Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia

Turnbull, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51874-9

Cited by 67 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…(Turnbull 2017, 283) Stories like Dietrich's are not lone ones. Interest in Black bodies has long been profitable according to historian Paul Turnbull (2017) who examined the unpublished memoirs of Korah Halcomb Wills. Wills as it turns out was a butcher who moved from Melbourne to Bowen where he managed a hotel.…”

Section: Of Bones and Fleshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black bodies and Bioethics: Debunking Mythologies of Benevolence and Beneficence in Contemporary Indigenous Health Research in Colonial Australia

2021

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We seek to bring Black bodies and lives into full view within the enterprise of Indigenous health research to interrogate the unquestioned good that is taken to characterize contemporary Indigenous health research. We articulate a Black bioethics that is not premised upon a false logic of beneficence, rather we think through a Black bioethics premised upon an unconditional love for the Black body. We achieve this by examining the accounts of two Black mothers, fictional and factual rendering visible the racial violence Black bodies have been subjected to. We call for a Black bioethics that reimagines the Black body as beautiful and belonging-to both someone and somewhere.

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Section: Of Bones and Fleshmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black bodies and Bioethics: Debunking Mythologies of Benevolence and Beneficence in Contemporary Indigenous Health Research in Colonial Australia

2021

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“…The published photographs from this visit also leave out any sign of the busy port that operated at the mouth of the Stewart River, the surrounding pastoral land, or other features which might reveal the impact or extent of European settlement [59]. There have been suggestions his photographic practices were as much about not wanting to show "his Aboriginal friends as 'degraded' outcasts," [59] and historian Paul Turnbull provides evidence for elders from relevant clans stating that the ancestral remains acquired by Thomson would have been given to him "for good reasons" by community members who held him "in high regard" [60]. Whatever the motivations, the result was the same: photographic representations of Indigenous peoples shaped by an ethnographic eye, and more human remains entering museums, with all the potential problems around discovery, access, and repatriation that entails.…”

Section: (Howard Morphy In [57])mentioning

confidence: 99%

Collections in the Expanded Field: Relationality and the Provenance of Artefacts and Archives

Jones

2019

Heritage

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In 2017 archaeological evidence was published which indicates that modern humans first arrived in Australia around 65,000 years ago. Through the countless generations since, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples built deep connections to the landscape, developed rich material culture infused with story and myth, and used oral and ceremonial traditions to transmit knowledge over thousands of years. Yet, since European invasion at the end of the eighteenth century, the provenance of ethnographic and institutional collections has largely been documented with reference to white collectors and colonial institutions. Attitudes are starting to change. Recent decades have seen significant moves away from the idea of the authoritative institution toward relational museums and the co-creation of knowledge. But the structure and content of much museum documentation continues to lag behind contemporary attitudes. This paper looks at the documentation of Australian ethnographic and anthropological collections through the lens of changing perspectives on provenance, including archival notions of parallel and societal provenance. When placed in the context of recent developments in material culture theory, these collections help to highlight the limitations of existing documentation. The paper concludes with a call for community involvement and a more relational approach to documentation which better encompasses the complexities of provenance and the entangled institutional, archival, oral, and community perspectives that accumulate around artefacts in museums.Heritage 2019, 2 885 artefacts in particular, documented provenance often starts with collection by Australian, European, or American anthropologists and expeditions rather than with the names or stories of those who designed, manufactured, or used the item. This paper explores the broad concept of provenance in the context of museum collections and archival records, drawing on archival theory, museological and curatorial investigations into the 'relational museum,' and case studes from the history of collecting in Australia. 'Provenance' is here viewed as one element in an expanded relational field [3] of description which can (and should) contain other possibilities for the theory and practice of museum documentation. In doing so, museums can better reflect complex, entangled histories, and the multiple contexts and knowledge systems that surround artefacts and other collection items.As a white academic I do not write on behalf of Indigenous Australia. With hundreds of communities speaking more than 250 langauges, the Australian continent contains a huge diversity of cultures and perspectives, including many different attitudes towards museums, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions. Here I argue that those of us embedded in European institutions must not assume we have the experience, or the right, to make decisions regarding provenance, knowledge, and the representation of First Nations artefacts and ideas. Instead, we must critique existing practi...

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“…Osteological material, especially skulls, was thought to provide direct evidence about humankind's evolutionary genealogy. However, as Paul Turnbull as shown, many older specimens "were acquired in the pursuit of other, earlier avenues of scientific curiosity" (Turnbull, 2017, p. 3). These remains were collected to support now outmoded theories of racial science, in which human crania was used to validate notions of racial diversity and hierarchy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human remains as documents: implications for repatriation

Berryman

2019

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate the documentality of human remains in museum and research collections. Second, to provide a rationale for a processual model of documentation, which can account for their repatriation and eventual burial. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the repatriation issue. It considers an ethical argument developed to support claims for repatriation: the nominal identification of a body as a universal criterion for its burial. Based on Igor Kopytoff’s processual model of commoditisation, it looks to cultural anthropology to help explain how objects can move between a document and non-document state. Findings Human remains can be understood as examples of information-as-thing. However, while document theory can readily account for the expanding realm of documentation, it cannot adequately accommodate instances where documentality is revoked, and when something ceases to be a document. When a human biological specimen is returned, the process that made it serve as a document is effectively reversed. When remains are interred, they revert to their primary standing, as people. The process of becoming a document is therefore not unidirectional, and document status not permanent. Research limitations/implications The implications of a processual model of documentation are discussed. Such a model must be able to account for things as they move into and out of the document state, and where the characteristics of documentality change through time. Originality/value This paper explores problematic material not usually discussed in relation to document theory. The repatriation movement poses a challenge to a discourse predicated on documentation as a progressively expanding field.

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Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia

Cited by 67 publications

References 0 publications

Black bodies and Bioethics: Debunking Mythologies of Benevolence and Beneficence in Contemporary Indigenous Health Research in Colonial Australia

Black bodies and Bioethics: Debunking Mythologies of Benevolence and Beneficence in Contemporary Indigenous Health Research in Colonial Australia

Collections in the Expanded Field: Relationality and the Provenance of Artefacts and Archives

Human remains as documents: implications for repatriation

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