Wangga: The Linguistic and Typological Evidence for the Sources of the Outrigger Canoes of Torres Strait and Cape York Peninsula

How an isolate distribution of the Austronesian outrigger canoe complex came into the possession of Pama‐Nyungan speakers of Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait has long been obscured by the diverse typology and lexicons of these canoes. Here I pinpoint links between the typological variation and the distribution and ages of associated Austronesian loan words. These links implicate several Austronesian contact sequences, one in Torres Strait and another in southeast Cape York Peninsula, and point to speakers of Papuan Tip Oceanic languages as the main source. Some of these loan words reflect archaic forms of Papuan Tip words and are thus indicative of early contact dates. I suggest that the introduction of these canoes most likely involved past episodes of sustained trade engagement and/or small‐scale colonization by speakers of Austronesian languages.     

Australia's response to the West New Guinea dispute, 1952–53

In the post‐World War II period, the question of the disposition of West New Guinea developed into a bone of contention between Holland and Indonesia. Because of its geographic contiguity and in recognition of New Guinea's role as a strategic bulwark for its own defence, Australia took a keen interest in the determination of sovereignty over West New Guinea. It opposed the transfer of sovereignty over the island to Indonesia and sided with the Dutch. The period 1952–53 saw Australia taking practical action to bolster the Dutch resolve to retain full sovereignty over western New Guinea and the emergence of Australia and the Netherlands as de facto joint guarantors of half of the island. This paper discusses how Australia responded to the West New Guinea dispute, especially in the period 1952–53, and focuses on why Australia turned its concern over the status of West New Guinea into practical action. The paper argues that Australian action was brought about by the deteriorating internal situation in Indonesia and the consequent Dutch determination to maintain a permanent presence in New Guinea.     

Torres Strait and Dawdhay: Dimensions of Self and Otherness on Yam Island1

When Papua New Guinea attained independence two decades ago an absolute distinction was created between Papua New Guinea and the Torres Strait: Papuans were firmly placed in Papua New Guinea territory and Torres Strait Islanders in Australian territory. In constituting themselves as Torres Strait Islanders and more specifically as Australians, Yam Island people's contemporary expressions of their connection to, yet distance from, lowland Papua New Guinea can be best described as ambivalent, pulsing between identification and incorporation, distance and disavowal. I argue that this ambivalence is not an artefact of the establishment of the border per se, but rather it was through the establishment of the border that a new layer was added to Self and Other constructions by Yam Island people in terms of how they see themselves and their Papuan neighbours. The sometimes fraught nature of this relationship can be understood in light of the continuing socio‐political impacts of these international border lines on people who have recently combined a somewhat legalistic and political definition of themselves, and of Papuans, with perennial extra‐legal definitions. I suggest it is in isolating and exploring domains of interaction that we can see the fluidity and dynamism of Self and Other definitions in operation, and in so doing better appreciate their essential imbrication.     

The Impacts of Indonesia's Civil War and the US–Soviet Tug of War over Indonesia on Australia's Diplomacy Towards West New Guinea

From 1958 onwards, the Amsterdam–Jakarta dispute on the determination of sovereignty over the western half of New Guinea began to be affected by the developments of Indonesia's civil war and the tug of war between the US and the Soviet Union over Indonesia. This paper explains how this influenced Australia's WNG diplomacy.

It argues that the major impact of Indonesia's internal war and of the US–Russian tug of war was that they destroyed Australia's assumption that the Dutch would maintain its presence in the Pacific permanently. The second principal impact was that Indonesia's internal war and the Washington–Moscow tug of war urged Canberra to set another new objective in relation to the WNG dispute, and produced a new policy for the achievement of this objective. With the outbreak of an Indonesian–Dutch war over Netherlands New Guinea becoming a real possibility, Australia set the avoidance of the war and the prevention of Indonesia falling into the communist orbit as another new objective. In order to keep a war from occurring in the Southwest Pacific, Canberra developed a policy of appeasing Jakarta.     

