Indigenous views on the future of public archaeology in Australia. A conversation that did not happen
Abstract
This paper was written in response to a request by the editors of the AP: Online Journal of Public Archaeology, Jaime Almansa Sánchez and Elena Papagiannopoulou, for Claire Smith to write on the future of public archaeology in Australia. In Australia, public archaeology focusses on high profile colonial sites such as The Rocks in Sydney (Karskens 1999) and Port Arthur in Tasmania (Steele et al. 2007; Frew 2012), tourism (e.g. Cole and Wallis 2019) or enhancing school curricula (Nichols et al. 2005; Owens and Steele 2005). However, given her decades-long relationships with Jawoyn and Ngadjuri people (Smith 1999; Smith et al. 2016; Smith et al. 2020), Claire Smith decided that a useful way of approaching this topic would be to obtain Indigenous views on the subject. Accordingly, she contacted the Aboriginal co-authors of this article and invited them to co-author the paper. The possibility to write in free form was a boon. The ‘conversation’ format we settled on was designed to facilitate the voices of individuals, to present a range of Indigenous views, to allow people to express their views frankly, and to deal with the constraints of people being located in different parts of Australia as well as occasional lock-downs due to COVID-19. We decided on five topics/questions that would be the basis of the conversation. Each Aboriginal author gave their views either by email or by phone. These views were interwoven into a ‘conversation’. The language has been edited lightly for clarity and to simulate a real-life conversation. The final text was approved by all authors.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Commonwealth of Australia 2018. Chapter 6. Truth-telling. Report of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Former_Committees/Constitutional_Recognition_2018/ConstRecognition/Final_Report/section?id=committees%2Freportjnt%2F024213%2F26675 (accessed 19 December 2020).
Atalay, S. 2012. SHARE(ing) the benefits of anthropological research. American Anthropologist 114 (1), 144-145.
Atalay, S., Clauss, L.R., McGuire, R.H., and Welch, J.R. 2014. Transforming Archaeology: Activist Practices and Prospects. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Birt, P. and Copley, V. 2005. Coming Back to Country: A Conversation at Firewood Creek. In C. Smith and H.M. Wobst (eds) Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Theory and Practice, pp. 262-78. London: Routledge.
Burke, H. and Smith, C. 2010. Vestiges of colonialism: Manifestations of the culture/nature divide in Australian heritage management. In P. Messenger and G. Smith (eds) Cultural Heritage Management, Policies, and Issues in Global Perspective, pp. 21-37. Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Cole, N.A. and Wallis, L.A. 2019. Indigenous rock art tourism in Australia: Contexts, trajectories, and multifaceted realities. Arts 8, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts8040162
Frew, E.A. 2012. Interpretation of a sensitive heritage site: The Port Arthur Memorial Garden, Tasmania. International Journal of Heritage Studies 18(1), 33-48.
Jackson, G. and C. Smith 2005. Living and learning on Aboriginal lands: Decolonising archaeology in practice. In C. Smith and H.M. Wobst (Eds.) Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Theory and Practice, pp. 326-49. London: Routledge
Karskens, G. 1999. Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood. Alexandria, NSW: Hale and Iremonger Pty Ltd.
Marshall, Y. 2002. What is community archaeology? World Archaeology 34(2), 211–19.
Matsuda, A. 2004. The concept of ‘the public’ and the aims of public archaeology. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 15, 66-76.
Menzies, D. and Wilson, C. 2020. Indigenous heritage narratives for cultural justice. Historic Environment 32(2), 54-69.
Mizoguchi, K. and Smith, C. 2019. Global Social Archaeologies: Making a Difference in a World of Strangers. London: Routledge.
Moshenska, G. 2010. What is public archaeology? Present Pasts 1(1), 46–48.
Nichols, S., Prangnell, J. and Haslam, M. 2005. Hearts and minds: Public archaeology and the Queensland school curriculum. Australian Archaeology 61, 71-79.
Owen, T. and Steele, J. 2005. Perceptions of archaeology amongst primary school aged children, Adelaide, South Australia. Australian Archaeology 61, 64-70
Pollard, K., Smith, C. and Ralph, J. 2017. Contested spaces: the ‘long grassers’ living private lives in public places. The Conversation. 20 March. Available at: https://theconversation.com/contested-spaces-the-long-grassers-living-private-lives-in-public-places-72199 (accessed 22 December 2020).
Pollard, K. 2019. Archaeology of homelessness. In C. Smith (ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, pp. 5272-5276. New York; Springer.
Ralph, J. and Smith, C. 2014. We’ve got better things to do than worry about whitefella politics’: Contemporary indigenous graffiti and recent government interventions in Jawoyn country. Australian Archaeology 78, 75–83.
Richardson, L. and Almansa-Sánchez, J. 2015. Do you even know what public archaeology is? Trends, theory, practice, ethics. World Archaeology 47(2), 194-211.
Smith, C. 1999. Ancestors, place and people: Social landscapes in Aboriginal Australia. In P. Ucko and R. Layton (eds) The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape. Shaping your Landscape, pp. 189-205. London: Routledge.
Smith, C. 2007. The Indigenous transformation of archaeological practice. The SAA Archaeological Record 7(2), 35-39.
Smith, C. and Wobst, H.M. 2005. The next step: Archaeology for social justice. In C. Smith and H.M. Wobst (eds) Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Theory and Practice, pp. 390-92. London, Routledge.
Smith, C., Domingo, I. and Jackson, G. 2016. Beswick Creek Cave six decades later: Change and continuity in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk. Antiquity 90(354), 1613-26.
Smith, C., Copley, V. senior and Jackson, G. 2018. Intellectual soup. On the reformulation and repatriation of Indigenous knowledge. In V. Apaydin (ed.) Shared Knowledge, Shared Power. Engaging Local and Indigenous Heritage, pp. 1-28. New York: Springer
Smith, C., Jackson, G., Ralph, J., Brown, B., Rankin, G. and Barunga Community 2020. An engaged archaeology field school with a remote Aboriginal community: successes, failures, challenges. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage. DOI: 10.1080/20518196.2020.1804112
Smith, G.S. 2006. The role of archaeology in presenting the past to the public. In I. Russell (ed.) Images, Representations and Heritage, pp. 122–37. New York: Springer.
Steele, J., Clark, J., Tuffin, R., and Jackman, G. 2007. The archaeology of conviction: public archaeology at Port Arthur Historic Site. In J.H. Jameson and S. Baugher (eds) Past Meets Present: Archaeological Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers and Community Groups, pp. 69–86. New York, Springer.
Watego, L. 2020. Why Blak, not Black? Black History Month for Teachers. Available at: https://sites.google.com/site/australianblakhistorymonth/extra-credit#:~:text=Blak%3A%20a%20term%20used%20by,hip%2Dhop%20or%20rap%20music (accessed 22 December 2020).
Wilson, C. 2010. Becoming a Ngarrindjeri archaeologist: the journey to and from suburbia. In G. Nicholas (ed.) Being and Becoming an Indigenous Archaeologist, pp. p. 327-333. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Zimmerman, L.J. 2018. Changing archaeology’s ‘brand’ would be helpful. Antiquity 92(362), 523–24.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23914/ap.v10i0.293
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2021 Kellie Pollard, Claire Smith, Jasmine Willika, Vince Copley sr, Vincent Copley jr, Christopher Willson, Emily Poelina-Hunter, Julie Ah Quee
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ISSN: 2171-6315
Follow us on:
Journal edited by JAS Arqueología
