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Article Excerpt
Hannah asked, 'What do you think about this whole reburial business, Lynn?' Reluctantly, Lynn replied, 'I think it's good because they are bringing an old Koori home where he belongs.' Hannah rebuked her, 'You should be ashamed of yourself We're not tribal. We've never been tribal here. That was taken away. We don't know where those bones came from or how to do a smoking ceremony. If they stir up the spirits, no one will know how to sing them back in the ground.'
'But they do know where the bones came from, whoever took them in the first place wrote it down and it's in the museum records,' Lynn pointed out. Hannah retorted, 'You're following whiteman's history. You're letting the whiteman tell you who they belong to. How would the whiteman know?' Lynn replied, 'They are righting the wrongs of the past. The bones should have never been dug up in the first place and now they are coming home; that is better than them sitting in a museum on display.'
Hannah questioned, 'Who authorized such a thing? Who was in charge of this-some whitefellas at the museum? The Land Council? Who was it that decided that this was a good thing? I'd like to know because they are bringing trouble into this community, maybe not in this generation, but to the next....' Anyone who gets involved in this will have trouble in their lives. Stay away from it.' (1)
In May 2002, the remains of 21 Indigenous individuals were repatriated to La Perouse, a Koori community in southeast Sydney, and ceremonially reburied. The reburial did not begin and end on the day the remains were returned. Rather, before the bones arrived in La Perouse, they had been carefully wrapped in paperbark, enclosed in a yellow wooden box, and enlivened by debate. As the back and forth between Hannah and Lynn attests, repatriations are not as simple as packing up bones in boxes and delivering them to communities. Instead, the repatriation and reburial ceremonies are at La Perouse best understood as unprecedented productions that are informed by a history of difficult and power infused race relations and varying understandings of culture and obligations. Not unexpectedly, they generate conflicting discourses among Aboriginal people as well as among researchers and within government agencies. On one hand, these acts have transformative potential--for State-Aboriginal relations, for community structures and social relations, and for Aboriginal recognition. (2) On the other hand, the return of skeletal remains to Aboriginal communities, particularly ones in settled urban areas like La Perouse, raises important questions about Aboriginal representation, history, knowledge, and cultural practices.
Thirteen kilometers southeast from the settlement at Sydney, the area that is known today as La Perouse was isolated for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. La Perouse was part of the migratory landscape of Indigenous people on the southeastern coast of Australia; shell middens, as well as rock engravings, occupational sites, and other archaeological evidence speak to their active and long-term occupation of the area. (3) Just across Botany Bay from Captain Cook's landing place, the area takes its name from Comte De Jean Francois Galaup Laperouse, whose French botanical expedition entered the Bay only eight days after the British arrival, on January 26, 1788. While Governor Phillip had already moved into Sydney Cove, establishing Port Jackson, Laperouse's ship anchored off the shore of what is known today as Frenchman's Bay and set to work setting up camp and collecting botanical specimens. They stayed for six weeks, leaving behind the grave of a scientist and a Franciscan priest, locally believed to have succumbed to smallpox during the expedition's stay. Today, both a monument to Laperouse and the tomb of Le Receveur mark the brief French occupation of the Bay.
Pictures of and references to 'Aborigines of Botany Bay' date to the 1820s and the location of an 'Aborigines Camp' along Frenchman's Bay is noted on military maps around the mid-nineteenth century (Perdriau 1889). It was the 'Aborigines Camp' that the first missionaries from the United Aborigines Mission (UAM) found when they began their work among Aboriginal people living around the Sydney settlement during the early 1880s. The missionaries erected the first mission house on-site of the Camp, and in 1897 the Crown gazetted seven acres of land to an Aboriginal woman living on the mission as a 'Reserve for the use of the Aborigines' (Telfer 1939). The Crown's act did not signal Aboriginal autonomy, however, as the Aborigines Protection Board had taken over the supervision and care of Aboriginal people in 1883. The Protection Board designated managers, sometimes police magistrates or missionaries, to oversee the reserves. Missionaries assisted the Protection Board in keeping Aboriginal people segregated, by limiting their contact with non-Indigenous people, reporting trespassers to police, and discouraging travel into the city (Bell 1959, 328). (4)
Despite the fact that most Kooris at La Perouse lived under the rules of the Protection Board (which was later renamed the Aboriginal Welfare Board), the resources and dangers of urban expansion spilled over into their somewhat remote community. At the turn of the twentieth century, La Perouse, and southeastern Sydney, more generally, began to bear the marks of recreational, industrial, socio-economic modernity. The rural feel of the area and its fresh air and ocean views drew Sydney-siders for weekend getaways. People came for sun, picnics, horseback rides, golfing, swimming, and fishing. In the teens, the tram brought tourists, outdoor enthusiasts, and weekenders to the Leisure Grounds, promoting a local Aboriginal arts and crafts economy.
