Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context? - Rainforest ...

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Sandra PannellIn the same way that Annette Weiner argues that there are some objects which are neverexchanged because of their acknowledged capacity to authenticate cosmology (1992), thenthere are some places which, regardless of their disfigurement or, in some cases, completeobliteration, continue to be socially recognised as important loci for the convergence ofmemory and meaning. In other words, some places invite commentary and people tellstories about them. Again, similar to Weiner’s ‘inalienable possessions’, these places are notisolated ‘memory palaces’ (Yates 1966). Rather, their uniqueness derives from thosecultural traditions, which link these sites into a wider netscape of memory.As these comments suggest, and as Paul Carter (1987) reminds us, space is not simply abackdrop or stage upon which significant events take place or are inscribed upon.Landscapes and places are implicated in dynamic social processes of memory-making andforgetting, as well as being one of the products of these ongoing processes. In Massey’sterms, space is part of “an ever-shifting social geometry of power and signification” (1994: 3).This is brutally evident in places like Bosnia and Herzegovina which, to paraphrase EdwardSaid (1993: 7), can be regarded as ‘geographies which struggle’, disturbing the notion ofspace as somehow inherently fixed or settled.Rather, than regarding these violated spaces or disfigured places as ‘non-places’ (cf. Auge1995) or aesthetic blights on the landscape, readily shunned or removed in the first wave ofrebuilding a community or creating a new nation, these ‘troubled’ spaces occupy animportant place in the social consciousness of a people. As the Rwanda example suggests,the violations enacted on place not only stand as powerful memorials of violent events andhistories but they can also give shape to ongoing social processes of reformation andreconciliation.In light of the preceding discussion, we can ask the question, how does a society rememberits past or configure its future? In the context of recent theatres of war in Europe, Africa, andAsia, this is not an academic question but is one, which has widespread social and politicalimplications. In the post-war period in many of these war-torn places, with the emphasisupon reinstating fundamental amenities, such as health, water, sanitation, housing, etc., andredeveloping the built environment, this question takes on an added impetus.In war-torn and transformed landscapes, identifying what constitutes the cultural heritage of agroup or a nation is not an obvious or simple matter. The issue here is not purely a matter ofdetermining how to memorialise a tragic past in spatial terms, though this is a significantconsideration. Often, efforts to monumentalise events and experiences in this wayunderstate the fact that social memories are conveyed and sustained through embodied,spatialised experiences. The issue here is how to preserve this progressive and engagedsense of place and, at the same time, recognise enduring commemorative spaces.An examination of the World Heritage List reveals a notable lack of places and spacesassociated with and defined by war and conflict. Indeed, as previously stated, spacesdisfigured, even obliterated by war and conflict do not readily meet the criteria and conditionsfor ‘outstanding universal value’ under the World Heritage Convention. While such placesmay signify monumental events in world history, structurally they do not conform to the ideasof intact heritage defined by the Convention. The emphasis upon restoration as a means ofmaintaining the integrity and authenticity values of a site necessarily precludes the listing ofmany war-related properties, resulting in a situation where the World Heritage List practicallyignores a significant dimension of human history and heritage.58
Reconciling Nature and Culture in a Global Context?Lessons from the World Heritage ListAUSTRALIAN HERITAGE AND THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCEThe issue of recognising a ‘heritage that hurts’ (Uzzell and Ballantyne 1998) is one that manyformer colonies are still grappling with as they come to terms with and try to reconcile someof the more shameful episodes in their recent past. In Australia, for example, while the legalrecognition of native title attempts to redress contemporary Aboriginal dispossessionresulting from the colonial imposition of the concept of terra nullius, for the most part thiscolonial past remains a ‘hidden history’ (Bird Rose 1991). When Aboriginal cultures areacknowledged as part of the ‘nation’s heritage’ or are recognised as World Heritage, it is notbecause they have somehow survived more than 200 years of European colonisation.Unlike Macau, there are few instances in Australia of restoring and preserving thearchitectural products of the encounter between Indigenous people and European colonists.Comparison with Macau and other former colonies inscribed on the World Heritage List hasobvious implications for future nominations by the Government of Australia involvingIndigenous cultural heritage. It is certainly time to rethink the relationship between heritageand the ‘colonial experience’ if we are to progress beyond the view of Australian coloniallandscapes as a picturesque artistic legacy, epitomised by the Heidelberg School (Taylor1995), or the presentation of colonial spaces as surviving ‘palaces’ of empire, as epitomisedby the recently-listed (2004) Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens.If Macau represents one of the first and longest-lasting interactions between East and West,then the introduction of the ‘Reserve System’ by colonial authorities in Queensland in 1896can make similar claims in the history of Indigenous and colonial encounters. Ostensiblyestablished to ‘protect’ Aborigines from European and Chinese settlers and the allegeddebilitating moral influences of these two societies (Meston 1895: 24), the Queenslandsystem was the first of its kind in Australia and variations of it were soon enacted in otherstates. So-called ‘protection’ entailed the mass and forced removal of Aboriginal people fromtheir traditional homelands to one of the newly established settlements. Prior to theestablishment of the Government’s reserves, a number of church-run mission stationsalready existed, the first of these being set up in the 1870s in south-east Queensland(Department of Aboriginal and Islanders Advancement 1982). In the Wet Tropics region,Yarrabah 55 was established by the Church of England in 1892; Bloomfield River Mission wasinitially a government settlement established in 1886, but then taken over by the LutheranMission Council of South Australia in 1887; Mona Mona Mission was founded by the SeventhDay Adventist Church in 1913; while the government-run Hull River Aboriginal Settlementbegan operating in 1914 (loc. cit.). By 1948, 18 Aboriginal and Islander reserves, missions,and settlements had been established in North Queensland and on Cape York Peninsulaalone (loc. cit.) 56 . As previously mentioned, Yarrabah and Wujal Wujal (formerly BloomfieldRiver Mission), together with the Mona Mona Reserve, were incorporated into the boundariesof the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (DASETT 1987). While no longer reserves ormissions, today Yarrabah and Wujal Wujal continue to support large Aboriginal communities,while Djabugay people are redeveloping the former mission site of Mona Mona.Most Aboriginal people living in Queensland have some form of direct or mediatedexperience of the reserve system as part of what it meant to live under the Act in thenineteenth and twentieth century 57 . Today, the architectural remains of the mission days atplaces like Yarrabah, Wujal Wujal and Mona Mona are salient reminders of the injustices of55 Yarrabah was formerly known as Cape Grafton and also as the ‘Bellenden Ker Mission’.56 In the 1960s, Aboriginal Reserves were also established at Ravenshoe and Malanda in the WetTropics region.57 In its various manifestations, The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of1897 controlled Aboriginal lives in Queensland until 1984 (Bottoms 1999: 87).59
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