BookPDF Available

Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation: The Keeping Place

Authors:

Figures

Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation
explores Indigenous practices of curation, object repatriation, and cross-
cultural community engagement in a dynamic Koori museum.
Grounded in the fact that Gunai Kurnai people have never ceded
sovereignty, the text reorients dominant temporal and colonial approaches
of museum studies to document and theorise Gunai Kurnai self-presentation
and community engagement in the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place.
Researched and co-authored by the Cultural Manager of the Keeping Place,
Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man Robert Hudson, and white Historian
Shannon Woodcock, the book traces the temporal, social, and cultural
considerations of the Elders who curated the permanent exhibition in the
early 1990s. Discussing community management of a collection growing
through the ongoing repatriation of tools, art, and Ancestor remains, the
text also explores how Robert Hudson engages with visitors to the Keeping
Place and local colonial history museums, and theorises the power of
Gunai Kurnai work with individuals and institutions in the small museum
context. Finally, Hudson and Woodcock demonstrate that the Keeping Place
articulates sophisticated Gunai Kurnai-grounded methodologies of museum
practice in relation to international critical Indigenous studies scholarship.
Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation
provides a vital case study of an Indigenous museum space written from an
inside perspective. As such, the book will be essential reading for scholars
and students engaged in the study of museums and heritage, Indigenous
peoples, decolonisation, race, anthropology, culture, and history.
Robert Hudson is a Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man and Cultural
Manager of the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place.
Dr. Shannon Woodcock is a white historian.
Self-Determined First Nations
Museums and Colonial
Contestation
Committed to the articulation of big, even risky ideas, in small format pub-
lications, ‘Museums in Focus’ challenges authors and readers to experiment
with, innovate, and press museums and the intellectual frameworks through
which we view these. It oers a platform for approaches that radically
rethink the relationships between cultural and intellectual dissent and crisis
and debates about museums, politics and the broader public sphere.
‘Museums in Focus’ is motivated by the intellectual hypothesis that
museums are not innately ‘useful’, safe’ or even ‘public’ places, and that
recalibrating our thinking about them might benet from adopting a more
radical and oppositional form of logic and approach. Examining this prob-
lem requires a level of comfort with (or at least tolerance of ) the idea of
crisis, dissent, protest and radical thinking, and authors might benet from
considering how cultural and intellectual crisis, regeneration and anxiety
have been dealt with in other disciplines and contexts.
The following list includes only the most-recent titles to publish within
the series. A list of the full catalogue of titles is available at: www.routledge.
com/Museums-in-Focus/book-series/MIF
Reections on Critical Museology
Inside and Outside Museums
J. Pedro Lorente
Self-Determined First Nations Museums and Colonial Contestation
The Keeping Place
Robert Hudson and Shannon Woodcock
Logo by James Verdon (2017)
Museums in Focus
Series Editor: Kylie Message
Australian National University, Australia
Self-Determined First Nations
Museums and Colonial
Contestation
The Keeping Place
Robert Hudson and
Shannon Woodcock
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Robert Hudson and Shannon Woodcock
The right of Robert Hudson and Shannon Woodcock to be
identied as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identication and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-64177-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-64179-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12244-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003122449
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Anonymous grati, Athens. Image and logo by James
Verdon (2017).
We dedicate this book to the staunch Elders on unceded Gunai
Kurnai Country who fought to build the Krowathunkooloong
Keeping Place.
List of gures x
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
1 A tour of the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place:
Rob Hudson – Cultural Manager 27
2 Community futures and embodied sovereignty 45
3 Receiving and working with Ancestor objects 65
4 Settler museums, white supremacy, and the Keeping Place 85
Conclusion 104
Index 109
Contents
0.1 Direction sign to the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place,
Main Street Bairnsdale. 3
0.2 ‘The Hoarding Begins’ Colonial Virus Series. 8
Figures
These are not only my words; they are my beliefs and my voice.
I wrote this book with Shannon to reect my everyday life and my work
as a Cultural Manager at the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place, teach-
ing truth and challenging colonial history. Our main purpose in writing
this book is to dierentiate between colonial museums and First Nations
Cultural Museums (Keeping Places). The average person’s perception of a
museum is an eclectic collection of manual tools and bygone era antiques,
whereas a Keeping Place is an embedded connection to culture, still as
strong today as in the days of my ancestors.
The Keeping Place displays traditions, lore, and connection to spirit and
country. It provides a safe place for First Nations people to connect with
their ancestral linage, ask for guidance and clarity, revive language, and
receive moral understanding of the passed-down dreaming stories. This is
all part of peoples’ journeys to self-discovery, while honouring the tradi-
tions that were forbidden with colonisation.
This book is an insight into the ongoing and perpetual spiritualisation of
First Nations people. We share not only an awareness of artefacts and the
ways First Nations people have lived for the last 60,000 years but how we
continue to be a living and breathing culture. I hope this book inspires you
to not only visit a Keeping Place but to spend enough time there to immerse
yourself and develop a richer understanding of my culture and the immense
importance of these amazing places.
Rob Hudson,
Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo, living on my Country
Preface
We thank the Elders for establishing The Keeping Place. We acknowledge
the love, wisdom, and laughter of our Gunai Kurnai and Koori Elders, kin
and Country across thousands of generations.
We acknowledge the Old People in the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place.
We thank Leanne Hudson, Uncle Russell Mullett, Ruth Walker, and our
families for sharing their knowledge, love, and hard work with us and with
the Community.
I (Rob) thank the Uncles that are in spiritual and physical form guiding me
through my life to become the person I am today. They shared their knowl-
edge of our culture, teaching the craft of canoe, tool, weapon making, and
teaching the languages of Gunnai Kurnai and Monero. The Uncles showed
me that ght comes in all forms, but the best is to ght with words. The
Yulendji Group at the Melbourne Museum have been a great voice and com-
munity in the museum setting. I have learnt a lot from working with Gene-
vieve Grieves and from the wisdom of the whole group; everyone is included
as part of that family no matter where you come from, and they make a calm
and emotional space to grieve the past alongside creating exhibitions and
stories together. I thank Yulendji for doing the work in the proper way.
I thank my wife Leanne, my children Ronan, Logan, Hirahni, and Ahren.
Thanks to Shannon for being a trusted friend and being truly strong.
I (Shannon) thank Rob rst and foremost, for his patience, energy, and trust
in directing this work. And for defending me when I was a big mouth shark.
Dr Crystal McKinnon has been a constant friend and informal academic
supervisor, we thank her for being a vital part of this amazing process. Shan-
non thanks Dorothy Maniero and Lisa Roberts, artists who stand against
white supremacy here in Gunai Kurnai Country and who have been vital to
this work. Thanks to Ann Faulkner and Marlene Constable for their love,
and for teaching me about white anti-racism and queer life in the colony.
Ann, Crystal, Dorothy, Lisa, Marlene, Anna Cameron, and Martine Hawkes
gave feedback on various drafts of this book alongside their epic friendships
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements xiii
and encouragement. Thanks to Amir Rezanezhad for balancing the hemi-
spheres and sharing the ght, and to Mardin Arvin for sharing freedom with
so many stories.
Special thanks to Prof. Alexis Wright, artist Chips Mackinolty, and pho-
tographer Lisa Roberts for permission to use their work in this text. We
wrote this book throughout our shared Creative Fellowship at the State
Library of Victoria, and we thank Suzie Gasper and Aunty Maxine Briggs
for their support. Dr Corina Apostol and Dr Jasmina Tumbas, editors of
ArtLeaks Gazette #5 (2019), kindly gave permission to reproduce part of
Shannon’s article in Chapter Four of this work. We thank the anonymous
reviewers for their insights, and Heidi Lowther, Kylie Message, and Manas
Roy, the outstanding editorial team at Routledge.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003122449-1
We turn to look out the window of Rob’s oce in the Krowathunkooloong
Keeping Place when a car pulls into the parking lot. People arrive and walk
across to the medical centre or the Elder’s room. Everybody knows every-
one else so we pause – identify – then back to the conversation. When it’s
someone new we keep on looking.
If visitors head towards the Keeping Place they will rst meet the scar
tree. Huge old tree, hundreds of generations in girth, found severed and
brought here to lie down, marked by working with Gunai Kurnai to make
a canoe. Maybe this tree gave their canoe for shing, or for the rst eeing
from white invaders – the same white men today’s asphalt streets are named
after. Anyway, the tree rests here now; held by gentle arms, a roof that the
rain can talk to them on.
When someone paces past the tree, they’re coming to ask Rob some-
thing. If they are holding a package in their arms, we know it’s important
and stay still. We wait. Colonisers, especially those long retired, often
bring Rob the things they know they shouldn’t have, the spoils of a war
they don’t acknowledge as such. They bring looted shields and baskets,
and beautiful black ceramic dolls made by and purchased from the Aunt-
ies. Sometimes they bring important information detailing a shed on their
property where their family keeps human bodies, bones collected and hid-
den in the process of occupying Kurnai land to extract prot, though these
people are most likely to phone in on the landline. When those calls come
in Rob keeps his voice calm, opens Google Maps on the computer, and
pinpoints the location they describe. He lets them know that Community
would love to visit, and they promise to call back and organise a time but
rarely do.
The people who arrive and then linger at the scar tree to read the interpre-
tive sign increase our tension. Some meander in afterwards and Rob takes
them through to the permanent exhibition. Many others get that close, turn
around, go back to their cars, and zoom on out of the co-op carpark.
Introduction
2 Introduction
This place is powerful.
The Ancestors are here. They have always been here, and will always
be here, at this place, overlooking the wetlands, the lakes, and the ocean.
When the door to the permanent exhibit closes the other world behind, there
is quiet. This quiet is a strong calm energy. The canoes, Dingo, the weapons
and tools, all vibrate with ready-to-go-again: shing, running, hunting, and
ceremony. The building holds them safe between the shields representing
the ve tribes of Gunai Kurnai Country carved into the wooden poles. The
Elders are here in portraits and photographs. Their faces are familiar to the
people we meet in the streets of Bairnsdale today. Sometimes their families
drop by to greet them here.
The Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place is an important cultural centre
and museum space for the ve Gunai Kurnai nations. To visit us in person,
start in the city of Narrm, on Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung Country and
travel east. After you pass through Boon wurrung Country you will reach
Gunai Kurnai Country. On the old path that is now the M1 freeway, you
will pass through Brayakaulung Country, with Brataualung Country to the
south. The foothills of the mountains will be on your left, to the north. When
you reach Brabralung Country, continue to Wy Yung, on the rst of the three
rivers that ow to the ocean, on the other side of Tatungalung Country. The
Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place is here, in a small city called Bairns-
dale. If you continue east through Bairnsdale you’ll pass Krautungalung
Country, then Bidawel Country, then Yuin Country, and then the ocean at
the sunrise edge of the continent.
A sign at the central intersection of Bairnsdale directs you to turn for the
Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place. A second sign below it adds: Aborigi-
nal Cultural Museum. You’ll drive past the pub, cross the railway tracks,
and turn right onto Dalmahoy St. to nd the Keeping Place, a standalone
building amongst many that constitute the Gippsland & East Gippsland
Aboriginal Co-operative (GEGAC).
This is Gunai Kurnai land. This is a clear and simple truth. We (Rob)
Gunai Kurnai people have been here all through time, for thousands and
thousands of generations. Europeans came here just 180 years ago, less than
ten generations, but have destroyed without pause. Europeans colonise and
destroy Country for monetary prot. Gunai Kurnai people have never ceded
sovereignty to this colony. We are living in an ongoing European occupa-
tion that is violent and causes harm to our Country, our Community, and to
all the humans and more-than-humans who live here, together.
We are Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man Rob Hudson, the Cultural
Manager of the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place, and Shannon Wood-
cock, a white colonist historian. We are writing this book to you from the
Keeping Place to tell you about a museum space that is of Country. The
Introduction 3
Keeping Place is self-determined and uncolonised. The Koori community
on Gunai Kurnai Country fought for more than 20 years to buy this land and
build this Keeping Place at the heart of our self-determined co-op in 1994.
This is a place to keep our belongings safe, and where people can come
to learn about Gunai Kurnai Culture. The Elders made this Keeping Place
with clear purpose, and that is the same purpose we have now in writing
this book – to care for Gunai Kurnai Culture, Community, and Country. The
Keeping Place uniquely expresses our knowledge and relationships with
each other and with everyone on our Country – it expresses Gunai Kurnai
grounded normativity.
The sign that points the way to the Keeping Place uses the words museum
and cultural centre. We are a cultural centre because we don’t see the things
we have here as in the past, but we are a museum in that the Gunai Kur-
nai Community made the Keeping Place to have a permanent exhibition,
regular opening hours for the public, and to preserve Ancestor objects: to
be legible to colonists as a museum. The Elders made this Keeping Place
to be an eective interface between colonial culture and our own; they
wanted the Keeping Place to be legible to colonists as a historical museum
Figure 0.1 Direction sign to the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place, Main Street
Bairnsdale.
Source: Photo by Lisa Roberts.
4 Introduction
so colonists understand we care for and know about our own history, and
they also wanted this place to be marked as a centre for our living Culture
and Community.1 Many Tribal museums in Turtle Island and other Keep-
ing Places in so-called Australia have the same dual purpose that we do, of
preserving Ancestor objects and being an educational space, which is why
we often refer to ourselves as both museum and cultural centre (Erikson,
2002, p. 174).
The Keeping Place is not about money. It’s about having a place for Gunai
Kurnai and Koori people to learn, experience, and nd their heritage here. It
is very important that this is a community owned and run space, on land that
our community bought back from the colonial government. This Keeping
Place was founded as part of a movement for self-determination2 and land
rights for Aboriginal communities on this continent and across the world
that began in the 1960s (Hudson & Woodcock, 2022; Message, 2014; Per-
heentupa, 2020). Wiradjuri scholar Sandy O’Sullivan points out that of 450
museums they visited between 2010 and 2016, ‘those that were community
run and led shared more than just a greater level of direct engagement to a
community; they consistently demonstrated a diversity and complexity in
their community’ (2016, p. 43). This is certainly the case here. The Krowat-
hunkooloong Keeping Place is on Gunai Kurnai Country and shares Gunai
Kurnai Culture, but it includes the experiences of all Koori people who have
lived and live on this Country.
We use the words ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘First Nations’ in our
work as broad categories that dene people in relation to colonialism. The
names don’t say who we are ourselves in relation to our Land, Community,
Nations, and kin. This is why Sámi academic Troy Storfjell says that ‘Indi-
geneity is an analytic, not an identity’ (2021). People from Nations across
this part of the continent might also call ourselves Koori, and we might also
identify ourselves by our Country specic Nations. We use the terms Abo-
riginal, Indigenous, and First Nations to be inclusive of people who identify
and are identied as such in colonial society today. Our capitalisation of
Community, Culture, and Country grammatically signies the united, com-
plex, and singular nature of these made-personal-rather-than-abstract nouns
in the Koori Community.
Who are we? Our methodology of research
and co-authorship
I (Rob) am a Gunai Kurnai Monero Ngarigo man, and family raised me
strong in cultural knowledge. My mother and Aunties were amongst the
women who fought to create the co-op (GEGAC) and the Keeping Place.
I am an experienced builder and heritage worker, and I am also part of
Introduction 5
Yulendji, the Melbourne Museum First People’s consultation group of com-
munity Elders. You will get to know me better in Chapter One when I take
you on a tour of the permanent exhibition. In my work as the Cultural Man-
ager of the Keeping Place I am not alone, I work with the whole community
and with representatives of GEGAC, the co-op we are part of, and GLa-
WAC, Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation.
I (Shannon) am a white queer genocide studies historian and colonist.
I was born in Meanjin and have studied white violence against Romani peo-
ple in Eastern Europe and (always racialised, gendered, and sexualised) vio-
lence in Albania, Australia, and Iran. My interest in museum spaces began
with the genocide denial in the museums of Meanjin and was consolidated
in the memorials to World War Two atrocities in Japan and Europe. My PhD
was about anti-Romani racism in Romania, and I was a Postdoctoral Fellow
at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. After teaching history in
Albanian and Australian universities, I wanted to live and work in a way that
aligned with the fact that no First Peoples ever ceded sovereignty to white
colonisers in so-called Australia. If colonisers accept that Woi wurrung peo-
ple, for example, have not ceded sovereignty, then how does this behove us
to act as active white perpetrators of ongoing colonial occupation? I moved
to Gunai Kurnai Country in 2017, worked reception at the caravan park at
Eagle Point, a site of Gunai Kurnai signicance and colonial atrocity, and
I have done Community directed historical work since this time.
We met at the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Com-
mittee (NAIDOC) marches of 2017 on Gunai Kurnai Country, and then for-
mally met when Shannon visited the Keeping Place a few weeks later. The
Elders established the Keeping Place to be a recognisable place for colonists
to come to meet Koori community in a culturally safe way, so our meet-
ing at the Keeping Place was itself facilitated by Gunai Kurnai intelligence.
Shannon introduced herself as a white colonist historian wanting to do Com-
munity directed work, who would not do work that was not directed, would
not move across Country unless directed, and would not force Gunai Kurnai
labour: if there was no way to be of use, then silence, stillness, and learn-
ing was to be the default action. Shannon sees her role as a white colonist
academic as responsible for engaging with other white colonists about and
against racism, and she is here without any project or deadline.
Rob told Shannon to come back to visit the Keeping Place, and we spent
a lot of time there with Ruth Walker. We (Rob, Ruth, and Shannon) are all
the same age and are good friends. Shannon learnt a lot by attending Rob’s
tours for visitors, and Rob directed Shannon in archival research and to
engage with a white local history association. In 2019, we applied for and
received a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship to research local
colonial history ourselves.
6 Introduction
Neither of us are primarily museum studies scholars. Rob has two dec-
ades of work experience with colonial museum structures and heritage and
holds an awesome amount of Gunai Kurnai knowledge. Shannon has read
in museum studies and critical Indigenous studies, bringing that knowledge
back to the Keeping Place to engage and produce this work. Rob’s discursive
agility with colonist visitors impressed Shannon as a genocide studies scholar,
and much of the work Rob does is not widely documented in museum studies
literature. When Martine Hawkes, author of Archiving Loss: Holding Places
for Dicult Memories (2018), sent us the Museums in Focus series call for
proposals, we decided to share the work of the Keeping Place with you.
We have researched and written about the Krowathunkooloong Keeping
Place in the Keeping Place. Our methodology and content manifests and
expresses the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place’s purpose: to create an
interface between Gunai Kurnai sovereignty and settler colonialism in the
eld of museum studies. We centre ‘cultural protocols, values and behav-
iours’ (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, p. 116) as integral to how we research ‘with
great care, and with pride and responsibilities’ (McKinnon, 2016, p. 496).
This book is itself an interface in that it shares Gunai Kurnai grounded nor-
mativity in a format legible to colonists and First Nations peoples alike: in
accessible English language, in an academic format.
We use a resurgence paradigm to think through self-determined First
Nations museum spaces in this textual extension of the Keeping Place inter-
face.3 We structure this book around Rob’s role as Cultural Manager at the
Keeping Place, and Rob’s way of enacting Gunai Kurnai grounded normativ-
ity in the museum contributes to the growing eld of scholarship about Tribal
museums and Keeping Places. The methodologies we used to write each sec-
tion are detailed therein. In the rst chapter, Rob gives a tour of the permanent
exhibition and tells us about the heartache it took the Elders to set this place
up. The exhibition, curated by the Elders in 1994 and narrated by Rob, exem-
plies Community knowledge expressed through ‘complex, nonlinear con-
structions of time, space, and place’ (Betasamosake Simpson, 2017, p. 82).
