Reading  Unexpected  Peoples  in  Unexpected  Places  

       

Convenors:    Tracey  Banivanua  Mar  and  Nadia  Rhook  

 

Counter  Networks  of  Empire  

La  Trobe  University,  Franklin  St  Campus  215  Franklin  Street,  Melbourne  

Friday,  6  November,  2015    10:00  AM-­‐5:30  PM  

     

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Welcome  to  Country  and  Opening  10:00  –  10:30  AM  

Keynote  10:30  AM-­‐12:00  PM  

Alan  Lester   Settler  Colonialism,  George  Grey  and  the  Politics  of  Ethnography  

Lunch  12:00-­‐1:00  PM  

Panel  1:  Networking  the  past  …  1:00-­‐3:00  PM  Chair:  Samia  Khatun  

Penny  Edmonds   Collecting   ‘evidence’   of   empire:   Quaker   investigative   tours,  violent  mobilities  and  counter  networks  in  the  antipodes  

Liz  Conor   Colonial  Flotsam:  Racialised  Children  caught  up   in   the  Workings  of  Nets  

Nadia  Rhook   Forming  Indian  Networks  in  early  White  Australia  Melbourne.    

Sophie  Loy-­‐Wilson   Chinese-­‐Indigenous  Encounters  and  Chinese  Mobility  in  Australia  and  the  Pacific    

Afternoon  Tea    3:00-­‐3:30  PM      

Panel  2:  …with  the  Present  and  Future    3:30-­‐5:30  PM  

Chair:  Samia  Khatun  

Damon  Salesa   Remaking   a   Native   Sea:   Samoans   and   Other   Islanders   in   a  Colonial  and  Postcolonial  Age  

Tracey  Banivanua  Mar   Decolonisation  and  the  ‘Black’  Pacific:  intelligence  networks  and  the  pursuit  of  consciousness  

Keith  L.  Camacho   Lover,  Father,  Killer:  Samoan  Masculinities  and  Criminal  Trials   in  New  Zealand,  1950-­‐1980  

Tony  Birch   ‘A   counter   network   for   the   future':   climate   change,   the  Anthropocene  and  Aboriginal  Knowledge  

Program  

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   Settler  Colonialism,  George  Grey  and  the  Politics  of  Ethnography Alan  Lester,  University  of  Sussex    This  paper  suggests  that  the  spaces  of  British  settler  colonialism  and  metropolitan  science   were   interconnected,   under-­‐examined,   grounds   upon   which   both  ethnography  and  colonial  governance  developed.  Focusing  on  the  governmental  and  ethnographic  activities  of  Sir  George  Grey,  governor  of  South  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  the  Cape  Colony  during  the  mid-­‐nineteenth  century  it  argues  that  the  origins   of   ethnography   and   the   specifically   humanitarian   governance   of   spaces  invaded   by   settlers   were   co-­‐constituted.   Although   anthropologists   have   long  recognised  the  complicity  of  ethnography  in  modern  colonialism,  the  relationship  thus  runs  far  deeper  and  extends  far  more  broadly,  than  has  been  appreciated  in  even   the   most   incisive   critiques.   That   relationship   was   also   located   in   violent  settler  colonial  spaces  that  have  been  relatively  neglected  in  the  anthropological  historiography.  The  article  concludes  that  Grey’s  governmental  practices,  and  his  representations   of   them,   established   the   terms   upon   which   cultural   genocide  could  be  posited  as  an  humane  alternative   to   racial  extermination.  On  behalf  of  the   British   Empire   as   a   whole,   he   thus   reconciled   settler   colonialism   and  humanitarian  governance.      Alan  Lester   is  Professor  of  Historical  Geography  at  the  University  of  Sussex,  UK.  He  is  author  of   Imperial  Networks:  Creating  Identities   in  Nineteenth  Century  South  Africa  and  Britain  (Routledge  2001);  co-­‐editor  with  David  Lambert  of  Colonial  Lives  Across   the   British   Empire:   Imperial   Careering   in   the   Long   Nineteenth   Century  (Cambridge   University   Press,   2006),   and   co-­‐author   with   Fae   Dussart   of  Colonization   and   the   Origins   of   Humanitarian   Governance:   Protecting   Aborigines  Across  the  British  Empire    (Cambridge  University  Press,  2014).      Collecting   ‘evidence’   of   empire:   Quaker   investigative   tours,   violent   mobilities  and  counter  networks  in  the  antipodes  Penny  Edmonds,  University  of  Tasmania    This   paper   traces   the   investigative   tours   of   British   Quakers   ‘travelling   under  concern’   in   the   1830s   who   sought   to   witness   the   treatment   of   those   violently  mobilised   and   dislocated   in   empire’s   service:   convicts,   slaves,   and   Indigenous  peoples.  Examination  of   these   tours,  as  both   religious   journeys  as  well  as  cross-­‐cultural   enquiries,   highlights   the   contingent   and   enmeshed   ways   that   travel,  

