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Indigenous Australian Archaeology - Ep 38
324 Plays4 years ago
On today’s episode Jessica hosts Dr. Chris Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Australian Studies and Archaeology at Flinders University. In 2017, Dr. Wilson was the first Indigenous Australian to be awarded a PhD in Archaeology. Dr. Wilson tells how the discovery of family history/geneaology, family and community involvement, and the archaeology of whaling all tied together within his Ph.D research. Throughout the episode he also shows how the archaeological research being done in Australia today, including his own fascinating zooarchaeology work, is breaking down misperceptions of Indigenous Australians. Towards the end of the episode Dr. Wilson touches on Indigenous rights and repatriation in Australia. Note: This includes a brief (and disturbing) discussion on repatriation from anatomy labs.
Links
- https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/christopher.wilson
- https://www.flinders.edu.au/braveminds/past-perspectives-from-a-pioneer
- David Horton aboriginal map
- Series-First Inventors
- https://www.buttermedia.com.au/
- https://www.buttermedia.com.au/dr-chris-wilson
- Boomerang
- Rutledge Book [Coming 2020]
- Ngarrindjeri Ruwar and the Archaeology of the Lower Murray, South Australia
- PhD Thesis
- National Indigenous Knowledges and Research Network (NIRAKN)
- International community on monuments science conference
- Museum exhibit- National Museum
- ABC News 24 - Dr Christopher Wilson - Ngarrindjeri archaeology
- IPINCH BIO
- Articles about becoming the first Indigenous Australia to get a PhD
- https://www.murrayvalleystandard.com.au/story/5017129/ngarrindjeri-man-chris-wilson-becomes-first-aboriginal-person-to-earn-phd-in-archaeology/
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-20/first-indigenous-australian-to-complete-archaeology-phd-to-grad/8961894
- Chris’ Email: christopher.wilson@flinders.edu.au
Contact
- Jessica
- Jessica@livingheritageanthropology.org
- @livingheritageA
- @LivingHeritageResearchCouncil
- Lyle
- Lyle.Balenquah@gmail.com
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
We're excited to announce that our very own podcasting platform, Zencaster, has become a new sponsor to the show. Check out the podcast discount link in our show notes and stay tuned for why we love using Zen for the podcast. You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Heritage Voices Episode Introduction
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to Heritage Voices, episode 38. I'm Jessica Uquinto and I'll be your host today. And today we are talking about Indigenous Australian archaeology.
00:00:37
Speaker
Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Nooch or Ute People's Treaty Lands, the Dineata, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland.
Meet Dr. Chris Wilson
00:00:48
Speaker
On today's show, we have Dr. Chris Wilson. Dr. Wilson is a senior lecturer in Indigenous Australian Studies and Archaeology at Slenders University. He is from the Lower Murray Lakes and Kurong in South Australia.
00:01:02
Speaker
Dr. Wilson received a bachelor's of archaeology from Flinders University, as well as a professional certificate in Indigenous research training and practice from the University of Melbourne. In 2017, Dr. Wilson was the first Indigenous Australian to be awarded a PhD in archaeology, which he received from Flinders University. In 2010, he served on the Expert and Community Reference Committee for the Department of Indigenous Affairs of the Federal Australian Government, Canberra.
00:01:32
Speaker
for the review of the International Repatriation Advisory Policy. Welcome to the show, Chris. Thank you for having me. Yeah, okay.
Journey into Archaeology
00:01:41
Speaker
So I want to get this started with asking you how you got into archaeology and indigenous studies.
00:01:51
Speaker
OK, so I guess I first heard about university when I was in high school and I would have been around 13 years old and I didn't know that it was an option back then. It was actually my uncle who came to visit Franklin University. He was working there at the time as a recruitment officer and I mentioned that it's possible for Indigenous students to apply to university through a program.
00:02:15
Speaker
That kind of set, I guess, the little emotion for me in terms of thinking about university. I'd always been, you know, interested in culture, in history. I love doing society environment projects and also astronomy and the dinosaurs. So I was always, you know, I had this curious mind and I was, you know, always exploring lands around home and farmlands and our creeks and our rivers. So I guess I had a, you know, quite a
00:02:45
Speaker
interest at a young age for exploring, you know, country and exploring culture and history and heritage. So when I heard about university and what the options were, my uncle mentioned archaeology and that popped, you know, that immediately was an interest for me. So I had chosen archaeology for my tertiary entrance rank.
00:03:10
Speaker
and also forensic science because I was interested in human remains and burials and it wasn't necessarily that I wanted to work around human remains. I just was fascinated by the skeleton and the body and
00:03:23
Speaker
And I knew that there was a lot of burials within our country, a lot of Aboriginal burials. So I chose forensic science, but I guess I ended up going with archaeology for
Cultural Exploration and Identity
00:03:35
Speaker
a few reasons. I mean, the first is that in terms of being able to travel attracted me. The second was I could explore my own culture and heritage and identity.
00:03:45
Speaker
And the third one was that it sounded like a really fun and exciting kind of career to have. So, yeah, I did my year 11 and 12, which we call SACE here in South Australia. It's the South Australian Certificate of Education. And I had just gotten the score I needed to get into archaeology. And I was the first in my family to go to university and to do a bachelor's degree.