In the second and third chapters, Shannon writes about the work Rob does
with human visitors and with returning Old People and Ancestor objects
respectively. By virtue of being written from the interface of the Keeping
Place, these two chapters also provide insight into the relentless colonial
contestations of Gunai Kurnai knowledge and sovereignty that Rob receives,
holds, and disarms as part of everyday work. We developed the content for
Chapter Two and Chapter Three over three years of Rob’s tours at the Keep-
ing Place, after which we would discuss Rob’s work at length. Rob’s words
and actions direct the chapter structures and content and Shannon draws on
relevant academic literature and her own embodiment as colonist to critically
engage with Rob’s work and the purpose of the Keeping Place.
Introduction 7
The nal chapter turns to examples of local white historical societies
contesting Gunai Kurnai sovereignty through their engagement with the
Keeping Place, and how Rob refuses these contestations, including through
directing Shannon to engage with other white colonists. This chapter dem-
onstrates how museum scholars can do Community directed work, and the
importance of breaking white solidarity and speaking back to racism in
museums as white people. Colonial museums and galleries, at the local and
national levels, are ‘white sanctuaries’, ‘white institutional space within a
racialized social system that serves to reassure whites of their dominant
position in society’ (Embrick, Weer, & Dómínguez, 2019, p. 995). Chap-
ter Four records how white local history museums contest Gunai Kurnai
knowledge and existence through their engagements with the Keeping
Place, and demonstrates an anti-racist methodology of research that can be
enacted in museum studies research.
We agree with Ho-Chunk historian Amy Lonetree’s opening statement in
Decolonising the Museum that ‘museums can be very painful places for
First Nations communities’ (2012, p. x). Museum studies scholarship can
also be painful for us both, Black and white. It is painful when scholar-
ship about museums does not consider what it means when the museum is
built on stolen land, when collections are composed of people and objects
removed through violent dispossession, and when ongoing settler colonial
occupation causes harm to First Nations people and the Countries we share.
Colonial occupation inuences all aspects of museum work and studies by
scholars, not just when the research is about racism or the white supremacy
inherent in museum structures and collections, as Ariella Azoulay articu-
lates in Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019).
We dene white supremacy as ‘a political, economic and cultural
system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material
resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and enti-
tlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white
subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and
social settings’ (Ansley, in Ko, 2019, p. 21). White supremacist colonial
occupation is an inextricable factor when thinking about aect and visitor
engagement in museums, for example, as the embodied relationship of
each person to white supremacy will inuence their aective relation-
ship with any exhibition before they choose (or refuse) to visit an exhibi-
tion space. One’s relationship with white supremacy strongly inuences
whether someone considers visiting a museum. Audience satisfaction and
attendance, or the uses of technology in museums, are all racialised elds,
but academic museum studies still predominantly universalises a white
cisgendered person as the normative subject, rendering white supremacy
normal as well.
8 Introduction
This stamp by Chips Mackinolty, a white artist born on Gunai Kurnai
Country, carries the reality from which we write to you. The Gweagal
shield hovers large, central, about to power into the teleological future
over the diminished and equalised white and Black humans below.
Perhaps it has been to ‘the future’ already and has come back to think
through the potential history of this moment. The words tell the truth we
know bite sized that Cook, the rst white British invader, stole the
shield. This piece, entitled ‘The Hoarding Begins’ from the Colonial Virus
Series, refers to white people hoarding the property of First Nations peo-
ples for museums, and their land for prot. The subtitle ‘Commemorating
250 years of Colonial Virus-COVID-1770’ highlights that the pandemic
of white invasion and theft is ongoing. Colonial occupation is a dynamic
and devastating disease, but is seen as unproblematic by the white people
who enact it.
Figure 0.2 ‘The Hoarding Begins’ Colonial Virus Series.
Source: Chips Mackinolty (2020).
Introduction 9
The violent arm of the Australian state, the police, killed ten beloved First
Nations family members in custody in this colony between 2 March and
15 August 2021, and more than 476 beloved First Nations people since the
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was conducted in
1991 (See the Guardians Deaths Inside database, also Razack, 2013). If not
for colonial police and prisons, if not for the racism that the capitalist car-
ceral state relies on (Wang, 2018; McKinnon, 2019), these people would be
with us today. The colonial legal system in ‘Australia’ still puts children age
ten in prisons. ‘In 2020, 499 children aged between 10 and 13 were impris-
oned. At least 65% of them are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children.
64% of all children in detention were on remand, meaning they were yet to
be convicted of any crime’ (Allam, citing Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare, 2021). Simpson and Coulthard point out that ‘state-sanctioned mur-
dering, assimilating, and disappearing of Indigenous bodies (asymmetrically
distributed across genders) are, as the Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson says,
a direct attack on Indigenous political orders because these bodies generate
knowledge, political systems, and ways of being that contest the hegemony
of settler governmentality and thus make dispossession all the more dicult
to achieve’ (2016, citing Audra Simpson, 2014, 2015).
White colonists built museums to be the cultural arm of the colonial
state: the justication for disarming and looting, the ruse to obfuscate the
destruction of, and the sanctioned detention place for First Nations cul-
ture and property. Through continuing to detain Old People and Ancestor
objects, museums remain the cultural arm of the violent colonial occupa-
tion just as the police continue to enact the physical violence of colonial
occupation. White scholars constitute the intellectual scaolding of violent
colonial occupation; writing histories and creating museum exhibitions
that normalise colonial violence strengthens white supremacist occupation.
This book is grounded in the fact of unceded and ongoing Gunai Kurnai
sovereignty on Country. This is both our daily reality and our academic
concern.
To share Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist Leanne
Betasamosake Simpson’s description of radical resurgence, what we call
cultural resurgence ‘begins from a refusal of colonialism and its current set-
tler colonial structural manifestation. It refuses dispossession of both Indig-
enous bodies and land as the focal point of resurgent thinking and action. It
continues the work of dismantling heteropatriarchy as a dispossessive force’
(2017, p. 34). As Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson theorised, ‘the refusal
to accept the impossible condition of banishment and disappearance from
one’s homelands, and outright dispossession, structures the Indigenous
political practice of return, restoration, and reclamation of belonging and
place’ (Simpson, 2014, cited in Estes, 2019, p. 248).
10 Introduction
‘De-centering whiteness in arts and cultural institutions is an urgent mat-
ter’ (Murawski, 2019, p. 1). In this book we refer to ‘white people’ and
‘colonists’ as such because ‘suspending individuality for white people is a
necessary interruption to (their) our denial of collective advantage’ (DiAn-
gelo, 2021, p. 52). White colonists perpetuate and benet from colonialism
as (an ongoing) structure rather than a (past) event, as the dearly missed Pat-
rick Wolfe unforgettably wrote (2006, p. 388). We refer to people forced to
move by the violence of empire as arrivants, not colonists, following scholar
and Chickasaw Nation member Jodi Byrd (2011, p. xix) and following the
logic of Wolfe and Kanaka Maoli scholar Kēhaulani Kauanui (2012, p. 239).
This book is written from and structured by self-determined Gunai Kur-
nai grounded normativity at the interface space of the Keeping Place itself.
Dene political scientist Glen Coulthard articulates grounded normativity
‘as a place-based foundation of Indigenous decolonial thought and prac-
tice’ to refer to ‘the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and
longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical
engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhu-
man others over time’ (2014, p. 13). Leanne Betasamosake Simpson clari-
es that ‘grounded normativity isn’t a thing; it is generated structure born
and maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are
inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Processes were
created and practised. Daily life involved making politics, education, health
care, food systems, and economy on micro- and macro-scales’ (2017,
pp. 23–24). We use grounded normativity in this book to express Gunai
Kurnai ways of being and knowing on Country as expressed through the
Keeping Place. We humbly situate our work in relation with contemporary
scholars using grounded normativity to live in and write from within First
Nations sovereignty, survivance, and cultural resurgence across the world.
Gunai Kurnai grounded normativity refers to the relationalities nourished,
embodied, and enacted by Rob here on Gunai Kurnai Country. Waanyi
writer Alexis Wright’s piece ‘Hey Ancestor!’ reminds us that temporality
is also unique to each Country, in opposition to the colonial violence Mark
Rifkin calls ‘settler time’ (2018). As Wright’s Ancestor Country tells us,
That’s real sovereignty kind of thinking. True ownership. Comes with
responsibility. Caring. Respect. Stu like that for instance.
Permanence – ties unbroken, can’t be broken.
Deep roots. Core roots.
Country time everyday.
I am talking about time immemorial experience – how to grow roots
like that. Not like scrap of paper made yesterday – a second ago, imsy,
impermanence, that type of thing saying you got the title over blackfella
Introduction
Adair, J. G. (2020). Bodies in the museum? In J. Adair & A. Levin (Eds.),
Museums, sexuality, and gender activism (pp. 127–129). London: Routledge.
Aguirre, K. (2015). Telling stories: Idle no more, indigenous resurgence and
political theory. In E. Coburn (Ed.), More will sing their way to freedom: Indigenous
resistance and resurgence (pp. 184–207). Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Allam, L. (2021, July 27). Jailing of nearly 500 children aged 13 and under a
‘failure’ by Australia’s top legal officers, advocates say. The Guardian. Retrieved
from www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/27/jailing-of-nearly-500-
children-under-13-a-failure-by-australias-top-legal-officers-advocates-say
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2021, May 28). Youth justice in Australia
2019–2020. Retrieved from www.aihw.gov.au/reports/youth-justice/youth-justice-in-
australia-2019-20/data
Australian National University, British Museum, the National Museum of Australia,
& Museum of the Riverina (2016–2020). Talking about stones part of an Australian
Research Council Linkage Project called The relational museum and its objects:
Engaging Indigenous Australian communities with their distributed collections.
Retrieved from https://cdhr-projects.anu.edu.au/talkingaboutstones/index.html
Autry, L. S. (2019 January 11). Museums are not neutral. Artstuffmatters.
Retrieved from https://artstuffmatters.wordpress.com/museums-are-not-neutral/
Azoulay, A. (2019). Potential history: Unlearning imperialism. London: Verso
Books.
