Aborigines, Islanders and Hula Girls in Great Barrier Reef Tourism
2014; Routledge; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00223344.2014.897201
ISSN1469-9605
Autores Tópico(s)Island Studies and Pacific Affairs
ResumoABSTRACTThe Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's premier tourist destinations. It is promoted and marketed to tourists as part of an idealised Pacific island paradise. While the gardens and decor of island resorts mimic those of resorts elsewhere in the Pacific, the way in which Indigenous people are represented is markedly different. This paper presents an analysis of historic tourist ephemera to suggest that Australian Aboriginal people are largely invisible at the Great Barrier Reef, despite their role in establishing the tourism industry. It suggests that ambiguities of Aboriginal presence, in labour and performance, are a product of tourism ideals and colonial race relations.Key words: Great Barrier ReefAboriginallabourPacifictourismperformance AcknowledgementsI gratefully acknowledge the support and interest of the Yarrabah community, especially Florence Grivin, Claire Ambrym and Iris Livingstone, Con Yeatman, Leon Yeatman and Ron Gray. I would like to thank Bob Muir, former chair of Sea Forum, an organisation representing Great Barrier Reef Traditional Owners, for his long-term interest and support. Dr Luke Keogh, Dr Katelyn Barney, Dr David Collett, and the anonymous referees all made constructive suggestions. Thanks to Dr Vicki Luker for her excellent editing. The research was enabled by a fellowship from The University of Queensland and assisted by staff at the British Museum, National Library of Australia, and State Library of Queensland.Notes1 C. Michael Hall, ‘Making the Pacific’, in Gregory D. Ringer (ed.), Destinations: cultural landscapes of tourism (London 1998), 140–53; Miriam Kahn, ‘Tahiti intertwined: ancestral land, tourist postcard, and nuclear test site’, American Anthropologist, 102:1 (2000), 7‒26; Miriam Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’, History and Anthropology, 14:4 (2003), 307‒26.2 Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’, 308.3 Margaret Jolly, ‘From Point Venus to Bali Ha‘i: eroticism and exoticism in representations of the Pacific’, in Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly (eds), Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: sexualities in Asia and the Pacific (Chicago 1997), 121; Michael Sturma, ‘The nubile savage’, History Today, 45: 4 (1995), 7‒9; Tamasailau M. Suaalii, ‘Deconstructing the “exotic” female beauty of the Pacific Islands’, in Alison Jones, Phyllis Herda and Tamasailau M. Suaalii (eds), Bitter Sweet: Indigenous women in the Pacific (Dunedin 2000), 93‒108, Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’.4 Desmond makes a useful distinction between the term ‘hula girl’ to refer to a popular and touristic ideal of sexually attractive Pacific Islander women and the more culturally contextualised ‘hula dancer’ of Hawaii. Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: bodies on display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago 1999), 270.5 Ibid., 5; Teresia Teaiwa, ‘Reading Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa with Epeli Hau‘ofa's Kisses in the Nederends: militourism, feminism and the “Polynesian” body’, in Vilsoni Hereniko and Rob Wilson (eds), Inside Out: literature, cultural politics, and identity in the New Pacific (Lanham 1999), 249‒63.6 Desmond, Staging Tourism; Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’.7 Celmara Pocock, ‘“Blue lagoons and coconut palms”: the creation of a tropical idyll in Australia’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, 16:3 (2005), 335‒49.8 Hall, ‘Making the Pacific’, 140.9 Images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at the Reef are comparatively few, but nevertheless exist across a range of published and unpublished sources. Images for this study have been sourced from private and public photographs and films held in public institutions. including the National Library of Australia (hereinafter NLA), the Australian National Film and Sound Archive, John Oxley Library (State Library of Queensland), Mitchell Library (State Library of New South Wales), National Archives of Australia, Queensland State Archives and British Library. Images have further been sourced from private collections and those of local historical societies and museums.10 Lindahl Elliott provides an excellent example of how a severely modified and artificially created environment in the Panama region has been created as a pristine site of biological investigation. Nils Lindahl Elliot, ‘A memory of nature: ecotourism on Panama's Barro Colorado Island’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: travesia, 19:3 (2010), 237‒59. Gordon