Vessels of Culture, Identity, and Knowledge: Aboriginal Tied-Bark Canoe Making as a Phenomenon of Indigenous Resilience through Cultural Resurgence in Contemporary South-Eastern Australia.

Abstract

This thesis critically describes the phenomenon of Aboriginal tied-bark canoe making within the highly colonised and urbanised south-eastern coastal region of Australia, as part of a contemporary Indigenous cultural resurgence movement around artefact making practice. Highlighting the Australian National Maritime Museum’s groundbreaking 2012 Nawi – Exploring Australia’s Indigenous Watercraft conference, the thesis historicises cultural resurgence, and incorporates critical community reflections and GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) connections. It recognises the primary authority and innate sense of resilience of Aboriginal peoples in self-defining their Indigenous cultural heritage, but also respects the contributions made by non-Indigenous peoples, and adaptation of practice to include Western materials and sources of Indigenous knowledges such as documentary research and photographic collections. The thesis employs methods from visual sociology, namely documentary photography and photo elicitation, to create theory and appropriately reflect the resilient, multi-sensorial features of Indigenous ways of knowing. Such an approach arguably remains in the periphery of sociological research and deserves better recognition. In a participatory and collaborative Indigenist research framework informed by three important Indigenous Australian concepts of Country, Culture, and Community, this thesis develops a grounded theory around contemporary Aboriginal tied-bark canoe making knowledge production to understand the role of this emplaced, practice-based form of education to help counteract the Indigenous “crisis of knowledge” caused by the effects of colonisation. It also critiques the value of Aboriginal “authenticity” at the juncture of unbroken cultural continuity and cultural resurgence in response to breaks in tradition. Reclaiming of this practice provides a meaningful engagement with Aboriginal cultural heritage.