Balla, P. (2018). Work to be done, across Australia, artists are disrupting the
country’s colonial mindset: How is contemporary aboriginal art challenging an
exclusive historical canon? Frieze: Contemporary Art and Culture, (199), 142–146.
Balla, P. (2020). Disrupting artistic terra nullius: The ways that first nations women
in art & community speak Blak to the colony and patriarchy (PhD thesis). Victoria
University. Available at https://vuir.vu.edu.au/42147/1/BALLA_Paola-
thesis_nosignature.pdf
Barker, J. (2014). Gender. In R. Warrior (Ed.), The world of Indigenous North
America (pp. 506–523). New York: Routledge.
Barker, J. (2017). Introduction. In J. Barker (Ed.), Critically sovereign: Indigenous
gender, sexuality, and feminist studies (pp. 1–44). Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Bennett, T. (1995). The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. London:
Routledge.
Bennett, T. (2004). Pasts beyond memory: Evolution, museums, colonialism.
London: Routledge.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2011). Dancing on our turtle’s back: Stories of
Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter
Ring Publishing.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2021). A short history of the blockade. Alberta:
University of Alberta Press.
Bremer, R. (2021 July 3). Bones of contention: The return of Mungo Man. AWAYE!
On Radio National. Retrieved from
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/bones-of-contention:-the-return-of-
mungo-man-repeat/13432156
Byrd, J. (2011). The transit of empire: Indigenous critiques of colonialism.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Carroll, K. (Ed.). (2016). The importance of being anachronistic: Contemporary
aboriginal art and museum reparations. Melbourne: Discipline.
Chipangura, N. , & Mataga, J. (2021). Museums as agents for social change:
Collaborative programs at the Mutare museum. London and New York: Routledge.
Clark, A. , & Lilje, E. (2018). Pacific presences: Oceanic art and European
museums volume 1 and 2. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Colwell, C. (2017). Plundered skulls and stolen spirits: Inside the fight to reclaim
native America’s culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Conaty, G. T. (Ed.). (2015). We are coming home: Repatriation and the restoration
of Blackfoot cultural confidence. Alberta, Canada: Athabasca University Press.
Coote, K. (Ed.). (1998). Care of collections: Conservation for aboriginal and Torres
strait islander keeping places and cultural centres. Sydney, NSW: Australian
Museum.
Coulthard, G. (2014). Red skin white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of
recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Coulthard, G. , & Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2016). Grounded normativity/place-
based solidarity. American Quarterly, 68(2), 249–255.
Cvetkovich, A. (2020). Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: Artist curation as
queer decolonial museum practice. In J. Adair & A. Levin (Eds.), Museums,
sexuality, and gender activism (pp. 133–144). London: Routledge.
DiAngelo, R. J. (2021). Nice racism: How progressive white people perpetuate
racial harm. Boston: Beacon Press.
Downey, K. (2020). Reaching out, reaching in: Museum educators and radical
transformation. Journal of Museum Education, 45(4), 375–388.
Embrick, D. G. , Weffer, S. , & Dómínguez, S. (2019). White sanctuaries: Race and
place in art museums. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy,
39(11/12), 995–1009.
Erikson, P. P. (2002). Voices of a thousand people: The Makah cultural and
research center. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Estes, N. (2019). Our history is the future: Standing rock versus the Dakota access
pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. London and New York:
Verso.
Faulkhead, S. , & Berg, J. (2010). Power and the passion: Our ancestors return
home. Melbourne, Vic.: Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.
Fforde, C. , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to
indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew. London and New York:
Routledge.
Georgeson-Usher, C. (2020). All that moves us: Bodies in land. In J. Adair & A.
Levin (Eds.), Museums, sexuality, and gender activism (pp. 145–153). London:
Routledge.
Gilchrist, S. (2020). Belonging and unbelonging: Indigenous forms of curation as
expressions of sovereignty (PhD dissertation). Department of Art History,
University of Sydney, https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/22301
Gorman, J. M. (2011). Building a nation: Chickasaw museums and the construction
of history and heritage. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Gorrie, N. (2018, May 10). Aboriginal families: Beyond flesh and blood. Archer
Magazine. Retrieved from https://archermagazine.com.au/2018/05/aboriginal-
families-beyond-flesh-blood/
Grieves, G. (Curator). (2013). First peoples [Exhibition]. Melbourne, VIC: Bunjilaka
Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum Australia.
Guardian (2021). Deaths inside: Indigenous Australian deaths in custody 2021.
The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-
interactive/2018/aug/28/deaths-inside-indigenous-australian-deaths-in-custody
Hawkes, M. L. (2018). Archiving loss: Holding places for difficult memories.
London: Routledge.
Healy, C. , & Witcomb, A. (Eds.). (2006). South pacific museums: Experiments in
culture. Melbourne: Monash University E Press, 2006.
Hemming, S. , Rigney, D. , Sumner, M. , Trevorrow, L. , Rankine Jr, L. , Berg, S. ,
& Wilson, C. (2020). Ngarrindjeri repatriation: Kungun Ngarrindjeri yunnan (listen to
Ngarrindjeri speaking). In C. Fforde , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.),
Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew (pp.
147–164). London: Routledge.
Hicks, D. (2020). The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and
cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Hokowhitu, B. (2015). Taxonomies of Indigeneity: Indigenous heterosexual
patriarchal masculinity. In R. A. Innes & K. Anderson (Eds.), Indigenous men and
masculinities: Legacies, identities, regeneration (pp. 80–95). Winnipeg: University
of Manitoba Press.
Horwood, M. (2018). Sharing authority in the museum: Distributed objects,
reassembled relationships. London: Routledge.
Hudson, R. , & Woodcock, S. (2022). “People come and go, but this place doesn’t:”
Narrating the creation of the krowathunkooloong keeping place as cultural
resurgence. Aboriginal History Journal, 45 (forthcoming).
Jenkins, K. (2021, July 30). Healing for our people: Iman celebrate return of
grinding stone after 45 years. The Point, NITV. Retrieved from
www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2021/07/30/healing-our-people-iman-celebrate-return-
grinding-stone-after-45-years
Kassim, S. (2017). The museum will not be decolonised. Media Diversified.
Retrieved from https://mediadiversified.org/2017/11/185/the-museum-will-not-be-
decolonised.
Kauanui, J. K. (2021). The politics of indigeneity, anarchist praxis, and
decolonization. Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 1, 9–42.
Kauanui, J. K. , & Wolfe, P. (2012). Settler colonialism then and now. A
conversation between. Politica & Societa, 1(2), 235–258.
King, L. (2017). Legible sovereignties: Rhetoric, representations, and native
American museums. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press.
Ko, A. (2019). Racism as zoological witchcraft: A guide to getting out. Cheltenham,
UK: Lantern Publishing & Media.
Krmpotich, C. (2014). The force of family: Repatriation, kinship, and memory on
Haida Gwaii. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lawlor, M. (2006). Public native America: Tribal self-representations in museums,
powwows, and casinos. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Lonetree, A. (2012). Decolonizing museums: Representing native America in
national and tribal museums. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mackinolty, C. (2020). The hoarding begins. In Colonial virus series.
Mbembe, A. (2018, May 10). À propos de la restitution des artefacts africains
conservés dans les musées d’Occident. AOC Media. Retrieved from
https://aoc.media/analyse/2018/10/05/a-propos-de-restitution-artefacts-africains-
conserves-musees-doccident/
McKinnon, C. (2016). Sitting and listening: Continuing conversations about
indigenous biography. Biography, 39(3), 495–498.
McKinnon, C. (2018). Expressing indigenous sovereignty: The production of
embodied texts in social protest and the arts (Unpublished PhD dissertation).
Department of History, La Trobe University.
McKinnon, C. (2019). The lives behind the statistics: Policing practices in aboriginal
literature. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 45(2), 207–223.
Message, K. (2014). Museums and social activism: Engaged protest. Abingdon,
Oxon; New York: Routledge.
Message, K. (2018). Museums and racism. Oxon: Routledge.
Minott, R. (2019). The past is now. Third Text, 33(4–5), 559–574.
Morse, N. (2021). The museum as a space of social care. London and New York:
Routledge.
Moulton, K. (2018). I can still hear them calling, echoes of my ancestors. In
Sovereign words: Indigenous art, curation and criticism (pp. 197–215). Norway:
Office for Contemporary Art.
Moulton, K. (2020). Mother tongue. In J. Nagam , C. Lane , & M. Tamati-Quennell
(Eds.), Becoming our future global indigenous curatorial practice (pp. 205–218).
Winnipeg: ARP Books.
Moulton, K. , with McFadzean, M. , Dale-Hallett, L. , & Mauri, T. (2019). Inside
out/outside in: Museums and communities activating change. In R. R. Janes & R.
Sandell (Eds.), Museum activism (pp. 256–267). London and New York:
Routledge.
Murawski, M. (2019, August 13). Interrupting white dominant culture in museums.
Retrieved from https://murawski27.medium.com/interrupting-white-dominant-
culture-in-museums-f5b58d29e10
Museums and Galleries NSW, Australia Council, & Arts NSW (2011). Keeping
places & beyond: Building cultural futures in NSW: A reader. Woolloomooloo,
NSW: Museums & Galleries NSW
Museums Australia (1998). Caring for our culture: National guidelines for
museums, galleries and keeping places. Fitzroy, Vic.: Museums Australia Inc.
National Gallery of Australia (2000). Keeping culture: Aboriginal art to keeping
places and cultural centres. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia.
Onciul, B. (2018). Museums, heritage and indigenous voice: Decolonising
engagement. London and New York: Routledge.
Ormond-Parker, L. , Carter, N. , Fforde, C. , Knapman, G. , & Morris, W. (2020).
Repatriation in the Kimberley: Practice, approach, and contextual history. In C.
Fforde , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous
repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew (pp. 165–187). London and New York:
Routledge.
O’Sullivan, S. (2016). Recasting identities: Intercultural understandings of first
peoples in the national museum space. In P. Burnard , E. Mackinlay , & K. Powell
(Eds.), Routledge international handbook of intercultural arts research (pp. 35–45).
