Contrasting colonial collectors: an examination of nineteenth-century collectors of Victorian Indigenous cultural artefacts, violence and antiquarianism

- Donovan, Paul

Title
Contrasting colonial collectors: an examination of nineteenth-century collectors of Victorian Indigenous cultural artefacts, violence and antiquarianism
Creator
Donovan, Paul
Date
2023
Type
Text; Thesis; PhD
Identifier
http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/199475
Identifier
vital:19208
Abstract
The motivations and methodologies for collecting Indigenous Australian cultural material from colonial Victoria from 1802–1900 have varied widely. Some collectors enacted frontier war to disarm a colonised people and dispossess them of their land. Others sought to salvage a material scientific record of the culture of a race they believed was doomed to imminent extinction or build museum collections for public education. Some sought souvenirs or gifts to document tourism experiences, and some acquired exotic material for commercial enterprise. This dissertation offers a historical overview of political and scientific paradigms underpinning the collection of Indigenous Australian cultural material from nineteenth-century Victoria and characterises the resulting collecting practices. The nature of the collection methods and the content of the collections were examined. The dynamics of relationships between nineteenth-century collectors, Indigenous Australian communities, the source of collections, and collecting institutions were analysed following on from Nicholas Thomas’s entangled objects framework and using the methodologies of Geertz’s thick description, McBryde’s ethnohistory, Denzin’s interpretive biography and Thomas, Znaniecki and Shaw’s biographical analysis. By examining evidence in the primary sources of Indigenous Australian value for colonial material and colonial value of Indigenous material, this dissertation deconstructed the nature of the relationships between agents. It explored the nexus between objects, institutions and individuals. The case studies add depth to the understanding of the collections of Victorian cultural material still held in museums.; Doctor of Philosophy
Publisher
Federation University Australia
Rights
Culturally sensitive
Rights
All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
Rights
Copyright Paul Donovan
Rights
Open Access
Subject
Indigenous; Artefacts; Colonial; Museum; Race; Victorian; Colonisation; Collection; Collecting; Museology; Antiquarianism
Full Text
Thesis Supervisor
Waldron, David
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