Abstracts  and  Bios  

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mobility   and   the   violence   of   empire   and   could   give   rise   to   new   networks   and  social   relations.     Imperial   circuits   were   often   based   on   military,   scientific   or  humanitarian   personal   and   political   connections   and   patronage,     and   these  Quakers  used  both  multi-­‐denominational  humanitarian  and  scientific  networks  to  support   their   movement   around   the   colonies.   Crucially,   they   were   active  correspondents   within   a   now   esteemed   global   network   of   influential   British  humanitarians,   writing   regularly   to   Elizabeth   Fry   and   anti-­‐slavery   advocate  Thomas   Fowell   Buxton,   and   in   the   Australian   colonies   supported   in   their  endeavours   by   Governors   Richard   Bourke   and   George   Arthur.   This   paper,  however,   seeks   to   foreground   the   interconnectedness  of   elite   and   subaltern  or  marginalised  imperial  networks,  revealing  the  ways  that  Quakers  both  witnessed  and   intervened   in   new   cross-­‐cultural,   social   constellations   parallel   to   and   in   the  service  of   empire,   and   at  other   times   contested   and   ran   counter   to   established  imperial  networks.        Associate  Professor  Penny  Edmonds  is  Australian  Research  Council  Future  Fellow  in   the   School   of   Humanities,   University   of   Tasmania.   Penny’s   research   and  teaching   interests   include   colonial   histories,   postcolonialism   and   Indigenous  histories,  humanitarianism  and  human  rights,  Australian  and  Pacific-­‐region  contact  and   transnational   histories,   cultural   heritage,   and   performance.   Major  publications   include  Urbanizing  Frontiers:   Indigenous  Peoples  and  Settlers   in   19th-­‐Century   Pacific   Rim   Cities   (UBC   Press,   2010),   Making   Settler   Colonial   Space:  Perspectives   on   Race,   Place   and   Identity   co-­‐edited   with   Tracey   Banivanua-­‐Mar  (Palgrave   UK,   2010).   Her   recent   edited   collection   is   Conciliation   on   Colonial  Frontiers:   Conflict,   Performance   and   Commemoration   in   Australia   and   the   Pacific  Rim,  co-­‐edited  with  Kate  Darian-­‐Smith  (Routledge  Series  in  Cultural  History,  2015).  Her   forthcoming   book   is   titled   Settler   Colonialism   and   (Re)Conciliation:   Frontier  Violence,    Affective    Performances,  and  Imaginative  Refoundings    (Palgrave,  2016).      Colonial  Flotsam:  Racialised  Children  caught  up  in  the  Workings  of  Nets  Liz  Conor,  La  Trobe  University    In  April   1852   the   Spanish  monk  Rosendo   Salvado   took   two  Yued  Noongar   boys  from   Western   Australia   to   a   Daguerreotype   studio   in   Naples   and   had   their  portraits   taken.   Salvado,   the   founder   of   the   Benedictine   New   Norcia   mission,  commissioned   an   engraving   after   the   two   daguerreotypes   from   a   little-­‐known  Roman   copper   engraver   and   etcher   Giuseppe   Mochetti.   Salvado   intended   the  engraving   of   the   boys   to   appear   in   his  memoir   of   the   founding   of   the  mission,  which   he   subsequently   published   in   Italian,   Spanish   and   French,   to   distribute  throughout   the   ecclesiastical   networks   of   Europe.   In   another   unpublished,  personally  bound  edition  of  his  memoir   that  Salvado  had  assembled  years   later,  he  places   the  boys’   portraits   opposite   two  moving   letters   they  wrote   to  him   in  Italian   from   the   Monastery   Cava   where   they   were   training   as   Benedictine  postulants.  Conachi,  the  younger  of  the  two  boys  died  in  Rome  in  October  1853.    

