In turn in turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia In turn in turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia Edited by Vanessa Castejon, Anna Cole, Oliver Haag and Karen Hughes Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Ngapartji ngapartji, in turn, in turn : ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia / Vanessa Castejon, Anna Cole, Oliver Haag and Karen Hughes, editors. ISBN: 9781925021721 (paperback) 9781925021738 (ebook) Subjects: Aboriginal Australians--History. Aboriginal Australians--Social conditions. Aboriginal Australians--Politics and government. Other Authors/Contributors: Castejon, Vanessa, editor. Cole, Anna, 1969- editor. Haag, Oliver, editor. Hughes, Karen, editor. Dewey Number: 305.89915 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover image: Artwork by Julie Gough. Detail, Intertidal resulted from an invitation to participate in an exhibition <Abstractions>. My concept was to arrive with raw materials collected during my journey to the Canberra gallery from which new works would be made. One of the four pieces produced was titled Intertidal for which I finely ground-up the materials and applied them to a board surface in linear striations. Each ‘stripe’ represented my absence from Tasmania as well as the fulfilling exploration of working with and combining new materials to describe my, at the time, nomadic life. The ANU.Lives Series in Biography is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography at The Australian National University http://ncb.anu.edu.au/. Cover design by Nic Welbourn and layout by ANU Press Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2014 ANU Press Contents Acknowledgments . vii Notes on Contributors . ix Preface: Ego-Histoire . xv Bruce Pascoe Theoretical Introduction 1 . Introduction: ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji: In Turn, In Turn’— Ego-histoire and Australian Indigenous Studies . 3 Vanessa Castejon, Anna Cole, Oliver Haag and Karen Hughes 2 . ‘Introduction’ from Essais d’Ego-Histoire . 21 Pierre Nora, Translated by Stephen Muecke Self and History 3 . Ngarranga Barrangang: Self and History, a Contemporary Aboriginal Journey . 25 Victoria Grieves 4 . A Personal Journey with Anangu History . 41 Bill Edwards 5 . Layers of Being: Aspects of Researching and Writing Professional Savages: Captive Lives and Western Spectacle . 61 Roslyn Poignant 6 . Stories my Grandmother Never Told Me: Recovering Entangled Family Histories Through Ego-Histoire . 75 Karen Hughes 7 . ‘Start By Telling Your Own Story’: On Becoming An Anthropologist and Performing Anthropology . 93 Franca Tamisari 8 . Yagan, Mrs Dance and Whiteness . 109 Jan Idle 9 . Becoming Privileged in Australia: Romany Europe, Indigenous Australia and the Transformation of Race . 125 Oliver Haag Out of Place 10 . From Paris to Papunya: Postcolonial Theory, Australian Indigenous Studies and ‘Knowing’ ‘the Aborigine’ . 143 Barry Judd 11 . Situated Knowledge or Ego (His)toire?: Memory, History and the She-Migrant in an Imaginary of ‘Terra Nullius’ . 159 Jane Haggis 12 . Genealogy and Derangement . 173 John Docker 13 . Art Works From Home, Out of Place . 189 Helen Idle 14 . From Bare Feet to Clogs: One Aboriginal Woman’s Experience in Holland . 197 Rosemary van den Berg Tales of Mystery and Imagination 15 . Home Talk . 211 Jeanine Leane 16 . True Ethnography . 227 Gillian Cowlishaw 17 . Lands of Fire and Ice: From Hi-Story to History in the Lands of Fire and Ice—Our Stories and Embodiment as Indigenous in a Colonised Hemisphere . 241 May-Britt Öhman and Frances Wyld 18 . Turning into a Gardiya . 259 Stephen Muecke 19 . Tales of Mystery and Imagination from the Tweed River: Shaping Historical-Consciousness . 271 Philip Morrissey 20 . Nourishing Terrain: An Afterword . 281 Gillian Whitlock Appendix Is ‘Ego-Histoire’ Possible? . 289 Pierre Nora, Translated by Stephen Muecke Acknowledgments The production of this book would not have been possible without the generous funding by Centre de Recherches Interculturelles sur les Domaines (CRIDAF), Pleïade, Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, and the Austrian Centre for Transcultural Studies, Vienna. We are deeply thankful for the trust and faith shown in our project by Melanie Nolan and the National Centre for Biography, ANU. We also wish to thank Francoise Palleau and Gillian Whitlock for commenting on earlier drafts of the manuscript. We wish to extend our gratitude to the following colleagues for refereeing individual chapters: Margaret Allen, Josie Arnold, Sue Ballyn, Diane Bell, Anne Brewster, Ann Curthoys, Paul Gillen, Victoria Grieves, Jane Haggis, Chris