%80%99%20end&f=false">at his wits’ end</a>” by the thievery at Tongatapu and responded by applying “the lash as he had never done before”. </p>
<p>Instead of shaving the heads of thieves, Cook again ordered them to be severely flogged and ransomed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-ancestors-met-cook-in-aotearoa-250-years-ago-for-us-its-time-to-reinterpret-a-painful-history-128771">My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it's time to reinterpret a painful history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Cut-throat retribution</h2>
<p>The Discovery’s master, Thomas Edgar, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=r7uMcVV0J-UC&lpg=PA30&dq=shot%20an%20Indian%20in%20the%20side%20with%20small%20shot%20as%20he%20was%20escaping%20from%20the%20ships%20he%20having%20committed%20theft%E2%80%99&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q=shot%20an%20Indian%20in%20the%20side%20with%20small%20shot%20as%20he%20was%20escaping%20from%20the%20ships%20he%20having%20committed%20theft%E2%80%99&f=false">kept a tally of these punishments</a> and noted that in a two-week span, eight men were punished with 24-72 lashes apiece for stealing items such as a “tumbler and two wine glasses”. </p>
<p>Cook even punished his own men with the maximum 12 lashes for “neglect of duty” when thefts happened on their watch. </p>
<p>He also resorted to punishments which midshipman George Gilbert deemed “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Ty4rDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA132&dq=cutting%20off%20their%20ears%3B%20firing%20at%20them%20with%20small%20shot%3B%20or%20ball%20as%20they%20were%20swimming%20or%20paddling%20to%20the%20shore%3B%20and%20suffering%20the%20people%20(as%20he%20rowed%20after%20them)%20to%20beat%20them%20with%20the%20oars%3B%20and%20stick%20the%20boat%20hook%20into%20them%3B%20wherever%20he%20could%20hit%20them&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q=cutting%20off%20their%20ears;%20firing%20at%20them%20with%20small%20shot;%20or%20ball%20as%20they%20were%20swimming%20or%20paddling%20to%20the%20shore;%20and%20suffering%20the%20people%20(as%20he%20rowed%20after%20them)%20to%20beat%20them%20with%20the%20oars;%20and%20stick%20the%20boat%20hook%20into%20them;%20wherever%20he%20could%20hit%20them&f=false">unbecoming of a European</a>”, including:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>cutting off their ears; fireing at them with small shot; or ball as they were swimming or paddling to the shore; and suffering the people (as he rowed after them) to beat them with the oars; and stick the boat hook into them; wherever he could hit them</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Edgar described <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ElSpOmbJeIkC&lpg=PA99&dq=%22after%20this%20a%20strange%20punishment%20was%20inflicted%20on%20the%20man%20which%20received%20siz%20dozen%20as%20captain%20cooke&pg=PA99#v=onepage&q=%22after%20this%20a%20strange%20punishment%20was%20inflicted%20on%20the%20man%20which%20received%20siz%20dozen%20as%20captain%20cooke&f=false">how one Tongan prisoner</a> who received 72 lashes and then was dealt “a strange punishment” by </p>
<blockquote>
<p>scoring both his Arms with a common Knife by one of our Seamen Longitudinally and transversly [sic], into the Bone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This horrific and excessive carving of crosses into the man’s shoulders is most reminiscent of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. </p>
<h2>Blind hypocrisy</h2>
<p>Cook’s increasingly violent punishments reflected his sheer frustration over the refusal of Indigenous people to recognise the superiority of Western ways and Europeans’ concepts of property. </p>
<p>Of course, while they were very <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=j62v1iyuKqIC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA78#v=onepage&q=furious%20about%20these%20thefts&f=false">protective and jealous of their own possessions</a>, Cook and his crew were blind to any Indigenous concepts of property. </p>
<p>As he journeyed through the Pacific, Cook, like other European voyagers, freely collected water and fruit, netted fish and turtles, hunted birds and game and cut down trees for wood, never thinking Indigenous people would regard these valuable resources as their property nor construe such actions as theft.</p>
<p>When the expedition reached Endeavour River, near present-day Cooktown in far-north Queensland, the Guugu Yimithirr people tried to reclaim turtles Cook’s men had fished from their waters. They were rebuffed by Cook’s men and angrily set fires in retaliation. </p>
<p>Cook, however, did not recognise this as punishment or retribution for the stolen turtles. <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook/17700719.html">Instead he thought their actions were “troublesome”</a>, so was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>obliged to fire a musquet load[ed] with small short at some of the ri[n]g leaders.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Throughout his voyages, Cook faithfully followed the Earl of Morton’s advice to show off the superiority of European might, but he increasingly failed “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mIk8x6lsusQC&lpg=PA150&dq=Hints%20offered%20to%20the%20consideration%20of%20Captain%20Cooke%2C%20Mr%20Bankes%2C%20Doctor%20Solander%2C%20and%20the%20other%20Gentlemen%20who%20go%20upon%20the%20Expedition%20on%20Board%20the%20Endeavour%E2%80%99&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q=to%20check%20the%20petulance%20of%20the%20sailors&f=false">to check</a>” his own “petulance” and “restrain the wanton use of Fire Arms”.</p>
<p>Most, significantly, through his administering of rough justice against Indigenous people for apparent thieving, Cook forgot Morton’s edict that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>shedding the blood of these people is a crime of the highest nature.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127025/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shino Konishi researches histories of cross-cultural encounters in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Australia and receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Yawuru descendant of the Broome area.