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Dirimera   returned   to   his   family   but   died   soon   after   in   August   1855.   They   were  among   five   Yued   Noongar   children   taken   to   Europe   by   clergy,   none   of   whom  survived.    

These   children  were   of   interest   to   Europeans   because   of   the  ways   their  race   and   childhood   hinged,   opening   toward   a   future   of   civilised   natives.   They  embodied  an  indigeneity  set  on  a  pathway  that  was  radically  divergent  from  that  of   their   parents   and   ancestors.   Disinherited   from   their   people’s   traditions   they  were   thereby   unclaimant   heirs   to   their   homelands   and   therefore   critical   to   the  central  colonial  project  of  dispossession.    

Their   bodies   and   images   thus   harboured   potent   post-­‐hoc   consequence.  Unlike   the   adults   whose   care   they   were   entrusted   to,   they   were   not   so   much  networkers  but  caught  up  in  nets  not  of  their  making  and  carried  along  through  these  vast  colonial  circuitries;   in  this  case  steam  travel,  monastic   instruction  and  ecclesiastical  print.  In  this  paper  I  chart  the  movement  of  these  children  within  the  context   of   the  mobility   of   racialised   childhood   and   its   cultural   renderings,   from  the   engravings   and   letters   of   Conachi   and   Dirimera   to   the   colloquial   type,   the  ‘piccaninny’.        Liz  Conor  is  a  senior  research  fellow  at  La  Trobe  University  and  last  year’s  Abbot  Placid   Spearritt  Memorial   Fellow   at  New  Norcia.   Her   PhD  was   published   as  The  Spectacular  Modern  Woman:  Feminine  Visibility   in  the  1920s,  by  Indiana  University  Press   in   2004.   She   has   completed   an   Australian   Research   Council   postdoctoral  fellowship  in  the  Department  of  Culture  and  Communications  at  the  University  of  Melbourne   from   which   she   wrote   Skin   Deep:   Settler   Impressions   of   Aboriginal  Women  [UWAP  forthcoming  2016].  She  is  editor  of  the  scholarly  journal  Aboriginal  History  and  former  editor  of  Metro  Magazine  and  Australian  Screen  Education.  She  edited   A   Cultural   History   of   Women   in   the   Modern   Age   and   a   special   issue   of  

