Oral History in a Wounded Country: Interactive Interviewing in South Africa

The utility of oral history has always seemed most evident whengreat change occurs. Political, social, and cultural upheavalscall for documentation of the direct participants, and the printedarchives inevitably reflect the viewpoint of the old regime.Nowhere has such change been more dramatic and breathtakingthan in South Africa since the 1990s, when decades of strictapartheid collapsed into a multiracial, multicultural societythat is now ruled by its former political prisoners. Although     

Defining Citizenship for a New Nation

A key part of any process of decolonisation is the need for the emerging nation to determine the rules for citizenship. In Papua New Guinea, what it meant to be a citizen was the first topic that the Constitutional Planning Committee considered when it set about its task to develop a ‘home grown’ constitution in late 1972. The process by which it first comprehended this matter and then involved thousands of Papua New Guineans in their villages, missions and schools in a territory-wide exercise in consultation forms the subject of this paper. The records of the discussions that took place between February and April of 1973 reveal much of how the criteria for membership of the national enterprise came to be established. This case study of defining citizenship in PNG demonstrates the intensive consultation of the local peoples on key issues in nation-building and reveals the high degree of Indigenous agency in the decolonisation process.     

Ichnofacies of the Stairway Sandstone fish-fossil beds (Middle Ordovician,Northern Territory,Australia)

The Stairway Sandstone is a 30–560 m thick succession of Middle Ordovician siliciclastic sedimentary rocks within the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, deposited in the epeiric Larapintine Sea of northern peri-Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone is significant as one of only two known Gondwanan successions to yield articulated arandaspid (pteraspidomorph agnathan) fish. Herein we use the ichnology of the Stairway Sandstone to reveal insights into the shallow marine habitat of these early vertebrates, and compare it with that of other known pteraspidomorph-bearing localities from across Gondwana. The Stairway Sandstone contains a diverse Ordovician ichnofauna including 22 ichnotaxa of Arenicolites, Arthrophycus, Asterosoma, Cruziana, Didymaulichnus, Diplichnites, Diplocraterion, ?Gordia, Lockeia, Monocraterion, Monomorphichnus, Phycodes, Planolites, Rusophycus, Skolithos and Uchirites. These ichnofauna provide a well-preserved example of a typical Ordovician epeiric sea assemblage, recording the diverse ethologies of tracemakers in a very shallow marine environment of flashy sediment accumulation and regularly shifting sandy substrates. New conodont data refine the age of the Stairway Sandstone to the early Darriwilian, with ichnostratigraphic implications for the Cruziana rugosa group and Arthrophycus alleghaniensis.     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

The emergence of a Presbyterian evangelical: a religious and social history of Isaac Nelson's pastorate at First Comber Presbyterian Church, 1838–42

The Revd Isaac Nelson was one of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century Ulster Presbyterianism, who achieved transatlantic recognition for his involvement with anti-slavery and later became notorious for his advocacy of Irish Home Rule. Owing to his opposition to the 1859 revival, Nelson has been castigated by both fundamentalists and moderate evangelicals as the enemy of vital religion. This view has been disseminated in popular mythologies of the Ulster awakening, especially in the works of Ian Paisley and John T. Carson. An objective examination of Nelson's public career, however, does not support this conclusion. This essay seeks to substantiate the claim that Nelson was an evangelical by considering his early experience as minister of First Comber Presbyterian Church. By means of a micro-history case study, it also usefully illuminates our understanding as to how the dominance of evangelicalism within Ulster Presbyterianism was experienced at a local level. Accordingly, the essay also considers Nelson's role in disputes with Episcopalians and Unitarians during this early part of his career as well as his early involvement in ecclesiastical politics.