Policy development and engagement: perspectives and insights from key stakeholders involved in the creative industries in north Queensland,Australia

Like many western nations, the Australian government invests significant resources in creative industries at federal, state and local levels. While the majority of investment exists in the southern part of Australia, the current federal government has drawn attention to the need to develop the vast northern area of the country. North Queensland is the most populated area of northern Australia, hence key to this broader vision for the country. This case study therefore presents findings from interviews with key stakeholders involved in the development and/or promotion of cultural policy in north Queensland, including participants working at national, state and local levels. The findings are significant and point to four issues of ongoing relevance: the impact of policy and associated engagement issues, reductions in government funding, the fragmented nature of the creative industries, and the particular challenges facing north Queensland in terms of the northern Australia vision.     

Obscure oases: natural,cultural and historical geography of western Queensland's Tertiary sandstone springs

The distribution of surface water dictates human and animal activity in arid zones. Although typically small, hidden, and inaccessible, springs and wells fed by local aquifers were the only sources of reliable water across vast areas of inland Australia until the last century. Compared to larger, more accessible water sources such as riverine waterholes and Great Artesian Basin discharge springs, their history is sketchy and poorly documented, although rich in intrigue and mythology. Since the expansion of artificial waters and motorised transport, many of these small oases have been forgotten, and their location and permanence are now less well‐known than for thousands of years. We examine the distribution, hydrogeology, cultural history, and biological values of Tertiary sandstone springs in western Queensland based on a review of historical literature, interviews with long‐term residents, and extensive field surveys. One hundred and sixty springs were documented, and nearly 40% of these have declined in flow or become inactive since pastoral settlement for reasons that are not well understood. While their decline in some areas seems related to shallow bores sunk into their local aquifers, it is possible that some smaller springs owed their existence to regular human maintenance. Others are probably naturally dynamic over decadal time scales. This study documents an almost‐forgotten aspect of Queensland's natural and cultural history.     

Exhibiting the Native American Other: The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and Commodified Racism

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYP) not only reflected the frontier culture of Seattle, Washington, in 1909, it also revealed a deeply ingrained set of values within American culture that deemed Native individuals (the Other) as inferior. This label of “inferior” is visible in the various exhibitions of Native American objects at the AYP, which also expose deliberate expressions of hierarchy and the association of culture with commodity. The visual record that remains from the AYP includes souvenir items, official photographs, and postcards, which, when viewed as a cross section of fair imagery, suggest a relationship between Georg Simmel’s theory of objective/subjective culture and commodified racism.     

After the Typhoon: Multicultural Archaeologies of World War II on Peleliu,Palau, Micronesia

Abstract

In the autumn of 1944, one of the worst battles of the Pacific War took place between the Americans and Japanese on the small Micronesian island of Peleliu in the Palau group. Over more than two months of combat, its garrison fought almost literally to the last man, while US casualties were proportionately among the heaviest of the entire war. Afterwards largely overlooked in the public consciousness, the battlefield is now the best preserved of the Pacific theatre and is the subject of an extensive archaeological survey, coupled with a programme of large-scale unexploded ordnance removal. This paper is the second of two, following our previous publication summarizing the more conventional results of the fieldwork. Here, we instead explore the deeper ways in which the material culture of Peleliu can illuminate the multicultural histories of the fighting and thus enable the battlefield to stand as a lasting, reflective memorial to all those whose lives it touched. We address the neglected narratives of the Japanese, the Korean and Okinawan forced labourers, and also the marginalized members of the US forces including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. In particular, we attempt to bring out the indigenous perspective on the material heritage of an imported and deeply alien war. In combination, we hope the research can provide new theoretical avenues of exploration for the archaeology of battlefields.     

