Monumental Discovery Narratives and Deep History
ANN McGRATH
MONUMENTAL HISTORIES latitudes seem incommensurable, unable to be ▲ Montage using accommodated inside history’s ambit.2 article figures. In the evening of 12 June 2020, in In recent years, however, leading historians the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, a have called for an expansion of their contingent of mounted police and other police discipline’s time-scale beyond the modern officers wearing protective face-masks formed and pre-modern.3 How did it come about that a circle to guard the statue of Captain Cook in a certain ‘regime of historicity’, in theorist Sydney’s Hyde Park (fig. 1). Weeks earlier, on Francois Hartog’s formulation as ‘a way of 24 May 2020, the Juukan caves in the Pilbara linking together past, present, and future’4 was region of Western Australia had been blasted so chronologically, geographically, and racially by mining giant Rio Tinto. This destroyed exclusive? Historians may need to rethink a site that contained evidence of 46,000 their discipline not only beyond the ‘pre’ of years of Aboriginal habitation in Australia. prehistory, but also beyond its monumental Although Cook did not set foot in Hyde discovery wall.5 Park during his brief visit in 1770, the police protection afforded the monument, erected ◄ Fig 1. Statue of Captain Cook 109 years later, stood in stark contrast to the surrounded by police, absence of any protection at Juukan Gorge. Hyde Park, Sydney. The former represented the lengths to which IMAGE: ELLY BAXTER the forces of the state would go to protect a cherished coloniser heritage. One history was familiar and state-endorsed, while Juukan was unknown by the wider public until its destruction, despite being classified as a heritage site and of ‘the highest archaeological significance’.1 So why this dichotomy? For one thing, ancient Indigenous pasts are either excluded from historical narratives or positioned as outside or before ‘history’ really began. In both academic and popular understandings of history, Australia’s deep human past has not been integrated into the telling of its national history. Its vast temporal and geographical
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 69 The cache of discovery narratives and reinterpreted story. On its high pedestal, continues to play a key role in obscuring, it stands as a signifier for a complex history if not entirely blocking off, the possibility of sailing technology, skill, and imperial land of deep Indigenous histories. Historians of takeovers that have been well-documented, oft Australia have tended to start their accounts written about, perpetuated and glorified. In in 1770, at the time of James Cook’s short 1810 Governor Macquarie had superimposed sojourn at Botany Bay, or in 1788, with the the name Hyde Park on the Eora lands after so convict colonisation that eventually followed. many of their people had died in a devastating These start dates constantly reinscribed the epidemic.7 This appellation represented significance of European arrivals as opposed hopeful importations of Englishness, with its to the exceptionally deep human history of contemporary notions of civilisation, class Indigenous Australia. Is it possible to displace and culture. Almost 70 years later, in Cook’s these ‘white man’ chronologies? It may be memorialisation, the colonial elites of New more difficult than we expect, for discovery South Wales chose their preferred imperial narratives have so long delineated territory beginnings, one less shameful than that of the and sovereignty that Australian historians adjacent convict barracks.8 have become entrapped by their boundary Funded by both community and government markers. This is not to suggest that European contributions, the inscriptions accompanying discovery of other places did not mark a the Hyde Park statue read: historical rupture, a turning point—a symbolic moment after which nothing could ever be the captain cook same. For Europe, much of the world would this statue was erected by public subscription no longer remain unknown. For Indigenous assisted by a grant from the people, colonialism presented a rupture of new south wales government great magnitude. But discovery was not a 1879 closing curtain; it should not block sight of * the many far earlier ruptures. Indigenous BORN Australians lived on the continent when it AT MARTON IN YORKSHIRE was joined to New Guinea, when the seas 1728 rose, the megafauna disappeared and the * climate dramatically changed. And nor did DISCOVERED THIS TERRITORY ‘Discovery’ mean that Indigenous sovereignty 1770 or Indigenous history ended. * In nations such as Australia, Canada, New KILLED AT OWHYHEE Zealand and the United States, the timeline 17799 of European discovery clearly served imperial and colonial ends. It became cemented Standing high above the general populace, the as a powerful device for