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ABSTRACT
The Bundian Way project is an initiative of the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council on the far south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Aboriginal Elders and activists working on the project are restoring an Aboriginal pathway that stretches from the coast to the high country. This article examines the experiences of four young Aboriginal men employed to work on the project. Drawing on qualitative research, I analyse how these young men are using and reconceptualising settler histories of early cross-cultural encounters to propose new ways of living well in settler-colonial Australia and to contest the dominant settler historiography that has positioned Indigenous people as either ‘violent, ignoble savages’ or the fading victims of colonisation. In their rearticulation through the project, these stories of early cross-cultural relations are reclaimed as powerful critical histories of settler colonisation. Through this project, Aboriginal people are critically interrogating discourses of settler colonisation while opening up new historical spaces that speak to the ‘truth’ of Aboriginal lived experience in contemporary Australia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See The Bundian Way: One Path Many Stories. Available at: https://bundianway.com.au/ (accessed 17 October 2019).
2 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
3 Les Kosez, interview with author, 7 January 2016, interview AEM5, transcript.
4 To explain his cultural identity, Les Kosez said, ‘I try to identify where my (maternal) family comes from which is the Biripi country near Taree. I have a strong affinity and personal connections all up and down the coast. I married into a family down this way’. Les Kosez, interview with the author, 7 January 2016, AA, transcript.
5 Indigenous activism on the far south coast has been under way since the early years of invasion and is ongoing. Indigenous people have campaigned tirelessly for land rights and social justice issues. See Lee Chittick and Terry Fox, Travelling with Percy, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997; Mark McKenna, Looking for Blackfella’s Point: An Australian History of Place, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002; Deborah Bird-Rose, Gulaga: A Report on the Cultural Significance of Mt Dromedary to Aboriginal People, presented to the Forestry Commission of New South Wales and the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife, Sydney: The Service, 1990; The Merunga Blog, Available at: https://merunga.blogspot.com/; Rodney Kelly, ‘Returning the Gweagal Shield’, YouTube, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJoacTy8NeA.
6 For example, see Greg Lehman ‘Telling Us True’, in Robert Manne (ed), Whitewash:On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Melbourne: Black Inc., pp. 174–84; Tony Birch, ‘I Could Feel it in My Body: War on a History War’, Transforming Cultures ejournal 1(1), 2006, pp 19–32; Gary Foley, ‘Black Power, Land Rights and Academic History’, Griffith Law Review 20(3), 2011, pp 608–18.
7 Robert White, White Mythologies, 2nd ed, London: Routledge, 2004.
8 Ann McGrath, ‘Deep Histories in Time or Crossing the Great Divide?’, in Ann McGrath and Mary Anne Jebb (eds), Long History, Deep Time: Deepening Histories of Time. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2015, p 6.
9 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
10 Developing the Bundian Way was part of the 2010 Land and Sea Country Plan. The plan was devised to provide ‘appropriate means for Koori people to access and utilise the land and sea country for cultural and economic purposes’. See the ‘Land and Sea Country Plan: for Aboriginal people with traditional, historical and contemporary connections to land and sea country within the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council region, southeast NSW’, Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority, Australian Government: Department of the Environment Water Heritage and the Arts, 2010, pp v, 59. The role of the Land and Sea Country coordinator was to ‘implement actions within the land and sea country plan’, Les Kosez, interview with author, 7 January 2016 AEM5, transcript.
11 Inga Clendinnen, ‘Incident on a Beach’, True Stories, ABC Boyer Lectures, 14 November 1999. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/lecture-1-incident-on-a-beach/3561394#transcript (accessed 30 October 2016).
12 Mark McKenna, Looking for Blackfella’s Point: An Australian History of Place, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002, p 24.
13 Mathew Flinders, ‘Section IV Part II, East Coast With Van Diemen’s Land South Coast’, Voyage to Terra Australis, Vol 1. Available at: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00049.html#section3 (accessed 10 August 2016).
14 McKenna, Looking for Blackfella’s Point, p 25.
15 See Jeremy Beckett, Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality, Canberra: ANU Press, 1988; Bronwyn Carlson, ‘Constructing the Aborigine’, The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today?, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2016, pp 17–28; Gustav Jahoda, Images of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice, East Sussex: Routledge, 1999; and Marcia Langton, Well, I Saw It on the Television and I Heard It on the Radio, Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1993.