Waitt, Ruth Lane and Lesley Head, ‘The boundaries of nature tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 30:3 (2003), 523‒45; Paige West and James G. Carrier, ‘Ecotourism and authenticity: getting away from it all?’, Current Anthropology, 45:4 (2004), 483‒98; Deborah Bird Rose, ‘The year zero and the north Australian frontier’, in Deborah Bird Rose and Anne Fiona Clarke (eds), Tracking Knowledge in North Australian Landscapes: studies in indigenous and settler ecological knowledge systems (Casuarina, NT 1997), 19‒36.11 Elizabeth Deloughrey, ‘Island ecologies and Caribbean literatures’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 95:3 (2004), 298‒310; Mimi Sheller, ‘Natural hedonism: the invention of Caribbean Islands as tropical playgrounds’, in Sandra Courtman (ed.), The Society of Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 2 (2001). Available online at: www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/papers/vol2.htm (accessed 21 Jan. 2014); Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’.12 Pocock, ‘“Blue lagoons and coconut palms’”.13 Much biological classification and other scientific methods had been undertaken with museum collections rather than on living specimens in their environment. These collections originated from field collections of the earlier naturalist expeditions of the late 18th century.14 Celmara Pocock, ‘Sense matters: aesthetic values of the Great Barrier Reef’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 8:4 (2002), 365‒81; Celmara Pocock, ‘Real to reel reef: space, place and film at the Great Barrier Reef’, in Tiziana Ferrero-Regis and Albert Moran (eds), Placing the Moving Image (Brisbane 2004), 53‒68; Celmara Pocock, ‘Sensing place, consuming space: changing visitor experiences of the Great Barrier Reef’, in Kevin Meethan, Alison Anderson and Steve Miles (eds), Tourism, Consumption and Representation: narratives of place and Self (Oxfordshire 2006), 94‒112; Todd Barr, No Swank Here? The development of the Whitsundays as a tourist destination to the early 1970s, ed. Department of History and Politics in conjunction with Department of Tourism (Townsville 1990), 7‒19.15 James Bowen and Margarita Bowen, The Great Barrier Reef: history, science, heritage (Cambridge 2002), 264‒82.16 Captain Tom, a long-term tour operator in the Whitsundays, suggests that the tourists arrived in the region in ‘the wake of this expedition’. G. Tom McLean, Captain Tom (Mackay 1986), 3‒4.17 Maurice Yonge, A Year on the Great Barrier Reef: the story of corals and of the greatest of their creations (London 1930).18 There are at least two men who can be identified from archival mission records, and they were Harry Mossman and Paul Saxton, both boatmen. The first family was Gracie and Andy Dabah, and their children Edith and Cecil. They were later replaced by Minnie Connolly and Claude Ponto, and their children Teresa and Stanley. This has been established through cross-referencing names mentioned in Maurice Yonge, A Year on the Great Barrier Reef, archival records in the ‘Register of baptisms at Yarrabah Mission: 1891–1927’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies MS3234 (Canberra: AIATSIS 1891‒1927), and confirmed through consultation with descendants.19 See, for example, ‘Sir Maurice Yonge (1899‒1986) Australian and New Zealand papers [M2844‒846], 1929‒1985’, microform, NLA, Australian Joint Copying Project, and British Museum; and ‘Great Barrier Reef Expedition, 1928‒1929, C.M. Yonge’, pictures collection, Canberra, NLA.20 Yonge, A Year on the Great Barrier Reef, 30.21 Ibid.22 The first missions were ostensibly established to protect Aboriginal people, who were regarded as a ‘dying race’. Contrary to colonial expectations, however, the Aboriginal population on missions expanded rapidly, and government policy shifted from segregation to assimilation. Under a new labour policy, the mission system served to provide early Australian industries with a Christian workforce.23 Rosalind Kidd, ‘Who paid for the Lucky Country?’, Queensland Journal of Labour History, 10 (2010), 19‒26; Rosalind Kidd, Hard Labour, Stolen Wages: national report on stolen wages (Rozelle, NSW 2007), Rosalind Kidd, ‘Wealth and poverty’, in Andrew Gunstone (ed.), History, Politics and Knowledge: essays in Australian Indigenous Studies (North Melbourne 2008), 148‒67.24 Celmara Pocock, ‘Entwined histories: photography and tourism at the Great Barrier Reef’, in Mike Robinson and David Picard (eds), The Framed World: tourism, tourists and photography (Farnham 2009), 185‒97.25 Philip Hayward, Tide Lines: music, tourism and cultural transition in the Whitsunday Islands (and adjacent coast) (Lismore 2001), 15‒16.26 For a comprehensive study, see Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: the antiquarian imagination in