Tasmanian Aborigines Research Articles

Reconciling 22,000 years of landscape openness in a renowned wilderness

AbstractHere, we explore the profound impact of the Tasmanian Aboriginal (Palawa) people on Tasmanian landscapes by examining a 22,000‐year record of landscape change from Lake Selina in western Tasmania, Australia. We analysed a sediment core for palaeoecological proxies, namely, pollen (vegetation), charcoal (fire), and geochemical data (landscape weathering). This study reveals that the contemporary landscape is a product of Palawa people’s intentional and strategic fire management practices characterised by fire‐dependent buttongrass moorland and the absence of climax rainforest. Specifically, our data show that rainforest failed to re‐establish a dominance at Lake Selina following the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, as temperature and moisture increased as a result of Palawa cultural fire for at least 18,000 years. This finding challenges the long‐held notion that Tasmania’s wilderness is a product of the absence of human activity. Rather, archaeological sites across western and central Tasmania demonstrate long term presence, with some of the highest artefact and faunal bone densities in the world. The study contributes to the recognition of Tasmania’s west as a cultural landscape shaped by generations of Aboriginal care for Country and fire practices.

Beyond access: (re)designing archival guides for changing landscapes

In 2013, the authors of this article and their colleague Gavan McCarthy published Stories in Stone: an annotated history and guide to the collections of Ernest Westlake (1855–1922). The guide provided contextual information and digital access to the entire paper archives relating to the three large stone collections formed by Westlake during his lifetime: French and English geological specimens housed in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History from 1924, and a collection of Tasmanian Aboriginal stone tools stored in the Pitt Rivers Museum since 1923. The Tasmanian collections, formed by Westlake from 1908 to 1910, are highly significant to the Palawa (or Pakana or Tasmanian Aboriginal) community because they include objects made by ancestors, and words spoken by ancestors to Westlake and recorded in his field notebooks. Stories in Stone was created to improve access to Westlake’s Tasmanian collections for the Palawa community with whom author Rebe Taylor had worked closely since 1999. Nonetheless, the structural and technical design of Stories in Stone was not Palawa-led. It was driven by Australian and international archiving standards; by stipulations set out by the collecting institutions; and by the stories of collecting and subsequent scholarship on the collections. In 2023, Stories in Stone is offline, and the authors are planning a relaunch. This time they aim to reach beyond their original aim of providing archival access to the Palawa community, and work with Palawa community to co-design how that access is delivered. This consultative work will be done at the University of Tasmania, where Palawa advisors and other Indigenous scholars have been integral to developing international Indigenous data sovereignty principals. This article precedes those formal discussions and thus offers a timely reflection on the original aims and design of Stories in Stone as well as an extensive analysis of broader changes in the management and dissemination of First Nations collections and culture. Such changes include: international human rights frameworks; movements supporting data and archival sovereignty; co-designed archival technologies; and increased focus on archives as process not merely product. These developments will lay the foundations for the next version of Stories in Stone, which aims to go beyond access, scholarship, and standards by helping to facilitate First Nations’ aspirations for dignity, sovereignty, and self-determination.

Rikawa: Tasmanian Aboriginal Kelp Water Containers

Abstract: Water containers made of kelp from lutruwita (Tasmania) are one of the rarest object types found in ethnographic museum collections. Only two, well-documented, historic examples still exist. The British Museum holds one given to it in 1851, after the Great Exhibition of London. An older example, which formed part of the collections of a French naturalist engaged on the d’Entrecasteaux expedition in southern lutruwita in the early 1790s, was located at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in 2019, after it had been mislabelled and was thought to be lost for several decades. The technical and cultural information that these two containers evidence is invaluable to Aboriginal people (palawa) in lutruwita today. This paper discusses and reflects on the on-going collaborative research, which involves the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as well as museum scientific staff and curators, in an effort to better understand these rare objects and the once lost techniques they exemplify.