</span></em></p>
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.
Shino Konishi, ARC Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/134404
2020-04-27T23:04:11Z
2020-04-27T23:04:11Z
Make no mistake: Cook’s voyages were part of a military mission to conquer and expand
<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The military nature of the Endeavour’s voyage – as part of an aggressive reconnaissance and defence against Indigenous resistance – has historically been overlooked or downplayed. </p>
<p>But musket fire was used many times to teach lessons of British military superiority. Violence underscored almost all of Cook’s Pacific encounters with Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>In the broader strategic sense – as all 18th and early 19th century scientific voyages were – Cook’s voyages were part of a European drive to conquer. The aim was to claim resources and trade in support of the British Empire’s expansion. </p>
<p>At its heart, Cook’s first voyage was first and foremost a Royal Navy expedition and he was chosen as a military commander who had a background in mathematics and cartography. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Imperial science and ‘ships of force’</h2>
<p>During the “great age” of Pacific voyaging, expeditions always had several goals at once.</p>
<p>Cook’s first voyage in 1769 occurred during the perennial cold war of Anglo-French rivalry after what has been regarded as the first global conflict, the Seven Years War (1756-1763). This was also at the height of the promotion of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078549?seq=1">“imperial science”</a> – the idea that scientific advancement and colonial expansion were twin goals. </p>
<p>As industrialisation drove upheaval in Europe, scientific “discovery” was seen as a critical part of establishing, developing and controlling an empire. </p>
<p>The seeds of Cook’s “<a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/content/secret">secret instructions</a>” to seek out the fabled southern continent were sown by an astronomer, Professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hornsby">Thomas Hornsby</a>. </p>
<p>In 1766 Hornsby called for a “settlement in the great Pacific Ocean” led by “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-0kh4coN-mQC&lpg=PA4&dq=professor%20thomas%20hornsby%20ships%20of%20force&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=professor%20thomas%20hornsby%20ships%20of%20force&f=false">some ships of force</a>”. This expedition would be advantageous to astronomers, but also “add a lustre” to a nation already distinguished “both in arts and arms”. It seemed a natural fit to the scientist Hornsby that the Royal Navy spearhead a British presence in the Pacific. </p>
<p>Even Cook, as was expected of any sea-going commander visiting distant stations, made military reconnaissance notes. </p>
<p>In November 1768, when the Endeavour reprovisioned at Rio de Janeiro, the local Viceroy was <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=D1MEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=Rio+de+Janeiro++suspicious+james+cook&source=bl&ots=tYMVWgO0zg&sig=ACfU3U1pCV1RBV2qVpsoeAiIeca_mNY5aQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjF2KuMm4fnAhVJU30KHZObAKgQ6AEwDXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Rio%20de%20Janeiro%20%20suspicious%20james%20cook&f=false">suspicious</a> of a voyage supposedly to observe the transit of Venus. He suspected Cook of seeking to extend British influence in the Pacific.</p>
<p>Cook duly <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Ylw7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT114&lpg=PT114&dq=it+would+require+five+or+Six+sail+of+the+Line+to+insure+Success&source=bl&ots=DMfyKIE1LC&sig=ACfU3U0dMqlVDQSNKX6OdSEWlsSaBLE8mg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjz_ealm4fnAhVSaCsKHVGkBNkQ6AEwAHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=it%20would%20require%20five%20or%20Six%20sail%20of%20the%20Line%20to%20insure%20Success&f=false">noted</a> in his journal the state of local defences in and around Rio de Janeiro and that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it would require five or Six sail of the Line to insure Success.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cook felt insulted at being carefully watched and had a low opinion of the Viceroy’s scientific ignorance. But, in fact, the Viceroy was correct. </p>
<p>After opening his supplementary instructions (so-called “<a href="https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw1_doc_1768.pdf">secret orders</a>” issued by the British Navy) Cook headed off to attempt to find and claim for Great Britain the supposed southern land thought to exist in the vast southern ocean. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-stories-of-tupaia-and-omai-and-their-vital-role-as-captain-cooks-unsung-shipmates-126674">The stories of Tupaia and Omai and their vital role as Captain Cook's unsung shipmates</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Policy emanated from the barrel of a gun</h2>
<p>Every European ship that voyaged the Pacific was, in the first instance, a floating fortress; an independent command with the ability to send out small shore parties or to concentrate firepower as needed. </p>
<p>And this was at the heart of all contact, all encounters, all attempts at communication with Pacific and other peoples. Make no mistake, restraint in British policy and conduct with Indigenous peoples in the Pacific emanated from the barrel of a gun. </p>