00:04:11
Speaker
And as soon as I started, I just knew that archaeology was going to be the career that I was going to follow. I guess I was expecting to do classical archaeology as well and travel broadly, Australia and the world. But that first year really kind of busted that myth for me in terms of, you know, we could explore in Egypt and Greece and, you know, be Indiana Jones.
00:04:40
Speaker
There was so much work in Australia and I didn't realise how much more work there was to do here. It was just amazing and mind-blowing for me. I made the decision quite early with a few other friends who were also Aboriginal. There were only three of us who were Aboriginal who started.
00:04:57
Speaker
back in 2000 was our first year.
PhD Research and Whaling Insights
00:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, I just knew that I wanted to work with my mob and my people from there on end. And there wasn't anybody in my community doing archaeology or that was trained in archaeology. So I was pretty much mentored by elders and community members and other academic staff throughout my degree. So I'm quite lucky to have the mentors around both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.
00:05:26
Speaker
And yeah, I've always been kind of a proud Aboriginal Australian. I like to acknowledge both my cultural heritage and I think it's important. It's certainly important in this kind of field because it's so political that I kind of I'm upfront with who I am and my cultural heritage because I'm not just exploring my Aboriginal heritage. I'm also exploring my non-Aboriginal heritage and there's quite interesting intersections which I've uncovered during my PhD research
00:05:56
Speaker
which I'm starting to follow as one of my lines of research and interests. Can you share about that? That sounds really interesting. Yep, so I guess when I was doing my background research for my PhD, my literature review, and then my archival research, I came across some archives and some newspaper clippings in a journal
00:06:22
Speaker
that was written by Norman Tyndale. And Norman Tyndale is seen as one of the founding fathers for archaeology in Australia. He worked out of the South Australia Museum in the 20s and 30s and 40s, I think. And yeah, he's acknowledged as our forefather for Australian archaeology. A lot of anthropology and
00:06:47
Speaker
and archaeology excavations and surveys across the country. He took a lot of photographs as well of Aboriginal people and collected artefacts. So the South Australian Museum actually has one of the largest collections, archaeological collections in the world of Aboriginal artefacts.
00:07:05
Speaker
In that collection there's human remains, there's a lot of wooden implements because down in our community or down our region there was quite a lot of wooden implements as part of the tour here. A lot of photographs from that colonial period, so you documented quite a lot and spoke to a lot of elders within our past, we had a lot of knowledge and were last speakers in our community, also last people who were initiated in our community.
00:07:31
Speaker
And so in these journals, and there's quite a lot of them, were called the River Murray journals. And in one of my newspaper clipping of my uncle, his name was Susie Wilson. His name was John, but his nickname was Susie, and that's how he was known. He gave a report in that newspaper article at the age of 102. And he spoke about two things, he spoke about
00:08:02
Speaker
Hunting kangaroos when he was younger, in that day, which was in the 1930s when he was interviewed, there weren't as many younger people hunting kangaroo and he would hunt 20 to 30 kangaroo back in his day, but in the 20s and 30s that was starting to die down.
00:08:19
Speaker
And the second thing was relating to whaling and sealing in that area because we live along the coastal region and we have quite a large island, Kangarooong. It's one of the largest islands offshore from Australia mainland, the science of Tasmania and a few others. Yeah, he spoke about how the whaling industry started to impact our culture. And so he spoke about
00:08:47
Speaker
One of the accounts of whaling the experiences he had with some of the whalers and one day they got dragged out to sea when they were trying to harpoon a whale and they got dragged kilometers out and it took them a couple of days to swim back. Wow.
00:09:03
Speaker
For me, it kind of, I thought, well, there's quite a lot of knowledge around whaling about the whales. And our people didn't traditionally, obviously, they didn't traditionally hunt whale. I mean, they're the biggest mammal on Earth, but they certainly had ceremonies around whales. So when the whales would get beached, particularly around the encounter bay, the encounter bay region in Victor Harbor,
00:09:32
Speaker
And there would be a big ceremony for that whale. And at that point in time, people would actually use the whale for food, for ceremony, for trade, and so all components of that whale. But I asked a few questions by one of the elders, Uncle George Taboru, who's now passed, about
00:09:55
Speaker
why my uncle was talking about the whale. And he said, oh, that's probably because the whale was one of your nachis.
Archaeological Projects and Community Involvement
00:10:01
Speaker
And a nachi, you know, language is totem. And for me, that was quite interesting. I'm starting to reconnect with my cultures through the animals and through whales and through whaling industry. So there's this interesting intersection between who I am and my identity and an archaeologist, but also, you know, my kind of heritage and my genealogies as well.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, so the cult whaling thing story, I started to write into my PhD, and what that meant for me as an identity person and starting to rediscover that component of my history. And yeah, so I looked back in the genealogies, which were held by the South Australian Museum, and in Tyndale, again, he wrote up these genealogies, and he also
00:10:45
Speaker
helped to draw up a map of Aboriginal Australia. So you probably might have seen there's a map that's done by David Horton. It's a colourful map which shows all the different nations and groups in Australia. Well, he actually based his work on Norman Tindale's maps as well.
00:11:07
Speaker
The genealogies of families, when I would look back at them, it took me back to one of our amicable ancestors, her name was Fanny.