The archaeology of orality: Dating Tasmanian Aboriginal oral traditions to the Late Pleistocene

Aboriginal people have lived in Australia, continuously, for tens of thousands of years. Over that time, they developed complex knowledge systems that were committed to memory and passed to successive generations through oral tradition. The length of time oral traditions can be passed down while maintaining vitality is a topic of ongoing debate in the social sciences. In recent years, scientists have weighed into the debate by studying traditions that describe natural events, such as volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts, which can be dated using scientific techniques. Here, we bring together a trans-disciplinary team of scholars to apply this approach to Tasmanian Aboriginal (palawa) oral traditions that were recorded in the early nineteenth century. These traditions describe the flooding of the Bassian Land Bridge connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia and the presence of a culturally significant “Great South Star”, identified as Canopus (α Carinae). Utilising bathymetric and topographic data of the land and sea floor in the Bass Strait, we estimate the Bassian Land Bridge was finally submerged approximately 12,000 years ago. We then calculate the declination of the star Canopus over the last precessional cycle (26,000 years) to show that it was at a far southerly declination (δ < −75°) between 16,300 and 11,800 years ago, reaching its minimum declination approximately 14,000 years ago. These lines of evidence provide a terminus ante quem of the Tasmanian traditions to the end of the Late Pleistocene. This paper supports arguments that the longevity of orality can exceed ten millennia, providing critical information essential to the further development of theoretical frameworks regarding the archaeology of orality.

On stone tools and the ‘prehistoric’: The value of Tasmanian Aboriginality at the Smithsonian

ABSTRACT This article examines the meaning of Indigenous objects in cultural institutions. The 2019 research at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History out of which it emerged started with the one Tasmanian Aboriginal item in the online database, a single stone tool, and ended with the more than 230 Tasmanian stone implements in the collection. In approaching the ‘museum as method’ (Thomas, Nicholas. 2010. “The Museum as Method.” Museum Anthropology 33 (1): 6–10), my deep engagement with the various stages of meaning and value creation that occurred before, during, and after these objects entered the collection clarifies this central discrepancy. These processes gain clarity in relation to Shryock and Smail’s insights into containers (Shryock, Andrew, and Daniel Lord Smail. 2018a. “On Containers: A Forum. Introduction.” History and Anthropology 29 (1): 1–6; Shryock, Andrew, and Daniel Lord Smail. 2018b. “On Containers. A Forum. Concluding Remarks.” History and Anthropology 29 (1): 49–51) and Morphy’s on museums and infinity (Morphy, Howard. 2020. Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols. London: Routledge). Despite associations with prevalent discourses of extinction and primitivity these objects, by virtue of being contained, have stories left to tell.

Pseudobaeospora taluna (Fungi: Agaricales) newly described from southern Australia

Pseudobaeospora taluna is formally described from southern Australia, representing the first report of the genus from Australia given that P. lamingtonensis is excluded from the genus. Analysis of sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) shows that P. taluna is a distinct phylogenetic species. The distinctive morphological characteristics of the species are the combination of a pinkish grey to dull grey pileus, pale rhizomorphs at the base of the stipe extending into soil, thick-walled dextrinoid spores, presence of cheilo- and pleurocystidia, and a trichoderm pileipellis that stains bluish green in KOH. Three of the examined collections, from Tasmania, were 4-spored but a single collection from Victoria produced 2-spored basidia. Apart from the 2-spored basidia and larger spores, this 2-spored collection was similar in morphological and sequence characters to the 4-spored collections and is placed under P. taluna. The specific epithet was chosen in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and the palawa kani Language Program. In palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aborigines, taluna is the name of the Huon River area, where the holotype was collected.

From Tasmania to the world: long and strong traditions in seaweed use, research, and development

Abstract Tasmania is an island state in south-eastern Australia that has a long and rich history of seaweed use, research, and development. It is a cool-temperate system with 750 macroalgal species currently described. Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples have lived on this land for at least 40,000 years utilising seaweed as food, shelter, water carriers and medicine, as well as for ceremonial reasons. Modern taxonomic investigations began with French naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de La Billardière in 1791, and there are 184 type specimens of seaweeds originating from Tasmania. Ecological and physiological studies of seaweed in Tasmania have focussed on the dominant large brown seaweeds (Laminariales and Fucales) and have contributed significantly to the global understanding of these systems, particularly related to community resilience, seaweed-urchin interactions, their habitat-forming role for other species, responses to global change, and restoration of lost habitat. Ocean warming and changing oceanography have caused a 95% decline in surface canopy cover of Macrocystis pyrifera in eastern Tasmania since the 1950s and led to a focus on restoring these lost forests. Tasmanian seaweed communities have a uniquely high proportion (up to ∼90%) of seaweeds that rely solely on CO2 for photosynthesis, which has implications for responses to ocean acidification. Tasmania has industries that use brown seaweeds for fucoidan extraction and beach-cast harvest for alginates, fertilisers, and feeds for agriculture. New aquaculture initiatives include integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, offshore kelp mariculture and Asparagopsis cultivation for bioactive products to reduce methane emissions in ruminants, as and the development of unexploited species including Caulerpa spp. for food.