<p>Cook’s voyaging did not take place on a blank canvas, but across a rich tapestry of thriving, voyaging cultures that were ultimately the target of European aggression.</p>
<p>Cook has often been feted as one of the few 18th century voyaging captains renowned for his “tolerance” of Indigenous people and cultures. But ultimately, this was a tactic used in pursuit of domination. The best military commander only rarely has to resort to open conflict.</p>
<h2>A lesson learned well before Cook</h2>
<p>Cannon – such as those Cook <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook/17700611.html">dumped overboard</a> to lighten his ship after he struck the Great Barrier Reef in 1770 – make good museum objects and monuments in public parks. </p>
<p>But like those on Cook’s ship the HMB Endeavour, the fact is many cannon on later voyages were hardly used – if ever. The power of artillery fire had been swiftly learned by Pacific peoples since Europeans first arrived in the 1500s, many years before Cook. </p>
<p>Resistance warfare occurred across the Pacific from the 1500s right through to conflicts such as Samoan resistance to German imperial rule in 1908. But like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars">Australian Frontier Wars</a>, these conflicts have often been neglected by military historians. </p>
<p>Yet conflict across the Pacific was surprisingly inter-connected, and influenced military thinking back in Europe. </p>
<h2>A long history of oceanic warfare and navigation</h2>
<p>One such example is The Battle of Mactan in 1521, in which Indigenous warriors in the Philippines fought and defeated an overconfident, numerically small Spanish force fighting under Portugal’s Ferdinand Magellan (famous for circumnavigating the globe). </p>
<p>And in 1595, the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendana was searching for “Terra Australis” when he arrived in the Marquesas Islands. He was met by several hundred canoes and more than 200 Marquesans were killed in the ensuing conflict. </p>
<p>European voyagers were often unaware that many major island groups across the Pacific were in regular communication with each other. </p>
<p>At least 174 years years after the Spanish devastation in the Marquesan islands, Tupaia – the Tahitian priest and navigator with knowledge of more 70 islands in the Pacific – joined the Endeavour voyage, in effect as a pilot and intermediary.</p>
<p>Tupaia drew a map with more than 130 islands on it, and included the Marquesas Islands on it. He described to Cook and Joseph Banks how, in the distant past, four islands were visited by ships similar to the Endeavour. His map drew on Pacific knowledge of previous conflicts and navigation techniques. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310161/original/file-20200115-151867-19jb6w4.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">Tuaia’s first map of the Pacific islands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57132308">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the British captain <a href="http://collections.anmm.gov.au/objects/167740/an-account-of-the-voyages-undertaken-by-the-order-of-his-maj?ctx=7a3a0802-1e40-4d51-b58f-689b8074f980&idx=43">Samuel Wallis</a> arrived at Tahiti in the HMS Dolphin in 1767, just two years before Cook, according to <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=yDd7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=Jean-Claude+Teriierooiterai&source=bl&ots=752kS3Y4il&sig=ACfU3U1zeXVf5hkkBWqhzvGuJdfxB2UqQw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV5bO34oHnAhWs7XMBHek5A3g4ChDoATACegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=Jean-Claude%20Teriierooiterai&f=false">Jean-Claude Teriierooiterai</a>, the Ari’i Amo (king) of Tahiti probably recognised these voyagers as the same white people who had attacked the Marquesans. </p>
<p>Around 100 double war canoes loaded with stones attacked the Dolphin for four days until Wallis fired his cannon into the Tahitian fleet (and at villages ashore for good measure). The Tahitians rightly regarded this firepower as all but invincible and soon became hospitable. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310167/original/file-20200115-151862-1w5c7m4.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">Attack of Samuel Wallis and his crew aboard The Dolphin by the people of Otaheite, Tahiti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lib-dbserver.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/pacific/wallis-carteret/wallis-carteret.html">Royal Museums Greenwich</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the French voyager Louis-Antoine de Bougainville arrived at Tahiti a year later, he thought the Tahitians the friendliest people in the world, living in a paradise. He did not know that he had Wallis’ cannon fire to thank for his reception. </p>
<p>It is important to remember the military factors in Cook’s and all other voyagers experiences in the Pacific and around Australia. They remind us of what underlined, if not defined, cross-cultural encounter moments. </p>
<p>Addressing the fact that these expeditions were all of a military nature reminds us that European colonisation was resisted from its very first moments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134404/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gapps is a curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum. He is the author of The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony, 1788-1817.</span></em></p>
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.