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Interventions:  Journal  of  Postcolonial  Studies  on  Types  and  Typologies  and  she  has  published  articles  on  colonial  and  modern  visual  and  print  history  in  the  Journal  of  Australian   Studies,   Postcolonial   Studies,   Studies   in   Australasian   Cinema,   Feminist  Theory  and  Gender  and  History.  Her  freelance  essays  and  editorials  have  appeared  in  The  Age,  The  Drum,  Crikey.com,  Arena  and  she  is  a  columnist  at  New  Matilda.  Her  blog  has  been  archived  by  the  National  Library  of  Australia.      Forming  Indian  Networks  in  early  White  Australia  Melbourne    Nadia  Rhook,  La  Trobe  University    ‘Counter’  has  verbal  and  noun  forms.  To  counter  is  to  act  or  move  in  the  contrary  direction.  A   counter,  on   the  other  hand,   is   a   long  object   that   at  once   separates  people  in  space  and  facilitates  meetings,  or  in  other  words,  encounters.  In  the  last  decade,  historians  of  empire  have  demonstrated  that  networks  have  profoundly  mattered   in   the   global   making   of   race,   but   have   paid   less   attention   to   the  grounded   physical   forms   of   such   networks.   With   an   eye   to   the   position   of  counters   and   benches   in   buildings   across   a   racialised   settler   colonial   city,   this  paper  asks:  how  did  the  Melbourne  Indian  community  form  in  the  early  years  of  the  White  Australia  Policy?  And  how  was  the  community  at  once   formed  by   the  triangular   imperial   relationship   between   Britain,   India   and   Australia,   and   by   the  street-­‐level  relationship  between  counters,  work  and  racial  power?  Via  tracing  the  urban   lives   of   two   prominent   Indian   leaders   –   shopkeeper   Khooda   Bux   and  masseur  Teepoo  Hall   –   I   suggest   that   in   early   twentieth   century  Melbourne   the  space   around   shop   counters   and  massage  benches   had  political   potential.   They  were   safe   if   surveyed   public   spaces   for   Indians   to   meet   and   counter   the  consequences  of   the   restrictive   federal   Immigration  Restriction  Act,   designed   to  whiten  the  urban  economy  and  the  nation  at  large.    Bio:  Nadia  Rhook  is  a  Research  Fellow  at  La  Trobe  University,  currently  embarking  on   a   new   project   about   the   triangular   relationship   between   French   Vietnam,  Australia   and   New   Caledonia.   Her   PhD   researched   language,   law   and   race   in  colonial  Melbourne.   From   it   she   has   published   in   the   Journal   of   Colonialism   and  Colonial   History   and   Postcolonial   Studies   and   developed   a   walking   tour   of  Migration  Melbourne.        Chinese-­‐Indigenous  Encounters  and  Chinese  Mobility  in  Australia  and  the  Pacific    Sophie  Loy-­‐Wilson,  University  of  Sydney    This  paper  traces  storytelling  around  Chinese-­‐Indigenous  encounters   in  Australia  and   the   Pacific   through   Chinese-­‐language   sources   and   interviews   with   Chinese  Australian  descendants  and  Chinese-­‐Papua  New  Guinean  descendants  in  Australia  and   PNG.   In   doing   so   it   seeks   to   retrieve   networks   of   Chinese   traders   and  missionaries  active  in  Australia  and  PNG  in  the  late  19th  and  early  20th  centuries.      

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Sophie   Loy-­‐Wilson   is   a   Postdoctoral  Research   Fellow   in   the   Laureate  Centre   for  International   History   at   the   University   of   Sydney.   In   2016   she   will   take   up   a  permanent  position  in  the  Department  of  History  at  the  University  of  Sydney  as  a  Lecturer  in  Australian  History.        Remaking   a   Native   Sea:   Samoans   and   Other   Islanders   in   a   Colonial   and  Postcolonial  Age  Damon  Salesa,  University  of  Auckland    While   colonialism  dominates   the   storylines   of   the   twentieth   century   in  western  Polynesia,   continuing   as   before,   and   largely   in   parallel   with   this,   were   deep  connections  between  different  Pacific  Islanders.  Long  existing  connections  within  this   ‘Native   Sea’—the   ancient   Pacific   network   that   joined   Tonga,   Samoa,   Uvea,  Futuna  and  Fiji—remained  strong  and  continued   to  be   influential.  Despite   these  connections   being   deeply   and  openly   challenged  by   colonial   rule,  which   sought  both   to   control   and   to   truncate   Indigenous  mobility,   Pacific   Islanders   remained  tied   to   each   other.   Responding   to   new   restrictions   while,   at   the   same   time,  seizing  upon  new  opportunities  to  move,  this  ‘Native  Sea’  was  remade  by  Pacific  peoples.    One  of  the  culminations  of  these  developments  was  the  forging  of  new  networks   and   spaces  within   the   complicated   site   of   New   Zealand,   in   a   process  that  looks  very  different  if  we  understand  it  within  Indigenous  developments,  and  not  just  as  a  migration  story  driven  by  the  state,  capital  or  global  labour  migration.    Damon   Salesa   is   University   Director   of   Pacific   Strategy   and   Engagement,  Associate   Professor   and  Head   of   Pacific   Studies   and   Co-­‐Head   of   Te  Wānanga   o  Waipapa   (The   School   of  Māori   Studies   and   Pacific   Studies)   at   the   University   of  Auckland.  He   is   editor   and   author   of   books   and   scholarly   articles   on   the   Pacific  Islands,   empire,   and   history.   He   is   the   author   of   Racial   Crossings:   Race,  Intermarriage  and  the  Early  Victorian  Empire  (Oxford,  2011;  paperback  2013),  which  won   the  Ernest  Scott  Prize   in   2012   and   jointly   edited  and  authored  Tangata  o   le  Moana:  New  Zealand  and  the  People  of  the  Pacific  (Te  Papa  Press,  2012).  At  present  he   is   leading   a   research   project   on   technological,   environmental   and   cultural  change  in  Samoa,  funded  by  a  three  year  Marsden  Grant  from  the  Royal  Society  of  New  Zealand.          Decolonisation  and  the   ‘Black’  Pacific:   intelligence  networks  and  the  pursuit  of  consciousness  Tracey  Banivanua  Mar,  La  Trobe  University    This  paper  tracks  the  mobility  of  the  transformative  word,  ‘Black’,  as  it  circulated  the  Pacific’s  oceanic  world  during  the  1960s  and  70s.  Carried  in  the  minds,  words  and  pamphlets  of  radically  mobile   Indigenous  peoples   it  wove  a  web  that   linked  Port  Moresby,  Melbourne,  Port  Vila  and  island  communities  to  New  York,  Geneva,  and   Dar   es   Salaam.   Its   weavings   eroded   colonialism’s   power   to   isolate   and  marginalise   and   confounded   the   covert   circuits   of   colonial   intelligence   through  