00:11:17
Speaker
And it wasn't much recorded about Fanny from what I've tried to find, other than she was from Cape Jervis, that she was taken by a whaler called Wilson. And again, there's not much information about Wilson, but Wilson took Fanny as a wife and a domestic slave, I guess, or domestic wife over to Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island had one of the
00:11:42
Speaker
major whaling stations for, you know, the southeast and that whole southern coastline before South Australia was set up as a colony. So that was back in the 1800s. Yeah, so it's from Wilson the Whaler, who we think is French, from that kind of French whaling industry. But there's other reports, you know, that is Scottish, that is Finnish, and
00:12:08
Speaker
So I'm trying to find out his kind of connections. Yeah, but Wilson and Fanny, they had, yeah, I guess children from where I'm descended from.
00:12:18
Speaker
And so that's part of what I'm trying to explore now is the whole history about whaling. And I'm working with Dr. Adam Patterson, who's a colleague of mine with the South Australia Maritime Museum around that whole whaling story. So we're starting to, well, we want to start an archeological project around targeting some of the whale sites and some of the whaling sites that they had on the coast and on the KI.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah for future research so that's one of the kinds of lines of research that I'm taking and I've got some of my family involved in that who are interested in learning about their culture and how do some young people who are doing genealogies as well so yeah that's that. Yeah that's really cool so we're already almost at our first break
00:13:11
Speaker
But I, okay, so there's, before we go to a break, just a couple questions to get you thinking while we're on break, and then we'll come back and start with these. So, I mean, I'd love to hear more about the community or family involvement that you mentioned at the end there. And then, also what you're looking at specifically, archaeologically, in terms of the whaling sites. So if you could talk a little bit more about like how this all ties together.
00:13:41
Speaker
That would be really interesting. So with that, we will be right back.
00:13:47
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:15:08
Speaker
All right, and we are back.
Ecological and Cultural Significance of Lower Murray
00:15:11
Speaker
Okay, so we were just talking about all the different aspects of your PhD, so the personal family connections, and the new community and family involvement, and then the archeology of the whaling states itself. So you were telling us about the first of those three, and I'm really curious to hear more about the second two still.
00:15:37
Speaker
family slash community involvement, and what exactly you were looking at from an archaeological standpoint. Yep. Okay, so just in terms of my family involvement in the community. So I'm Narangiri. Narangiri are a group from the Lower Murray Lakes in Coorong.
00:15:55
Speaker
in South Australia. And there's different particular tribes or languages within the Navajari nation. I guess it's more of recently we kind of, we call ourselves or collectively as one nation. My particular family connects to the Kurong area, but also to the southeast, which is down where Kingston is along the Kurong. So a lot of that Kurong area for me is
00:16:25
Speaker
is my connection to country. My path is in the Lower Murray. In the Lower Murray area is quite important in that river system because it starts to meander through towards the
00:16:40
Speaker
the southern coastline into Lake Alexandrina, Lake Albert and then along the Kurong and then out to sea. So, I mean, that whole ecologically, that whole area is quite significant because there's fresh and saltwater in that region. It's quite abundant in terms of food and resources.
00:17:00
Speaker
We have river redgums, one of the largest fish in Australia, the Murray Cod, was the main fish for the river. There are also other types of fish species, smaller fish, lots of plants and vegetables. And then you move to the kurong and you've got all the saltwater fish. And then you've got ducks and you've got swans and birds and swan eggs and swan egging.
00:17:27
Speaker
quite important down that way. So I was using nets for trapping fish and birds and stopping the flight past the birds. The current is one of the, it's on a register called Ramsar and Ramsar is like an international place of significance. So it's kind of equivalent to a World Heritage kind of area in some way. I mean, it's significant because of all the bird life that's there.
00:17:54
Speaker
It's one of the areas that the birds migrate from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere and they do that on a yearly basis and it has one of the most largest range of species of birds that come never used down to that area. And the gunner jettie is seen as quite important people for looking after a lot of different types of species of animals.
00:18:17
Speaker
particularly boiled birds and swans and ducks. We also got the pelican, which we call Norrie. I don't know if anyone's seen Stormboy. Mr Percival was a pelican and Stormboy was a movie which we grew up with and that was filmed at the Huron. So yeah, I guess I'm just trying to paint a picture here of how significant the area is because archeologically we can see all of that when we do our excavations, when we're out there in our country doing surveys. The whole country has one of the largest
00:18:48
Speaker
recorded areas for burial sites and then there was an archaeologist called Colin Pardo in the 80s who actually
00:18:56
Speaker
referred to these burials in the Lower Murray area as being like cemeteries. And that's important because the idea of Aboriginal people being nomads and nomadic and wandering around the landscape and not having any fixed places to burial was kind of busted. You know, that kind of myth was busted by Colin Pardo who started to call them, you know, these burials as cemeteries because there are markers in the landscape.
00:19:22
Speaker
People did bury families together in certain ways and there were certain traditions and practices for it.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I guess that gives us an idea about population size and that if there are quite a lot of resources in the area, archaeologists are starting to see quite a large number of this in the landscape through burials and through their analysis of human remains. And we know that there's actually quite a lot of people there living and there's a lot of organisation in terms of the social organisation of space.