Stephen Gapps, Conjoint Lecturer, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130618
2020-04-27T20:06:21Z
2020-04-27T20:06:21Z
Joseph Banks: traveller, botanist and agent of the British Empire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311991/original/file-20200127-81352-nq14ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C624%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Banks portrait by Joshua Reynolds (circa 1771-1773).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sir Joseph Banks is justly celebrated as a “naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.” His role as an expedition scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage set a benchmark for rigour, and helped to lift him to election as president of the Royal Society in 1778. From that position, he directed and encouraged multinational scientific endeavours for more than four decades. Less well-known is how he used that science to pursue imperial power.</p>
<p>The role of science in the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">Age of Enlightenment</a>” has sometimes been imagined as a bubble of purity, where the hunt for new knowledge outweighed all other considerations. It is certainly true that warring European powers granted safe passage for elite scientific correspondence, and sometimes for individual scholars, or whole expeditions. But the context for this was a consensus on the value of scientific discovery for the pursuit of imperial aggrandisement.</p>
<p>Banks was a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/joseph-banks">hereditary member of the English establishment</a>. Born in 1743, his father and grandfather had been members of parliament and he inherited extensive Lincolnshire estates at an early age. He blended formal education with self-funded studies, and by his mid-20s, was already a member of the Royal Society, undertaking an expedition to the north-eastern shores of Canada, where he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UcIXkyf55fMC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=joseph+banks+auk&source=bl&ots=3SsEWirQDR&sig=ACfU3U2d8mZUVKGn-dqvqKj_JHZyyIcNvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPm66O5KPnAhUOiFwKHf3TA_wQ6AEwD3oECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20auk&f=false">identified the Great Auk</a> for science.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Great Southern Continent</h2>
<p>Cook’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/the-voyages-of-captain-james-cook/articles/the-first-voyage-of-james-cook">first voyage</a> was ostensibly to observe the “<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/28may_cook">transit of Venus</a>” across the face of the sun in 1769: thus forming part of a multinational scientific effort to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens">map the size of the solar system</a>. But a deeper goal had already been voiced. </p>
<p>The first person the Royal Society suggested to command the voyage was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20633371">Alexander Dalrymple</a>, an eminent Scottish geographer and vocal proponent of the theory that a “Great Southern Continent” awaited discovery. He saw this as an opportunity equivalent to the discovery of the Americas, so great, as he wrote in his 1770/71 volume <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/1142150/an-historical-collection-of-the-several-voyages-and-discoveries-in-the-south">An Historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean</a>, that even: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dalrymple, however, demanded a full naval captain’s commission, which the Admiralty would not grant to a man who was not a professional seaman. James Cook had the necessary background, and was content with lieutenant’s rank. Cook’s voyage, of course, disproved the theory of a great Terra Australis, while at the same time mapping the outlines of New Zealand and eastern Australia. Banks (who had paid out of his own pocket for eight other scientists and servants to accompany him) both diligently completed his core botanical duties, and returned with clear views on how British imperial power could be enhanced through Cook’s discoveries.</p>
<p>Banks firmly advocated the strategic use of colonisation, vigorously promoting the use of “Botany Bay” as a penal colony. He sought to have interloping American trading vessels excluded from New South Wales “with severity”, but was not averse to other nations setting up settlements elsewhere in Australia, because there was a “moral certainty” that such territories would fall “into our hands in time of war”.</p>
<h2>The Bounty</h2>
<p>Banks was also the guiding light behind the most notorious episode of attempted ecological imperialism in the 1780s: the voyage of the Bounty, which set sail from the south coast of England in 1787, bound for what its crew saw as the very furthest reaches of the world. Banks had personally overseen its refitting, including the transformation of its captain’s cabin into a greenhouse, where hundreds of breadfruit seedlings were to be nurtured.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The much-maligned William Bligh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Huey (1814), National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ship’s captain, William Bligh – who was only 35, not the grizzled veteran sometimes depicted – had been sailing-master on Cook’s fatal third voyage, and had come under Banks’ subsequent patronage. His mission failed dramatically, not least because of the huge pressure its goals put him under, and the Bounty was lost to Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers in April 1789. Bligh redeemed his naval reputation with a voyage of more than 3,600 nautical miles to safety in an open boat. Only two years later, he led a second voyage of two ships, which did bring breadfruit from Tahiti all the way to the Caribbean. The Royal Society <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41376303?seq=1">awarded him a gold medal</a>.</p>