Australia (Cambridge 1996).27 Baiba Berzins, ‘Before the sharing: Aborigines and tourism in the Northern Territory to the 1970s’, Journal of Northern Territory History, 9 (1998), 69‒80; Julia Peck, ‘Performing Aboriginality: desiring pre-contact Aboriginality in Victoria, 1886–1901’, History of Photography, 34:3 (2010), 214‒33; Jane Lydon, Eye Contact: photographing Indigenous Australians, objects/histories (Durham 2005); Peter Carolane, ‘Parallel fantasies: tourism and Aboriginal mission at Lake Tyers in the late nineteenth century’, in Amanda Barry et al. (eds), Evangelists of Empires? Missionaries in colonial history (Melbourne 2008), 161‒72.28 Several studies have identified the ways in which Aborigines were viewed as part of nature and scenery. See, for example, Lydon, Eye Contact: photographing Indigenous Australians, 184‒9; Marcia Langton and Bruno David, ‘Nature and culture in a Forest Park: William Ricketts and his sanctuary, Victoria’, in Jane Lydon and Tracey Ireland (eds), Object Lessons: archaeology and heritage in Australian Society (Melbourne 2005), 71‒88; Carolane, ‘Parallel fantasies’.29 Celmara Pocock, ‘A playground for science: Great Barrier Reef’, Queensland Historical Atlas 2009‒10 (2010). Available online at: http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/playground-science-great-barrier-reef (accessed 21 Jan. 2014).30 A protectionist system established in Australian colonies had responsibility for ensuring the welfare of Aboriginal people. The system, however, primarily served to smooth the way for European settlement by removing Aboriginal people from their lands. Protectorates were established under the control of regional Protectors, who reported to a Chief Protector. It was under this system that Aboriginal people were removed to reserves and missions, and Protectors controlled every aspect of Aboriginal peoples' lives. Regina Ganter and Ros Kidd, ‘The powers of Protectors: conflicts surrounding Queensland's 1897 Aboriginal legislation’, Australian Historical Studies, 25:101 (1993), 536‒54. There are many general studies on aspects of the protectorate system, including Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880‒1939 (Carlton, VIC 1997); Gordon Reid, 'That Unhappy Race': Queensland and the Aboriginal problem 1838‒1901 (Kew VIC 2006).31 John William Bleakley, The Aborigines of Australia: their history, their habits, their assimilation (Brisbane 1961), 202.32 Further analysis is yet required to determine to what extent these performances were used by participants to reaffirm their particular cultural origins, and even to conduct displays of clan rivalry.33 An ecotour conducted by non-Aboriginal guides takes small groups of visitors to view Aboriginal rock paintings at Nara Inlet in the Whitsundays. Information about local Aboriginal people refers to the Ngaro in the past tense, so that they are positioned as discontinuous in the present. Aboriginal culture is thus portrayed and perceived as a relic of the past.34 Pocock, ‘“Blue lagoons and coconut palms’”.35 Margaret Jolly, ‘Desire, difference and disease: sexual and venereal exchanges on Cook's voyages in the Pacific’, in Ross Gibson (ed.), Exchanges: cross-cultural encounters in Australia and the Pacific (Sydney 1996), 508‒45; Jolly, ‘From Point Venus to Bali Ha'i’; Sturma, ‘The nubile savage’; Kahn, ‘Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination’; Desmond, Staging Tourism.36 Pocock, ‘“Blue lagoons and coconut palms”’.37 Peoples of the Pacific have been categorised and studied in racialised terms through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries; the resulting hierarchy of racial groups most commonly places Polynesians at the highest end of the spectrum as the ‘most beautiful’, with darker skinned peoples of the region labelled Melanesia described as inferior to them, and Aborigines as ‘the most brutish’. Bronwen Douglas, ‘Foreign bodies in Oceania’, in Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard (eds), Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the science of race 1750‒1940 (Canberra 2008), 8‒10. See also Desmond, Staging Tourism; and for a discussion of the term ‘Melanesia’, see Stephanie Lawson, ‘“Melanesia”: the history and politics of an idea’, Journal of Pacific History, 48 (2013), 1‒22.38 Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders both hunt turtles, but the Torres Strait techniques are visually spectacular.39 Hayward, Tide Lines, 30.40 Kup mari, as a method of cooking food in the ground using hot rocks or stones and often accompanied by festivities, is known as a hangi by the Maori in New Zealand, umu in Samoa and pachamanca in Peru. In the Pacific, pigs are highly prized and frequently cooked by this method.41 Barr, No Swank Here?42 Anecdotal evidence and preliminary research further