Introduction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PAUL TURNBULL INTRODUCTION LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND WESTERN AND INDIGENOUS SCIENCES This issue of Humanities Research offers Indigenous knowledge and cultural four papers exploring relations between heritage, and lain McCalman, Director of Western and Indigenous sciences. They the Humanities Research Centre. By early derive from the `Science and Other 1995, these discussions included David Indigenous Knowledge Traditions' Turnbull, a cultural historian intern- conference, held at the Cairns campus of ationally known for his work on the James Cook University in August 1996. relations between Indigenous and The confer-ence was an ambitious Western ways of mapping time and space. venture, sponsored by the Humanities Since assuming the Directorship, Research Centre, in collaboration with McCalman had sought to encourage Bukal Indigenous Consulting, the Centre Indigenous participation in the Centre. for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Given that in 1996 the Centre's activities Participation in Research and would cohere around the theme of Development of James Cook University It `Science and Culture', it seemed to us brought together Indigenous Elders and logical and timely for a major conference knowledge custodians, Indigenous and exploring the relations between European non-Indigenous researchers from and Indigenous sciences. Also, we felt it Australia and overseas for five days on the should be held at the Cairns campus of ancestral country of the Djabugay people, James Cook University This would on which James Cook's recently maximize opportunities for participation established Cairns campus is located. by Elders and knowledge custodians from The decision to devote a major across Northern Australia. However, we Humanities Research Centre conference were also keen to recognize and draw to exploring the relations between upon the expertise in issues relating to European and Indigenous sciences grew Indigenous Australian knowledge out of conversations through 1994 developing within James Cook's Centre for between myself, Henrietta Fourmile, a Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Yidinji historian and policy analyst, well Participation in Research and Develop- known for her research on protection of ment. Indeed, it was while Henrietta 8 PAUL TURNBULL Fourmile was employed at the Centre that Indigenous biological resouces and other she won international recognition for her less tangible forms of cultural property in research into the theft of Indigenous grave risk of appropriation and use cultural property in Australia. without permission or compensation. In Queensland, with the gradual For several years, I had likewise been dismantling from the mid-i96os of the interested, as a non-Indigenous protectionist regime under which they researcher, in documenting the fate of had lived since the turn of the twentieth Indigenous cultural property and century Aboriginal and Torres Strait knowledge in nineteenth and early peoples gained legal rights to ownership twentieth century Australia. In particular, and enjoyment of cultural property. Yet, as I had been exploring the history of research by Henrietta Fourmile had scientific procurement and uses of shown, restoration and community Indigenous bodily remains. As is well protection of cultural property hinged on known, the 198os witnessed at times fierce demonstrating the property in question controversy over the continued was used in accordance with 'tribal custom preservation of Indigenous skeletal or law'. State bureaucrats and non- material within museums and medical Indigenous experts effectively reserved schools. Demands by community Elders the right to determine just what and Indigenous spokespersons provoked constituted 'tribal custom and law'; and as debate as to whether scientific criteria or was evidenced by cultural property being obligations prescribed by Indigenous defined as 'relics' in the relevant ancestral belief should ultimately legislation, the presumption on the part of determine their fate. I was particularly non-Indigenous authorities was that little if anything remained by way of Indigenous culture and customary law Moreover, as Fourmile argues in her contribution to this volume, the continuing persuasiveness of these colonialist assumptions places lain McCalman, Director of the Humanities Research Centre, and Henrietta Fourmile, conference co-convenor. Photo: Leena Messina INTRODUCTION struck by the perplexity of personnel natural history collectors or ordinary working in institutions housing settlers keen to aid contemporary collections of remains. Why, as it seemed scientific research into the origins and to them, did research focused on human nature of Indigenous society. Many of remains now cause Indigenous these sources also proved remarkable for Australians such anguish and outrage illuminating the ways in which the when it had never done so before? Several scientific practices and ideas that confessed to me that they could only make rendered the Indigenous dead objects of sense of the controversy in which they had curiosity in European eyes also become embroiled by assuming that it was determined how the living and their orchestrated by younger Indigenous knowledge systems were understood. activists, whose motivation was purely political: quite likely they had been inspired by similar campaigns for the reburial of remains undertaken since the explorers, surveyors and mid 197os by radical North American squatters routinely availed Indian organizations. themselves of Indigenous knowledge There was no reason to doubt that these sentiments were genuine, but what they raised in my mind was whether the What emerged in the process were also controversy over scientific use of glimpses of how explorers, surveyors and Indigenous bodily remains had more squatters routinely availed themselves of complex historical origins that needed to Indigenous knowledge. They used the be considered. This question seemed expertise of Indigenous people to navigate especially pertinent as during the course unknown country and to assess its worth of the controversy both scientific for pastoralism. Explorers often found researchers and their Indigenous critics that the Indigenous men they employed to justified their stance by recourse to claims help them travel, and often live off the about how and why Indigenous bones and land, were anxious to gain the permission soft tissue had come to rest in medical of traditional owners to do so. The schools and natural history museums. diplomacy of Indigenous guides was often Working in the collections of the National critical to expeditions gaining safe Library over the summer of 1994-5, I came passage. Interestingly, guides were at across numerous accounts written during times as unfamiliar as the white men with the course of the nineteenth century the culture of the people whose country documenting how different Indigenous they passed through. When they met with communities sought to prevent the what from their own experience seemed desecration of burial places by explorers, sacred places, Indigenous guides readily TO PAUL TURNBULL sought to persuade their European determined by Indigenous knowledge of companions to leave quickly without weather patterns and the reliability of disturbing anything. Typical in this regard local water courses: Indigenous were the expeditions undertaken by pharmacopoeia and ways of healing were George Grey in northwest Australia during assessed and used when they paralleled the late 183os. In his account of his second contemporary western medical practice. expedition in early 18 39, Grey wrote of the Settlers in outlying districts similarly used wariness of Kaiber, the party's principal the ashes of woods favoured by guide, when travelling through unknown Indigenous healers to cauterize wounds, country, and his 'concern and unease' on and employed steam baths using herbs and the party's encountering a newly made species of fern which Indigenous people grave on the upper reaches of the Harvey had discovered to be effective in treating river.' After the loss of their stores and rheumatic pains and bronchial boats, Grey's party was forced to make a congestion.2 Stiff black and white joints gruelling journey of some six hundred were treated with goanna fat.3 The resin kilometres back to. Perth, which they of the red gum (Eucalyptus resinfera) was survived only through Kaiber's diplomacy, used to prevent wounds turning septic, his ability to discover water and and taken in pill form to check dysentery/. persuading the people they encountered As one settler in Western Australia to share frogs and other seasonally recorded in his journal in the early 184os, plentiful foodstuffs. `it is a very strong astringent and has been taken medicinally very generally in the Pastoral, and later mining, frontiers were colony, and certainly I found immediate typical of colonial situations in that the relief from it.'5 colonizers assumed they were inherently superior to the colonized. While as has Throughout the nineteenth century, been extensively documented by colonial naturalists drew heavily on historians, sexual relations between Indigenous knowledge. They invariably Indigenous women and European men relied on Indigenous people to locate were widespread, other relationships, specimens of flora and fauna, as is well grounded in senses of affinity or equality, exemplified by the activities of the early were much rarer, with the result that nineteenth century botanist, George Caley. Indigenous knowledge was used by Through