<p>Breadfruit never became a self-sustaining food crop for Britain’s brutalised plantation slaves, which had been the grim objective at the heart of these voyages. But this was just one small part of Banks’ vision of imperial botany. He took <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dcd33da0-0e69-11e4-a1ae-00144feabdc0">a leading role</a> in establishing the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as a centre for the systematic study of the world’s plants. He helped promote a network of such centres, from Calcutta to St Vincent in the Caribbean, and the exchange of species between them.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to Bligh’s departure, Banks had expounded in a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qfa3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=joseph+banks+letter+to+Sir+George+Yonge+Mangosteens,+Jacks,+Durians&source=bl&ots=TV13znCp2t&sig=ACfU3U0EAXu116tnGjbEqy-Rt4e2mv2ADg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-zYnlhrnnAhWF8XMBHczVBn0Q6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=cajir&f=false">letter</a> on the benefits of transplantation. From his own previous voyages, he noted the potential value of New Zealand flax for rope-making, and the “Mangosteens, Jacks, Durians” that might be brought westwards from Malaya (now Malaysia). One letter listed more than 30 products of both hemispheres that might be profitably transplanted, from the “lichee” to Basmati rice, “Naugharbussee bamboo” – superior, he noted, to Philippine bamboos already brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish – and what he called the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_-5rQMHKLi8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Cajir+Gautch&source=bl&ots=STojOEHP1V&sig=ACfU3U3iYCyB9c-NieLokciw6uWympgIRg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6gNOM3KPnAhUIT8AKHX1wB38Q6AEwAHoECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cajir%20Gautch&f=false">Cajir Gautch</a>”, a palm whose sap made an alcoholic drink.</p>
<p>Banks closed this letter by noting how happy and eager he was to take forward such plans “so highly fraught with disinterested benevolence” as they were. His correspondent, however, was His Majesty’s secretary for war <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30223">Sir George Yonge</a>. Sir Joseph Banks, like so many leading lights of his generation, drew no distinction between the advancement of humanity and the interests of the British Empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Andress 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 celebrated botanist Joseph Banks, his voyage with James Cook was more about extending imperial power than simply discovery.
David Andress, Professor of Modern History, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129978
2020-04-25T11:03:55Z
2020-04-25T11:03:55Z
Tall ship tales: oral accounts illuminate past encounters and objects, but we need to get our story straight
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326324/original/file-20200408-108576-6pvzjk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C63%2C1698%2C2072&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two Dharawal men opposing Cook’s arrival at Kurnell.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indig2.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In the early Sydney colony, newcomers commonly quizzed Indigenous locals about their <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p171301/pdf/article031.pdf">memories</a> of Captain Cook and the Endeavour. </p>
<p>They believed the arrival of a shipload of British men who stayed for a week was an incredibly memorable event; and assumed that details of it would have been preserved — even treasured — over time. </p>
<p>The accounts given are hardly ever a straightforward recounting of what Cook did. And they rarely tally with what is recorded in the voyage accounts. </p>
<p>Rather, they carry those common <a href="https://methods.sagepub.com/foundations/oral-history">qualities</a> of remembering: telescoping, conflating, rearranging time, stripping back detail, and upping symbolism and metaphor. Unpicking the threads of these memories is vital for historians wanting to find agreement on details and interpretations, and provenance of items that changed hands during early encounters. </p>
<p><a href="http://bit.ly/2KmwdQF"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Recollecting memories</h2>
<p>Some oral accounts were written down – either at the time they were heard or later. Records reveal accounts extracted out of curiosity, to assist with commemorations, or simply to pass the time. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311045/original/file-20200121-187186-1kvgctj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Efforts are underway to clarify the history and provenance of items like this bark shield, held by The British Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://research.britishmuseum.org/join_in/using_digital_images/using_digital_images.aspx?asset_id=585093001&objectId=490919&partId=1">The British Museum</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One account comes from the early 1830s. Two priests stationed at St Mary’s Cathedral near Sydney’s Domain met an Aboriginal man from Botany Bay. They asked him “if he had any recollections of the landing of Captain Cook”? He was born too late to have witnessed it himself, but he shared a reasonably <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13077664?searchTerm=domain%20wall&searchLimits=dateFrom=1863-04-27%7C%7C%7CdateTo=1863-04-27%7C%7C%7Cl-advtitle=35">long story</a> he had inherited from his father, the recollection of which one of the priests later published.</p>
