Description:
Ballarat, in the British colony of Victoria, Australia, burst into life as an instant city in 1851, following the discovery of gold. Adventurous men and women from all over the world descended on Ballarat in the 1850s, feverishly attacking the sticky clay at Golden Point. The diggers followed the gold underground, along the course of the ancient rivers, buried by the volcanic eruptions of Mounts Warrenheip and Buninyong. On the flat, 30,000 diggers collected into small cooperatives of “mates” and desperately searched for their personal Eldorado.From the first discoveries in 1851, relations between the miners and the police sent to administer the goldfields were uneasy. The government attempted to collect a monthly license fee for the right to search for gold, but the tax conferred no rights, and licenses were inspected at the point of a bayonet. The more outspoken miners, schooled in the ways of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, led a movement to protest against the gold license. The cry of “No taxation without representation” was raised, echoing the rhetoric of the American Revolution and the Chartist movement for democratic rights in Britain. [EXTRACT]
Description:
Celebrations in 1992 of Columbus' so-called Discovery of the Americas were a focal point for trans-Atlantic activism. The initial invisibility of Amerindian peoples in planned official proceedings became a source of conflict and was countered with instances of self-representation in conferences, protests, networks, ceremonies and interventions in public debate. In response to exclusion from Quincentennial discourse, indigenous movements coordinated protest across the Atlantic sphere. They achieved a worldwide hearing for perspectives that revolved around visions for differentiated citizenship that entailed (a) inter-nation compacts that were implicitly civilisational, and (b) assertions of indigenous historicity and bold claims around environmental guardianship. This essay begins to explore the vernacular of the social movement that developed at this juncture through a comparative sociological study of continental coordination. It counter-poses the heritage of Euro-American images of fossilised Indian civilisations to living assertions for various forms of sovereignty. It is argued that the transnational politics generated during this stormy episode are part of what can be characterised as an indigenous modernity.
Description:
Celebrations in 1992 of Columbus' so-called Discovery of the Americas were a focal point for trans-Atlantic activism. The initial invisibility of Amerindian peoples in planned official proceedings became a source of conflict and was countered with instances of self-representation in conferences, protests, networks, ceremonies and interventions in public debate. In response to exclusion from Quincentennial discourse, indigenous movements coordinated protest across the Atlantic sphere. They achieved a worldwide hearing for perspectives that revolved around visions for differentiated citizenship that entailed (a) inter-nation compacts that were implicitly civilisational, and (b) assertions of indigenous historicity and bold claims around environmental guardianship. This essay begins to explore the vernacular of the social movement that developed at this juncture through a comparative sociological study of continental coordination. It counter-poses the heritage of Euro-American images of fossilised Indian civilisations to living assertions for various forms of sovereignty. It is argued that the transnational politics generated during this stormy episode are part of what can be characterised as an indigenous modernity.