history-telling. Cook figure holds a telescope in one hand, Although subjected to scrutiny by Indigenous with the other upstretched as if to reach activists and academic historians of various the skies. The statue speaks to the history backgrounds throughout the twentieth of British mercantilism and Enlightenment century, the global Black Lives Matter science, fundamental factors in the founding movement has awarded critiques of Cook-style of the British colony of New South Wales. Its monumentalism a much higher profile.6 Yet, elevation on a plinth suggests the supposedly contestations over the ‘discovery’ statues and superior notions of European or ‘western’ stories do little to dismantle their significance civilisation, including that of the voyage’s as historical boundary markers; rather, they stated purpose to measure the transit of Venus. may do the opposite. In the past year, many of the Juukan The Cook statue, situated in pride of place artefacts, a belt made of human hair and in Sydney’s Hyde Park, evokes a widely retold stone tools, perhaps associated with their
70 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 ◄ Fig 2. Statue of Captain Cook, Hyde Park, Sydney. IMAGE: FLICKR
▼ Fig 3. Plaque, Statue of Captain Cook, Hyde Park, Sydney. IMAGE: FLICKR
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 71 own star stories, were removed in advance to Indigenous deep history presents a a mining company’s storage area.10 In common challenge to the constitution of the modern with Cook’s statue, most news coverage of nation. It poses questions of what the full its destruction mention a date—but in this polity, including the Indigenous citizens of instance a 46,000-year-old date. This recent the nation, want the history and future of the chronological value, attributed by scientific nation to be. This presents a major challenge dating techniques, assisted in measuring its to the humanities in general and for the international heritage significance. The long discipline of history in particular. associations of the Puuti Kunti Karrama and If the ‘Australian nation’ is taken to mean Pinikura people with this region, and their all those who belong to today’s nation- long-held Indigenous stories are personal, state, Indigenous people rightly consider familial and enduring. To its owners, a themselves as part of that polity and its history. beginning date is not necessarily relevant.11 Indeed, they have been the most defining For the non-Indigenous public, the site and enduring element of it, both in their and its associated journey routes do not recent contributions and as custodians of the fit into a recognisable history-telling mode landscapes from which the modern nation in the western tradition. Most of history’s benefited. Beyond this, the duree of Australia’s chronologies derive from northern hemisphere Indigenous history is so lengthy that it makes benchmarks, and regardless, such a long little sense to overlook it in favour of such a expanse of human time is difficult for many to relatively short history. imagine. Just as Cook’s plaque alone does not Indigenous Australians have repeatedly tell that complex imperial history, adding a objected to the ‘white lie’ of Cook being plaque that announces ‘Juukan caves, c. 46,000- lauded as discoverer of Australia.13 This was 2020’ would certainly not enrich the story of an obvious denial not only of their existence, this site. but also of their authority over their custodial land. In 2020, Wiradjuri lawyer Teela Reid DEEP NARRATIVES got to the point: ‘Let’s be clear: Captain Cook The Uluru Statement from the Heart, the did not “discover” the continent known as outcome of an Australia-wide deliberation by Australia. This must be the starting point for Aboriginal representatives, called for a full dialogue concerning the relationship between telling of the Indigenous past. It pointed to an the Australian state and the many First Nations enduring history which could be accounted that have never ceded sovereignty.’ She added: for in multiple kinds of evidentiary proof: ‘speaking truth is a hard task when you live in ‘according to the reckoning of our culture, a country that denies the truth of its past’.14 from the Creation, according to the common Mythologising Cook aimed to make law from “time immemorial”, and according to Australian history a British one, serving science more than 60,000 years ago’. It stated imperial agendas and a triumphalist European how their spiritual ties with land over deep narrative of ‘white progress’ against murderous time cemented their sovereignty: Indigenous ‘savagery’. Cook’s memory, however, has long been contested. At the re-enactment This link is the basis of the ownership of the of his landing at Federation, in 1901, the largely soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never white colonial crowd at Botany Bay jeered been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists the actor playing the role of Captain Cook, with the sovereignty of the Crown. drowning out his words. Instead, they cheered How could it be otherwise? That the Aboriginal performers, who put on such an peoples possessed a land for sixty exciting show as warriors that the onlookers millennia and this sacred link disappears demanded an encore.15 In Indigenous stories from world history in merely the last two and songs that stretch around the country, and hundred years?12 in many critical artworks, Cook signifies an immoral figure. To the Gurindji, he travelled
