At the museum...

Stone tools,

Bellinger Valley Historical Society Museum

"At the museum, 

this means seeing the objects where they are, and simultaneously seeing them where they no longer are, that is to say, in the regions from which they were taken. It means enjoying the beauty and the knowledge that have been accumulated in our cities over centuries, but enjoying them with full awareness of the conditions in which these objects were collected, in asymmetrical economic, military and epistemological contexts. It means rendering visible, in order to master them better, the internal contradictions and the glaring tensions that have been at work in the very idea of museums since its origin. It means paying close attention, in this context, to the gazes and voices of the dispossessed."   Bénédicte Savoy

Bénédicte Savoy, Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects: Inaugural lecture delivered at the Collège de France on Thursday 30 March 2017

Bénédicte Savoy, Objects of Desire, Desire for Objects, Inaugural lecture, Open Edition

Sandy Beach, NSW artefacts display in the Yarrila Arts and Museum (YAM)

Visions of Nature - How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism by Jarrod Hore - A commentary

Jarrod Hore is an environmental historian of settler colonial landscapes, nature writing, and geology. ’Visions of Nature How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism' elucidates cultural techniques used in the Anglo-American settler empire over various centuries. The Pacific Rim Nations (North America, Aotearoa/NZ and Australia) command the most attention of the critical historical image research. It is a historical elaboration of pictorial imagery (iconography), mainly photography, paintings, but also texts.

At the time of steam trains, photos were a novelty with which to view exotic locations. Photography and paintings informed worldviews and worldmaking practices. Visual cultural analysis can reveal the power relations that are embedded in the narrative knowledge that these images and publications entail.

Hore’s text emphasises the underlying scaffolding of presence and absence in the visual realm, textual narrations and the world. The unseen is rendered visible through an apparatus of in- and exclusion. The dominant motif is the binary opposition of existence and non-existence, life and erasure, being and necropolitics.

In 500 years of European expansion, the legal myth of ‘terra nullius’  (‘nobody's land' or ’uninhabited land’) was a foundational imperative. Settlers transferred the ‘empty land’ or ‘natural environment’ into their possession. The human absence of a ‘disembodied land’ was not a given but was achieved by on-going violence and exploitation by the global settler community.

The ‘wide-open spaces’ depicted in images of the time lacked any human trace. They were selling tales of empty land to satisfy settlers/farmers driven by an expanding ‘land hunger’. The ‘empty spaces’ were ‘yearning’ to be filled with plant and animal mono-cultures from the mother country.

Images of this environmental transformation had to depict the taming of a ‘wilderness’ not as the degradation that it was by then, but as a J Locke-style “clothed in the language of improvement” and thereby value creating.

Spatial politics was composed of cultural practices, monotheistic belief systems and iconoclastic enactments. The dominant culture usurps interpretive sovereignty over all cultural artefacts.

Later, new customers were assured of an empty and available commodity to project their imagination upon. “Rampant land speculation” chopped up the land into square rectilinear bits and put it on the market.

Upper Orara 1912

After this period of utility came the romantic idyllic scenery with nationalism to foster belonging. Pictures drove the real estate industry and satisfied “European expectations of the scenic” for leisure. The spatial production of ‘wilderness’ opened up new possibilities for recreation.

National Parks were declared in Australia as primarily for settlers to access recreational spaces, whereas in the US they were set aside for the conservation of biodiversity primarily. “Wilderness was violently, legislatively and spatially produced before it could be preserved.” (Hore, 2022, p.106)

To the same degree as Indigenous mobility was restricted and confined, settlers' mobility was increased. It was time for explorative drives into the countryside. “Pioneering settlers constructed new environmental regimes that improved the prospects for settler mobility and constrained Indigenous movement.” (Hore, 2022, p. 211)  First Nations peoples and Australian flora and fauna were by now “outside the frame” of the settler society's gaze.

When nationalism severed ties from the mother country, some floral and faunal emblems were allowed to impregnate the hearts and minds and stand for the new nation.

While this new national identity was manufactured, a new wave of exclusion and denial was pursued for people not of the Anglo-Saxon ‘race’ - a ‘neo-European nationalist destiny’ was to be established.

A hierarchisation of ‘races’ discouraged settlers from non-European origins, as well as ranking European ‘ethnics’. Newcomers should have been preferably "white/British" or Anglo-Celtic peoples to make up a monocultural ‘white ethnostate'. 

Coffs Harbour, 1924

The entanglement of nationalism and colonialism continued for the ‘chosen people of the promised land’. An expansionist Manifest Destiny excluded non-white settlers from entry and/or citizenship. The White Australia policy was ended in 1973. In 1967 they finally acknowledged the existence of First Nations people of Australia and started to count the survivors.

The presence of First Nation peoples is a “logical anomaly in settler polities - an embarrassment to the sovereign settler state.” (Hore, 2022, p.109) The outstanding business lingers and is unsettling and traumatic. The dispossession and exclusion of Indigenous peoples in this country is like a festering wound rocking the unstable foundation. 

