- Title
- Taking fire, making fire : settler colonial understandings of Aboriginal fire practices in Victoria, Australia
- Creator
- McMaster, Sarah
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Text; Thesis; PhD
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/185879
- Identifier
- vital:16786
- Abstract
- In the State of Victoria, Australia, fire has a political dimension that is as vigorous and enduring as its physical presence. This thesis argues that in Victoria, European explorers and settler colonists persistently treated and depicted Aboriginal fire skills and practices in ways that were politically advantageous to themselves, and disadvantageous to Aboriginal peoples. Drawing from nineteenth century diaries, letters, recollections, newspaper articles and official records, this work uses Foucauldian theories to analyse the discourses that shaped and made possible the newcomers’ understandings of Aboriginal fire practices. It argues that explorers and settler colonists sought to replace Aboriginal peoples as Victoria’s fire managers and to restrict the opportunities Aboriginal peoples had to determine burning regimes. They did this physically, by prohibiting, and limiting attempts by Aboriginal peoples to continue precolonial fire practices. They also did it discursively, creating knowledge which constituted the practices as antiquated and incompatible with colonial enterprises, and by forming their own identity as expert settler Victorians, legitimately at home on the land. This thesis stresses that relationships of power between Aboriginal and European peoples were multidimensional and argues that in maintaining a position of dominance, the newcomers variously appropriated, emulated, feared and revered Aboriginal fire practices. It further argues that these efforts to disturb Aboriginal peoples using fire were fuelled only partially by the settler colonial perceptions that Aboriginal-managed fires presented unacceptable physical risks to humans and their assets. Efforts to disturb existing practices were additionally prompted by the newcomers’ political need to effect their seizure of territory, by demonstrating that it was they, not Aboriginal peoples, who controlled fire in Victoria. Drawing from settler colonial theory about the enduring nature of colonising structures and discourse, this thesis suggests that caution is needed to ensure the state’s contemporary use of Aboriginal fire practices does not further perpetuate settler colonial patterns of dominance and control.; Doctor of Philosophy
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright Sarah McMaster
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- Culturally sensitive
- Subject
- Making fire; Aboriginal fire practices
- Full Text
- Thesis Supervisor
- Archer, Verity
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