72 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 the wrong way, and was greedy; in Australia’s According to the law of nations, a colony contemporary art, he is ‘Crook’, a pirate, a law- could be established in the following ways: breaker, a symbol of land theft, dispossession 1. By persuading the indigenous and genocide.16 Marking the 250th Anniversary inhabitants to submit themselves to of Cook’s arrival in Australia, a 2019 exhibition its overlordship; at the National Library of Australia and one in 2020 at the National Museum of 2. By purchasing from those inhabitants Australia presented a multi-perspectival view, the right to settle part or parts of it; including that of the Bama Aboriginal people 3. By unilateral possession, on the basis of first of Cooktown, where his Endeavour crew discovery and effective occupation.19 stopped for repairs.17 For many Aboriginal Australians and their allies, however, Cook The third, of ‘first discovery’, basically relied became a symbol of a cruel and oppressive upon a European man’s sighting of non- colonising regime, a mythologised figure European-occupied lands. This method did who epitomised the most heinous coloniser not require consent, a treaty or agreement rapaciousness and savagery. by Indigenous people. But discovery could not stand alone; it had to be followed DISCOVERY AND LAW OF by an ‘effective occupation’, a continuing EUROPEAN NATIONS colonisation. Consequently, early European We might well ask why discovery has been colonisations such as those of the North such a big deal, when people were clearly America’s Mayflower Pilgrims and Australia’s already living in Australia—a fact recorded First Fleet of convicts were commonly fused by the so-called discoverers themselves? Put with discovery as dual markers to signify simply, discovery underpinned the British right national beginnings. to declare sovereignty over the continent of The law of sovereignty also required certain Australia. The ‘law of nations’, upon which this ritual performances, with embodied and was based, has frequently been taken to be a material enactments. Written inscriptions and/ universal law, as if something agreed across or visual records were required as proof that ‘the world’. It was, in essence, an agreement the rituals had indeed been performed. Cook’s amongst certain European powers, who at journals, therefore, attested to making certain various points of history, used it as a basis inscriptions of dates and other details on for negotiating disputes between competing trees at Botany Bay, and to a flag-raising ritual empires. The laws emanated in part from purportedly performed on an island off Cape contests over papal rule, but they evolved to York that he not-too-subtly named ‘Possession serve later contests of imperial conquest and Island’. To assert authority over territories, expansion. In order to justify taking over the the evidence of such written records was lands of other peoples, Europeans argued almost as crucial as the act of locating these that they could bring a superior culture.18 places in the first instance. The authoritative Under such law, the notion of ‘civilisation’ nature of Cook’s logbooks confirmed that was awarded cultural and legal weight. he had carried out his Secret Instructions of It was associated with Christianity and ‘making Discoverys [sic] of Countries hitherto certain economies as the superior cultural unknown’. What they did not do, however, models. Hunting and gathering societies—no was to demonstrate that he had ‘take[n] matter how sophisticated their technologies Possession’ of such territories ‘with the Consent and techniques might be—were classed as of the Natives’.20 backward and uncivilised. European nations Reflecting the necessity of the coloniser including Portugal, Spain, Italy, Holland, France nation’s investment in continuing and England declared sovereignty over various performances of sovereignty, discovery ‘New Worlds’. narratives took on a political, legal and a historical authority all their own. Later