00:19:52
Speaker
the way that people interact, the way that people, their cultural practices. So there's, yeah, quite a lot of symbolic and social organization that goes with large populations. So the Long Murray scene is having one of the largest populations of Aboriginal people at the point of contact in Australia.
00:20:18
Speaker
And this is one of the research questions that Australian archaeologists investigate.
00:20:24
Speaker
I guess the river system in the Kurong is littered with, well not littered, but scattered with shell mittens.
Diet, Lifestyle, and Archaeological Findings
00:20:31
Speaker
So shellfish is one of the other primary resources that people ate. And there's mussel shells in the river. There's two different types of mussel shells. That was one of the sites that I excavated were midden sites. Within those middens, you get obviously bone from animals, so snakes, lizard, fish, the Murray cod.
00:20:52
Speaker
ear bone, which we call the odolith, is actually quite significant for archaeologists because we can start to determine the species through the odolith. Species, even humans, have ear bones, and each ear bone has a signature in there. And they also grow rings throughout their life. So it's like a tree where it grows tree rings. And the fish also does that in its life. And because of the type of
00:21:22
Speaker
material that the body produces or that fish produce in terms of its carbonate type of material, the ear bone forms.
00:21:32
Speaker
soaks up all the kind of elements in the environment. So we're able to do analysis, chemical analysis. We're able to do, you know, typological analysis. We can try to determine the minimum length of the fish by that, and we can do aging as well. So one of my colleagues, Dr. Morgan Despaine, she did a fish odour list from the Loa Murray from my excavation, but also from the Kurong and another fish from there called the Kurongmala.
00:21:58
Speaker
and a few other different types of species of fish. And she actually found that the Murray cod, one of them from my excavations, and was at least 2.2 meters in length. And that's quite important for Australian archaeologists, but for environmentalists, but I guess for understanding the type of environment that was before, the type of environment and the ecology that we had before contact.
00:22:23
Speaker
So if we have bigger fish in, the largest recorded fish since contact is 1.8 meters. So we're talking about 0.4 meters or 400, yeah, so 0.4 meters at least, then we know that there were quite large fish. And we have stories of the pondi, which is the Murray cod and pondi traveled down and crowded the river in our region. You know, pondi is described as being a giant fish. And so,
00:22:49
Speaker
The stories from our elders kind of correlate with some of the research that we've found. And we don't compare it necessarily, but in terms of being able to find synergies and correlate some of that and try to find standing between the indigenous or our cultural worldviews and the archaeological research,
00:23:13
Speaker
Something in which I tried to explore my PhD and it's something that a lot of people are starting to acknowledge in Australian archaeology and that kind of deep, the idea of deep time is something that people started to look at and explore. The idea of everything people having agriculture or like agriculture.
00:23:34
Speaker
is something that people are starting to explore.
Australian Archaeology Overview
00:23:37
Speaker
And also, you know, the kinds of navigation techniques that Aboriginal people had in terms of being able to sail up and down rivers, you know, sail on lakes to, you know, in the northern part of Australia, Australian archaeologists are still trying to find research around how human, you know, how ancestors actually moved out of Africa, in theory.
00:24:01
Speaker
into Indonesia and then across the sea. So they're still trying to find the evidence for the sea craft and the watercraft and then the technology that actually was able to bring populations over and be able to be sustainable across to the Australian continent. So there's quite big questions in Australian archaeology that are still being explored. Archaeologists
00:24:27
Speaker
the maritime area explore that and I've got some colleagues at Flinders University and Dr Jonathan Benjamin who just
00:24:35
Speaker
who is leading a project up in Western Australia, which is looking at submerged landscapes, looking for the sites and artefacts underwater, which they found some interesting results. There's lots starting to come out, I think. But, yeah, in the southern area, there's a lot of burials. We have rock, rock heart, rock engravings mainly, and a lot of shelving sites, a lot of scarred trees.
00:25:00
Speaker
where people have carved out their canoes and their shields and to make implements like boomerang and other types of wooden implements. And the boomerang is quite an important implement for us as well. And David Ganakon, who is on the $50 note, is accredited to being one of the first indigenous people to author in English. And he was also an inventor. So he created blue, well, he had blueprints and
00:25:30
Speaker
theories and ideas which related to physics and motion, perpetual motion. But he also used the kinds of ideas around the boomerang and that technology for ideas around propellers, helicopter propellers, and flight, and also for electric shears, which helped establish Australia's agricultural industry early on. So they've been icons on F-50 notes,
00:25:58
Speaker
you know, being, you know, acknowledged for his contribution to, I guess, Australian culture and just culture and history and, and science and engineering. And so he's authored a few books in English. He, yeah, there was a part of the university he named after him, it's called the Dave Unipon School. I'm currently working with a
00:26:24
Speaker
a media company called Butter Media and our National Indigenous Television to, yeah, in regards to a series which they've called the first inventors.
Education and Indigenous Curriculum
00:26:35
Speaker
And this is still new in their development. It's the second season for them. And they're not proposing that they do, you know, one of the episodes around the boomerang, because I think it's quite,
00:26:46
Speaker
People don't really give it enough credit in terms of how important it was to make, the kind of skills that go into making wooden implements and the kind of tools for actually using a boomerang and making that come back or even to hunt animals and the different styles and different types is quite fascinating.