Still Under the Act? Subjectivity and the State in Aboriginal North Queensland

ABSTRACT Both the colonial encapsulation and post‐colonial recognition of North Queensland's Aboriginal population have been achieved through legislative demarcation. This paper explores the way such demarcation has extended the influence of the state within local Aboriginal life‐worlds, focusing on the State of Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 and the Commonwealth's Native Title Act 1993. Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Central Cape York Peninsula, and recent anthropological theorization of the state, I argue that anthropologists need to seriously consider Aboriginal claims about what Michel‐Rolph Trouillot calls ‘state effects’. But careful examination of these claims suggests that the state no longer simply imposes its projects on fundamentally distinct Aboriginal life‐worlds. Not only is the state now deeply engaged within these life‐worlds, it is also deeply interwoven into post‐colonial Aboriginal subjectivities.     

The ritual dugong bone mounds of Koey Ngurtai,Torres Strait,Australia: Investigating their construction

The islands of Western Torres Strait, between Papua New Guinea and Australia, saw the emergence of ritual dugong bone mounds approximately 400 years ago. These mounds were used as a means to commune with, and as an aid for the hunting of, dugongs. This paper explores the bone contents of three dugong bone mounds on the small, uninhabited island of Koey Ngurtai as a means to determine their construction and in doing so to explore the historical emergence of ritual bone mounds associated with dugong hunting magic—and thereby to historicise ethnographically known cultural practices—in Torres Strait. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Sun and the Shakers,Again: Enga,Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain Part One

ABSTRACT In the middle 1940s, at a time when white people were just beginning to penetrate the western highlands of what would become Papua New Guinea, a cult spread quickly among Engas, Ipili speakers, and Somaips. In the seminal article ‘The Sun and the Shakers' published almost 40 years ago, Mervyn J. Meggitt would call this cult the ‘Cult of Ain.’ The cult's core feature involved a massive sacrifice of pigs to the sun in an attempt to enlist the sun's aid. Participants stared at the sun and shook, entering a trance‐like state. While massive pig sacrifices to the sun occurred in all cult variants, local versions of the cult differed in emphasizing one or two themes: acquiring wealth (pigs and pearlshells but also white manufactured goods) and/or ascending to the sky. Interpretations of the cult reflect this variation, some focusing on apparent cargo cultic dimensions while others train on the cult's millenarian aspects. This reprise of Meggitt's article argues that the themes of wealth acquisition and ascent to the sky were at base the same, intelligible with respect to the cosmological discourse that so clearly informed all the cult's manifestations (hence the emphasis upon the sun), a discourse that this article attempts to interpret. This, the first of a two‐part article, summarizes what is known of Cult of Ain variants, highlighting the features other reporters have emphasized as well as those that may provide insight into underlying cultural and even transcultural logics.     

Official Statistics and the Contemporary Politics of Indigeneity

Critical scholarship on colonisation tells us that official statistics have reflected the perspectives of the colonisers. However, the colonised, in asserting ‘Indigenous rights,’ have begun to use official statistics to advocate policies that will relieve the continuing structural injustice that is colonisation's legacy. This paper examines Aboriginal and Maori intellectuals' efforts to quantify, using official statistics, the ‘unfinished business’ of settler colonial liberalism. Examining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioners' annual Reports, the paper argues that their quantitative comparisons of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations highlighted the contested implications of ‘equality.’ Turning to New Zealand, the paper reviews two issues: the appropriate boundary of the ‘Māori population,’ and whether it is possible to measure Māori well-being according to Māori norms. The paper draws on the work of Andrew Sharp to make sense of the difficulties and opportunities that face Indigenous intellectuals in Australia and New Zealand when they operationalise ‘social justice’ in the terms of a comparative statistical archive. The paper argues that there are now two distinct idioms in which to represent the collective Indigenous presence within settler colonial nation-state—one signified by the concept ‘population,’ the other by the concept ‘people.’ The tensions between ‘population’ and ‘people,’ resonating with undecided issues about the claims of Indigenous citizenship upon a liberal policy, are a feature of contemporary Indigenous political discourse.     

A Long and Unfortunate Voyage Towards the 'Invention' of the Melanesia/Polynesia Distinction 1595-1832* * Translated from French by Isabel Ollivier

In 1875, Methodist George Brown arrived in the Bismarck Archipelago to establish the New Britain Mission. Based in the Duke of York Islands, Brown's territory covered New Ireland and the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. The mission was one of the first to be photographed from its inception. The Australian Museum holds 96 plates from the first five years of the mission. Brown's photographs are a visual record of conditions and peoples of the time. Analysed in relation to Brown's writings they are indicative of the relationships and bonds established through photography both in the mission field and across wider scientific and church audiences. The methodology employed here also challenges the kinds of interpretations of photographs that can arise from visual analyses relying solely on the caption and the posing of the subject.     