London: Routledge.
O’Sullivan, S. (2021). The colonial project of gender (and everything else).
Genealogy, 5(3), 1–9.
Perheentupa, J. (2020). Redfern: Aboriginal activism in the 1970s. Canberra:
Aboriginal Studies Press.
Peterson, N. , Allen, L. , & Hamby, L. (Eds.). (2008). The makers and Making of
indigenous Australian museum collections. Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press.
Phillips, K. (2021). Staging indigeneity: Salvage tourism and the performance of
native American history. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Piatote, B. (2013). Domestic subjects. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press.
Pierce, J. (2016). Feeling, disrupting. Biography, 39(3), 434–437.
Pierce, J. (2017). Adopted: Trace, blood, and native authenticity. Critical Ethnic
Studies, 3(2), 57–76.
Razack, S. H. (2013). Timely deaths: Medicalizing the deaths of aboriginal people
in police custody. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 9(2), 352–374.
Reed, L. , & Parr, E. (1987). The keeping place: An annotated bibliography and
guide to the study of the Aborigines and aboriginal culture in Northeast New South
Wales and Southeast Queensland. Lismore, NSW: North Coast Institute for
Aboriginal Community Education.
Regan, S. (2015 June 26). In mainstream museums, confronting colonialism while
curating native American art. Hyperallergic. Retrieved from
https://hyperallergic.com/217807/in-mainstream-museums-confronting-colonialism-
while-curating-native-american-art/
Rifkin, M. (2011). When did Indians become straight? Kinship, the history of
sexuality, and native sovereignty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rifkin, M. (2017). Beyond settler time: Temporal sovereignty and indigenous self-
determination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Robins, R. (1992). A manual for small museums and keeping places. Brisbane:
Queensland Museum.
Robins, R. (1996). Paradox and paradigms: The changing role of museums in
aboriginal cultural heritage management. Brisbane: Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Studies Unit, University of Queensland.
Robson, M. K. (1986). Keeping the culture alive: An exhibition of Aboriginal
fibrecraft featuring Connie Hart, an elder of the Gunditjmara people, with significant
items on loan from the Museum of Victoria/ Hamilton, Vic.: Hamilton City Council.
Schorch, P. , Mallon, S. , Mulrooney, M. , Moreno Pakarati, C. , Tengan, T. P. K. ,
Tonga, N. , & Kahanu, N. M. K. Y. (2020). Refocusing ethnographic museums
through oceanic lenses. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Sentance, N. (2018, November 28). Diversity means disruption. Archival
Decolonist. Retrieved from https://archivaldecolonist.com/2018/11/28/diversity-
means-disruption/
Shannon, J. with Atalay, S. , Collison, J. N. , Herewini, T. H. , Hollinger, E. ,
Horwood, M. , Preucel, R. W. , Shelton, A. , & Tapsell, P. (2017). Ritual processes
of repatriation. Museum Worlds, 5(1), 88–94.
Shorter, D. D. (2014). Sexuality. In R. Warrior (Ed.), The world of indigenous north
America (pp. 487–505). London and New York: Routledge.
Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler
states. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Simpson, A. (2015, October 17). The chief’s two bodies: Theresa spence and the
gender of settler sovereignty. In Unsettling conversations, unmaking racisms and
colonialisms. Panel presentation at R.A.C.E. Network’s 14th Annual Critical Race
and Anticolonial Studies Conference, Edmonton, Alberta.
Simpson, A. (2017). The ruse of consent and the anatomy of ‘refusal’: Cases from
indigenous North America and Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 18–33.
Sleeper-Smith, S. (Ed.). (2012). Contesting knowledge: Museums and indigenous
perspectives. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Smith, L. (2014). Visitor emotion, affect and registers of engagement at museums
and heritage. Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage: Historical Technical
Journal, 14, 125–131.
Smith, L. (2020). Emotional heritage: Visitor engagement at museums and heritage
sites. London and New York: Routledge.
Stanley, N. (Ed.). (2007). The future of indigenous museums: Perspectives from
the southwest pacific. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Storfjell, T. (2021, January 21) [Twitter]. Retrieved August 10, 2020, from
https://twitter.com/storfjta/status/1351770335851364352
Sullivan, N. , & Middleton, C. (2019). Queering the museum. London and New
York: Routledge.
Sullivan, N. , & Middleton, C. (2020). Warning! Heteronormativity. In J. G. Adair &
A. K. Levin (Eds.), Museums, sexuality, and gender activism (pp. 31–37). London:
Taylor & Francis Group.
TallBear, K. (2016, December 22). Badass (indigenous) women caretake relations:
#NoDAPL, #IdleNoMore, #BlackLivesMatter. Cultural Anthropology. Retrieved from
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1019-badass-indigenous-women-caretake-relations-
nodapl-idlenomore-blacklivesmatter.
TallBear, K. (2018). Making love and relations beyond settler sex and family. In A.
E. Clarke & D. Haraway (Eds.), Making kin not population (pp. 145–166). Chicago:
Prickly Paradigm Press.
TallBear, K. (2018, April 14). Settler sex is a structure. Keynote lecture given at the
Second Annual International Solo Polyamory Conference (SoloPolyCon18),
Seattle, WA, USA. Retrieved from www.criticalpolyamorist.com/homeblog/yes-
your-pleasure-yes-self-love-and-dont-forget-settler-sex-is-a-structure
Tallbear, K. (2019). Critical poly 100s. In E. Washuta & T. Warburton (Eds.),
Shapes of native nonfiction: Collected essays by contemporary writers (pp.
154–168). Washington, DC: University of Washington Press.
TallBear, K. (2020). Identity is a poor substitute for relating: Genetic ancestry,
critical polyamory, property, and relations. In B. Hokuwhitu , A. Moreton-Robinson ,
L. Tuhiwai-Smith , C. Anderson , & S. Larkin (Eds.), Routledge handbook of critical
indigenous studies (pp. 467–478). London: Routledge.
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous
peoples. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd.
Turnbull, P. (2007). Scientific theft of remains in colonial Australia. Australian
Indigenous Law Review, 11(1), 92–104.
Turnbull, P. (2015). Australian museums, aboriginal skeletal remains, and the
imagining of human evolutionary history, c.1860–1914. Museum & Society, 13(1),
72–87.
Turnbull, P. (2017). Science, museums and collecting the indigenous dead in
colonial Australia. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wajid, S. , & Minott, R. (2019). Detoxing and decolonising museums. In R. R.
Janes & R. Sandell (Eds.), Museum activism (pp. 25–35). London and New York:
Routledge.
Wakefield, J. (2019, May 14). Museums could be powerful, liberatory spaces if they
let go of their colonial practices. Racebaitr. Retrieved from
https://racebaitr.com/2019/05/14/museumscould-be-powerful-liberatory-spaces-if-
they-let-go-of-their-colonial-practices/
Wang, J. (2018). Carceral Capitalism. South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e).
Whitehead, J. (Ed.). (2020). Love after the end: An anthology of two-spirit and
indigiqueer speculative fiction. Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Whittaker, A. (2015). The border made of mirrors. In D. Hodge (Ed.), Colouring the
rainbow: Blak queer and trans perspectives, life stories and essays by first nations
people of Australia (pp. 159–168). Mile End: Wakefield Press.
Witcomb, A. (2013). Understanding the role of affect in producing a critical
pedagogy for history museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 28(3),
255–271.
Witcomb, A. (2015). Toward a pedagogy of feeling: Understanding how museums
create a space for cross-cultural encounters. In A. Witcomb & K. Message (Eds.),
Museum theory (pp. 321–344). Chichester, England: Wiley.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of
Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409.
Wright, A. (2018, January 23). Hey ancestor! Indigenous X. Retrieved from
https://indigenousx.com.au/alexis-wright-hey-ancestor/
A tour of the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place
Azoulay, A. (2019). Potential history: Unlearning imperialism. London: Verso
Books.
Belcourt, B. (2017). This wound is a world: Poems. Calgary: Frontenac House.
Bennett, T. (1995). The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. London:
Routledge.
Bennett, T. (2004). Pasts beyond memory: Evolution, museums, colonialism.
London: Routledge.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Buckley, P. C. (1853, September -1861, December 3). [Diary]. State Library of
Victoria (MS BOX 1873/12), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Cruickshank, J. , & Grimshaw, P. (2019). White women, Aboriginal missions and
Australian settler governments: Maternal contradictions. Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill.
Däwes, B. (2020). “The people shall continue”: Native American museums as
archives of futurity. Anglia, 138(3), 494–518.
Dow, E. (2012). Archivists, collectors, dealers and replevin: Case studies in private
ownership of public documents. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press.
Foley, G. , & Anderson, T. (2006). Land rights and Aboriginal voices. Australian
Journal of Human Rights, 12(1), 83–106.
Gibson, J. , & Mullett, R. (2020). The last jeraeil of gippsland: Rediscovering an
Aboriginal ceremonial site. Ethnohistory, 67(4), 551–577.
Gippland East Gippsland Aboriginal Cooperative GEGAC (1987, March 30). Canoe
tree destroyed by fire. The Bairnsdale Advertiser.
Gorrie, V. (2021). Black and blue: A memoir of racism and resilience. Melbourne:
Scribe.
Grieves, G. (Curator). (2013). First peoples [Exhibition]. Melbourne, VIC: Bunjilaka
Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum Australia.
Hawkes, M. L. (2018). Archiving loss: Holding places for difficult memories.
London: Routledge.
Hicks, D. (2020). The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and
cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Hudson, R. , & Woodcock, S. (2022). “People come and go, but this place doesn’t:”
Narrating the creation of the Krowathunkooloong keeping place as cultural
resurgence. Aboriginal History Journal, 45 (forthcoming).
King Family Day Books (1844–1863). State Library of Victoria (MS BOX 4551/5–6),
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Lonetree, A. (2012). Decolonizing museums: Representing native America in
national and tribal museums. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mbembe, A. (2002). The power of the archive and its limits. In C. Hamilton , V.