00:27:07
Speaker
and gives us all an understanding about technology and weaponry and how important that's been for our modern world. The weapons that we have in our modern times are kind of built on indigenous people's knowledge and their wooden implements and I'm sure that's the same in North America in terms of knowledge that was there.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, so this has started to come out in Australia in terms of us being able to use science and history for education and for curriculum. So working with a few of our education departments and university around regionising curriculum, some around archaeology and heritage. Yeah, people are really interested in the science and engineering space and also agriculture and environmental science as well. So yeah, so there's like a million things that I want to ask you about all of that.
00:27:57
Speaker
Okay. Well, I'm going to save one of them for after the break, which is about the indigenizing curriculum. So we'll save that one for a moment. Two quicker ones. Forgive my ignorance as a, as an American, but you know, the, the boomerang it's, it's always kind of, it seems like it's used as like a joke a lot in like, um, movies and TV. It's like always, so I just, I'd be curious to get your perspective on that because obviously you're showing.
00:28:25
Speaker
a great deal of respect for it, which, I mean, sounds... Yeah, I mean, there's different topics.
00:28:33
Speaker
with the two types of boomerangs of iron are also more widely used for Aboriginal people, both for hunting. Obviously, there's a returning boomerang, which is also a hunting one, but there's also a larger style of boomerang. It doesn't return, but it's for larger mammals and animals, and you get those ones more in the Central Australia.
00:28:59
Speaker
East Coast of Australia. But yeah, so there's hundreds of different styles of the boomerang. So the key to the technology or the carving and the process of it is something which I'm exploring with the South Australian Museum, but because of all the different types of boomerangs and sizes and lengths and all that kind of thing. But from what I understand, it's the actual face of the boomerang, which
00:29:28
Speaker
and the wood's been carved, which helps, which I guess is the scientific aspect on it, which helps the returning brim rings come back. It's not just about the shape of it. It's also that kind of carved, what's carved on the face on it as well. Yeah, but you may have to send a link to kind of explain it, because I'm not too sure of the aspects of that, of the brim ring and how to make it. I mean, that's something which we're going to explore with some elders who are still doing some wood carving.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's fascinating. It's one of those things over here where it's, I don't know, you almost one don't know whether or not that really exists because it seems so amazing. Although, like I said, the representation of it is a little, I don't know what the word would be exactly. It's not coming to mind, but not the most respectful, I guess. So the other part that I wanted to ask you about, which I mean, I guess ties exactly into that too.
00:30:28
Speaker
is what you would want the world to know about Indigenous Australians. You talked a lot just now about some of the way that Australian archaeology is changing with the cemetery idea and the idea that people weren't just nomadic and all of these different aspects that you mentioned.
00:30:52
Speaker
If there was something that you would like to set the record straight on, what would that be? Oh, I think...
00:31:01
Speaker
Some of the dating techniques in Australian archaeology enabled us to put the date back to 70,000 years and that's some of our colleagues, Professor Chris Clarkson and his team and his research helped put that date back even further to 75,000 or something like that and I mean that's pretty
00:31:26
Speaker
pretty amazing in terms of those dating techniques and the scientific techniques that go with it and the instruments that you use for them. But I guess there's limitations with those and that's part of what we understand when we're doing our work in Australia is that the instruments that we use for dating only take us back a certain time. So the radiocarbon dating only goes back to
00:31:51
Speaker
100,000 years or so, and then have to start using other techniques. So what we do understand, which isn't really on the record as such, because it's not something that you can really publish without having it tested properly, but we know that there's science here and we know that they're older than that. And we know that, you know, when Aboriginal people talk about and our elders talk about, we've been here for a long time or we've been here for,
00:32:19
Speaker
you know, since the beginning of time, they're not just clips that we just dismiss. In Australia, I call just a really respectful with that in terms of understanding that there was actually quite a long, deep time here that people are conveying. And yeah, so the work with the submerged landscapes, for example,
00:32:43
Speaker
is because the sea level changes over time have risen. And so a lot of sites, if they're going to be older, are actually going to be under the water. And so the maritime archaeologists are doing some amazing work and I just want them acknowledged because
00:32:58
Speaker
It's quite a different landscape under the water. I haven't got my diving license and I haven't done any of that work and I haven't been on ships to do any of that kind of work. And it's amazing kind of work that they do. It's quite rough terrain. It's different. I mean, we're using the same methods and techniques, but they have to be very skilled in
00:33:18
Speaker
recording those sites underwater and so some of this research is starting to come out now with their work in the last five years where they've found the first site underwater up in WA where they found the first artifact up there and I'm looking forward to reading their work for that to be shared because
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, we know, we knew that they were there and we know that there's older sites around them. Yeah, I guess that's the kind of space that people are going into. They're moving into, you know, there's submerged landscapes on the water. There's a lot of rock art sites which have been destroyed because of mining here in Australia, particularly up in the Burrup-Gilbert region of Western Australia. And I haven't been up there myself, but from my colleagues, they've been waking up there for years recording the sites that they can before they get destroyed. You know, there's,
00:34:08
Speaker
Lots of fascinating work up in the Northern Territory, in Queensland, in the Torres Strait Islands. We have amazing shell mounds. We've got, you know, in the east coast, and we've got mountains up there. That's the start of our kind of river system because of the mountains and the snow. And then when they melt, it starts our river system. So, yeah, and then we've got some islands around too, you know, around the
00:34:35
Speaker
and the coast as well which are quite significant.