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 73 performances of imperial and colonial scholar Bede’s calculations and adoptions sovereignty included public memorialisation, of key dates that informed his Ecclesiastical flag-raising, toasts to the King or Queen, History of the English People, including his re-enactments of ‘discovery’ and ‘taking popularisation of dating from the birth of possession’, the erection of Captain Cook Christ (Anno Domini [A.D.] or year of Our statues, the naming of hotels and roads Lord). He is often referred to as ‘The Father and its inclusion as a ‘key fact’ in school of English History’.23 Despite today’s history textbooks. A Brisbane bridge was named for discipline showing increasing appreciation Captain Cook in 1972. The name of the current of and adeptness in the use of oral, visual, Prime Minister’s electorate near Botany Bay material objects and landscapes evidence, it honours Cook. In 2020, his government was still relies primarily upon text-based sources. to fund a replica Endeavour to sail around Although some of the earlier twentieth- Australia to mark the 250th anniversary of century historians were sceptical about the Cook’s short visit to Australia’s east coast. singularity of Captain Cook in Australian These moments fitted well with the wider history, they still gave discovery narratives semiotics of ‘discovery’, a key concept in pride of place. Before getting onto Cook, they western ontologies, including in scientific usually paid attention to Englishman William discourse, narratives of civilisation, innovation, Dampier’s earlier voyages, then to Dutch advancement and progress.21 navigators such as Dirk Hartog, Jan Carstenz and Abel Tasman. Next came the land-based THE HISTORY DISCIPLINE’S explorers such as Blaxland, Lawson and PERFORMANCES OF SOVEREIGNTY Wentworth, Mitchell, Sturt and Leichardt. History writing became a performance of Maps of their one-time journey routes featured sovereignty in itself. As did the libraries and prominently in history texts, whereas the archives upon which it relied. Early historical much-travelled Indigenous pathways and societies, libraries and state archives devoted songlines of deeper histories did not feature themselves to gathering explorer’s, early at all (figs 4 and 5). Some tried alternative coloniser’s and government accounts as key approaches such as foregrounding ‘the land’ documents of state. The Cook plaque, for and ‘the Aborigines’, but these sections read like example, contains a skeletal version of the ‘background’, unable to move along at the same kind of data upon which historians continue to pace as the plot-lines of the European explorers rely as verifiable facts—birth and death dates, and adventurers.24 named people and named places. Details were With a first chapter entitled ‘The Invasion supplied by various British parish and state of Australia’, W. K. Hancock’s Australia, a archives and Cook’s own logbook and journals. breakthrough national history which appeared Discovery stories were an ideal fit for history’s in 1930, tried to shed the popular adulation evidence criteria and research methodologies, of Cook’s ghost. Near the end of the book, he providing the required framings for its explains why: ‘Australia has been too much chronological narratives. The epistemologies of glorified by simple patriots, who imagine the history discipline thus served to reinforce that civilisation started with the voyages of the discovery timeline as its beginning point. Captain Cook’.25 Regardless, Hancock fell into The discipline of history had its beginnings discovery’s spectral framing: ‘Many nations in philology or the interpretation of ancient adventured for the discovery of Australia, texts, which concreted its approach as but the British peoples have alone possessed document-based. Its methodologies were her…’. 26 The white man reigned over the land, refined at the major academies of Germany, depicted as female and as fantastically ready England and other European centres of for the taking. With or without Cook, history learning, their teachers refining critical skills writing continued in the vein of gendered to tackle the histories of people who left forms conquest, where discovery delivered the ‘birth of writing.22 Prior to this, it was the monastic of civilisation’ on the continent. R. M. Crawford
74 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 commenced his history, also called Australia (1952) with a chapter on geography. He epitomised ‘Cook’s great voyage’ as ‘a splendid prelude to British settlement in the South Seas’, marred only by the ‘irksome’ convict problem.27 Crawford’s inclusion of a chapter on ‘Aborigines’ reflected the strengths of the contemporary anthropological discipline, but also its weaknesses, as Aboriginal society was portrayed as an unchanging culture positioned outside of modernity and therefore outside history. Colonial onslaughts, including expropriation of lands and resources, disease, ▲ Fig 4. (top left) neglect, and massacres received minimal or on Aboriginal Australians tellingly entitled A general chart no attention in such history books. The topic ‘The Days before History’. Similarly, Marjorie