An Analysis of the 2021 Apologies by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community

In 2021, the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) apologised to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community for past wrongs. The mistreatment of Tasmanian Aboriginal Ancestral remains by the Society in the nineteenth century is well known. Less well known is that the Society, in association with TMAG, removed Ancestral remains and cultural objects from Country until the late twentieth century and actively resisted early claims for repatriation. Were the Apologies comprehensive? How did Aboriginal Community representatives respond to them? This article analyses the Apologies in consideration of the authors’ recently published report to inform the Society's Apology, and the wider context of truth-telling efforts in Australia.

Tabula rasa

In his analysis of the frontier genocides waged against the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia, Benjamin Madley (2004) identified three phases. The first is initiated by colonial invasion: economic and political frictions develop as settlers and indigenous peoples struggle for limited resources and power. In Phase Two, indigenous peoples attack settlers to reclaim lost resources and land, and this prompts a genocidal military campaign. In Phase Three, the settlers’ government incarcerates the indigenous peoples in concentration camps, where it continues genocide by attrition (through malnutrition, inadequate medical care, overwork, unsanitary conditions, and violence). All three genocides began with the assertion that the land was empty or should be made empty. Here, I consider how far the concept tabula rasa (“a map scraped clean”) applies to contemporary “re-educated” Xinjiang on China’s northwest frontier.

Fire, herbivores and the management of temperate Eucalyptus savanna in Tasmania: Introducing the Beaufront fire – mammalian herbivore field experiment

SummaryThe temperate Eucalyptus savannas in the Midlands of Tasmania are ancient ecosystems where fire and grazing are intrinsic ecological disturbances. The arrival of Aboriginal people into Tasmania some 40,000 years ago altered natural fire regimes, and since the end of the last ice age, their skilful patch burning increased the grass cover and the abundance of large grazers in the Midlands savannas. This ancient socio‐ecological tradition abruptly ended following European invasion in the early 19th century, which resulted in the rapid establishment of pastoralism, causing profound adverse changes to the ecological integrity of the temperate savannas. These changes include widespread tree clearing, extinction of native biota, establishment of domestic and feral mammalian herbivores, the introduction of exotic plants, broadscale application of chemical fertilisers and more recently irrigation. The Midlands retains a small fraction of the original vegetation, which typically occurs in small fragments on private land. These have been colonised by non‐native plants and animals, and experience altered fire regimes. There is a growing awareness that to effectively manage temperate savanna fragments may require the intentional coupling of fire and herbivory. We describe the establishment of a field experiment designed to test four broad hypotheses: a) herbivore off‐take increases after fire; b) smaller burned areas experience more intense herbivory than larger ones; c) non‐native herbaceous plants are more tolerant of herbivory, whereas native herbaceous species are more tolerant of fire; and d) Eucalyptus seedlings are most likely to reach maturity in areas which are both burned and protected from herbivores. A novel aspect of the fire‐herbivore experiment was that the Tasmanian Aboriginal community were engaged with and were contracted to conduct the burning. The findings of this landscape ecology experiment will inform the management of remnant temperate Eucalyptus savannas.

Tasmanian Aboriginal Material Culture, Compensation, Belonging

Abstract The Tasmanian Aboriginal people have historically been defined by their visible lack of stereotypical “Aboriginal” characteristics and their supposed nonexistence. This article examines how Tasmanian Aboriginal individuals are bridging such gaps through material cultural production. In thinking about how communities mobilize the past to produce themselves in the present, I argue that canoes, kelp water carriers, and shell necklaces are vehicles through which alterity and distinction are rendered concrete. As such, these processes are best understood in relation to Bell and Geismar’s “materialization” and Ingold’s “meshworks.” Despite internal debates amongst practitioners over proper methodologies and styles, revitalized culture can be productively imagined as compensation for outward shortcomings and deficiencies. Efforts at revitalizing culture are willed connections to a deep ancestral past and represent the discursive enactment of a continuity that is often otherwise conspicuous by its absence. [material culture, cultural revitalization, Indigeneity, Tasmania, Australia]

