Cross-culturalizing history : journey to the Gurindji way of historical practice

Abstract

My thesis questions the mainstream academic monopoly over Australian historical studies by validating the alternative historical practices of Indigenous Australians. The conventional practice of academic history, which is based on time-oriented chronology, teleology, and historicity, is only one mode of exploring the past. My thesis explores Aboriginal historians' narratives, which are characterised by space-oriented stories framed according to the logic of their own ontology and cosmology, or cultural mode of being. Drawing upon field research with the Gurindji people of Daguragu in Northern Territory, this thesis explores the Gurindji analysis of Australian colonial history. This project represents an alternative framework, namely a 'place-oriented history', in which the very concept of 'history' becomes more spatial than temporal. For the Gurindji people, both body and place are invested with invisible memories of their own past. Historical knowledge has been created, and is maintained through the web of connection among people, their Dreaming and places. They use oral story telling techniques, body actions, visual iconography and diagrams rendered on the earth in order to explore and express their pasts. This study explores the nature and structure of the Gurindji way of practising history in order to reveal the 'reality' of the Gurindji people's history. However, even though I aim to present Gurindji history based on the Gurindji mode of historical practice as closely as possible, I do not present my thesis as an example of Gurindji cultural practice- the Gurindji historians do not write theses. Therefore, my purpose here is not to find a place for my speaking position within the Gunndji culture. Instead, my aim is to create the arena where both Aboriginal and academic historians can communicate with each other across the cultural gap between them and share multiple Australian pasts. In other words, to set up a dialogue and negotiation between two historical practices in order to share different ways of constructing the past. I call this process, 'cross-culturalizing history'.