Exploration archives and indigenous histories: An introduction

Konishi, Shino; Nugent, Maria; Shellam, Tiffany

doi:10.22459/ii.09.2015.01

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…In Fleetwood's work, a broader range of individuals are brought into view, including less famous European travellers and the Asian guides and porters who made their journeys possible. In this sense, this book is the latest link in a longer chain of valuable works that have sought to surface the contributions and experiences of people ignored within mainstream histories of geography (Jones, 2010; Driver, 2013; Konishi et al, 2015; Martin, 2020; Armston-Sheret, 2021).…”

Section: Diversifying the Histories Of Geographical Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why study the history of exploration?

Armston-Sheret

2023

Dialogues in Human Geography

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To some critical geographers, the history of exploration might seem an unpromising field. Colonial-era expeditions embody many of the values that most contemporary scholars seek to move away from, including racism, heroic masculinity, and imperial expansion. This reflection on Lachlan Fleetwood's important book, Science on the Roof of the World, will address one central question: 'What does the discipline of geography gain by further analysis of nineteenth century expeditions?' This is an important questionand not a new one (Barnett, 1995). In answering it, this commentary will reflect on the productive role that the history of exploration can play within contemporary geographical research.

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Section: Diversifying the Histories Of Geographical Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why study the history of exploration?

Armston-Sheret

2023

Dialogues in Human Geography

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“…Drawing on the insights of subaltern studies, Indigenous studies, and science and technology studies, historians of science and knowledge production have sought to dismantle heroic narratives of imperial and colonial exploration, commerce, and scientific enterprise across Australasia. Revisiting these accounts recognises the many Indigenous and local brokers, guides, and intermediaries, on whom non-Indigenous people depended, on land and at sea (see Konishi et al, 2015;Shellam et al, 2016; for Aotearoa, see Ballantyne, 2011). Although such gendered and racialised encounters were vital on the frontier, they were rarely acknowledged in metropolitan contexts (e.g., Mercer, 2021).…”

Section: Dismantling Heroic Narratives Of Knowledge Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From history of science to history of knowledge? Themes and perspectives in colonial Australasia

Beattie

Morgan

2021

History Compass

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This overview article presents some of the main approaches to histories of colonial science in Australasia as well as suggesting future areas of research. Given the plurality of knowledge systems in the colonial period, we argue that a framework defined by history of knowledge, rather than history of science, better reflects the realities of colonial Australasia and opens up opportunities for fresh and innovative scholarship. A 'history of knowledge systems' approach, we contend, has the potential to free the study of non-Western knowledge systems from normative approaches that define other systems only in relation to Western science. A history of knowledge approach, we believe, enables scholars to explore the complex ways in which knowledge-making in colonial Australasia arose from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous traditions, perspectives and practices. | INTRODUCTIONOn his return to Scotland in 1862, physician and botanist William Lauder Lindsay (1829-1880) reflected on his recent tour of New Zealand. In the 1862 pamphlet Place and Power of Natural History in Colonisation, he observed that 'the systematic, economical, and complete development of … [Otago's] resources can be effectually accomplished only by the aid of scientific observations and deductions'. Such views typified his generation's approach to science in Australasia as being primarily concerned with utilitarian matters of practical use to colonial development.For historians of science too, Lindsay's outlook reflects the predominant focus of the field in Australasia on 'science in the service of empire' during the long 19th century (e.g., Gascoigne, 1998).In this short review article, we map such approaches to the history of science in Australasia, and make a case for new directions in the field. Provocatively, we argue that rather than the frameworks traditionally offered by the history of science, the application of a history of knowledge lens would better serve historians seeking to make sense of the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples interpreted and understood the natural and

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“…The white explorers were heavily reliant on the knowledge of local Aboriginal peoples to find these precious reserves of water "hidden" in the landscape. As historians such as Shino Konishi (Konishi, Nugent & Shellam 2015;Konishi 2019) and Tiffany Shellam (Shellam et al 2016) have shown in Western Australia and elsewhere, their dependence on Indigenous knowledge unsettles narratives of colonial domination of the environment and offers insights into the nature of the interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples during the nineteenth century. For instance, a "native interpreter" and "three natives" accompanied explorer Augustus Gregory on his survey of the lands north of Perth in 1848 (Crawford & Crawford 2003).…”

Section: Water and The Inlandmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Continent Without a Cryohistory?

Morgan

2020

J North Stud

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Australia is a continent seemingly without a cryohistory. But take a closer look. Its cryohistory differs dramatically from that of the northern hemisphere—a contrast that long baffled Victorian geologists seeking evidence of glaciation in the Great South Land. Just as historians have sought to redress the image of a static Arctic through a new attention to its cryohistory, so too historians of Australia have sought to recover a continent that is anything but a “timeless land.” Its long geological history—its cryohistory—framed Aboriginal lifeways across the continent, which in turn, shaped colonial encounters in the aftermath of British invasion in 1788. Guiding this historical project have been the moral challenges of the settler nation’s legacy of Indigenous dispossession and displacement, and the unfolding planetary crisis of the Anthropocene and its implications for critically understanding deep time. This article examines the colonial hydrology of water scarcity in the goldfields of arid Western Australia in the late nineteenth century. It shows how access to freshwater became a flashpoint for relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples on an extractive frontier. At the turn of the twentieth century, water was the means by which to improve health, hygiene and cleanliness, without which the privileges of white civilisation could not be afforded. Although such conditions also developed elsewhere in settler Australia, the limited water availability on the eastern goldfields made the circumstances that emerged there especially dire. Accordingly, the material conditions of the arid inland—the product of Australia’s Pleistocene—came to bear on the nature of the encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples from the mid-nineteenth century. The very absence of ice in Australia’s cryohistory left its mark on the peoples of the eastern goldfields.

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Exploration archives and indigenous histories: An introduction

Cited by 4 publications

References 2 publications

Why study the history of exploration?

Why study the history of exploration?

From history of science to history of knowledge? Themes and perspectives in colonial Australasia

The Continent Without a Cryohistory?

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