<p>Similarly, in a recent prize-winning <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2019/371-august-2019-no-413/5667-2019-calibre-essay-prize-winner-nah-doongh-s-song-by-grace-karskens">essay</a>, historian Grace Karskens reconstructs a tantalising conversation between Aboriginal woman Nah Doongh and her settler friend Sarah Shand. </p>
<p>“Shand was intensely curious about Nah Doongh’s memory of her first contact with white people”, Karsken explains, but was frustratingly incapable of seeing she was implicated in the dispossession of Aboriginal people, including Nah Doongh. </p>
<p>Nah Doongh offered her a story about Cook, whom she presented as big and evil, violent and greedy, in a way that anticipates late 20th-century Aboriginal oral narratives.</p>
<p>Cook emerged as an erstwhile topic in cross-cultural conversations across colonial Sydney, but the substance of what was said and why was less dependent on the details of what Cook and his crew had done in 1770 than on the conditions, contexts and purposes of the chats. </p>
<p>As many have noted, <a href="https://timetoeatthedogs.com/2019/05/17/replay-aboriginal-australians-first-encounter-with-captain-cook/">discourses about Cook</a> in Australia are neverending; but their contours and emphases change in relation to – and contribute to change in — broader Australian culture and politics.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-captain-cook-to-the-first-fleet-how-botany-bay-was-chosen-over-africa-as-a-new-british-penal-colony-128002">From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Who is speaking?</h2>
<p>Sometimes it is not the account given of Cook that is of primary interest, but the identity of the narrator. </p>
<p>Dharawal woman <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/giles_biddy">Biddy Giles</a> lived around the Botany Bay area for much of the 19th century. An account she gave of Cook’s landing was written down after her death by a white settler. </p>
<p>He recalled she’d said: “They all run away; two fellows stand; Cook shot them in the legs; and they run away too!”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C3%2C1086%2C782&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C3%2C1086%2C782&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311312/original/file-20200122-117962-zdw7d5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dharawal woman Biddy Giles (left) with Jim Brown, Joe Brown, Joey, and Jimmy Lowndes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=FL3269806&embedded=true&toolbar=false">State Library of NSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This economical account is faithful to longer Endeavour voyage renditions. But researchers are more exercised by biographical information showing Giles was briefly married to a much older man, Cooman. Speculation swirls that Cooman’s grandfather, also called Cooman, was one of the two fellows shot. </p>
<p>When historian Heather Goodall in her book <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/rivers-and-resilience_aboriginal-people-on-sydneys-georges-river/">Rivers and Resilience</a> returned to Giles’ life, she made it clear she thought historians who relied on documentary sources should not attempt such jumps. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-spoke-about-dreamtime-i-ticked-a-box-teachers-say-they-lack-confidence-to-teach-indigenous-perspectives-129064">'I spoke about Dreamtime, I ticked a box': teachers say they lack confidence to teach Indigenous perspectives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Repatriation requests</h2>
<p>Not all researchers have been so circumspect. In 2016, speculations about the identity of one of the two men shot contributed to formal requests to museums in Britain for the return of artefacts either known to have been collected at Botany Bay during the Endeavour voyage (four spears at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) or believed to have been (a shield at the British Museum in London). </p>
<p>The repatriation claim repeated historian <a href="http://www.keepingplace.net.au/2016/09/">Keith Vincent Smith</a>’s assertion one of the two men was Cooman.</p>
<p>When asked for advice on this repatriation request, I (Nugent) concluded there was no consensus about that assertion, noting it was unfortunate that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>historical claims which derive from inconclusive evidence, are based on questionable interpretative leaps, and are not presented in ways that recognise and respect the complexities of writing “early contact” history from fragmentary sources […] were being relied upon. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other arguments would serve applications for return far better.</p>
<p>The request was unsuccessful, but the process was productive and generally positive. More work has taken place since, both further historical research and object analysis, and importantly, renewed and enriched relationship-building.</p>
<h2>Building a material history</h2>
