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The temple of history: historians and the sacralisation of archival work
by Mike Jones
Archives have long been considered central to the work of historians, from nineteenth-century Europe to contemporary Australian practice. Rarely remarked upon is the recurring tendency for some historians to sacralise the process of archival research through the use of religious (usually Christian) symbolism, including temples and churches, sacred relics, pilgrimages, resurrection, rituals and communion.
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Deep Historicities
by Laura Rademaker and Ben Silverstein
In seeking to understand the deep past, the knowledges of First Nations peoples and of the various academic disciplines can seem incommensurable. In this essay, we argue the concept of “historicities”, that is, the encultured ways of narrating and conceiving of the past offers to enrich the study of deep history. Sensitivity to the various ways the past is remembered and understood, as well as the ways in which these historicities are dialogically and relationally constructed, offers ways of bringing distinct accounts of the deep past into conversation. Through closely reading various narrations of deep histories of the Tiwi Islands, we suggest ways in which historicities might be understood as coexisting and in relation, without reducing their accounts to a single universalizable story of the past or hierarchy of knowledges. This special issue further explores decolonizing challenges to ways of knowing the deep past from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
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People of the Footprints: Rediscovery, Indigenous Historicities and the Science of Deep Time
by Ann McGrath
Using a case study from one of Australia’s most significant deep history sites, “People of the footprints” shows how reconciliatory efforts to share the western scientific kudos attached to discovery have proved an uncomfortable fit with Indigenous cultural values. When a young Mutthi Mutthi woman was credited with discovering an ancient human trackway at Lake Mungo in western New South Wales, Australia in 2003, it exposed not only the footprints of her ancient ancestors of approximately 20,000 years ago, it also revealed the difficulties posed by discovery narratives for Indigenous people. Celebrating a “discovery”, with its associated “first observer” implications, is thought to be prestigious in mainstream European histories and science, yet such narratives are steeped in the justifications and mythologies of imperial sovereignty – the very ones that led to Indigenous dispossession. They are also fundamental to the kinds of western scientific paradigms that refuted Indigenous knowledge systems. Contrasting Indigenous ideas of the deep past with those of archaeologists and historians, this essay explores the problematic nature of attributing a deep time “discovery” to an Indigenous individual. Following Indigenous rewritings, and other acts of displacement and resistance, it argues the ongoing nature of the Indigenous custodians’ affective, intimate and living relationships with their ancient past.
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The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History
by Ann McGrath and Lynette Russell (eds)
The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History presents exciting new innovations in the dynamic field of Indigenous global history while also outlining ethical, political, and practical research. Indigenous histories are not merely concerned with the past but have resonances for the politics of the present and future, ranging across vast geographical distances and deep time
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Deep history and deep listening: Indigenous knowledges and the narration of deep pasts
by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker, and Ben Silverstein
This article outlines the possibilities of a deep history practice that engages with rather than sidelines Indigenous historical knowledges. Many Indigenous people insist that their knowledge of the deep past demands engagement. They do so, we suggest, because scientific historicism and Indigenous knowledge-systems and historicities already impinge upon and inform each other: they are intertwined. We propose ‘deep listening’ as a way historians might contribute to bringing these practices of deep history into more explicit conversation and address some of the challenges of doing so.
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Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum
by Mike Jones
Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum provides the first interdisciplinary study of the digital documentation of artefacts and archives in contemporary museums, while also exploring the implications of polyphonic, relational thinking on collections documentation.
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Narlim’s Fingerprints: Aboriginal Histories and Rock Art
by Sally May, Laura Rademaker, Joakim Goldhann, Paul Taçon and Julie Narndal Gumurdu
This article takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding Aboriginal rock art artists, drawing together insights from the disciplines of archaeology and biography, as well as from Indigenous knowledge-holders, in order to explore the life and work of a relatively unknown rock painter from western Arnhem Land in Australia: Narlim (born c. 1909)
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Songspirals: Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country through Songlines by Gay’wu Group of Women
by Ann McGrath
It is not very often a book comes along that I cannot stop quoting. Indeed, in writing this review, rather than interpreting the book in an academic style review, I was tempted to simply share appealing excerpts. Though it would be difficult to choose which ones, for there are so many.
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Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology
by Mike Jones
In the two decades since the first edition of Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies there has been a flood of work exploring the decolonisation of history, education, pedagogy, universities, maps, landscapes, nature, literature, museums, health and healthcare, diets – the list goes on. Into this crowded market comes Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology, edited by Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem,
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‘Throwing Mud’ on Questions of Sovereignty: Race and Northern Arguments over White, Chinese, and Aboriginal Labour, 1905–12
by Ben Silverstein
This article addresses two arguments about Chinese settlers in the Northern Territory. The first, in 1905, was sparked by criticisms of Chinese mining practices and accusations that Chinese people contaminated those Aboriginal people with whom they came into contact. The second was prompted by the imposition, in 1910–11, of restrictions on Chinese rights to work and employ in the Territory. Both were opposed by the Chinese, who represented themselves as deserving and indispensable settlers who had made their home in the Northern Territory. The article argues that these arguments demonstrate the centrality of Aboriginal people to settler practices of being and belonging. Placing Indigeneity and migration in uneasy relation, it examines the emergence of racialised modes of representation as ways of both producing and obscuring sovereignties.
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