KEEPING THE PEACE

This paper locates the emerging professional police force in Copenhagen both in a European‐wide context and in the context of Danish absolute monarchy between 1660 and 1799. The surviving source material on the activities of the new police force itself (from 1683) is reviewed, but the notion of ‘good police’ is placed in a much broader early modern framework involving not only daily security in the city, and matters of criminal and civil law arising naturally in a growing urban environment, but also the relationship between the police master and the many other existing agents of domestic policy in early modern Denmark. The role of ‘good police’ in terms of begging, vagrancy and the workhouse conform largely to contemporary European patterns, but when the police was also (from 1773) given powers to control newspapers and the press, questions of civil rights and obligations were bound to be raised – not least once public opinion became fully aware that the mental condition of Christian VII meant that absolutism could not operate in the normal way. Although the Copenhagen police provided a tool for more co‐ordinated implementation of social policy in the 18th century, there were no sudden changes in domestic agenda.     

Ideology,clientelism and the ‘fascistization’ of the Italian state: fascists in the Interior Ministry police

Abstract

This is a study of fascist police personnel under Mussolini's dictatorship. Based on an examination of the personal files of the Interior Ministry police, the article questions how far the recruitment and/or promotion during the mid-to-late 1920s of fascist police officers and officials, several of whom had been involved in the black-shirt movement before the March on Rome, represented an effective ‘fascistization’ strategy. If their presence led to a ‘fascistization’ of the police of sorts, they generally distinguished themselves neither as ‘good’ policemen nor as ‘good’ fascists. The professional attitudes and ideological outlooks of fascist policemen should be considered in the broader context of clientelism and factionalism which characterized public life in Italy and which played a key role in career advancement in the state.     

Letting Indigenous People Talk About Their Country: a Case Study of Cross‐Cultural (Mis)communication in an Environmental Management Planning Process

This paper presents a case study, based on the experiences of two senior Aboriginal traditional owners who were engaged in negotiations surrounding the establishment of a Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) in southeast Queensland. This case is notable as an illustration of the capacity of natural resource management planning, through negotiation within a formal process, to extinguish native title. Importantly, the personal experiences of two senior Aboriginal people provide an insight into a situation designed to enhance interactions between government and community, with the overt intention of improving natural resource management. However, the record of this personal experience indicates that the communication was less than satisfactory and that the outcomes, at least in terms of the experiences recorded here, of the individual senior Aboriginal community members, was less than satisfactory. We conclude that, despite best intentions, there is an important lack of provision for community influence or power, including any legal or administrative institutional framework. We also conclude that there are important institutional and social processes of engagement still to be developed, including ways of engaging the community more widely that has conventionally been the case.     

关于警察行政权的实施和监督问题的思考

警察行政权是国家进行管理的重要权力。警察行政权的特殊性,决定了警察行政权的行使直接涉及公民的人身自由和财产,关系到人民群众的生命安危和切身利益。因此,为了防止警察行政权被滥用,规范警察行政行为,必须加强对警察行政权的监督和制约,真正发挥法律监督的功能,防范、控制和纠正警察权力的扩张,以实现警察治安行政管理权运行的规范化和程序化。     

British Women Travellers and Constructions of Racial Difference Across the Nineteenth-Century American West

At a time coinciding historically with the height of the British Empire, the immigrants' rush to occupy American West lands and the wholesale removal of Native Americans onto reservations, encounters between Native peoples and British women travellers became emblematic of a whole range of socio-spatial relationships of domination, subordination and resistance. In this paper, I examine representations of western Native Americans in the travelogues of ten British women travellers to the late nineteenth-century American West, produced primarily during encounters at sites along the western rail lines. Constructions of racial and gender differences in the texts can be tied to British colonial discourses, as well as to the social relations inherent in the multiple contact zones within which the encounters took place.     

The cultures of Native North American language documentation and revitalization

The reviewed books comprise an emerging ethnographic literature on endangered language documentation and revitalization in Native North America. Language loss and preservation are pressing concerns for tribal communities, galvanizing activists and researchers to develop classroom curricula and literacy traditions in hopes of producing new speakers. While the reviewed books show that this goal often goes unrealized, we nevertheless read them as grounds for optimism. Even if language revitalization rarely increases the everyday use of particular lexical and grammatical codes, it may succeed in accomplishing another important goal: facilitating indigenous communities’ efforts to create for themselves more meaningful contemporary cultures.