The Report to inform an Apology to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community by the Royal Society of Tasmania

This paper contains information regarding Aboriginal Ancestral remains that may cause sadness, anger and distress to some people. This information is being shared in the spirit of truth-telling and with the understanding that with knowledge comes obligations. We ask that you treat the information in this paper with dignity and respect to Aboriginal Community members and their wishes about how these stories should be shared. In 2017, the Royal Society of Tasmania (the Society) commissioned a report to inform an apology to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community. Pakana woman and museum curator Zoe Rimmer and British-born historian Rebe Taylor co-researched and wrote the Report by early 2018. The Report detailed mistreatment of Tasmanian Aboriginal Ancestral remains and mistreatment and misrepresentation of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and people. The Society presented its Apology in February 2021 at an event at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). The Society’s Apology was preceded by a Preamble by Tasmania’s Governor and was followed by a ‘paired’ Apology by TMAG. This paper includes all the findings and recommendations included in the original report and differs only in its formatting, style, and some very minor editing.”

Van Diemen’s Land and the Great Exhibition of 1851

Imperial authorities questioned whether so distant Van Diemen’s Land could participate in the ‘Great Exhibition’ to be held at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851, but as it transpired, the locals made a notable showing. Aspiring to display the positives of ‘his’ colony, Lieutenant-Governor Sir William Denison was the driving force behind this participation, with Joseph Milligan his chief aide and members of the local Royal Society notably assisting. The range and types of exhibits were remarkable and fascinating. Contributions came from various local quarters, one of interest being an ex-convict with whom Denison had some political liaison, whereas, conversely, Denison’s critics tended to abstain from involvement. Women played a role in contributing exhibition pieces, as did Aboriginal Tasmanians – Milligan no doubt crucial in orchestrating this. Denison was especially concerned to display Tasmanian timber, and other primary produce, but the thrust of the Exhibition was to celebrate human skills, and the contributions of manufactured goods and superior hand-crafted items conformed to that pattern. The world saw exhibits bespeaking an active, achieving society, and although the Vandiemonian contribution won modest notice in the British press, locals gained a share of the many awards granted to exhibitors. Not that the whole story was triumphant – some jealousies resulted and its difficulties and tensions also told of time and place

Apology to Tasmanian Aboriginal people 2021

On Monday, 15 February 2021, the Royal Society of Tasmania (RST) and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) delivered paired Apologies to the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. The event was held in the Courtyard of TMAG, Hobart, and attended in person by about one hundred invited guests including members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, members of the Council of the RST and members of the Board of Trustees of TMAG. A large number of invited guests also witnessed the event by livestream. It was also the first time the Aboriginal flag had been flown at Customs House to commemorate the significance of this event.

Tyereelore and Straitsmen : the true story of Tasmanian Aboriginal survival

Much has been written, theorised and assumed about Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples and histories, but few representations of their life and culture have been recorded by the subjects themselves. This paper reiterates and expands on the conclusions drawn in previous work that tells the little-known history of the genesis of Tasmania’s contemporary Aboriginal communities. The lifeworld and identity of the unique cultural group formed by the Straitsmen and their female Aboriginal partners, the Tyereelore, on the small islands of eastern Bass Strait, has remained virtually undisclosed in colonial narratives. They were entrepreneurs and shrewd traders of the surplus from the sea and land and in partnership they thrived despite the harsh environment and their precarious position in the socio-economic landscape. Against all odds, their joint skillsets, adaptability and resilience ensured the survival of their descendants today.

Reply to the apology to the Aboriginal community by The Royal society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Good afternoon everyone. I would like to acknowledge all members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community who are here today, and to pay respect to all our old people who have passed before us. Let’s not forget that this day is as much about them as it is us. This is a momentous day for the Aboriginal community of Tasmania – Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Royal Society of Tasmania. As we have heard today the TMAG and the Royal Society have offered apologies to the Aboriginal community for past actions that have shown no regard for our culture and spirituality and which in turn contributed to our disadvantage and trauma. I believe it is up to all of us to consider these apologies with open minds and hearts.

