Related pages
Australian Aboriginal Studies 2005
Archaeology, claimant connection to sites, and native title: employment of successful categories of data with specific comments on glass artefacts
Peter Veth and Susan O’Connor
This paper argues that Indigenous utilisation and manipulation of post-contact materials should be given more attention in both routine and native title–oriented archaeology. We analyse a range of categories of postcontact occupation, including art, habitation sites, and implements based on introduced materials. We draw particular attention to glass artefacts in that they have the advantage of being near ubiquitous in the landscape. We would argue that judiciously treated they can be highly informative about the timing and nature of settlement and subsistence patterns after contact (revealing both continuities and transformations). They may also reflect on group identity and processes of aggregation during the imposition of pastoral, mining, forestry, defence and other regimes on traditional lands. Of the numerous Federal Court archaeology expert witness reports prepared by the authors in the arid zone, in all cases glass artefacts were recorded. Equally, in all cases claimants had some connections to and knowledge of sites where such postcontact artefacts were noted.
Contact archaeology and native title
Rodney Harrison
Contact archaeology in Australia is emerging as an important tool in the independent ‘verification’ of claimants’ testimony regarding the post-sovereignty occupation and use of particular parts of the landscape in a continuous and ‘traditional’ manner. This paper reviews the literature on post-contact archaeology and material culture in Australia, and provides an assessment of the ways in which this evidence has been used in native title claims to date. The utility of post-contact artefact forms, both in terms of providing evidence of post-sovereignty use and occupation, as well as in demonstrating long-term continuities in claimant land-use patterns, is discussed, with reference both to knapped bottle glass artefacts, the most well known post-contact Aboriginal artefact type in Australia, as well as other post-contact artefact forms such as stone artefacts and modified metal tools. It is argued that an examination of a broader range of post-contact material culture items and archaeological site patterning has potential not only in directly informing native title archae-ology, but also in developing more complex archaeological narratives concerning both continuity and change in Aboriginal societies in the past, which may serve political and social agendas in the present.
Archaeological evidence in the De Rose Hill native title claim
Josephine McDonald
This paper examines the nature of some of the archaeological evidence used in the De Rose Hill native title claim. The archaeological evidence was not a point of contestation in this claim. Archaeological evidence gathered by the claimants’ archaeologist and the Crown’s archaeologist was seen as supporting several important components of the Native Title Act 1993. The methodological implications of collecting evidence for native title claims are discussed in terms of the broader ramifications for archaeological practice.
Nukun and Kungun Ngarrindjeri Ruwe (Look and listen to Ngarrindjeri country): an investigation of Ngarrindjeri perspectives of archaeology in relation to native title and heritage matters
Amy Roberts, Steve Hemming, Tom Trevorrow, George Trevorrow, Matthew
Rigney, Grant Rigney, Lawrie Agius and Rhonda Agius
Australian archaeology has in past decades been subject to criticisms from Indigenous Australians for its treatment of and lack of consultation with their communities. Since these critiques the situation has changed and archaeologists are now required to consult with Indigenous communities, leading to improved relationships between many archaeologists and Indigenous peoples. However, there are still a number of factors that inhibit meaningful collaborative research. The utilisation of archaeology in native title and heritage research, particularly in relation to ‘future acts’ and ‘site clearances’, provides an added tension to this arena where different cultural values, politics and worldviews collide. Thus, it is now more important than ever that archaeologists have a greater understanding of Indigenous peoples’ ‘lived experiences’ as well as their responsibilities to the communities with whom they work. Part of this involves an appreciation of Indigenous research agendas. It is also crucial that archaeology understand its power as an important player in the politics of knowledge
surrounding native title and heritage regimes in contemporary Australia.
This paper explores these issues through the ‘lived experiences’ of six Ngarrindjeri people who have extensive experience in native title and heritage matters, and was written in collaboration with two researchers. It is hoped that the ‘lived experiences’ of the Ngarrindjeri authors may be used to educate archaeologists as well as other researchers, particularly those who may be new to an Indigenous
community, so that future relations between Indigenous peoples and archaeologists will undergo profound changes. Such changes will mean that archaeologists can work ethically, sensitively and professionally with, and more importantly for, Indigenous communities and thereby contribute to the improvement of native title and heritage processes.
Identifying Aboriginal ‘contact period’ sites around Darwin: long past due for native title?
Patricia M Bourke
Stimulated by questions arising from my own experience as an expert witness in the Larrakia native title process, I report here on preliminary investigations aimed at identifying Aboriginal ‘contact period’ sites around Darwin, Northern Territory. The initial findings, of uniquely Aboriginal urban places, representing historic Aboriginal activity on top of older pre-contact sites, provide evidence of continuity and change in Aboriginal settlement and subsistence behaviours on the fringes of Darwin. This paper suggests that systematic research and production of a baseline database of urban ‘contact period’ sites, to potentially provide important historical evidence on the activities of
urban-based Aboriginal people, relevant for native title, is long overdue.
Native title archaeology: a synopsis of the role of archaeology in litigated native title determinations in Australia
Andrea A McCarron-Benson
The archaeological evidence used in litigated determinations has the ability to provide valuable data upon which archaeological practitioners can draw. Equally, the limitations of archaeology in native title to address issues of continuity, and the discipline-embedded limitations in being able to establish ethnicity and ‘boundaries’ in the archaeological record as required by the courts, must also be
recognised. My research establishes the unique, but limited, role of archaeology in providing evidence for the requirements of native title, with specific reference to the length of occupation of a territory in question and continuing traditional customs and laws concerning it. My critique attempts to illustrate what the most relevant uses of archaeology to the requirements of native title might be, within the limits of
the rules of evidence and the duty of the expert witnesses. This research, undertaken as a recently completed BA (Honours) thesis, establishes the need for revised methodology for native title archaeology.