On the biodiversity front it appears that settler society has not stopped rolling up the unique rich ‘carpet’ of Australian animals and plants, and turning them into a fast buck. ‘Superior land use’ consists of having the worst animal extinction rate in the world. Most ecosystems are degraded and collapsing.

“Australia has the worst record of mammal extinctions globally. (It) is regarded as one of the world's 11 deforestation fronts (WWF, 2015) and is likely to suffer widespread biodiversity loss from climate change and habitat loss over coming decades.” (source)

Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges
Eugene von Guerard, 1857

The modus operandi of settler society has not changed. Genocide and ecocide practices are still the dominant structure. The social and natural metabolism is intensifying. The gear is changing from business as usual to fast-tracking everything. The distribution of gain and harm of this extractive and exploitative process is made to appear as natural. 

An expansionist political agenda increasingly excludes uncomfortable positions by scientists, ecologists, conservation experts and Indigenous peoples with hushing-up tactics. People speaking up about threatened species, mining, logging, carbon credits and other harm to the environment are in danger of becoming a persona non grata. Their voices or studies might just cease to exist, data might just vanish. Many whistleblowers and demonstrators are gagged and are existentially threatened. Resonance spaces for counter narratives shrink in civil society.

An inadequate public discourse and science suppression do not make for a literate citizenry. The absence of the acknowledgment of the truth of the violent legacies cannot break the prevailing ‘code of silence’.

The past still echoes in the collective psyche as unfinished business. There is an unwillingness to properly confront the uncomfortable truths about genocidal colonialism and the extractive relationship towards nature. It takes reparative justice and mindful symmetrical relations to heal the poly-traumas.

Settlers on this Earth need a fundamental reorganisation, a paradigm shift (a Copernican like revolution) to demonstrate that they are not the navel of the universe.

The Eurocentric baggage brings with it epistemic violence, exploitative relationships towards others and the ecosphere. The Western world view and practices curate our habitus and seem to be set on autopilot. Extraction, pollution and exploitation without limits has to end.

It is time to re-imagine the contemporary landscape and reconfigure the connectivity to the natural and social world.

Hore’s Visions of Nature provides another stepping stone on the path of truth telling.

The Western Genre and The Settler Society Narrative

Some readings about the latest Western the entertainment industry has to offer: Killers of The Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese.

The western genre convention usually depicts the 'unbounded freedom' of the individual, the 'Lone Cow-boy' trope on horseback set in a 'wide and open spaces' narrative. The 'hero' operates outside the law on Indigenous landscapes and in frontier towns.

"Unlike the visions of unbounded freedom found in traditional westerns, Martin Scorsese’s new film is a study of a West bounded by the vertical geometry of oil rigs and the violent conspiracies of powerful men.” (source)

It is an “epic about the bloody birth of modern America... An epic of creeping, existential horror about the birth of the American century, a macabre tale of quasi-genocidal serial killings" (source)

The film is “an epic story of greed and betrayal in its examination of Osage life in Oklahoma circa 1920, and the mass murders of the Indigenous community at the hands of their white neighbors.” (source)

Leonardo DiCaprio: “It's still happening...The more work that I've done, certainly in the environmental space, you realise the systematic persecution of Indigenous cultures all throughout the world...It's happening all over the world, in Australia. It's happening in Africa, it's happening in South America...And I keep saying this quote over and over again, those places that are most rich in resources are those that are often most drenched in blood." (source)

The BBC mentions that the zeitgeist how Indigenous peoples are treated might be changing in the 21^st Century: "The film is making a strong statement that it's no longer acceptable to extract valuable assets from Indigenous communities without our consent and input.” (source)

Interesting times when Hollywood actors and their products problematise past massacres of settler colonialism and present day injustices against Indigenous peoples.

As Patrick Wolfe said: Settler colonialism is a “structure not an event” (source)

Update:

Revealing reading regarding mineral and petroleum royalties: For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ still lingers, Conservation

A visit to the YAM (Yarrila Arts and Museum)

“Yaamanga Around here is a permanent exhibition exploring the history and identity of the Coffs Coast through themes of place, community and belonging, with Gumbaynggirr culture at its heart." (source)

The gallery, museum and library are housed in a new bright green building that even has bike racks in front. Culture is free there.

At the entry a film is shown: Daalga Nginundi Wajarr (Sing your Country) Gumbaynggirr artist Birrugan Dunn-Velasco uses modern instrumentation and sounds from Country.

The bulk of the museum is devoted to settler culture. Displays of deforestation tools, logging implements, barbed wire and cattle images. Frugal craftiness textiles.

One could say it is an obsession with stuff, with material culture and the hoarding of possessions. Collections of tools, shells, food implements from a nostalgic bygone era.

The only First Nations 'stuff' is showcased in a glass cabinet. Some dusty stone tools are lined up out of context (as seen in most Australian museums). To counter-pose a huge array of settler implements with Aboriginal stone tools could lead one to misleading conclusions.

Missing and therefore invisible in this display of material cultures is the greatest achievement of the Indigenous Peoples, that is having managed Country for 60.000 years without degrading it.