00:34:38
Speaker
You know, in that desert area, they've got quite a lot of desert in central Australia. Some of the arid region is, you know, it's in inhabitable, like it's places where a lot of our early explorers actually died trying to cross those places.
Future of Indigenous Archaeology and Education
00:34:56
Speaker
And yeah, it's just amazing the kind of knowledge that some of those Aboriginal communities still live there have, like in terms of being able to have water holes and know where to go.
00:35:05
Speaker
the knowledge that goes with plant biology and medicines. And that's still culture and history, or culture that exists still. And Alice Springs and that central desert area, they still have traditional practices and people still go up there from the cities to engage in ceremony or the sorry business. Yeah, we've got a lot of history here and a lot to look forward to as well, in terms of the shared history and new generation of people coming through.
00:35:35
Speaker
and hopefully a new generation of politicians. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the kind of work that people are starting to bring out and the new generation, young people who've got all these different skills across all different regions who are Aboriginal. I'm sure it's like that in North America too, where, yeah, they're just very savvy with technology and have very good ideas. And yeah, just looking forward to future generations too.
00:36:03
Speaker
All right. Okay. We are already at our second break point, but I want to touch on a lot of that right when we get back. So we'll be right back.
00:36:13
Speaker
Hello, it's Jim Eagle. Please join us for the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirit Society's 11th annual Two-Spirit Powel In-Person, or online this year at the San Francisco Fort Mason Center on Saturday, February 12th, 2022. Gourd Dance at noon and grand entry begins at 1 p.m. There will be over 60 vendors selling all types of indigenous products and crafts. Powel dances from all over the U.S. will be competing in contests all day long. We'll also be having several delicious fried bread taco vendors. For more information, go to baits.org. That's B-A-A-I-T-S.org. COVID protocols will be in effect. See you there.
00:36:45
Speaker
All right. And we are back. First of all, I mean, we were talking before about your PhD and I want to move on from your more recent work that you were starting to talk about. I feel like I had heard even before you were recommended to me for the podcast in 2017, I feel like I saw something about how you were the first indigenous Australian to be awarded a PhD in archaeology.
00:37:15
Speaker
And I was like really surprised by that at the time because, I mean, we don't have a ton of PhD archeologists that are indigenous here in the US, but we have some. And I was pretty surprised. I guess you always think like Australia and Canada are better with indigenous issues than the US. So that one, that really surprised me, but that's pretty awesome.
00:37:41
Speaker
I guess there's probably a couple of reasons for it. And I was surprised too, actually, to tell you the truth. So I didn't even know that until probably I stepped around the middle of my PhD. People started to ask whether there were any other Indigenous psychologists in Australia that had PhDs, and I don't think so because
00:38:01
Speaker
You know, a lot of the colleagues and connections I've made have been from the US or New Zealand, and there's certainly people there. I guess there's probably a couple of reasons. One is, in Australia, the way that archaeology is practiced is a little bit different to the US and to some of our neighbours and colleagues. So it did start as anthropology here in the 50s and 60s.
00:38:31
Speaker
And then around the 60s that changed. The Australian National University in Canberra was the first place that had archaeology as a discipline. And so they started to teach archaeology as a discipline and they didn't have anthropology as such within it. And that could be one of the reasons why we don't have many.
00:38:52
Speaker
We did have some in anthropology, but not in archaeology. There weren't a lot of universities who were teaching it as well. I guess in the 60s and 70s here, that's only, I guess, the beginning of the time when Aboriginal people actually started to have rights recognised.
00:39:15
Speaker
And people were allowed to start to engage in marriage, in the education system, and to do other things like vote. I mean, different on different states. So some states, average people could vote right from back when it was a colony. But in terms of like the federal politics and the federal landscape, the 60s are the kind of time when we had a referendum. So 1967 referendum. That's not too recognized. Sorry.
00:39:42
Speaker
Oh, I was just saying that's nuts. I had no idea it was that late. That's crazy. Yeah. And so, I mean, and that was the kind of year of, you know, one of the years of others kind of global, cultural, social, political movements happening, you know, rock and different movements. So the Black Panther movement, I think was one thing, or was one movement that Aboriginal people really picked up on in the US.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, they even started their own kind of freedom rides here. And Charlie Perkins, you know, was the guy, was the Aboriginal leader, I guess, who started our freedom rides over here. Yeah, and started to be more vocal and activists, and they started to fight for Aboriginal rights. So it wasn't until the 60s that, yeah, I guess people were starting to, Aboriginal people were starting to engage in education.
00:40:35
Speaker
So at our university, the first graduate was in the 1970s. And a lot of those people went into the areas like education and health, obviously because those were areas that our community needed more people to be trained in, and nursing, midwifery,
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of teachers at that time. So in terms of science, areas of science, that has only been a more recent, I guess, choice for Aboriginal people. As I said earlier in the podcast, I was the first in my family to go to university and do a bachelor's degree. I think only one of maybe two or three in my whole community.