Petztorme Women: Responding to Change in Lihir,Papua New Guinea

The goldmining project on Lihir Island in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, has brought dramatic socio‐economic changes. In this matrilineal society, while women's economic contributions were substantial, their political status was not. Women's participation in decision‐making about the mine has been restricted, mainly because men have excluded them. The mining company established a women's section that has supported the development of women's organizations and a range of economic development projects. The women's organizations provide the context for new political roles for women but have experienced many setbacks that are common in such groups across Papua New Guinea. Through the Lihir experience in the first five years of the mine, this paper examines the tensions and divided loyalties that constrain women's organizations and often lead to the failure of income‐generating women's projects in Papua New Guinea.     

Towards and Integrated Sustainable Development Management Strategy for Torres Strait

Lying between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait is a region of high environmental value faced by a plethora of environmental management issues. Although the environment is protected to some extent by the Torres Strait Treaty, the situation is complicated by the desire of the traditional inhabitants for political and economic autonomy and by the involvement of three levels of government, two sovereign nations and a wide range of sectoral interests in environmental management. The failure to extend the moratorium on mining exploration and exploitation of the seabed may act as a catalyst for the development of an integrated and sustainable approach to environmental management in the region. Nevertheless, there are significant constraints which may prevent this. These include the politicisation of environmental issues, lack of effective environmental management at the local level and pressure for the exploitation of natural resources.     

Geographic and Linguistic Reflections on Moent and Dubbelde Ree: Two of Australia's First Recorded Placenames

The year 2006 marks the quatercentenary of the first known European charting of any part of the Australian coastline, when the Dutch mariner Willem Janszoon explored 300 kms of the north‐west coast of Cape York Peninsula. He bestowed seven placenames, two of which, Moent and Dubbelde Ree have ambiguous meanings or referents. This paper attempts to resolve the enigmas behind these names by considering geographic, linguistic and historical evidence. Moent is particularly challenging, with several possible linguistic sources, some more plausible than others. The most compelling evidence points to it either referring to the western entrance to Endeavour Strait, or a Dutch rendition of an Indigenous Australian word. Dubbelde Ree is less problematic. The issue surrounding this name is whether its second element is meant to be Ree, an abbreviation of Reede (‘Roadstead’), or Rev, an abbreviation of Revier (‘River’). The search for the meaning of these placenames has provided credible evidence demonstrating that Janszoon explored the coastline in greater detail than has hitherto been thought, and that, in all likelihood, made contact with the local inhabitants.     

Pig diet in medieval York: carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes

This study investigates bone stable isotopes from pigs from medieval York, to characterise the pigs' diet and to explore their contribution to isotopic values from contemporary human bones. Pig bones from the Swinegate (N?=?9) and Coppergate (N?=?14) sites were used for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis to test the hypothesis that the majority of pigs in medieval York were yard-kept and fed on scraps and fish waste, elevating their nitrogen ratios. The results show that the Swinegate and Coppergate pigs gave nitrogen isotope values similar to contemporary sheep and therefore that animal protein made little or no dietary contribution. One sample showed C and N results consistent with more animal protein in the diet, and we propose that this could have been a yard-kept pig consuming human refuse. The majority of the data indicate that the pigs were eating a largely herbivorous diet and that pigs in medieval York may have been raised in rural or woodland locations rather than in the city.     

‘High Standard of Efficiency and Steadiness’: Papua New Guinea Native Police Guards and Japanese War Criminals, 1945–53

ABSTRACT

Drawing largely on archival records, this paper examines the Australian use of a detachment from the Native police force to guard the Australian war criminals' compounds for Japanese war criminals established at Rabaul and Manus Island, both in the Territory of New Guinea, from 1945 to 1953. Australia was the only Allied country in the immediate post-war period to utilise civilian police as guards for Japanese war criminals, let alone to draw principally upon Indigenous personnel. While Australian views of the Indigenous population remained paternalistic, if not outright racist, throughout this period, the use of the Native police opened up some small space for more complex perceptions of questions of racial difference. Yet, the Native police detachment to the Australian war criminal compounds has been, until now, generally overlooked in the broader history of the Native police forces of Papua and of New Guinea.     