<p>Retracing the speculative leaps made between the historical encounters, collected objects, and related written, oral and visual sources reinforces the urgent need for well-resourced, critically reflexive, and multimodal methods of interpretation. This is particularly true when the return of an object and the knowledge it embodies is strongly desired.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311047/original/file-20200121-187134-58zrpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A variety of fishing spears, shields, stone hatchets, clubs and swords by Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1807)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://search.sl.nsw.gov.au/primo-explore/search?query=any,contains,b2142884*&vid=SLNSW">Mitchell Collection/State Library of NSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This year we will commence a new ARC-funded project, <a href="https://app.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.8676651">Mobilising Objects</a> to draw together objects in international collections, images, written records, oral accounts, and contemporary expertise to generate a material history of early colonial Sydney. </p>
<p>The project aims to build knowledge about exceptional, but poorly-documented, Aboriginal objects from Sydney and the NSW coast (circa 1770-1920s) in British and European museums. We hope to build strong relations between Aboriginal communities and overseas museums and lay robust foundations for future projects seeking the return of Indigenous cultural heritage. </p>
<p>Gathering together records of oral accounts given by Aboriginal people about Cook and other seaborne interlopers, and grappling with the interpretive challenges they present, will be a vital aspect of this work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Nugent is an investigator on the ARC Linkage project, 'The Relational Museum and its Objects' (LP150100423).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Gaye Sculthorpe is an investigator on two active ARC Linkage projects, "The Relational Museum and its Objects;" (LP150100423) and "Collecting the West: How collections create Western Australia" (LP160100078).</span></em></p>
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.
Maria Nugent, Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University
Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator & Section Head, Oceania, The British Museum
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129785
2020-01-16T05:08:02Z
2020-01-16T05:08:02Z
Black Drop Effect review: infusing the present moment with layers of the past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310380/original/file-20200115-134768-5e8g1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C19%2C3152%2C2088&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When Indigenous elder Binno (played by William McPherson) teaches dances to three young men, a bigger plan emerges.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christopher Woe</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Black Drop Effect, directed by Felix Cross for Sydney Festival</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://writingnsw.org.au/people/nardi-simpson/">Nardi Simpson</a>’s debut play <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/black-drop-effect">Black Drop Effect</a> is the “immersive” experience the Sydney Festival program promises. Sitting in the stalls, as the sky darkened behind the outdoor stage, I was immersed in the present moment, in January 2020, and in the past too. </p>
<p>Simpson’s funny, tender and provocative dialogue infuses her narrative with layers of history – of place and ancestral knowledge, of encounter at Kamay (Botany Bay) 250 years ago, and of colonial commemorations and performances. </p>
<p>Her characters turn a fraught Aboriginal dance performance on 26 January into a chance to listen and share knowledge. And ultimately, the dance group has a few lessons to teach about who can control culture, how history can be memorialised, and by whom.</p>
<p>In the accompanying program, Simpson (also a composer, singer-songwriter and performer) suggests this work is “one verse in an ongoing song”. Black Drop Effect, and the rich array of Indigenous productions in this Sydney Festival, build on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performances at commemorative events throughout Australia’s history.</p>
<h2>Reenactment and protest</h2>
<p>The production was <a href="https://www.create.nsw.gov.au/arts-in-nsw/artistic-and-cultural-showcase/interview-with-yuwaalaraay-woman-and-writer-of-black-drop-effect-nardi-simpson/">prompted</a> by festival director Wesley Enoch’s call to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists to be ready for 2020. Some smart programming from Enoch <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/stories/uts-big-thinking-rethinking-nationalism">launches a conversation</a> that will heat up as the 29 April anniversary of Cook’s landing approaches.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-major-summer-arts-festivals-reckoning-with-the-past-or-retreating-into-it-126829">Australia's major summer arts festivals: reckoning with the past or retreating into it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The last time a Cook anniversary was commemorated on a large scale was 1970. At those events, Aboriginal actors led by Noongar performer <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A111193?mainTabTemplate=agentWorksBy">Ken Colbung</a> (Nundjan Djiridjarkan) performed the kind of reenactment Black Drop Effect dramatises in front of 20,000 Sydneysiders. </p>