suggests that changes in musical traditions in the Whitsundays echo these trends; see Hayward, Tide Lines, 47‒71, 77‒83, 101‒3.43 These images have not yet been located in the course of the research.44 One informant told me that, when she worked as a housemaid at a Whitsundays resort, one of her Australian South Sea Islander co-workers was required to wear flowers in her hair, whereas as a white employee she was not asked to do so.45 A significant part of the literature on Australian South Sea Islander labour concerns whether it was indentured labour, cooperative labour or ‘extremely labour-coercive’ (see for example Tom Brass, ‘Contextualizing sugar production in nineteenth-century Queensland’, Slavery and Abolition, 15:1 (1994), 100‒17; Adrian Graves, Cane and Labour: the political economy of the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1862‒1906 (Edinburgh 1993); Doug Munro, ‘Revisionism and its enemies: debating the Queensland Labour Trade’, Journal of Pacific History, 30 (1995), 240‒9; Clive Moore, ‘Revising the revisionists: the historiography of immigrant Melanesians in Australia’, Pacific Studies 15:2 (1992), 61‒86); Imelda Miller, an Australian South Sea Islander, uses the contemporary community label ‘Sugar Slaves’ to evoke the hardships of South Sea Islander experience in Australia. Imelda Miller, ‘Sugar Slaves’, in Queensland Historical Atlas (2010). Available at: http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/sugar-slaves (accessed 10 Oct. 2010).46 Patricia Mary Mercer, White Australia Defied: Pacific Islander settlement in North Queensland (Townsville 1995).47 Race as represented by dark skin has been strongly critiqued, but the skin colour continues to be used as an index of culture, especially in images. In this way, for example, Lindstrom has suggested that Pacific Islanders in American war photographs could act as representative of race relations and the roles played by black Americans in American society. Lamont Lindstrom, ‘Images of Islanders in Pacific War photographs’, in T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White and Lisa Yoneyama (eds), Perilous Memories: the Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham, NC 2000), 114.48 Skin colour was used to distinguish between different Pacific groups, and Europeans' positive views of Polynesians in Hawaii and Tahiti were at least partly attributed to their ‘copper coloured skin’. See Douglas, ‘Foreign bodies in Oceania’, 8‒9; Bronwen Douglas, ‘Climate to crania: science and the racialization of human difference’, in Douglas and Ballard, Foreign Bodies, 33, 35. The attraction felt by Europeans for a lighter brown skin is further supported by their favourable comparisons of Hawaiian to European women, and by the prevalence of hula dancers of mixed ancestry. Desmond, Staging Tourism, 8, 51.49 Desmond, Staging Tourism, xx, 36‒59.50 Ibid.; cf. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: leisure and travel in contemporary societies (London 1990), 8, 58.51 Henry suggests that contemporary dance performances allow Aboriginal people to engage outside the bureaucratic processes that dominate their lives. Rosita Henry, ‘Dancing into being: the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park and the Laura Dance Festival’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11: 2 (2000), 322‒32. Desmond, Staging Tourism, 25‒33, has similarly discussed how hula can be both a tourist performance and a cultural practice in Hawaii, and that the two categories share much in common even though each has elements that would not be included in the other. See also Adria L. Imada, ‘Transnational hula as colonial culture’, Journal of Pacific History, 46 (2011), 149‒76. It is likely that performances of culture – albeit it in modified and even new forms – provided similar opportunities of engagement for Aboriginal people on missions in the past.52 Deloughrey, ‘Island Ecologies and Caribbean Literatures’, 298–310.53 Cited in Teaiwa, ‘Reading Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa with Epeli Hau‘ofa's Kisses in the Nederends’, 254.54 Ibid., 253.55 Ibid., 254‒5.56 Ibid.57 Desmond, Staging Tourism, 5.58 Teaiwa, ‘Reading Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa with Epeli Hau'ofa's Kisses in the Nederends', 254.59 These idealised qualities of Polynesians are discussed by several authors already cited, including Douglas, ‘Foreign bodies in Oceania’; Desmond, Staging Tourism; Teaiwa, ‘Reading Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa with Epeli Hau‘ofa's Kisses in the Nederends’.60 Hannah Robert, ‘Disciplining the female Aboriginal body: inter-racial sex and the pretence of separation’, Australian Feminist Studies, 16:34 (2001), 69‒81.61 Desmond, Staging Tourism, 12.
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