exhibiting the discoveries made by of Aboriginal Australia was considered the Barnard’s popular A History of Australia (1962), Captn. James Cook province of anthropologists; at the time, the started out with the necessary ‘Background’ in this and his two historians’ remit related to white Australia. before moving onto an action-filled chapter preceeding voyages, 29 with the tracks of Also overlooking the horrors of colonialism, entitled ‘Discovery’. In most twentieth- the ships under his school text books usually fostered glorious century accounts, occupying the ‘days before command by Lieutt. discovery narratives, reinforcing the notion history’, before ‘discovery’, was the most that Roberts of His Majesty's Royal Navy. that Aboriginal demise was inevitable, more Indigenous Australians could hope for. In IMAGE: NATIONAL so given that they were a people located the major histories that followed, by Douglas LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA outside historical time. In Dunlop and Pike’s Pike, Gordon Greenwood, Manning Clark and ▲ Figs 5 & 5a. school text, Australia: Colony to Nation (1960), others, the periodisation of discovery and/ (top & lower right) they presented dynamic tales of European or colonisation became a convention, with Exploration map of the Commonwealth discoverers and colonisers, of development and Aboriginal Australians given short shrift or of Australia: compiled progress. In an attempt to acknowledge the ignored altogether.30 by C.R. Long, M.A., Aboriginal presence, they devoted a chapter to Since the 1980s, Australian historians Inspector of Schools, Education Department, the topic, dividing their sub-section ‘Prehistoric have published much on Aboriginal history, Victoria, for use Australians’ into ‘Old Stone Age Tasmanians’ exploring how European colonisers invaded, with "Stories of and ‘New Stone Age Australians’.28 Basically, occupied and established hegemony. They have Australian exploration"; S. Yandasynde, del., Aboriginal Australians primarily belonged highlighted the ongoing nature of oppressive Melbourne. in a museum exhibit, with their one chapter colonial power relations, and produced studies IMAGE: NATIONAL LIBRARY AUSTRALIA
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 75 of massacres, labour exploitation, state policies Aborigines.’36 The capitalisation looks to have of forced migration and child removal. Yet been intentional. the field of ‘Aboriginal history’, my own work Ascertaining the first arrivals and routes included, still tended to commence with, and to Australia remains an important area of then focus upon the period after European research for archaeologists and associated arrival—from 1770 or 1788.31 Several historians specialists.37 Nonetheless, Indigenous first have been keen to integrate the story of the arrival stories lack the prerequisites for long duree of Indigenous Australia.32 But classification as discoveries. Certainly, it is ‘prehistory’ proved difficult to tackle. The first accepted that the first Australians found volume of the Oxford History of Australia was somewhere new and they occupied the to cover the pre-1788 period, but this volume land. However, this did not fit the mould never eventuated. The Cambridge Companion of an imperial discovery story. There were to Australian History engaged archaeologists no accessible individual names, specific to write the pre-1788 chapter.33 Archaeologists places and dates. No inscriptions in ink continue to deliver pathbreaking work providing a Gregorian/Bedian calendar date, which eludes historians, most of whom feel an author’s name or a geographical latitude unqualified to write about this expanding field. and a longitude—the kinds of prerequisites The disciplinary divide between history and that had made the white Australian arrivals archaeology, with its rigorous techniques for ‘historical’ moments. researching the deep past, is clearly an issue for In researching the deep Indigenous past, the future of deep history. however, certain archaeologists have relished Some earlier archaeologists tried to creating a new version of the European dismantle the imperial discovery narrative, discovery adventure. Rhys Jones, who with while at the same time falling prey to its John Mulvaney and others researched the c. romantic allure. In doing so, they created new 45,000-year-old ancient cremation, Mungo 1 archaeological discovery narratives in their or Lady Mungo in western New South Wales wake.34 John Mulvaney’s 1969 book, entitled a in the late 1960s, waxed lyrical about the lost Prehistory of Australia, was written in accessible romance of earlier discovery. Referring to the prose and had a big impact upon historians wonder of ‘lost lands’ via Gulliver’s Travels and and the wider public alike. Concurring with Atlantis, he lamented how it was no longer the view that the study of pre-literate societies possible to make such