The development of Yarra Bay as a 'leisure area' stands in juxtaposition to industrial development of Port Botany. Early domestic commerce in the form of a paper mill, a power station, and a garbage tip (dump) framed the coastal and in-land boundaries of the area. Later, an oil refinery, container terminals, and finally, Sydney airport marked Port Botany's link to an ever-globalizing economy. Importantly, the growth of industry in the immediate area afforded Kooris access to jobs that were unavailable to those living in more rural areas. Residential patterns in the area also began to change, particularly during the Depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Land around the reserve that had formerly been part of the Leisure Grounds became de facto communities for droves of unemployed Sydney-siders. Unemployment camps at Happy Valley and Hill 60 saw poor Kooris and whites living side-by-side. As the Depression subsided, both groups benefited from the Homes Trust Act, which provided lots and raw materials for homes on newly plotted streets. Formally opened for residential development during the post-World War housing shortage, La Perouse was one of many sites of suburban expansion. Throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century the suburb has grown, gaining the reputation among non-Indigenous homebuyers as one of the last affordable seaside communities in Sydney.
As this historical overview suggests, La Perouse, and its Aboriginal residents were never completely cut off from the city or non-Indigenous people and culture. Indigenous people and meanings coexist with the ghosts and myths of explorers, botanists, and priests, as well as the descendants of colonial settlers, missionaries, military personnel, and recent immigrants ('new' Australians). (5) The experiences of local Aboriginal people uniquely reflect the realities of the community's shifting connections to people and places beyond the reserve. This fluidity is significant to understanding how and why Kooris in La Perouse construct their identities and culture in particular ways. They are particularly aware of how their (sub)urbaness can make their cultural identity claims seem suspect to those whose Aboriginal imaginary places authentic, 'traditional' Aboriginal culture only in the remote, isolated locations. Moments like the repatriation and reburial, however, not only exemplify the fabricated and dynamic nature of culture more generally, but also highlight the possibilities of culture for urban Aboriginal people in particular. Thus, it is no surprise that community members' responses to repatriation and reburial events were an uneven mix of uncertainty, resistance, and pride.
In the contemporary national atmosphere of reconciliation, the growing Aboriginal demand for the return of material and skeletal collections (in whole or part) (6) has become a touchstone of political, social, and cultural debate. While many museums in Australia have successfully collaborated with Indigenous people on the handling, care, and representation of Aboriginal material culture (Haas 1996), their efforts at repatriations have sometimes met resistance from scientists and researchers, for many of whom these collections represent their life's work. They have argued that access to these remains could be the key to unlocking the answers to questions about Indigenous origins, migration patterns, cultural practices and genetic make-up (Randerson et al. 2003; Morell 1995). For local governments in New South Wales, however, the returning remains embody the state's commitment to Aboriginal self-determination and national reconciliation initiatives.
The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established in 1991 to 'to improve the relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the wider Australian community' (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 2000). Among their many activities, the Council participated in planning the first National Sorry Day on May 26, 1998. In an effort to heal the wounds of past mistreatment of Aboriginal people, the Council placed Sorry Books in local government offices and businesses across Australia. In the months leading up to Sorry Day, thousands of individuals, community organizations, and national institutions expressed their apologies. Despite popular and local support for Sorry Day, Prime Minister John Howard refused to say 'Sorry' to Australia's Indigenous people on behalf of the federal government. As a result of Howard's silence, acts of accountability and public acknowledgement of the past have been left up to individual state agencies like the Australian Museum, which developed an official institutional response to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation's recommendations for recognition and respect of Aboriginal heritage. (7) Ironically, such tangible and potentially restorative actions on the part of state agencies have a tendency to obscure the continued absence of national gestures of recognition and reconciliation.