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which   British   and   Australian   governments   sought   to   contain   decolonisation’s  ‘winds   of   change’.   As   these   governments   explicitly   colluded   to   reconfigure  decolonisation   as   the   next   stage   of   Imperialism,   Indigenous   peoples   in   and  around   the  Pacific  developed   rich   intellectual,   political   and   cultural   traditions  of  decolonisation.  As  this  paper  explores,  the  mobility  of  Blackness  during  this  era,  which   was   remarkable   for   its   time,   gives   us   insight   into   the   ways   Indigenous  peoples   in   this  era  were   connecting   localised   traditions  of  protest   to   the  global  ferment  of  the  twentieth  century.    Associate   Professor   Tracey   Banivanua   Mar   is   an   Australian   Research   Council  Future   Fellow   at   La   Trobe  University.   She   is   the   author   of  Violence   and   Colonial  Dialogue:  the  Australian-­‐Pacific  Indentured  Labour  Trade  (Honolulu:  UHP,  2007)  and  the   forthcoming  Decolonisation   and   the   Pacific:   Indigenous   Globalisation   and   the  Ends   of   Empire,   2016).   She   is   also   co-­‐editor   of   Making   Settler   Colonial   Space:  perspectives  on  race,  place  and   identity,   (London:  Palgrave  Macmillan,  2010)  with  Penny  Edmonds.      Lover,   Father,  Killer:   Samoan  Masculinities   and  Criminal   Trials   in  New  Zealand,  1950-­‐1980  Keith  L.  Camacho,  University  of  California,  Los  Angeles    What  makes  a  Samoan  man  in  New  Zealand  and  the  United  States?    If  we  turn  to  the  historiography  on  militarism  and  sport,  then  we  can  assess  the  links  between  the  martial  acts  of  state  warfare  on  the  one  hand  and  the  martial-­‐like  acts  of  state  competition   on   the   other.   In   this   respect,   we   can   gauge   the   making   and  sanctioning  of  acceptable,  valorised,  and  even  memorialised  masculinities   in  and  between  New  Zealand   and   the  United   States.   But  what   are  we   to  make  of   the  masculinities  that  are  devalued  by  these  respective  states?  In  this  talk,  I  focus  on  the   New   Zealand   government   and   offer   preliminary   observations   about   its  condemnation  of  Samoan  masculinities  from  1950  to  1980.  By  surveying  criminal  trials   in   the   Auckland   District   Court   during   this   period,   I   specifically   seek   to  contextualise  a  network  of  racialised  confinement  that  may  have  been  tied  to  the  then  burgeoning  prison   industrial  complex   in  the  United  States,  now  the   largest  detention  system  in  the  world.    The  goal  is  to  analyse  Samoan  manhood  in  an  era  of  national  and  transnational  confinement.    Keith   L.   Camacho   is   an   associate   professor   in   the   Asian   American   Studies  Department   at   the   University   of   California,   Los   Angeles.     He   is   also   the   senior  editor  of  Amerasia  Journal,  the  author  of  Cultures  of  Commemoration:  The  Politics  of   War,   Memory,   and   History   in   the   Mariana   Islands  (2011),   and   the   co-­‐editor  of  Militarized   Currents:   Toward   a   Decolonized   Future   in   Asia   and   the   Pacific   (2010).    Along   with   co-­‐editors   Victor   Bascara   and   Elizabeth   DeLoughrey,   he   recently  published  “A  Call  for  Critical  Militarisation  Studies”  (no.  37,  March  2015),  a  special  issue  of  Intersections:  Gender  and  Sexuality  in  Asia  and  the  Pacific.      