Healy, Ian Henderson, Victoria Haskins, Martina Horakova, Barry Judd, Shino Konishi, Jeanine Leane, Jane Lydon, Ian McLean, Stephen Muecke, Maria Nugent, Suvendrini Perera, Andrew Peters, Cassi Plate, Martin Renes, May- Britt Öhman, Gillian Whitlock, Christine Winter and Frances Wyld. We thank Swinburne University for collegial support and as well as the talented team at ANU Press. vii Notes on Contributors Vanessa Castejon is an Associate Professor at University Paris 13. Her work explores Aboriginal political claims, self-determination and sovereignty, and the image of Aboriginal people in France/Europe. Her recent publications include an article on her ego-histoire, ‘Identity and Identification: Aboriginality from the Spanish Civil War to the French Ghettos’ in Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia, (Aboriginal History/ANU E Press, 2010), edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker. Her book, Les Aborigènes et l'apartheid politique australien, was published by Harmattan in 2005. Anna Cole was born in south west England to Anglo-Irish/Celtic parents. As a child she migrated with her parents and siblings to live on Nyungar land in Western Australia. She began learning about Indigenous history as a student at the University of Western Australia while involved in activism around a sacred Wagyl water source. Her previous edited collections include, Uncommon Ground: White Women in Aboriginal History (with Victoria Haskins and Fiona Paisley, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005) and Tattoo: Bodies, Art and Exchange in the Pacific and the West (with Nicholas Thomas and Bronwen Douglas, Duke University Press, 2005). Her co-written film documenting Indigenous debutante balls in urban Sydney, Dancing with the Prime Minister (November Films, 2010), was short-listed for a UN Media Peace Award. She has two young children and lives in the UK, where she teaches post-colonial history and literature at Brighton University. Gillian Cowlishaw’s ethnographic work explores structural and interpersonal relations between Indigenous and other Australians. Her publications include the historical ethnography, Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas (Michigan University Press, 1999), Blackfellas, Whitefellas and the Hidden Injuries of Race (Blackwell, 2004) and The City’s Outback (UNSW Press, 2009), an adventurous ethnography in the suburbs. John Docker is an honorary Professor at the Department of History, University of Sydney. He is the author of 1492: The Poetics of Diaspora (Continuum, 2001) and The Origins of Violence: Religion, history and genocide (Pluto Press, 2008). He is writing a memoir entitled Growing Up Communist and Jewish in Bondi: Memoir of a non-Australian Australian. W. H. (Bill) Edwards, ordained as a Minister of the Presbyterian Church in 1958, was Superintendent of Ernabella Mission (1958–72), Superintendent of Mowanjum Mission (1972–73), and Minister of the Pitjantjatjara Parish based at Fregon (1973) and Amata (1976 –80). He has lectured in Aboriginal Studies at the Torrens College of Advanced Education, the South Australian College ix Ngapartji Ngapartji, In Turn, In Turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia of Advanced Education, and the University of South Australia. In retirement, he remains an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of South Australia, and interprets Pitjantjatjara in hospitals and courts. In 2008, he was awarded a PhD in history at Flinders University for his thesis, ‘Moravian Aboriginal Missions in Australia’. He is the author of An Introduction to Aboriginal Societies (Social Science Press, 2004), and editor of Traditional Aboriginal Society (Macmillan, 1998). He was awarded membership of the Order of Australia in 2009. Victoria Grieves is ARC Indigenous Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, currently developing the project, More than Family History: Race, Gender and the Aboriginal family in Australian history. The most accessed of her published works is the online book, Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy (Lowitja Publishing, 2009). Oliver Haag has been engaged in Indigenous Studies for almost ten years. He first became interested in the relationship between Indigenous autobiographies and the re/writing of Australian history. He has started to research European translations and marketing of Australian Indigenous literature and the ‘translation’ of Indigeneity into European contexts. In his ego-histoire, he explores the impact of travelling on his Romany heritage. He is currently working on a research project that investigates the functioning of idealised