16 Chris Healy, The Ruins of Colonisation: History as Social Memory, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p 5.
17 Healy, The Ruins of Colonisation, p 7.
18 Hayden White, The Practical Past, NorthWestern University Press, 2014, p 10.
19 The Bundian Way Story trail was officially opened to the public on 4 April 2016. See Toni Houston, ‘Eden’s Story Trail Section of The Bundian Way Officially Opens, Eden Magnet, 4 April 2016. Available at: http://www.edenmagnet.com.au/story/3828599/eden-story-trail-officially-opens/ (accessed 5 April 2016).
20 Construction of the story trail commenced on 2 February 2015 and was funded by CLUB grants. Clubsgrants is a funding program which operates under the Department NSW Trade & Investment, Office of Liquor, Gambling & Racing (OLGR). For more information see http://www.clubsnsw.com.au/community/clubgrants/about-clubgrants
21 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees, interview with author, interview AEMFG1, transcript.
22 According to the Bega Valley Shire Council’s ‘Social Issues’ paper, 35 per cent of Indigenous people in the shire are unemployed. This is compared to 7 per cent of non-Indigenous people. See Bega Valley Shire Council, ‘Social Issues Paper: Aboriginal People’, Social Issues Papers 2012, p 37. Available at: https://www.begavalley.nsw.gov.au/cp_themes/default/page.asp?p=DOC-GBM-41-35-06 (accessed 18 July 2016).
23 Focus group interview with Aboriginal employees, interview with the author, interview AEMFG1, transcript.
24 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
25 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
26 Reinhardt Koselleck, ‘Time and History’, in his The Practice of Conceptual History, Timing History, Spacing Concepts, California: Stanford University Press, 2002, p 111.
27 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees, interview with author, interview AEMFG1, transcript.
28 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
29 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
30 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
31 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
32 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
33 Focus group Interview with Aboriginal employees.
34 Reinhardt Koselleck, Future Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, p 259.
35 Koselleck, Futures Past, p 259.
36 See Ossie Cruse, ‘Bundian Way Preserves and Shares Aboriginal Culture’, for an example of how ‘loss’ is attributed to Aboriginal culture on the south coast Ossie Cruse, ‘Bundian Way Preserves and Shares Aboriginal Culture, ABC South East, 4 July 2014. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/06/02/4017106.htm (accessed 7 February 2016). In this interview pastor and Elder Ossie Cruse responds to a question about cultural loss by arguing that there are parts of culture that cannot be erased, and he states ; ‘culture of extended families or kinship relations … no one can erase that, you can change it to some degree but no one can erase it’.
37 Denis Byrne, ‘Difference’ in Paul Graves-Brown, Rodney Harrison, Angela Piccini (eds), The Archaeology of the Contemporary World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, p 301.
38 B J Cruse, Bundian Way Advisory Committee Meeting, 25 August 2015, author’s field work notes.
39 Byrne, ‘Difference’, p 301.
40 Les Kosez, interview with author, 7 January 2016, interview AEM30, transcript.
41 See UNESCO, ‘History and Terminology’, Cultural Landscapes. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape/#1 (accessed 8 April 2016).
42 Les Kosez, Interview with author, 7 January, 2016, interview AEM30, transcript.
43 Les Kosez, Interview with author,7 January 2016, interview AEM30, transcript
44 Mark McKenna, From The Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories, Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 2016, p xviii.
45 To read more about the 2010–2011 survey of the Bundian Way, see http://www.bundianway.com.au/bundian_survey.htm
46 John Blay is a non-Indigenous writer and historian. Blay worked with the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council to undertake survey work on the pathway in 2010–2011. He had undertaken archival research using surveyor’s reports, settler journals and old maps to assist the Land Council to physically relocate the pathway. Blay published a book titled On Track: Searching Out the Bundian Way which recounts his experiences researching and walking the pathway. See John Blay, On Track: Searching Out the Bundian Way, Sydney, NewSouth Publishing, 2015.
