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Locating a celestial black hole: Chinese-Aboriginal relatedness in North Queensland, 1873-1900
Thesis   Open access

Locating a celestial black hole: Chinese-Aboriginal relatedness in North Queensland, 1873-1900

Peter Moore
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Bachelor of Arts (Honours), University of the Sunshine Coast
2014
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00312
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Abstract

Kuku-Yalanji Kokomini Guugu-Yimidhirr Indigenous Australians Chinese migrants Cooktown Palmer River Atherton Tablelands Relatedness Theory cultural-contact
This thesis seeks to create a scaffold for further research into late-19th-century cultural contact between North Queensland Aborigines and Chinese migrants. Anglo-Celtic metanarratives continue to dominate Australian historiography with mono-cultural, economic and political continuities founded on European epistemologies and ontologies. With few exceptions, 19th-century-cultural-contact debates centre the Anglo-Celtic migrants' experiences with Indigenous Australians and non-Anglo-Celtic migrants. However, such historiography infers an inaccurate standpoint centring the Anglo-Celts' host status, and excludes a third significant contact experience between Indigenous Australians and non-European migrants. This is understandable, given the extant written evidence has been overwhelmingly created and preserved by Europeans to serve white-Australia's Anglo-Celtic perspective. Therefore, a more inclusive reconstruction of cultural contact, recognising differences and equality, requires the application of inductive analysis with a focus on discontinuities, in order to identify the events influencing the creation of the preserved evidence. Quandamoopah scholar Karen Martin's (2008) relatedness theory is applied as a framework exemplar, offering a new vocabulary that shifts perspective towards Indigenous agency and viewpoints as the original culture. This methodology is tested in an analysis of events recorded by late-19th-century Europeans in Cooktown, Palmer River and Atherton.

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