Harris , J. Taylor , M. Pickover , G. Reid , & R. Saleh (Eds.), Refiguring the archive
(pp. 19–27). Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media.
McLisky, C. , Russell, L. , & Boucher, L. D. (2015). Managing mission life,
1869–1886. In L. Boucher & L. Russell (Eds.), Settler colonial governance in
nineteenth-century Victoria (pp. 117–138). Canberra: ANU E Press.
McMillan, M. , & McRae, C. (2015). Law, identity and dispossession – the half-
caste act of 1886 and contemporary legal definitions of indigeneity in Australia. In
Z. Laidlaw & A. Lester (Eds.), Indigenous communities and settler colonialism (pp.
233–244). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meyrick, H. (1846, April 30). [Letter to his mother]. State Library of Victoria (MS
Box 10/3), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
O’Sullivan, S. (2016). Recasting identities: Intercultural understandings of First
Peoples in the national museum space. In P. Burnard , E. Mackinlay , & K. Powell
(Eds.), Routledge international handbook of intercultural arts research (pp. 35–45).
London: Routledge.
Pepper, P. , & De Araugo, T. (1985). The Kurnai of Gippsland. Melbourne: Hyland
House.
Perheentupa, J. (2020). Redfern: Aboriginal activism in the 1970s. Canberra:
Aboriginal Studies Press.
Rankine, C. (2020). Just us: An American conversation. Minneapolis: Graywolf
Press.
Troy, J. (1993). King plates: A history of Aboriginal gorgets. Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies.
Tuck, E. , & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.
Turnbull, P. (2015). Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the
imagining of human evolutionary history, c.1860–1914. Museum & Society, 13(1),
72–87.
Turnbull, P. (2017). Science, museums and collecting the indigenous dead in
colonial Australia. Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wollentz, G. (2020). Landscapes of difficult heritage. Switzerland: Springer.
Zafiris, A. (2017, May 7). The forgotten first match between a VFL team and an
Aboriginal football team. Retrieved from www.shootfarken.com.au/forgotten-first-
match-between-vfl-team-aboriginal-football-team-lake-tyers-carlton/
Community futures and embodied sovereignty
Baldy, C. (2018). We are dancing for you: Native feminisms and the revitalization
of women’s coming-of-age ceremonies. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2011). Dancing on our turtle’s back: Stories of
Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter
Ring Publishing.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Case, E. (2021). Everything ancient was once new: Indigenous persistence from
Hawaiʻi to Kahiki. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Corntassel, J. (2012). Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous pathways to
decolonization and self-determination. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education &
Society, 1(1), 86–101.
Corntassel, J. (2020). Restorying indigenous landscapes: Community regeneration
and resurgence. In N. J. Turner (Ed.), Plants, people, and places: The roles of
ethnobotany and ethnoecology in indigenous peoples’ land rights in Canada and
beyond (pp. 350–365). Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Corntassel, J. , & Scow, M. (2017). Everyday acts of resurgence: Indigenous
approaches to everydayness in fatherhood. New Diversities, 19(2), 55–68.
Coulthard, G. , & Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2016). Grounded normativity/place-
based solidarity. American Quarterly, 68(2), 249–255.
Deloria, V. , &. Wildcat, D. R. (2001). Power and place: Indian education in
America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.
DiAngelo, R. J. (2021). Nice racism: How progressive white people perpetuate
racial harm. Boston: Beacon Press.
Diaz, N. (2020). Postcolonial love poem: Part one. Tin House. Retrieved from
https://tinhouse.com/podcast/natalie-diaz-postcolonial-love-poem/
Downey, K. (2020). Reaching out, reaching in: Museum educators and radical
transformation. Journal of Museum Education, 45(4), 375–388.
Estes, N. (2019). Our history is the future: Standing rock versus the Dakota access
pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. London and New York:
Verso.
Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, N. (2013). The seeds we planted: Portaits of a native Hawaiian
charter school. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, N. , & Kamaoli Kuwada, B. (2018). Making ‘aha: Independent
Hawaiian pasts, presents & futures. Daedalus, 147(2), 49–59.
Gushiken, P. (2019, December 30). Know where you stand: ʻŌiwi refusals of settler
futurities and carceral violence. Abolitionjournal. Retrieved from
https://abolitionjournal.org/know-where-you-stand-%CA%BBoiwi-refusals-of-settler-
futurities-and-carceral-violence-%EF%BB%BF/
Hicks, D. (2020). The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and
cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Hokowhitu, B. (2009). Indigenous existentialism and the body. Cultural Studies
Review, 15(2), 101–118.
McKinnon, C. (2016). Sitting and listening: Continuing conversations about
indigenous biography. Biography, 39(3), 495–498.
Message, K. (2018). Museums and racism. Oxon: Routledge.
Rankine, C. (2020). Just us: An American conversation. Minneapolis: Graywolf
Press.
Rey, J. (2021). Indigenous identity as country: The “ing” within connecting, caring,
and belonging. Genealogy, 5(2), 48.
Sandell, R. (2007). Museums and the combating of social inequality: Roles,
responsibilities, resistance. In S. Watson (Ed.), Museums and their communities
(pp. 95–113). Abingdon: Routledge.
Shorter, D. D. (2009). We will dance our truth: Yaqui history in Yoeme
performance. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Shorter, D. D. (2014). Sexuality. In R. Warrior (Ed.) The world of indigenous north
America (pp. 487–505). London: Routledge.
Slater, L. (2019). Good white people: Settler colonial anxiety and the endurance of
racism. Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 3(2), 266–281.
Smith, V. (2020). Come again! How familiarity leads to repeat visits and confident
learners. In A. Hackett , R. Holmes , & C. MacRae (Eds.), Working with young
children in museums: Weaving theory and practice (pp. 159–164). London:
Routledge.
Szekeres, V. (2007). Representing diversity and challenging racism: The migration
museum. In S. Watson (Ed.), Museums and their communities (pp. 234–243).
Abingdon: Routledge.
Tuck, E. , & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization:
Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40.
Walton, J. , Paradies, Y. , & Mansouri, F. (2016). Towards reflexive ethnicity:
Museums as sites of intercultural encounter. British Educational Research Journal,
42(5), 871–889.
Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-
humans (first woman and sky woman go on a European world tour!).
Decolonization: Indigenous Education & Society, 2, 20–34.
Wright, A. (2018, January 23). Hey ancestor! Indigenous X. Retrieved from
https://indigenousx.com.au/alexis-wright-hey-ancestor/
Receiving and working with Ancestor objects
Australian National University, British Museum, the National Museum of Australia,
& Museum of the Riverina (2016–2020). Talking about stones part of an Australian
Research Council Linkage Project called The relational museum and its objects:
Engaging indigenous Australian communities with their distributed collections.
Retrieved from https://cdhr-projects.anu.edu.au/talkingaboutstones/index.html
Azoulay, A. (2019). Potential history: Unlearning imperialism. London: Verso
Books.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Brown, S. (2019). Aboriginal stone artefacts and Country: Dynamism, new
meanings, theory and heritage. Australian Archaeology, 85(3), 256–266.
Carter, N. , Brown, J. , & Pickering, M. (2020). Cultural protocols in repatriation:
Processes at the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre. In C. Fforde , C. T.
McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation:
Return, reconcile, renew (pp. 583–587). London: Routledge.
Colwell, C. (2017). Plundered skulls and stolen spirits: Inside the fight to reclaim
native America’s culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Conaty, G. T. (2015). We are coming home: Repatriation and the restoration of
Blackfoot cultural confidence. Alberta, Canada: Athabasca University Press.
Fforde, C. , & Oscar, J. (2020). Australian Aborigine skulls in a loft in Birmingham,
it seems a weird thing: Repatriation work and the search for Jandamarra. In C.
Fforde , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous
repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew (pp. 588–609). London: Routledge.
Gardner, P. D. (1993). Gippsland massacres: The destruction of the Kurnai tribes,
1800–1860. Ensay: Ngarak Press.
Gibson, J. , & Mullett, R. (2020). The last jeraeil of Gippsland: Rediscovering an
Aboriginal ceremonial site. Ethnohistory, 67(4), 551–577.
Gough, J. (2020). The artist as detective in the museum archive: A creative
response to repatriation and its historic context. In C. Fforde , C. T. McKeown , &
H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation: Return,
reconcile, renew (pp. 835–853). London: Routledge.
Grieves, G. (Curator) (2013). First peoples [Exhibition]. Melbourne, VIC: Bunjilaka
Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum Australia.
Healy, C. (1997). From the ruins of colonialism: History as social memory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hemming, S. , Rigney, D. , Sumner, M. , Trevorrow, L. , Rankine Jr, L. , Berg, S. ,
& Wilson, C. (2020). Ngarrindjeri repatriation: Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan (listen
to Ngarrindjeri speaking). In C. Fforde , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.),
Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew (pp.
147–164). London: Routledge.
Hicks, D. (2020). The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and
cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Horwood, M. (2018). Sharing authority in the museum: Distributed objects,
reassembled relationships. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, K. (2021 July 30). Healing for our people: Iman celebrate return of
grinding stone after 45 years. The Point, NITV. Retrieved from
www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2021/07/30/healing-our-people-iman-celebrate-return-
grinding-stone-after-45-years
Kauanui, J. K. , & Bruchac, M. (2018). Margaret Bruchac on erasure and the
unintended consequences of repatriation legislation. In J. K. Kauanui & R. Warrior
(Eds.), Speaking of indigenous politics: Conversations with activists, scholars, and
tribal leaders (pp. 51–64). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ko, A. (2019). Racism as zoological witchcraft: A guide to getting out. Cheltenham,
UK: Lantern Publishing & Media.
Leane, J. (2018). Walk back over. Victoria: Cordite Books.
Liebelt, B. G. (2019). Touching grindstones in archaeological and cultural heritage
practice: Materiality, affect and emotion in settler-colonial Australia. Australian
Archaeology, 85(3), 267–278.
