Noelene Cole

Painting the Police: Aboriginal Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Cape York Peninsula

Abstract Aboriginal rock paintings of policemen near Laura and their ‘ethnographic interpretation’ were reported by Percy Trezise (1985:74, 1993) but are otherwise unstudied. This research integrates formal analysis of an assemblage of police and associated depictions with cultural, historical and archaeological evidence to shed light on Indigenous society and identity in the frontier period (c.1873-1890s). In drawing on Aboriginal testimony the study connects with local webs of meaning. Stylistic analysis reveals the police motif as an innovative, specialised category within Quinkan style. Signs of cognitive structure include visual, material and contextual attributes (e.g. shape, colour and form, paint recipes, graphic associations, positions and locations). Stylistic coherence suggests that radically new contexts of production (war, social and demographic transformations) did not disrupt the ancestral knowledge systems and unique worldviews which lie at the heart of visual culture at Laura. Unlike most colonial texts, the depictions record Indigenous identity in the contexts of local agency and colonialism.

Endangered rock art: Forty years of cultural heritage management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula

Abstract This paper reviews a changing scenario of cultural heritage management in the Quinkan region, Cape York Peninsula, currently experiencing unprecedented pressures from tourism and mining. From 1971 State and Federal governments acted to address concerns over protecting Quinkan rock art from modern impacts such as tourism: Gresley Holding (locally known as Crocodile Station) received statutory recognition as a declared ‘Aboriginal site’, the Quinkan Reserves were created, and ‘Quinkan Country’ was listed on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate. In the 1990s the Quinkan Reserves were transferred to Aboriginal Land Trusts, and the local Aboriginal corporation received intermittent government grants to help manage tourism. In 2004 the State government opened an interpretive centre in Laura as a tourism initiative without providing for a visitor management system. Today, virtually the entire Quinkan region is affected by applications for minerals and coal exploration. The outstanding heritage values of the Quinkan region are threatened by this potential mining development, coupled with expanding tourism, and traditional owners are struggling to manage their cultural heritage. It is not clear how current heritage legislation, environmental codes and the status of ‘Gresley Pastoral Holding-Crocodile Station’ as a Declared Landscape Area (DLA002) will be applied to protect the area into the future.

The Queensland Native Police and strategies of recruitment on the Queensland Frontier, 1849-1901

ABSTRACT Although historians have provided substantial insights into the structure, development and activities of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, they have rarely focused on the complex and sensitive issue of Aboriginal recruitment. A careful reading of historical records, however, identifies several methods, including coercion, intimidation, kidnapping and inducement, as well as “voluntary” enlistment. It is difficult to identify Aboriginal agency in recruitment processes as the records are entirely one-sided—the voices of the troopers themselves are absent from the archival sources. In this article, we examine the cultural and historical contexts of Aboriginal recruitment—for example, the dire social situations of Aboriginal survivors of the frontier war and the absence of future survival options for the potential recruits. We explore, through the framework of historical trauma, the impacts on vulnerable victims of violence and other devastating effects of colonisation. We conclude that the recruitment of Aboriginal troopers was far from a homogeneous or transparent process and that the concept of agency with regard to those who can be considered war victims themselves is extremely complex. Unravelling the diverse, conflicting and often controversial meanings of this particular colonial activity remains a challenge to the historical process.

The homestead as fortress: Fact or folklore?

Houses are quintessential statements of identity, encoding elements of personal and social attitudes, aspirations and realities. As functional containers for human life, they reflect the exigencies of their construction and occupation, as well as the alterations that ensued as contexts, occupants and uses changed. As older houses endure into subsequent social contexts, they become drawn into later symbolic landscapes, connoting both past and present social relationships simultaneously and connecting the two via the many ways they are understood and represented in the present. As historical archaeologist Anne Yentsch has argued: ‘Many cultural values, including ideas about power relationships and social inequality, are expressed within the context of the stories surrounding houses’.1 This paper is one attempt to investigate the stories surrounding a ruined pastoral homestead in central northern Queensland in light of relationships between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people on the frontier.