Whose pain? Whose shame? Integrating heritage and histories in Ballarat, Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT For generations a burden of misplaced shame has sat with victim-survivors of children’s institutionalisation. Experiences and memories of family separation, cultural obliteration, mistreatment, hunger, unpaid labour, curtailed educational and professional opportunities, and abuse had come to silently define and destroy the lifelong living experience of childhood incarceration. Meanwhile, institutions and the communities they are part of have been able to effectively ignore the legacies of their own trespasses, through ‘top-down’, celebratory approaches to history and heritage. In recent decades, renewed emphasis on survivor voices and agency has culminated in a range of Commonwealth and state-based reports, Inquiries and Commissions, driven by abundant survivor testimonies and truth-telling. The sense of shame and guilt over these parts of our collective histories has now re-centred on the perpetrators and enablers of abuse and mistreatment. Using interpretive heritage and historical lens this article outlines a theoretical conception of ‘integrated’ approaches to history and heritage, using real-life examples from contemporary urban development and institutional heritage in the regional Australian city of Ballarat. The authors examine changing contemporary representations of institutional Care, neglect and abuse, arguing that shifting cultural and social power is reflected in the urban landscape and cultural fabric of the associated institutions.