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40.
Ormond-Parker, L. , Carter, N. , Fforde, C. , Knapman, G. , & Morris, W. (2020).
Repatriation in the Kimberley: Practice, approach, and contextual history. In C.
Fforde , C. T. McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous
repatriation: Return, reconcile, renew (pp. 165–187). London: Routledge.
Rifkin, M. (2017). Beyond settler time: Temporal sovereignty and indigenous self-
determination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Scheersoi, A. (2018). Modern exhibition concepts. In L. Beck (Ed.), Zoological
collections of Germany (pp. 49–58). Springer.
Simpson, A. (2017). The ruse of consent and the anatomy of ‘refusal’: Cases from
Indigenous North America and Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 18–33.
Smith, L. (2000). A history of Aboriginal heritage legislation in South-Eastern
Australia. Australian Archaeology, 50, 109–118.
Tapsell, P. (2020). When the living forget the dead: The cross-cultural complexity
of implementing the return of museum-held ancestral remains. In C. Fforde , C. T.
McKeown , & H. Keeler (Eds.), Routledge companion to indigenous repatriation:
Return, reconcile, renew (pp. 259–276). London: Routledge.
Tengan, T. P. K. (2020). Afterword. Regenerating maka. In P. Schorch , N. M. K. Y.
Kahanu , S. Mallon , C. M. Pakarati , M. Mulrooney , N. Tonga , & T. P. K. Tengan
(Eds.), Refocusing ethnographic museums through oceanic lenses (pp. 183–190).
Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Turnbull, P. (2017). Science, museums and collecting the indigenous dead in
colonial Australia. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wakeham, P. (2008). Taxidermic signs: Reconstructing aboriginality. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-
humans (first woman and sky woman go on a European world tour!).
Decolonization: Indigenous Education and Society, 2, 20–34.
Woodcock, S. (2016). biting the hand that feeds: Australian cuisine and aboriginal
sovereignty in the Great Sandy Strait. Feminist Review, 114, 33–47.
Wright, A. (2018, January 23). Hey ancestor! Indigenous X. Retrieved from
https://indigenousx.com.au/alexis-wright-hey-ancestor/
Settler museums, white supremacy, and the Keeping Place
Beesley, M. (1986). Raymond island: Past present future. Victoria: Self-published.
Belcourt, B. (2015). Animal bodies, colonial subjects: (Re)locating animality in
decolonial thought. Societies, 5(1), 1–11.
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Birch, T. (1997). Nothing has changed: The making and unmaking of koori culture.
In G. Cowlishaw & B. Morris (Eds.), Race matters: Indigenous Australians and ‘our’
society. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Bruyneel, K. (2021). Settler memory: The disavowal of indigeneity and the politics
of race in the united states. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Byrne, P. J. (2021). War people: Punitive raids, democracy and the White family in
Australia. Genealogy, 4(4), 101.
Embrick, D. G. , Weffer, S. , & Dómínguez, S. (2019). White sanctuaries: Race and
place in art museums. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy,
39(11/12), 995–1009.
Haney-López, I. (2006). White by law: The legal construction of race. New York:
New York University Press.
Healy, C. (1997). From the ruins of colonialism: History as social memory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ko, A. (2019). Racism as zoological witchcraft: A guide to getting out. Cheltenham,
UK: Lantern Publishing & Media.
Krichauff, S. (2017). Memory, place and aboriginal-settler history: Understanding
Australians’ consciousness of the colonial past. Melbourne: Anthem Press.
Lydon, J. (2009). Fantastic dreaming: The archaeology of an aboriginal mission.
Plymouth: AltaMira Press.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The white possessive: Property, power and
indigenous sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Murawski, M. (2019, August 13). Interrupting white dominant culture in museums.
Retrieved from https://murawski27.medium.com/interrupting-white-dominant-
culture-in-museums-f5b58d29e10
Pepper, P. , & De Araugo, T. (1985). The Kurnai of Gippsland. Melbourne: Hyland
House.
Pyke, S. H. (2021). Reading the entrails: The extractive work of a fence.
Genealogy, 5(4), 87.
Ream, R. (2021). Composting layers of Christchurch history. Genealogy, 5(3), 74.
Rifkin, M. (2017). Beyond settler time: Temporal sovereignty and indigenous self-
determination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Schlunke, K. (2005). Bluff rock: Autobiography of a massacre. Freemantle:
Freemantle Arts Centre Press.
Sentance, N. (2017, July 21). Maker unknown and the decentring First Nations
People. Archival Decolonist. Retrieved from
https://archivaldecolonist.com/2017/07/21/maker-unknown-and-the-decentring-first-
nations-people/
Sentance, N. (2018, November 28). Diversity means disruption. Archival
Decolonist. Retrieved from https://archivaldecolonist.com/2018/11/28/diversity-
means-disruption/
Sicola, M. (2020). Anti-white supremacist strategies in American Indian art
museum exhibitions (Masters dissertation). American University, Washington DC,
USA.
Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler
states. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Singh, J. (2018). Unthinking mastery: Dehumanism and decolonial entanglements.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Sleeter, C. (2020). Critical family history: An introduction. Genealogy, 4, 64.
Sullivan, N. , & Middleton, C. (2020). Warning! Heteronormativity. In J. G. Adair &
A. K. Levin (Eds.), Museums, sexuality, and gender activism (pp. 31–37). London:
Taylor & Francis Group.
Conclusion
Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom
through radical resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Estes, N. (2019). Our history is the future: Standing rock versus the Dakota access
pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. London and New York:
Verso.
Wright, A. (2018, January 23). Hey ancestor! Indigenous X. Retrieved from
https://indigenousx.com.au/alexis-wright-hey-ancestor/
... Second, genocide perpetuation also creates space to consider projects of resistance and the possibility of the victim group's reconstitution in the wake of destructive violence, a point emphasized by numerous Indigenous activists, particularly those advocating Indigenous resurgence. 54 Having introduced the idea of genocide perpetuation, we may now return to the topic of language and language revitalization, before proceeding to examine this study's empirical materials. Within the framework of genocide perpetuation, language revitalization represents an effort of victim groups to reconstitute themselves after genocide; a sort of counter-genocidal praxis that undoes the harmful, destructive violence of genocide and undermines efforts to destroy the group through a coordinated attack on its various facets. ...
Article
Full-text available
Indigenous people in settler colonies such as Australia, the United States, and Canada are currently engaged in a range of projects to revitalize their languages: to reclaim and restore them in the wake of colonial destruction. Such language revitalization is frequently met with fierce backlash. This article examines the relationship between language revitalization backlash and genocide. I argue that language revitalization is part of broader efforts by Indigenous people to reconstitute themselves as distinct groups in reaction to colonial genocides. Backlash against language revitalization can therefore be seen as one element of ongoing efforts to prevent this, leading to a set of social and political relations I call perpetual genocide. I explore the dynamics of language revitalization backlash and perpetual genocide through an analysis of more than 600 social media comments collected from Australia over 2022 and 2023—the opening years of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages—and identify three key themes in these comments: civilizational racism, English and white supremacy, and linguistic diversity as a threat. Based on this analysis, I argue that this backlash, and the perpetual genocide of Indigenous peoples more broadly, is driven by a structural arrangement I call reactionary settler colonialism, which is led by a right-wing vanguard but involves all settlers as implicated subjects. I conclude by discussing counter-genocidal praxis in relation to this formation.
... It involves labelling newly 'discovered' lands, marking settlers' boundaries, and naming territories or populations that have been conquered, annexed or colonised, with various methods (Giraut 2022). The colonial practice of naming the Other is primarily observable in the context of naming territories and landscapes, known as 'colonial toponymy' or 'colonial place naming' (Alderman 2008;d'Almeida-Topor 2016;Bigon 2008;Cherry et al. 2023;Hudson and Woodcock 2022;Mamvura et al. 2017;Mangena 2023;Mbenzi 2019;. In addition to those examples, one can see certain instances where the names of individuals, including historical figures of the Other, are reappropriated by the Occidental authorities and are replaced with English-speaking preferences. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines two mechanisms in treating Persian names in English-speaking contexts: name projection and name adoption. The article adopts Edward Said's Orientalism, noting Western-centric naming and colonial division with Western superiority. The treatment of the Oriental name will be discussed within the frame of linguistic Orientalism which refers to the portrayal or study of Eastern languages and cultures through the lens of Western superiority or exoti-cisation. Previously, this mindset projected the coloniser's preferred names onto the territory and individuals of the Other. Today, the name of the Other is governed as the subjects from different backgrounds are propelled to conform to the coloniser's preferences in choosing Anglo-sounding names. I will conclude that the shift from the authoritative name projection to the disciplinary name adoption manifests a Foucaul-dian trajectory from 'sovereign power' to modern 'disciplinary power' in taming the name of the Other.
Article
Full-text available
Fossils and First Nations artifacts are both physical remains that demonstrate the deep history of the Earth and its inhabitants. Modern museums have become the places where both of these kinds of natural and cultural heritage are often stored. Yet, many museums carry baggage of institutional distrust, rooted in damaging colonial practices that rely on extractive approaches to research and collection. These practices have encouraged the separation of paleontological and cultural collections and knowledge, and have often excluded First Nations voices from their exhibitions and research practices, Here, we explore the role of museums and their relationship with paleontological objects and sites in Australia and their relationship with First Nations peoples and heritage. We analyze the results of the 'Found a Fossil' survey, and describe three case studies; paleontological and cultural cross-over with dinosaur tracks in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, the digital Museum of Stone Tools initiative, and the Rola[Stone] documentary film project, both based on Anaiwan Country in New South Wales, Australia. Acknowledging the innate duality of objects and places promotes elevated complexity in the way they are understood , studied, managed, legislated and curated. It is essential that First Nations stories, places, and objects be centered with fossils and geological materials to simultaneously tell the story of life on Earth, and in Australia, the story of the oldest living cultures in the world.