China in Fiji: displacing traditional players?

A widely held perception in Oceania is that China has taken the opportunity of Western sanctions against Fiji's military-led regime to expand its influence in Fiji. Observers and media in the region were alarmed by the sudden increase of China's pledged aid to Fiji shortly after the 2006 military takeover. They are concerned that China has a well-calculated strategy of displacing traditional Western players in Fiji, most notably Australia and New Zealand. Such concern is not well founded. While China does have multiple interests, including strategic interests, in Fiji, there is no clear evidence to suggest that China aims to displace the traditional players there. China's growing influence in Fiji is part of China's global rise. Both Australia and New Zealand are committed to Fiji and the South Pacific as a whole. Given its substantial interests in Australia and New Zealand, it is not in China's interest to increase its influence in Fiji at the cost of its relations with these two traditional players.     

Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Developing holistic accounts of indigenous peoples’ lifeways in colonial intercultural settings requires data that provide insights into patterns of landscape use and variations in social, economic, and cultural practices away from nodes of colonial activity. However, the mobile settlement patterns of some indigenous peoples mean that the data necessary for such investigations can be rare. In western Cape York Peninsula of northeastern Australia, culturally modified trees (CMTs) associated with the collection of wild honey or “sugarbag” provide opportunities to investigate indigenous patterns of landscape use and processes of economic change within colonial settings. Here we use CMT data to suggest that increased engagement with invader-settlers resulted in intensification of indigenous wild food production. This study exemplifies the complexity of socioeconomic shifts that accompanied European colonization worldwide, and illustrates how landscape-level data can provide information on the broader histories of indigenous peoples within colonial settings.     

The Bishop of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait pearlers' strike of 1936

The exploitation of Islander pearl divers in Torres Strait and the Queensland Government's control of divers' wages was the major cause of a strike by 400 divers in 1936. The strike was also fuelled by overall discontent with the Queensland Government's rule and a desire to be free of the Queensland Protectors. An address in 1935 by Stephen Davies, Bishop of Carpentaria, urging the Commonwealth of Australia to strip Queensland and other states of management of Island and Aboriginal affairs provided the catalyst. Davies's Torres Strait Island clergy played a pivotal role in the resistance to state control. One lasting effect of the strike lay in the introduction of elected Islander councils in 1937, but what happened subsequently allowed the perpetuation of Queensland control through the new Department of Native Affairs. The results of the strike fell short of the complete transfer to the Commonwealth that the Torres Strait pearl divers and clergy had envisaged.     

Rediscovering the French Canadian Diaspora: A Personal Testimony

The presence of Franco-Americans in New England is well documented. This is not the case for New York. Recently, public awareness of the French presence in Albany's Capital District was increased, an ethnic revival kindled and a mother country discovered through intergovernmental and transnational collaboration.     

The Wider Relationships of Australasian Populations: genetic and linguistic evidence

Recent genetic studies have claimed that the indigenous populations of Australia and New Guinea derive from the earliest split in the part of the modern human stock that spread beyond sub-Saharan Africa. This paper suggests that conclusion is based on an inappropriate analysis; that on the contrary the genetic affiliations of Australian and New Guinean populations, though obscured by long periods of relative isolation, lie in northeastern Asia; and that linguistic evidence can be shown to support a connection between Australian languages and present day linguistic groupings from that area.     

Vowesses and Female Lay Piety in the Province of York, 1300–1530

Abstract

'The Dignitaries of York Minster in the 1170s: a Reassessment'. The succession of clerics to the various offices of York Minster has long been the subject of scholarly attention. The resulting tables of deans, precentors, chancellors, treasurers and archdeacons have been used extensively as a basis for dating charters of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. New evidence has emerged which shows that William d'Eu, the Precentor of York, who was thought to have died in or before 1173–1174, was still living in 1178 and possibly later. A re-examination of the established chronology prompted by this discovery shows that Jeremy, previously thought to have become Archdeacon of Cleveland by late 1171, probably did not gain the position until 1176 or later, in succession to Ralph. Diceto's identification of Geoffrey, Provost of Beverley and Chancellor of the young King, with Geoffrey, Archdeacon of York, which has been doubted, is shown to be supported by the available evidence. The proposed revisions to the chronology of the tenure of the York Minster dignities will allow for more accurate dating of many charters from this period.