new discoveries on could not be ‘history’, its title ‘prehistory’ was the high seas. With mischievous flourish, intended to bring this time period and these he recalled the adventures of the French peoples into a parallel realm to other histories. navigator Baudin, whom he described as the The term had the unfortunate effect, however, ‘thick skinned matelot from Le Havre’, who of reinscribing the idea that the long duree had rounded the coast of ‘the half unknown of human experience took place outside real Terra Australis’.38 It was, of course, not ‘half time—effectively before European people unknown’ to local Indigenous nations, only made real History.35 In the case of Aboriginal ‘half unknown’ until the European discoverers Australians, it potentially reinforced the idea entered measurable time. that Indigenous Australians might occupy a zone of evolutionary stages, but not the REDISCOVERED HISTORIES dynamic change zones associated with other We have discussed how discovery-based history studies. Nonetheless, John Mulvaney narratives offer specific, dated beginning made an astounding intervention into the points that became a standard periodisation dominant national narrative. In his Prehistory for Australian history which reinforced book, he allowed Aboriginal people to replace coloniser hegemony. In her book Periodization Cook, proclaiming: ‘THE DISCOVERERS, and Sovereignty, mediaeval historian Kathleen explorers and colonists of the three million Davis considered the way historians organise square miles which are Australia, were its their analysis in themed chronological
76 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 chunks, arguing its efficacy in reinforcing Bay threw their continent into a story that and naturalising the social orderings of both potentially could find a place in both European past and present.39 For Europe, ‘The Age of history and modernity. Discovery’ was an epoch in itself, forming a As the doctrine of discovery was the legal prelude to ‘modern history’. This so-called Age basis of British sovereignty, it became the spanned the ocean journeys of the Spanish, conventional doctrine for writing the nation. Dutch, Portuguese and more—generally from Revered or mocked, because discovery became the fifteenth century to the seventeenth a set periodisation, histories that centred century—an epoch which omitted Cook’s around the idea of heroic ‘firsts’ by white men era, perhaps because Europe had already have been difficult to budge. Their ubiquity also ‘discovered’ and mapped most of the rest of the entrapped historians focused upon critiques world. Certainly, maritime journeys expanded of colonialism, for they too fell into discovery’s Europe’s known worlds, enabling them to dated certainties. broaden their knowledge, their imaginations, As long as discovery narratives remain their cultural influence and wealth, and above the focus of history contestations, their all, their dominions. Despite the horrors of significance will be reinforced and kidnappings, slavery, theft, and disease that significant sites like Juukan Gorge, with followed discovery, in the making of western its incommensurable history, will remain and world history, discovery was told as an unprotected. Such places may have much to appealing tale that heralded the arrival and teach people of the present, and arguably the beginning of a dynamic age.40 The prior lessons of deep time may be more relevant histories of the northern hemisphere were to the future than the monument to honour known as early modern and mediaeval, and Captain Cook. While historians need to the earlier periods beyond those were classed be cautious that they do not appropriate as Ancient History and classical studies (fig. 6). Indigenous history simply to deepen coloniser For Australianists, Cook’s visit to Botany identities, unless they grapple with the exceptionally deep human history of Australia, ◄ Fig 6. Ancient the nation—and the wider world—will be the History Syllabus. poorer for it. IMAGE: VCN BLIGHT, GOVERNMENT PRINTER, So what is preventing this from happening? 1961 For one thing, historians do not yet have the appropriate skills to research and decipher deep history. While archaeologists have well-developed fieldwork strategies, disciplinary boundaries appear difficult to cross. Historians and archaeologists both need to engage in transdisciplinary collaborations. Beyond that, they need to work in true partnership with Indigenous knowledge holders, and in doing so, to seriously consider Indigenous regimes of historicity and Indigenous modes of historical practice. In order to proceed with the study of deep time, history itself requires reconceptualisation. New kinds of human-centred periodisation will be required—not simply ones to do with stone tools or climate. Historians will need to develop new methodologies for using different kinds of evidence. Japanese historian of the Gurindji, Minoru Hokari, urged scholars to