00:41:18
Speaker
who have a PhD. I'm only one of a handful from my high school to have a PhD as well. So the area that I grew up in is south of Adelaide. It's a low socio and economic region. And yeah, not a lot of people have access to that kind of university education as well. Yeah. So that's some of the reasons why.
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah, certainly I'm getting, yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess other people have been proud and I'm proud and still quite a bit getting used to that. Certainly the industry likes to use that as a platform to evolve. They've had their involvement in that.
00:42:07
Speaker
But certainly Professor Claire Smith was my mentor at Flinders University. She was one of my supervisors for my PhD. She's chair of the World Archaeological Congress. I think you may have interviewed her already. No, but she's the one who recommended you. Yeah. So she's been a great mentor and she's networked
00:42:27
Speaker
and connected me internationally. And she helped also with getting my first book contract with Rutledge. And that's, you know, in the anthropology and archaeology section. What's the title? What's the title?
00:42:47
Speaker
and the archaeology of the Lower Murray. So that's the preliminary time moment. It's a little bit long, but it's based on the PhD. It focuses more on the archaeology of the Lower Murray and the ideas of country and indigenous ways of doing things on country.
00:43:08
Speaker
I guess the intersections between Nalangiti and Indigenous knowledge systems and the archaeological record and archaeological knowledge and my kind of my journey as well. So just bringing those two standpoints together. So when is that going to come out? It's August.
00:43:29
Speaker
August? Okay. I guess the other the other type of work involved in has been with the National Indigenous Research and Knowledge's Network. That was a quite a large research initiative funded by the Australian Research Council. I think it was over a million dollars funded for that project. I was one of the partners that was with a group of the 50 Indigenous researchers from around the country and led by Aileen Morton Robinson and
00:43:58
Speaker
started in 2014 and it's just about to finish but it was a huge investment by the government to put funds and resources and training into training up more indigenous researchers in masters in PhD level so I was involved in some of that network in terms of you know doing some of the workshops bringing people together. I also number
00:44:23
Speaker
research projects being around repatriation of human remains. The work I did before my PhD was working with my community and helping with negotiations and with the delegation bringing back old people's remains from overseas, from their museum collections, from their anatomy collections, and also helping once they're back home about re-bearing them back on country and the process for that.
Repatriation and Healing through Heritage
00:44:48
Speaker
Some of my work's been around the repatriation space and I continue to have involvement in that space. I was recently talking with John Cardie from the South Australian Museum and he heads up the, I guess, humanities part of the South Australian Museum and he's
00:45:09
Speaker
Really keen to get, well he already has some more Aboriginal people getting involved in the training aspect in the museum. Just looking, they're doing repatriation programs in there that he wants to open up, you know, I guess a space for researchers to come in for education and research training. And also, you know, redevelop the Aboriginal Cultures Gallery because as I said, the South Australian Museum has one of the largest, I think the largest collection of Aboriginal artifacts in the world.
00:45:36
Speaker
And a lot of those artifacts were collected by Norman Tindale, but over time. So there's some discussion there about continuing work in repatriation but for the state.
00:45:50
Speaker
I'm so confused. You mentioned that there was human remains in museum collections and anatomy collections. I don't have ever heard about this. Yeah, so overseas and even here domestically.
00:46:08
Speaker
The anatomy museums, I guess the anatomy departments of universities where they did their medical training used Aboriginal people's bodies because it was legislated under the state like in South Australia when Aboriginal people died. This is before the 1967 referendum. The Aboriginal people's bodies would become owned by the state. And what happened to you was that a lot of the
00:46:39
Speaker
People were used for medical research, for medical training. They were also sent overseas for the same purpose, mainly to the UK, but in other European institutions. A lot of those institutions were medical establishments, so they had anatomy museums attached to them, or they became anatomy museums.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of Aboriginal peoples' remains ended up in, yeah, not just the main museums, but in university departments, in university collections, in archaeological collections, different types of collecting institutions, and also in private collections too. So there were a lot of cases where researchers and
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah, medical practitioners actually, you know, kept their own collections of human skulls mainly, agricultural skulls. But certainly it has been, now with our group, we had over 400 human remains returned from overseas by the University of Edinburgh. And as part of that collection, it wasn't just skeletal remains, it was actually organs and body parts as well, so. Whoa!
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, in terms of body parts still preserved in, you know, formaldehyde and jars. And I can actually look inside any of the boxes when we were helping to do the burial ceremonies, but some of the anthropologists that we had were kind of relaying some of their own, I guess, disgust. I don't know if it's discussed.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah, they kind of did their own surprise, you know, what types of parts of the body and just the descriptions of it was kind of put me off a little bit in terms of wanting to pursue that any further with research. Yeah. And I kind of stopped doing it for a while. And that's when I spoke with elders and ended up doing my PhD focused on something which was more
00:48:50
Speaker
you know, a range of different skill sets, you know, more focused on shell, on river, on different, yeah. But yeah, it certainly is, you know, we've still got quite a lot of old people sitting down at Camp Caron in the keeping place, because there's been a, the government's withdrew funding, and there's no, it's not really funded for communities to do any work fully very well. Yeah, it takes a lot of organisation.