There are some beautiful paintings, glass and textile installations to see..

Suzanna Knight, Shearwater tapestry

The Storification of the life of others

Remarks inspired by three sessions at the Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival

The sessions were by the following authors that presented their books:

A) The photographer and writer Jon Rhodes, 'Whitefella Way', 2022
B) Anastasia Guise, (collaborative authors) Fire Stories: Reflections from Northern Rivers locals on the 2019/2020 bushfires.
C) Sarah George, Gamu: The Dreamtime Stories, Life & Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie
Moderation: Ross Macleay


Storification of the life of others might sum up the common thread
for these three presentations.

Anthropological enthusiasts with a gaze of an outsider curate and frame encounters of lived lives and experiences of others.

The mostly narrative form in text, image or audio is to make the stories 'more accessible'. It is to meet the longing for the unambiguous, a clarity of meaning, a search for orientation.

The literary device of narrative storification of the others' lived lives seems to have a contemporary ring of 'authenticity'. People open up 'first hand' about their lives and 'confess' to their trauma. The presently popular genre of autofiction blends autobiography and fiction.

Ever since the "narrative turn" (Peter Brooks) “storification” is en vogue and sells. The craft of narrative fiction or storytelling has also been seized by PR, medical communication, council spins and generally narrates corporate 'stories'.

In the age of attention deficits, the failure to actively listen seems ubiquitous. Distracted and overloaded, one has to relearn to listen, read and observe again. Forests of books and public mainstream broadcasters (ABC feeds) consist of 'stories' and no longer claim to be 'news'.

The genre of the first-person recount is said to easily connect with the interlocutor's emotions. Data visualisation or pictorial representation of information aims to 'bring the message home'.

The demand for authenticity in uncertain times is apparently met by the trustworthy first-person narrative. It is alluding to an immediate, direct, true and uncomplicated reciprocal exchange of meaningful experiences.

Communities of experience and practice can find a social anchor in a 'we'. For the consumer the stories appear more emotionally engrossing as the narrative appeals to an ingrained and familiar enculturated pattern of a narrative arc/structure.

There seems to be a difference if the interlocutor's “stories” are the literary confessing, retelling or bearing witness of an individual narration or a socially curated autofiction.
The 'story' of a representative/member of a First Nation sharing collective knowledge appears to be on another level of transmission. The ‘Indigenous cultural capital’ which is shared comprises the material and symbolic goods, the knowledge that functions as a social relation within an economy of practices.

For a long time cultural assets have been dealt with by members of another culture or identity. The curation of these cultures and traditions have been undertaken by members of the dominant culture (settlers/ anthropologists/enthusiasts) for too long.

It is time to refrain from voicing the concerns of others and start to face up to one's own mode of relating, then and now.

”The decolonizing practices by Indigenous scholars have outlined contours of critical Indigenous praxis that seek to liberate Indigenous communities from colonial and settler hegemonies of knowledge production, dissemination of knowledges, and the ongoing constraints colonial systems of systemic racism have imposed on Indigenous peoples as a global phenomenon.” (source)

Indigenous knowledge-holders have cared for Country for 65,000 years sustainably. The story of our 'Grand Narrative' has collapsed into an apocalyptic horror fiction 'story' with respect to the state of the environment and our social interrelatedness.

Time is long overdue for 'Whitefella Way'/settler colonial society to remember, reflect, and face up to the 'story' of their ongoing encounters. Self-reflexivity is needed to critically interrogate ourselves about our self-understanding and our decolonising practices.
There's a story in “truth telling” in the treatment of relationality and Country from the settlers' perspective. There's so much postcoloniality waiting to be unearthed, so much unlearning to be done. Nothing less than a reset in relation to self, land and people.


LINKS:
Jonn Rhodes, Whitefella Way 

“In the final chapter Rhodes investigates the mass killing of Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, Kaytej and Warumungu in the Northern Territory – the 1928 Coniston Massacre – and again asks, when will the fundamental truth of the 140-year-long Australian Frontier War be wholeheartedly acknowledged and memorialised by the government of the Commonwealth of Australia?”

In Jon Rhodes' 'Cages of Ghosts' he is tracing the vandalism of iconoclasts in NSW.

Cage of Ghosts, Jon Rhodes
Rhodes documents rock engravings and carved trees in NSW. "It is a photographic exploration of the destruction of cultural heritage by an iconoclastic system. Sacred sites today 'only exist  as ‘caged’, places that are now imprisoned by development. Rhodes creates a subtle, challenging narrative of the ambiguities and complexities of non-Indigenous relations with Indigenous culture over more than a century."

Anastasia Guise, (collaborative authors) Fire Stories: Reflections from Northern Rivers locals on the 2019/2020 bushfires. Collaboratively curated rich media stories about traumatised survivors of the climate induced bushfires in NSW, 2019/2020.

The Dreamtime Stories, Life & Feelings of Big Bill Neidjie, Sarah George


Further links:

Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology.1999
(Deconstructing the intellectual paradigms of colonialism)

Mapping Colonial Frontier Massacres, Australia, 1788 to 1930