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 77 include Indigenous accounts not only as myths It is important to note, however, that or legends, but as interpretative capital ‘h’ Indigenous Australians do not necessarily Histories. In order to understand Indigenous wish to be incorporated in western discovery histories, Hokari explained, one needed to pay narratives, for the discovery concept does attention—to geography, to the breeze touching not concur with their ontologies of human/ one’s skin, and to the earth, which lives and land relationships.44 The transient moment of speaks.41 Indigenous knowledge approaches discovery and the ephemeral journey routes of and cross-cultural ways of knowing offer explorers stand in contrast to the continuity the prospect of innovative directions for the of Indigenous journey routes—the enduring history discipline. thread of human travel by generations of women, men and children across vast landscapes, layered with Indigenous names The Indigenous archive resides bearing complex, connected and richly storied meanings. These were sustaining routes, not in text but in discrete where people shared deep stories of place, and physical landscapes … knowledge of food, water and medicines that sustained whole communities. Indigenous Australians knew these tracks for their creation The Indigenous archive resides not in and origin stories, as marriage routes, as text but in discrete physical landscapes—in connecting roads that united distant clans material evidence, rock art, language and in and language groups. They contained shelters, the epic narratives kept alive in aural and art sites, their ecologies sustained gatherings, visual performative traditions that in turn feasts, rituals, history stories and dances; they rejuvenate the spirits embodied in the land. were dotted with sites of birth and death. As explained by the Gay’wu group of women, Deep history should become a creative Indigenous history-telling practices follow a challenge to current thinking of what sacred or spiritual logic, with the principles constitutes history, how it can be researched, of song cycles propelling the past into the its role in the present, its role in moving the present, and along journey routes across narratives beyond imperial narratives of vast landscapes.42 Indigenous approaches discovery. Indigenous narratives recount their to temporality are non-linear,43 and place- journey routes through time with contrasting based. Plants and animals are historical ontologies of temporality—dubbed an actors, animated and storied. Great journey ‘everywhen.’45 If a truly collaborative enterprise stories travel along prescribed routes that with Indigenous knowledge holders, ‘deep follow where the sun sets and rises; these are history’ may serve as a potential decolonising narratives rich in ecological knowledge with move. The nation might thereby gain more an Indigenous law and a moral trajectory knowledge of the long era of Indigenous associated with an enduring sovereignty. occupation not as a static 65,000 years of These people saw the oceans around the ‘continuing culture’ but as one encompassing ancient continent of Sahul inundate the land; both continuity and change. To prevent they witnessed islands being formed, rivers discovery’s monumental features continuing changing course, bays forming, ecologies to block the view of deep time, historians need changing from savannah to rainforest, lands to appreciate indigenous interpretations of the covered in ice becoming grasslands, and deep past, and work with Indigenous leaders glaciers leaving behind huge granite boulders. to ensure future histories of nation align with They knew of volcanoes erupting. Over Indigenous sovereignty and inform reparative 65,000 years or more, Aboriginal Australians justice. To do so, the discipline’s parameters responded to many ruptures, many challenges. must be open to radical change. ¶
78 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 6. Julia Baird, ‘The toppling of statues is enriching ANN McGRATH is a historian not erasing our history…’, Sydney Morning Herald, of deep history, gender, 13 June 2020
1. Michael Slack, archaeologist who filed report for Rio 13. Larissa Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal Women and the White Tinto, cited in
HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 79 Penguin, 1987); Antony Anghie, Imperialism, 34. Ann McGrath, ‘Lady Mungo and the New and Sovereignty and the Making of International Law Old Discovery Narrative’, in Unmasking Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology, ed. by Bonnie 2005). Effros and Guolong Lai (Los Angeles: UCLA Cotsen 20. Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30 June 1768, Institute of Archaeology Press, 2018), pp. 227–56. Foundingdocs,
80 HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020