47 Warren Foster, interview with author, 6 January 2016, interview AA3, transcript.
48 Warren Foster, interview with author.
49 Warren Foster, interview with author.
50 Ossie Cruse, interview with author, 6 November 2015, interview AE2, transcript.
51 Ossie Cruse, interview with author.
52 Ossie Cruse, interview with author.
53 Ossie Cruse, interview with author.
54 Ossie Cruse, interview with author.
55 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
56 B J Cruse, interview with author.
57 Focus group interview with Aboriginal employees, interview with author, interview AEMFG1, transcript.
58 Ossie Cruse, interview with author.
59 Ian Clarke, Journals of George Augustus, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate: Volume 4, 1 January 1844–24 October 1845 (Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2014) and Oswald Brierly, notes on Twofold Bay and the Wanderer, 1843–1845 and Journal at Maneroo, December 1842–January 1843, https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110318855
60 Kim Scott, ‘Apologies, Agencies, Resilience’, in Russell West-Pavlov and Jennifer Wawrzinek (eds), Frontier Skirmishes: Literary and Cultural Debates in Australia after 1992, Heidelberg, Germany, Winter Verlag, 2010.
61 Scott, ‘Apologies, Agencies, Resilience’, p 60.
62 Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?, Broome, Magdala Books, 2014, p 11.
63 The work of predominately Aboriginal women researchers has culminated in two publications, Bittangebee Tribe: An Aboriginal Story from Coastal New South Wales and Mutton Fish: The Surviving Culture of Aboriginal People and Abalone on the South Coast of New South Wales. Mutton Fish draws on oral histories collected by the authors but also historical records and the work of academic historians. These sources are brought together to tell the histories and stories that speak to a long and continuing relationship that Aboriginal people on the south coast have with their coastal waterways. See Beryl Cruse, Rebecca Kirby, Steven Thomas and Liddy Stewart, Bittangebee Tribe: An Aboriginal Story from Coastal New South Wales, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994; and Beryl Cruse, Liddy Stewart and Sue Norman, Mutton Fish: The Surviving Culture of Aboriginal People and Abalone on the South Coast of New South Wales, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005.
64 Anders Schinkel, ‘Imagination as a Category of History: An Essay concerning Koselleck’s Concepts of Erfahrungsraum and Erwartungshorizont’, History & Theory 44(2), 2005, p 48.
65 See Liz Connor, Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women, Crawley, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 2016.
66 B J Cruse, interview with author, 22 September 2015, interview AE3, transcript.
67 Ossie Cruse, interview with author, 6 November 2015, interview AE2, transcript.
68 Lawrence Bamblett, Our Stories Are Our Survival, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2013.
69 Focus group interview with Aboriginal employees, interview with author, interview AEMFG1, transcript.
70 Bamblett, Our Stories Are Our Survival, p 174.
71 Bamblett, Our Stories Are Our Survival, p 163.
72 Scott, ‘Apologies, Agencies, Resilience’, p 61.
73 Peter Read, ‘Making Aboriginal History’, in Anna Clark and Paul Ashton (eds), Australian History Now, Sydney, New South Publishing, 2013, p 38.
74 Tim Rowse, ‘Indigenous Heterogeneity’, Australian Historical Studies 45(3), 2014, p 301.
75 Rowse, ‘Indigenous Heterogeneity’, p 9.
76 Japanese historian Minoru Hokari similarly suggests an approach to the past that focuses on historical practice as ‘one aspect of our day-to-day activities, practised within the complex web of our primary objectives, might-as-wells, whatever happens to be convenient, coincides and duties – how we interact with or connect with the past, bodily, mentally, spiritually; through localities and objects; or in a utilitarian way’. See, Minoru Hokari, Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback, Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2011 pp 43, 47.
77 For example, see Penny Edmonds, Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings, Palgrave MacMillian, 2016; Bruce Pascoe, Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with your Country, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007, John Maynard, True Light and Shade: Aboriginal Perspectives of Joseph Lycett’s Art, National Library Australia, 2014.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jodie Stewart
Jodie Stewart is a PhD candidate and tutor in the faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong, Bega. Jodie is documenting the development of the Bundian Way project as an important and potentially recuperative public history initiative. Pathways into History: Experiencing the Contemporary Aboriginal Past on the Bundian Way examines how various community members and visitors to the pathway, which stretches from the coast to the high country, think about, evaluate and understand the Aboriginal past via bodily and emplaced encounters with Aboriginal cultural landscapes. Jodie’s research is supported by an Australian Government RTP scholarship.