<p>Queen Elizabeth II <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-18/maher-sailing-into-royal-history/3577152">arrived</a> by sea, just as Cook had done, approaching the shore on the royal barge. As she neared, distant clap stick beats were heard, accompanying the official commentary and reminding viewers Aboriginal people were still there, as they had been when that other boat approached 200 years earlier. </p>
<p>Across the Bay at (Guriwal) La Perouse, Aboriginal protesters <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237506973">threw wreaths</a> into the water to commemorate the invasion. They were joined in protests across the nation. </p>
<p>At Sydney Airport the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/captain-cook-1970-bicentenary/10743830">Queen was greeted</a> with Aboriginal people in funeral dress. Elsewhere there was a torchlight procession to Canberra’s Parliament House, a costumed silent vigil in Brisbane, a March through Melbourne, a mourning demonstration in South Australia and a funerary procession in Perth. </p>
<p>Taking poetic licence with history, new British immigrants bearing the surname Cook or Cooks were recruited in the 1970 commemorations. On 30 April, 1970 the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10934448?q=The+Northern+Daily+Leader&c=article">Tamworth Leader</a> reported that “Too many Cooks” arrived in Sydney on a flight landing at Mascot airport, close to Cook’s landing spot. </p>
<p>In 2019, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-22/endeavour-replica-to-sail-around-australia/10734998">Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced</a> a replica of Cook’s ship Endeavour would circumnavigate Australia (even though the original Endeavour never made such a journey).</p>
<p>Anniversaries of the First Fleet’s landing in 1788 have also been repeatedly commemorated. In 1938 (150 years) Ngiyampaa and Paakantji residents of Menindee Aboriginal Reserve were brought down to Sydney under duress to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-25/eighty-years-since-forced-first-fleet-reenactment/9358854">perform a reenactment</a>. Many of their own family members joined the group staging a Day of Mourning protest through Sydney streets nearby. </p>
<p>In 1963 (175 years) a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-music/article/representing-australia-to-the-commonwealth-in-1965-aborigiana-and-indigenous-performance/B25B1383596A3C2CF012DDBBD98C4A5E/share/009f54c3d40a45f5e046571c900c8820740910a1?fbclid=IwAR1oAitOOON0NHL0550G6QYQy49HXBMt_fzs96PiOTfy9jdakNgxbAUGBLw">Pageant of Nationhood</a> was performed for the Queen featuring non-Indigenous dancers in black face in Burragorang Dreamtime, the brainchild of choreographer Beth Dean and composer John Antill. </p>
<h2>Talking back to Cook</h2>
<p>Black Drop Effect holds in tension these complex histories of Aboriginal responses to commemoration, making space for protest, reclamation of culture and cross-cultural negotiations. It is a productive response to our times that brings together a cohesive creative team. </p>
<p>Lucy Simpson’s evocative visual designs, with video by Mic Gruchy and lighting by Karen Norris, bring to life themes in the narrative. Swirling stingray and cockatoo projections and watery backgrounds move across a screen, waft through the trees and onto the sand under the actors’ feet. Matt Doyle’s vital choreography is underpinned by James Henry’s sound design, combining song fragments with electro beats and clap stick rhythms in extended time signatures.</p>
<p>Director Felix Cross creatively navigates the challenges of Bankstown Arts Centre’s courtyard and its proximity to the train line. The impressive cast never forget where their performances are happening, intermittently turning their gaze trainwards. The passing trains play a role in the drama, pausing the action or comically highlighting Anthony Hunt’s Cook portrayal and blustering refusal to let place disrupt his monologue. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310384/original/file-20200116-134802-1qho8g3.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">A strong cast anchors this eloquent debut work with performances that are both comic and poignant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christopher Woe/Sydney Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Experienced performers and newcomers alike shine bright in this strong cast. William McPherson (Binno), Marlene Cummins (Beenie), Jane Phegan (Pip), Googoorewon Knox (Max), Isaiah Kennedy (Brayden), and Ken Weldon (Charley Boy) deliver comedy and poignancy in quick succession, with Knox’s expert singing arriving as a late surprise. </p>
<p>The language of the Gweagal warriors who confronted Cook’s party with “<em>Warra warra wai</em>” also makes a powerful appearance — translated in Simpson’s script as “Go away!”</p>
<p>Black Drop Effect challenges, but it also brings people in, inviting us to listen, feel and rethink what it means for Indigenous Australians to remember Cook’s visit after 250 years. Enoch’s Sydney Festival gives us plenty to think about as 26 January and 29 April 2020 approach.</p>
<p><em>Black Drop Effect runs until January 18</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Harris receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Leverhulme Trust (UK). </span></em></p>
The world premiere of Nardi Simpson’s Black Drop Effect takes in the complex histories of Aboriginal responses to commemoration, and makes space for protest, cultural reclamation and negotiation.
Amanda Harris, Research fellow, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.