‘Everyday archaeology’: archaeological heritage management and its relationship to native title in development-related processes
Luke Godwin
This paper reviews various case studies to examine the capacity for including cultural processes and practices in the design and implementation of developmentrelated cultural heritage projects that demonstrate the maintenance of a body of law and custom consonant with native title. The paper shows that even apparently small cultural heritage projects linked to the development cycle afford an opportunity to gather a range of information that may likewise be of use at a later stage in native title–related matters. It then considers the design of terms of reference for cultural heritage projects that recognise that subsequent use of the results of that study may have to fulfil a larger purpose than may originally have been envisaged. Finally, attention is given to the role of the professional cultural heritage adviser in the context of native title. It is concluded that significant change in the role of such advisers is demanded by these circumstances.
We got our own management’: local knowledge, government
and development in Cape York Peninsula
Benjamin Richard Smith
In examining the growing interrelationship of local knowledge and projects of government among Aboriginal Australians I draw on ethnographic material to reveal the tensions and complexities of land- and naturalresource management involving Aboriginal ‘traditional owners’. I also analyse the ways in which the concept of management—a key term in local critiques of introduced forms of governance—itself reveals the growing interrelation of originally distinct indigenous and exogenous systems. This process of interrelation has affected not only the articulation of Aboriginal identities, but is also implicated in the current importance of local cosmological figures.
Lungmarama Yolngu nha: a week in the life of an outreach
program
Ben Wearne, Janice Chesters and Sue Whyte
The Yolngu of north-eastern Arnhem Land have lived with alcohol for just over 30 years. For some, particularly those who permanently or transiently camp on the fringes of the predominantly non-Indigenous township of Nhulunbuy, it has resulted in devastating health, social, family and cultural impacts. The Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation Outreach Program is a response to alcohol use by this Aboriginal community. We examine the outreach program in terms of its conception and development and ‘success’. The impact that funding (or lack of funding), the funding source, and different expectations by the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can have on the success or otherwise of such a program are manifest in this case study. Extracts from a journal written by one of the researchers while involved in the program provides a grounded insight into the practicalities and realities of undertaking this type of activity in a remote community.
The outreach program has achieved some success by helping a small number of Yolngu to turn their lives around and move off a path of self-destructive alcohol use. However, the program has been narrowly fashioned and continues to be driven by the concerns of the non-Indigenous community for whom its ‘success’ has been the attention given to litter and antisocial behaviour
Using the ‘power of the data’ within Indigenous research practice
Maggie Walter
Quantitative methods, especially when used on large-scale data sets such as NATSIS and census collections, are powerful analytical research tools. Yet the use of such methods is relatively rare among Indigenous Australian researchers. Reasons for this limited engagement include the fraught relationship between Indigenous peoples and research, the lack of an established Indigenous presence within quantitative research practice, and the paucity of relevant Indigenous quantitative data. Three arguments for the greater use of quantitative methods and techniques within Indigenous research practice include the research power available through the use of such methods, the need for an Indigenous presence in this field of research, and the capacity of an Indigenous research framework to transform quantitative research practice.
Rage, reason and the honourable cause: a reply to Cowlishaw
Peter Sutton
In 2003 Gillian Cowlishaw published a confrontational attack on a paper that I had published earlier on the subject of ‘The politics of suffering’ in Aboriginal Australia. While this reply takes up and answers her main points, it also examines her writings more generally and
comes to a critical view of the use of the anthropological literary framework in the pursuit of political ends. The politicisation of anthropological and historical writing on Indigenous themes in recent decades has focused unwarranted attention on the moral position of the author, and has been running in reverse gear against the long-term trend of secularisation and objectification encouraged in Western
thought since the Enlightenment. I suggest it’s time for a little classicism.
Droppin’ conscious beats and flows: Aboriginal hip hop and
youth identity
George Stavrias
Hip hop culture is significant in Aboriginal youth identity formation. I examine the culture of ‘conscious’ Australian hip hop as practised by three hip hoppers from the East Coast: Little G and MC Wire, both Aboriginal, and Morganics, a Settler who conducts hip hop workshops for Aboriginal youth. In dispelling the myth of American cultural imperialism, I argue that hip hop’s critical appropriation has as much to do with its internal logic of sampling, representin’ and flow as with the oppositional politics it often serves as a vehicle.
Shoes of invisibility and invisible shoes: Australian hunters
and gatherers and ideas on the origins of footwear
Kim Akerman
Apart from a single brief paper written by DS Davidson and published in 1947, and a detailed description of bark sandals from the Tanami desert region by DF Thomson in 1960, most attention in relation to Aboriginal Australian footwear has focused on the emufeather and hairstring kadaitcha shoes or slippers of Central Australia. While footwear was lacking among most indigenous Australians, at least five different forms of indigenous footwear or foot protection have been recorded. A revised distribution of Aboriginal footwear is presented here. Early records draw attention to the use of footwear among the Tasmanian Aborigines and offer insights into the possible origins of the use of footwear.
While traditionally footwear had a limited distribution on the continent, the use of at least one form intimately associated with magical killing and sorcery, the kadaitcha shoe, seems to have been spreading in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is suggested here that internal disruption caused by the impact of Western and Asian societies in the nineteenth century led to an increase in aberrant behaviour, including sorcery, that may account for the spread of this particular type of footwear.