Pursuing social justice through collaborative archaeologies in Aboriginal Australia

This paper identifies the emergence of the pursuit of social justice as a core focus of collaborative archaeologies in Aboriginal Australia. A wide range of case studies are examined, especially in relation to efforts to redress a ‘deep colonisation’ that silences Indigenous histories and fails to engage with Indigenous voices or experiences. This research is part of a wider global movement of community-based, activist and engaged archaeology that encompasses two principle approaches to social justice: the redistribution of resources and goods and the politics of recognition. It is informed by a more general concern with human rights, structural violence and ethical globalisation. In Australia, social justice archaeologies are both confronting, in terms of frontier violence, intentional structural violence and racism, but also inspirational/aspirational, in terms of Aboriginal nation building and the cultural facilitation of Aboriginal research ethics. The development of collaborative projects between Indigenous peoples and (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) archaeologists can be challenging. Indigenous archaeologists face particular challenges, including balancing sometimes conflicting expectations from communities with the demands of the profession. For non-Indigenous archaeologists, the challenge lies in the shift from working with Indigenous peoples to working for Indigenous peoples as part of a process in which social justice outcomes are a product, rather than a by-product, of archaeological research.

'Of Red War and Little Else': European Responses to Indigenous Violence in the Tasman World, c.1769-1850s

<p>Europeans responded to indigenous internecine violence in a variety of ways in the Tasman world from first contact to the middle of the nineteenth century. Whereas extant historiography has previously addressed European responses to Māori and Aboriginal violence in geographic and temporal isolation, a comparison spanning time and space augments knowledge of these responses. Violence was not the only aspect of indigenous societies Europeans responded to, nor was indigenous violence the only justification for colonisation. However an investigation of the ways in which Europeans represented and responded to indigenous violence enables a better understanding of the processes of the colonisation of the Tasman world. Indigenous internecine violence included cannibalism, infanticide, inter-gender violence, and inter-tribal warfare. Through a wide variety of European observations of this violence, this thesis identifies an initial conceptualisation of both New Zealand Māori and Aboriginal peoples of Australia as violent, cannibal ‘savages’. This conceptualisation was used to justify both colonisation and the related evangelical and colonial administrative attempts to suppress indigenous violence, as internecine violence was deemed ‘un-civilised’, unchristian, and unacceptable. Europeans attempted to suppress indigenous violence as it was seen both as an impediment to colonisation and, relatedly, as an inhibitor to the ‘redemption’ of indigenous peoples. While indigenous violence was seen as a barrier to colonisation, however, it was also simultaneously used to promote colonisation. Thus the attempted suppression of indigenous violence developed into the European mobilisation and utilisation of intra-Māori and intra-Aboriginal violence in the promotion of colonisation. The development of European responses to indigenous internecine violence – from conceptualisations, through attempted suppression, to utilisation – is here examined in a Tasman-world context, drawing upon the interactions between these varied responses. In tracing this development within a comparative framework, both indigenous agency and a rejection of the historiographically persistent notions of a homogenous (and harmonious) Aboriginal Australia and a homogenous Māori people during this time period are key threads.</p>

'Of Red War and Little Else': European Responses to Indigenous Violence in the Tasman World, c.1769-1850s

<p>Europeans responded to indigenous internecine violence in a variety of ways in the Tasman world from first contact to the middle of the nineteenth century. Whereas extant historiography has previously addressed European responses to Māori and Aboriginal violence in geographic and temporal isolation, a comparison spanning time and space augments knowledge of these responses. Violence was not the only aspect of indigenous societies Europeans responded to, nor was indigenous violence the only justification for colonisation. However an investigation of the ways in which Europeans represented and responded to indigenous violence enables a better understanding of the processes of the colonisation of the Tasman world. Indigenous internecine violence included cannibalism, infanticide, inter-gender violence, and inter-tribal warfare. Through a wide variety of European observations of this violence, this thesis identifies an initial conceptualisation of both New Zealand Māori and Aboriginal peoples of Australia as violent, cannibal ‘savages’. This conceptualisation was used to justify both colonisation and the related evangelical and colonial administrative attempts to suppress indigenous violence, as internecine violence was deemed ‘un-civilised’, unchristian, and unacceptable. Europeans attempted to suppress indigenous violence as it was seen both as an impediment to colonisation and, relatedly, as an inhibitor to the ‘redemption’ of indigenous peoples. While indigenous violence was seen as a barrier to colonisation, however, it was also simultaneously used to promote colonisation. Thus the attempted suppression of indigenous violence developed into the European mobilisation and utilisation of intra-Māori and intra-Aboriginal violence in the promotion of colonisation. The development of European responses to indigenous internecine violence – from conceptualisations, through attempted suppression, to utilisation – is here examined in a Tasman-world context, drawing upon the interactions between these varied responses. In tracing this development within a comparative framework, both indigenous agency and a rejection of the historiographically persistent notions of a homogenous (and harmonious) Aboriginal Australia and a homogenous Māori people during this time period are key threads.</p>

Relational Indigenous systems: Aboriginal Australian political ordering and reconfiguring IR

Ontological parochialism persists in International Relations (IR) scholarship among gestures towards relational ontological reinvention. Meanwhile, the inter-polity relations of many Indigenous peoples pre-date contemporary IR and tend to be substantively relational. This situation invites rethinking of IR's understandings of political order and inter-polity relations. We take up this task by laying out necessary methodological innovations to engage with Aboriginal Australia and then showing how conventional and much recent heterodox IR seek to create forms of ‘escape’ from lived political relations by asserting the powerful yet problematic social science mechanism of observer's distance. This demonstrates a need to take Aboriginal Australia as a system on its own terms to speak back to IR. We next explain how Aboriginal Australian people produce political order on the Australian continent through a ‘relational-ecological’ disposition that contrasts with IR's predominant ‘survivalist’ disposition. The accompanying capacity to manage survivalism through relationalism provides an avenue for engaging with and recasting some of mainstream IR's survivalist assumptions, including by considering an Aboriginal approach to multipolarity, without attempting ‘pure escape’ through alternative ontologies. We thus argue that while it is necessary to critique and recast dominant IR, doing so requires putting dominant IR and Indigenous understandings into relational exchange.