What’s in a name? Polyzosteria yingina ; the Golden Sun Cockroach

The endemic Tasmanian cockroach Polyzosteria yingina, was formally described in 2021, 80 years after it was first documented. Evidence from morphology, biogeography and DNA barcodes distinguishes this species from the related mainland Australian taxa it had previously been confused with and united the geographically disparate alpine and coastal populations under a single specific epithet. That specific epithet, yingina, was chosen in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. This was to acknowledge that, given the species’ large size, handsome appearance and overt behaviours, it would once have had Aboriginal names, which now may have been lost due to colonial disruption of language, land and culture.

Federalism, constitutional recognition and Indigenous Peoples: how a new identity-based state can be established in Australia

ABSTRACT The debate on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Peoples in Australia has highlighted the desire for meaningful responses to Indigenous Peoples’ claims to sovereignty and self-determination. One potential response is to apply federal principles and establish a new state, or states, for Indigenous Peoples in Australia. This proposal has been most prominently put by Tasmanian Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell. Others have followed. However, (at least) one fundamental problem with this federal idea has not been properly addressed, namely the dispersal and limited geographical concentration of Indigenous people in Australia. This paper asks whether and how federalism can be used to institutionalise the shared and self-rule of widely dispersed minorities, or more specifically, Indigenous Peoples in the settler-majority country of Australia. It demonstrates that a non-territorial approach can be applied to federalism in Australia, and that it may form one possible response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Navigating cultural intimacy in Tasmanian Aboriginal public culture

This article examines the utility of, and embarrassment around, strategic essentialism in Tasmanian Aboriginal public culture. My argument is informed by extensive participant observation in community-led education programs. Australia’s Tasmanian Aboriginal community has historically been defined by outsiders in terms of racial and cultural deficiencies. These judgments preceded and followed their supposed 1876 extinction. These education programs, catering primarily to elementary school students, idealized Tasmanian Aboriginal culture by emphasizing continuity and connection into deep antiquity. They also included moments in which private anxieties about essentialism, deficiency, and what I term their taxonomical fuzziness are made public. The delicate interplay between essentialism and private feelings about loss, appearance, and cultural inferiority is best understood in relation to Herzfeld’s “cultural intimacy.” I argue that approaching public culture through this concept forces researchers to engage with the pervasive fluency of stereotypes through which Native and Indigenous voices regularly must speak in order to be heard.

Population collapse and retreat to fire refugia of the Tasmanian endemic conifer Athrotaxis selaginoides following the transition from Aboriginal to European fire management.

Untangling the nuanced relationships between landscape, fire disturbance, human agency, and climate is key to understanding rapid population declines of fire-sensitive plant species. Using multiple lines of evidence across temporal and spatial scales (vegetation survey, stand structure analysis, dendrochronology, and fire history reconstruction), we document landscape-scale population collapse of the long-lived, endemic Tasmanian conifer Athrotaxis selaginoides in remote montane catchments in southern Tasmania. We contextualized the findings of this field-based study with a Tasmanian-wide geospatial analysis of fire-killed and unburned populations of the species. Population declines followed European colonization commencing in 1802ad that disrupted Aboriginal landscape burning. Prior to European colonization, fire events were infrequent but frequency sharply increased afterwards. Dendrochronological analysis revealed that reconstructed fire years were associated with abnormally warm/dry conditions, with below-average streamflow, and were strongly teleconnected to the Southern Annular Mode. The multiple fires that followed European colonization caused near total mortality of A. selaginoides and resulted in pronounced floristic, structural vegetation, and fuel load changes. Burned stands have very few regenerating A. selaginoides juveniles yet tree-establishment reconstruction of fire-killed adults exhibited persistent recruitment in the period prior to European colonization. Collectively, our findings indicate that this fire-sensitive Gondwanan conifer was able to persist with burning by Aboriginal Tasmanians, despite episodic widespread forest fires. By contrast, European burning led to the restriction of A. selaginoides to prime topographic fire refugia. Increasingly, frequent fires caused by regional dry and warming trends and increased ignitions by humans and lightning are breaching fire refugia; hence, the survival Tasmanian Gondwanan species demands sustained and targeted fire management.