Article
Full-text available
In this article I went back to my doctoral research to show, through the analysis of archival material, how the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, a majority museum, according to Clifford's definition, turned from “savior” to “patron” in relation to indigenous artifacts and became trough the years, starting with the direction of Michael Ames (1974-97 and 2002-04), an international benchmark for collaborative approach in museums. This article, focusing on the 1950s and 1960s, still shows the outcomes of a salvage anthropology and the idea of disappearing cultures, although in the 1960s the idea of new and original indigenous productions begins to make its way. Since Clifford first visited the museum in the 1990s, significant changes have occurred. In the early 2000's the MOA received funding for the implementation of a new type of collaborative research, the Reciprocal Research Network (RRN), in which research is determined by the interests of the Indigenous communities rather than the museum or scholars.
Chapter
L'effet musée est envisagé ici dans son rapport à des fonds, à des dispositifs, à des controverses et à des jeux d'influences. Il s'agit d'abord de décrire le travail des établissements sur leurs objets, non seulement dans le choix de les collecter, mais aussi dans leur traitement, déterminant pour la vie sociale des collections. Les gestes d'exposition analysés ensuite manifestent l'omnipotence de l'institution sur ses espaces, entre démonstrations visuelles et expériences immersives. Enfin, l'effet musée s'opère sur ses publics, entre fascination, respect, jouissance, mais aussi malaise, voire colère. Ces effets contrastés révèlent les aléas de la légitimité sociale et culturelle des faiseurs de musées, quels que soient leurs statuts (État, associations ou collectionneurs). Ils dessinent plus largement un paysage d'amitiés et d'inimitiés envers l'institution, autour de ses installations et de ses valeurs. Résolument pluridisciplinaire, cette enquête collective réunit jeunes chercheurs et universitaires confirmés, et couvre une grande diversité de collections de la fin du XIXe siècle à aujourd'hui. Cet ouvrage, préparé sous la direction de Dominique Poulot, est le quatorzième volume de la collection Histo.Art, présentant les travaux de l'École doctorale Histoire de l'art de l'université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Article
Full-text available
This article is an overview of Aboriginal artists and non Aboriginal artists in Australia, both white & non white settlers who grapple with the de-colonial, anti-colonial, or even non-colonial within their work. The dialogue around whether we are "post-colonial" is challenged through looking at a number of Aboriginal & non Aboriginal artists work & those politically astute Aboriginal activists and scholars who speak of the ongoing colonial project. This also addresses dialogue & writing that speak of us being post-colonial in contemporary Australia which sometimes leaks into art writing & research in Australia. The article overviews those who collaborate with Aboriginal artists in projects, exhibitions and public programming that engage with de-colonizing methodologies. It also mentions artists who are critically self aware of their standpoints as settlers who are also Indigenous, but displaced for various reasons. Their art making and resulting works are expressions of making sense of their place on un-ceded stolen lands of Aboriginal Peoples in Australia as a settler state, or ongoing colonial project. Almost all of them work from a place of this country not being post colonial at all, and create spaces of contestation, resistance and also an attempt to make peace with settling on unresolved lands, or as we know it as Aboriginal Peoples, as Country. The article looks at some of the key points in presenting how and why the de-colonial work of artists is so critical to make visible to an international readership and audience. The article names several current Aboriginal artists & their work and the movement of Aboriginal art and how prolific it is, and particularly the past twenty years. It's significance & contribution to the Australian narrative about historical truths and lived experiences of Aboriginal artists who resist and disrupt the colonial project. This includes Aboriginal women artists who are leading the way regarding de-colonial and anti-colonial work. These women especially speak about Aboriginal matriarchy as their driving force and philosophy and their criticisms of patriarchy and white feminisms.
Thesis
Full-text available
For PhD by creative project and exegesis: Balla, P. (2020) Disrupting Artistic Terra Nullius: The ways that First Nations women in art & community speak Blak to the colony & patriarchy The concept of ‘artistic terra nullius’ refers to the violent erasure of First Nations peoples in colony Australia and highlights their absence – particularly Aboriginal Women – in the white-dominated arts world. This doctoral research by creative project and exegesis sets out to document and respond to the work of Aboriginal women in art and community. I have used practice-led inquiry as the main methodology, informed by my own roles as artist, writer, curator, community researcher and as a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara, matriarchal and sovereign woman. Practising community ways of 'being, knowing and doing' to witness, participate and respond to Aboriginal women's art making and activism, I developed a new body of visual works and a series of essays, together with an exegesis relating to the project as a whole. The exhibition in December 2019 at Footscray Community Arts Centre held two bodies of work in two spaces. The ontological (or Being) space was a healing space of unconditional love, one of memory, timelessness, and respite. It has been created as 'daily acts of repair' in collaboration with other Aboriginal women and family members in a new process of bush dyeing fabrics, clothing and rags to become 'healing cloths”, dyed with gathered gum leaves, bush flowers, plants and Wemba-Wemba family bush medicine gifted to me from my Aunties. As a three-dimensional space, it makes visible trauma trails and stains and visualises what respite and healing could look and feel like. Under the 1961 flickering Super-8 image of my great-grandmother, this space also recreates ‘home’, particularly resonating with Aboriginal women’s curation of ‘home’ even in Mission housing. The second space, an epistemological (or Knowing) space, was an active studio of photographic based works drawn from matriarchal family stories, both past, present and future, and archival research. It included iii scholarly and other literature on Blak art and representation, in a recreation of my home studio and office. These bodies of work were made over a four-year project, drawing on concepts of de-colonising, Aboriginal feminist standpoint theory (Moreton- Robinson) and sovereignty. In emphasising making art as both research and artistic outcomes, I demonstrate art as a sovereign act, based in cultural practice and sovereign values. Both the exhibition spaces and the exegesis weave across past, present and future, across research in family, community and the Aboriginal women’s arts-work, across multiple creative media and stories – in the process here called ‘Ghost Weaving’. Responding to various modes of oppression, patriarchy and racism, Blak women’s art is not only a form of resistance to colonising, to violence, to academia and the white art world. It is also an ethical foregrounding of other forms of knowing and being. The exegesis is in two main parts: the written, thesis-element and a series of appendices which include a pictorial record of the exhibition, links and lists of related works, including relevant essays.
Article
Full-text available
This essay offers an evisceration of my troubled links to ‘cattle country’, seeking a truth-telling that responds to my mother’s romancing. I trace my family’s part in the cattle industry imposed upon Jiman Country and Wulli Wulli Country, drawing on stories populated with the hooves of cattle, the flight of emus, and the stare of a goanna. I find myself in uncomfortable territory, complicit in the actions of my settler relatives in this region of Central Queensland, but to not examine this informal archive of possession feels like a lie. The stories that shape me begin with the tales of Mum’s foster-mother, my great-aunt, about the dreadful murderous harms done during the early settler occupation of Jiman Country. My family’s later deployment of this stolen land is a related act of war. I see a related mode of violence in tales of terrified cattle in nearby Wulli Wulli Country, Mum’s girl-self perched on the back of a weary horse, whip in her hand. In all this, there is me, telling tales, like settler writers before me, caught in the writing act, exposed as a fence, dealing in stolen goods, part of the ongoing posts of making up and wires of making do. Nonetheless, I take up my extractive blade, sharpened by a field trip to this region, and carve into my family history, with its legacy of generational violence to humans, cows, waterways, and earth, exposing three extractions: the near-genocidal murders of the Jiman and Wulli Wulli people; the ongoing slaughter of cattle; and finally, there, on the kill floor, entrails exposed, the stories of my mother, laid bare for this critical reading.
Article
Full-text available
The gender binary, like many colonial acts, remains trapped within socio-religious ideals of colonisation that then frame ongoing relationships and restrict the existence of Indigenous peoples. In this article, the colonial project of denying difference in gender and gender diversity within Indigenous peoples is explored as a complex erasure casting aside every aspect of identity and replacing it with a simulacrum of the coloniser. In examining these erasures, this article explores how diverse Indigenous gender presentations remain incomprehensible to the colonial mind, and how reinstatements of kinship and truth in representation fundamentally supports First Nations’ agency by challenging colonial reductions. This article focuses on why these colonial practices were deemed necessary at the time of invasion, and how they continue to be forcefully applied in managing Indigenous peoples into a colonial structure of family, gender, and everything else.
Book
Faint traces of Indigenous people and their histories abound in American media, memory, and myths. Indigeneity often remains absent or invisible, however, especially in contemporary political and intellectual discourse about white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and racism in general. In this ambitious new book, Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, arguing that the ongoing influence of settler-colonialism has undermined efforts to understand Indigenous politics while also hindering conversation around race itself. By reexamining major episodes, texts, writers, and memories of the political past from the seventeenth century to the present, Bruyneel reveals the power of settler memory at work in the persistent disavowal of Indigeneity. He also shows how Indigenous and Black intellectuals have understood ties between racism and white settler memory, even as the settler dimensions of whiteness are frequently erased in our discourse about race, whether in conflicts over Indian mascotry or the white nationalist underpinnings of Trumpism. Envisioning a new political future, Bruyneel challenges readers to refuse settler memory and consider a third reconstruction that can meaningfully link antiracism and anticolonialism.
Book
In 1761 and again in 1769, European scientists raced around the world to observe the transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event in which the planet Venus passes in front of the sun. This book explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. The book argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable “Indianness” that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources. Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations-from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s vote in 2007 to expel Cherokee Freedmen to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill—the book demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do. Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire. The book contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, in turn, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.
Article
In contemporary Australia Aboriginal parents, and parents of Aboriginal kids, work to prepare their children for potentially negative encounters with police. Racialised policing practices target and enact state sanctioned violence upon Aboriginal communities. Statistics evidence these practices, with Aboriginal people being over-represented in all aspects of the criminal justice system. This paper explores the stories behind the statistics through a detailed examination of Boori Monty Pryor’s young adult fiction novel Njunjul the Sun. Close reading of this text illustrates how Aboriginal literature can deepen our understanding of social indicators through narrativising the complex and nuanced experiences of police and policing practices, including racist police violence.