Monumental Discovery Narratives and Deep History

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

Load more