00:49:18
Speaker
for that, so yeah, so that's the registration point. Yeah, I guess on colleagues as well around the idea of healing through archaeology and healing through heritage and these different aspects of, I guess, people who've returned from war, people with disabilities, people with other types of
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, the ways in which heritage and archaeology and reconnection can actually help with people's healing is something which colleagues are starting to collaborate with in humanities, archaeology, but also with our colleagues in psychiatry and psychology and in the health area as well. Currently, well, there's a conference coming up this year in October. It's the ICOMOS, which is the International Community on Monuments
00:50:13
Speaker
of Science, I think, that's the name, ICOMOS, to the big GA General Assembly coming up in Australia this year. And I'm co-chairing the Indigenous Heritage theme for that with a colleague, Dr. Diane Menzies, who's from New Zealand. She's actually a, is she an architect? Yeah, she's an Indigenous architect.
00:50:36
Speaker
that looks at landscape. And so she's interested in heritage, but through architecture and landscape, the way in which people use the landscape for building settlements and so forth. And so there's going to be quite a large conference, quite a lot of work involved in that. And that'll be bringing together a whole, you know, we've got a team from across the, you know,
00:51:01
Speaker
from India, from Sweden, from, you know, all these different indigenous people from around the world who we've got as part of our working team, as part of our theme. So, going into the heritage space, working with museums as well. So, as I mentioned, working with the South Australian Maritime Museum, around the maritime, all the mining stuff, the South Australian Museum, around helping with the repatriation, but also the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
International Conference and Mentoring
00:51:27
Speaker
They have an exhibition coming up this year and I've been working with them for a couple of years around displaying part of my work and the story of ponding to their exhibition. So that's opening, I think in the middle of the year, but I'll be sending one of the fish ear bones oatless, one that was 2.2 metres, over to Canberra, just waiting for the community to approve it. And yeah, they're going to exhibit some of that as part of the new exhibitions that are coming up.
00:51:57
Speaker
So yeah, and there's quite a lot of work to continue on down. Yeah. Uh, so are you, you're not working with, um, Jenny Newell, are you? No. Okay. Just kidding. Okay. So she was on the, Jenny Newell was on one of the earliest episodes of the podcast. Um, but
00:52:22
Speaker
I thought maybe she works at the Australian Museum, I want to say, Australian National Museum. Yeah, the Australian Museum as well, in Sydney. Okay. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, okay. So we're getting real close to the end. So I'm trying to think, I'm trying to look and see if there's, you know, like a final question that I should ask you, but I guess, is there anything else that you
00:52:51
Speaker
would like to add or talk about? I guess I didn't really, you know, in terms of my career, wasn't expecting to end up or to be in the university or to be elected. That wasn't my goal and it wasn't my plan at all. So when I started my degree, my kind of goal and
00:53:17
Speaker
was to travel, which I've done through my work, but I thought I'd be on excavations continuously, digging and just being directed by others. And so I guess towards the end of my degree when I started to work around repatriation, do honours, which I guess is equivalent to like masters, but
00:53:42
Speaker
I had some indigenous colleagues at the university who asked if I wanted to work in our Aboriginal unit, which was called Yungarindi at the time. It was the First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research. And to work with young people, because I was only 21 at the time, and go into the schools and recruit more Aboriginal people into the university. And I really valued my experience
00:54:11
Speaker
as an academic advisor, they called us, but we were academics, but also recruitment officers. So we're still doing research and teaching and teaching Aboriginal studies. So I'm currently teaching in archaeology and Aboriginal studies, Indigenous studies at Flinders. I give guest lectures at other universities here in the state and also interstate.
00:54:38
Speaker
you know, across the different degree programs and not just in humanities, but, you know, sometimes in science or health.
00:54:47
Speaker
And yeah, I guess, you know, I've only just been in the university sector for now 15 years and starting to see people graduate with their PhDs and seeing some of the students who came in way back 10 years ago who've now finished their medical degrees and are now training doctors. Recently had dinner with one of them and she thanked me for
00:55:15
Speaker
coming out to a school and talking, because that kind of, I guess, set her wheels in motion. And I've gotten a lot of reward out of that, like, and, you know, I'm grateful to have these experiences in universities and help other young Aboriginal people come in and do well with their life. And yeah, it's really inspiring to see. So yeah, I'm kind of, I didn't expect to be end up as an academic, but
00:55:44
Speaker
I like what I do and I'm just going to continue to continue working with the university and working with my community and yeah and just sharing the knowledge and the education of what I do.
Conclusion and Aspirations
00:55:57
Speaker
Yeah well we can't wait to hear more about about what you get to in the future and more about your work and everything. I'll have to talk more sometime. No worries.
00:56:10
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, as always, there's a million other things I could have asked you. But thank you so much for talking to us today. All right. Well, thanks and talk to you later. Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast.
00:56:37
Speaker
You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash heritage voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Music Store. Also, if you like the show, please share with your friends or write us a review. If you have any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me
00:57:04
Speaker
at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. Or you can find me on Facebook through Living Heritage Anthropology or on Twitter at livingheritagea. As always, thank you to Lyle Blanquia and Jason Nez for their collaboration.
00:57:31
Speaker
This show is produced by the archaeology podcast network Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective.
00:57:37
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to archpodnet.com slash members for more info.