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 ‘A   counter   network   for   the   future':   climate   change,   the   Anthropocene   and  Aboriginal  Knowledge  Tony  Birch,  Victoria  University    Australia,   in  common  with  global  nations  and  communities,  faces  immediate  and  future   ecological   and   economic   challenges   due   to   multiple   impacts   of   climate  change;   impacts   that   are   already   being   experienced   in   Australia.   Indigenous  communities   in   Australia,   many   who   presently   live   a   precarious   economic   and  social   existence,   are   particularly   vulnerable   to   the   effects   of   climate   change,  including   severe  weather   events   and   the   resultant   cultural   and   social   upheaval.  Climate   change   is   an   historical   as   much   as   a   current   or   future   phenomenon.  Indigenous   communities   hold   a   depth   of   knowledge   in   relation   to   country   that  could   be   beneficial   to   the   wider   community   in   initiating   policies   to   deal   with  climate  change  in  an  increasingly  warmer  world.  The  challenge  for  non-­‐Indigenous  Australia   is  firstly  to  respect  this  knowledge;  secondly,  to  facilitate  alliances  with  Indigenous  communities  based  on  a  formal  recognition  of  Indigenous  Knowledge  Systems   (IKS);   and   thirdly,   to  work   toward  a   relationships  of  mutual   reciprocity  that   neither   subordinates   Indigenous   knowledge   nor   commodifies   it   for   the  benefit  of  wealthier  White  Australia.    Tony  Birch   is   the  author  of   five   fiction  books.  He  publishes  poetry,   commentary  and  essays.  He   is   currently   the  Bruce  McGuinness  Research  Fellow  at  Moondani  Balluk  Academic  Unit  at  Victoria  University  in  Melbourne.    

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Counter  Networks  of  Empire  Symposium    In  the  last  decade,  scholars  have  illuminated  the  ways  Empires,  particularly  of  the   nineteenth   century   were   founded   on   and   maintained   by   networks   of  people,  goods,   and   ideas.  This  symposium  stretches,  perhaps   challenges,   the  ‘imperial  networks’  framework.  Participants  are  invited  to  shine  a  spotlight  on  networks  that   ran  counter   to  the  well-­‐documented   imperial  ones  established  by  settlers,  planters,  missionaries  and  government  officials  that  spread  across,  within   and   around   the   Pacific   world.   These   might   include   networks,   for  instance,   between   Indigenous   peoples   and   people   of   colour,   who  may   have  been  suppressed,  ignored,  or  reviled  by  those  who  penned  nineteenth  century  archives.   Speakers   will   explore   transoceanic,   transborder   or   transcolonial  alliances,  lateral  connections,  solidarities,  and  resistance  movements,  variously  formed  out  of  sight,  in  the  peripheral  vision,  or  at  times,  in  full-­‐frontal  view  of  imperial  and  colonial  powers.  How  have  counter  networks  formed,  mobilised,  and  mattered   in   the   imperial  past  and  the   ‘post’colonial  present?  What  were  the  connections  made  by  people  in  transit,  and  can  we  read  into  this  any  kind  of  lasting,  fleeting  or  contingent  impacts?    

Thanks  to:  La  Trobe  University  International  Collaboration  DVC  Research  fund  Australian  Research  Council  (DP120104928)  

Contributors:  Tracey  Banivanua  Mar,  La  Trobe  University  Tony  Birch,  Victoria  University  Keith  L.  Camacho,  University  of  California,  Los  Angeles  Liz  Conor,  La  Trobe  University  Penny  Edmonds,  University  of  Tasmania  Alan  Lester,  University  of  Sussex  Sophie  Loy  Wilson,  Sydney  University  Nadia  Rhook,  La  Trobe  University  Damon  Salesa,  University  of  Auckland  

Chair:  Samia  Khatun,  University  of  Melbourne