The structure of the events that occurred during that day in May--separate repatriation and reburial ceremonies, held in very different locations, attended by different groups of people and intended for different audiences--highlight the extraordinariness and uncertainties of repatriations. Within this primary frame (Goffman 1974), each ceremony provides a stage for the production and negotiation of State-Aboriginal relationships and Aboriginal culture in the contemporary moment. The overt presence of non-Indigenous officials and the dominance of their voices during the repatriation ceremony largely adhered to the normative roles, positions, and scripts that characterize interactions between Aboriginal representative bodies and the State. By sending out press releases, issuing invitations, and providing the funds necessary to carry out the reburial, The Australian Museum made their demand for a culturally appropriate response clear. A simple meeting to hand over the remains would not be sufficient. Such a momentous occasion required public recognition of the Museum's efforts and their collaboration with La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and the Koori staff at NSW Parks and Wildlife. Although public State-Aboriginal engagements typically follow certain protocols, like the inclusion of Welcome to Country speeches, a disruption in the proceedings quickly fractured the sense of predictability and authority that the officials established during their speeches. Moreover, the reburial called for unprecedented logistical and cultural considerations. Museum wanted and expected the La Perouse Local Area Land Council to host and coordinate public repatriation and reburial ceremonies that would be led by, and open to, the La Perouse community. They looked to local Kooris to determine the cultural content of the reburial ceremony. Specific decisions about how the reburial would be carried out--how the remains would be wrapped, placed into the ground, etc.--fell to Tom, the Cultural Sites Officer for the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council.
It was clear from my conversations with Tom that he did not expect to replicate a smoking ceremony from the past; rather, he wanted to ensure that the reburial was conducted in the most informed and dignified manner possible in the present. He sought advice from elders and drew on his own knowledge and ingenuity in determining how the remains would be laid to rest. Tom saw to it that the reburial was purposefully Koori-centric, focusing on the people whose remains were being re-interred and on the living participants. Kooris prepared the bones, the burial site, and worked out the logistics of the ceremony on the ground. Only Kooris from La Perouse and NSW Parks and Wildlife and three 'honorary Kooris,' (a junior archaeologist, the author, and her husband) attended the reburial. Consequently, participants who offered graveside eulogies and shared their reflections were not constrained by the presence of non-Indigenous officials or by the formalities apparent during the repatriation proceedings. Instead, we see Kooris actively engaging with and making meaning of the social, political, and cultural dynamics that repatriation and reburial created.
The repatriation of remains to La Perouse exemplifies the reality that the need for 'representative bodies' is a powerful social fact in contemporary Aboriginal communities. Representative bodies, from national organizations like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to local organizations like the La Perouse Local Area Land Council and Guriwal the Community Development and Employment Program (CDEP), are the public and administrative voices of Aboriginal people and communities. Set up by the State for this purpose, these bodies facilitate and negotiate State recognition of Aboriginal people and State-Aboriginal engagements. In La Perouse, the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, specifically the chairperson, is often the frontline broker of these relationships. Complicated race relations and a history of differing state and local priorities temper the capacity of the chairperson to effectively manage both state-community relationships and intra-community. Hannah's queries--'Who authorized such a thing? Who was in charge of this--some whitefellas at the Museum? The Land Council? Who decided that this was a good thing?' highlight the uneasiness between Koori organizations and the constituencies they are meant to embody. (8)
In a very literal sense the repatriated skeletal remains returned to La Perouse are also 'representative bodies.' They embody the past, as well as raise significant questions about representation of Aboriginal culture and history for Kooris in the present. Who were these people? Where did they originally come from? What is the relationship between the remains and Kooris at La Perouse today? Underlying...
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