{"id":1164,"date":"2019-02-08T17:13:31","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2019-02-08T17:13:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T17:13:40","slug":"travelling-knowledge-in-western-australias-southwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2019\/02\/08\/travelling-knowledge-in-western-australias-southwest\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Travelling Knowledge in Western Australia\u2019s Southwest\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading Transnational Lives\u00a0<\/em>this week I stumbled across Shellam\u2019s \u2018Travelling Knowledge in Western Australia\u2019s Southwest\u2019. Her article dismantled the \u2018binary\u2019 model of \u2018power and passivity\u2019 assumed to characterize 19th<\/sup>century indigenous-European relations in Australia by charting the career of Manyat; an Aboriginal man from King George\u2019s Sound (an ocean inlet on the south coast of Western Australia) who assisted with the European exploration process in the Southwest. I live roughly 216 miles north-west of that inlet in Bunbury, a quiet coastal city situated roughly 105 miles to the south of Perth. Being able to visualize that same Australian terrain Shellam described in her article really encouraged me to read on.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I should admit that Shellam\u2019s account really heightened my awareness of those pretty serious misconceptions I held about British-indigenous exchanges in the colonial south. Not all \u2018transnational\u2019 (Indigenous-European) relationships in the colonial Southwest were characterized by violence or shaped by European racism.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1832 (just two years after the establishment of the Swan River colony in Perth) Manyat was asked to join Scottish doctor Alexander Collie as a guide on an expedition roughly 50 kilometers north from King George\u2019s Sound into the Porrongorup mountain range. From that year and until his retirement, he served as a guide on several more expeditions that traversed Australia\u2019s Southwest region, and even worked as a mediator between indigenous groups and white settlers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A portrait likely to be that of Manyat, I think<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Dr Alexander Collie<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I think Shellam\u2019s description of spatial or \u2018travelling knowledge\u2019 as a commodity whose worth was mutual to European and Aboriginal societies was her most interesting point. She emphasized the similar values attributed to \u2018transnational travelling\u2019 by British and Indigenous peoples. In both Aboriginal and European cultures, travel served to support local \u2018knowledge economies\u2019 and functioned to provide social prestige for the explorer. Collie\u2019s expeditions took him from Scotland to those same Aboriginal \u2018nations\u2019 that were foreign to Manyat. Both were \u2018transnational\u2019 voyagers. Collie acquired the same type of \u2018fame\u2019 that Manyat received for his moving beyond the borders of his indigenous society.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Travelling knowledge gained high currency in the Aboriginal knowledge economy where such information was a valuable commodity, as it was among nineteenth century naturalists and metropolitan savants who traded in natural history objects and anthropological information\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a couple of things I took away from Shellam\u2019s piece which I think might help me as I move forward. First, (and building on our discussion about the importance of the \u2018national\u2019 in the \u2018trans\u2019) her work speaks to the possibility of applying the transnational lens to spaces and times where the \u2018nation\u2019 cannot be understood to have existed in any \u2018modern\u2019 \/ Westphalian sense (pre-federation or indigenous Australia for example). The relationship between Collie and Manyat could certainly be described \u2018transnational\u2019, though not fashioned \u2018above\u2019, \u2018below\u2019 or \u2018across\u2019 any particular sovereign territory. I think there is some value then in prioritizing the \u2018trans\u2019 over the \u2018national\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also think her work highlights the value in using anthropological perspectives to explore transnational relationships. Collie\u2019s exploration was made possible as much by the \u2018culturally defined process\u2019 of colonial record as Manyat\u2019s \u2018cartographic mind\u2019 in which maps had been \u2018danced in story and ceremony\u2019. Reconstructing culturally informed \u2018ways of thinking\u2019 is surely crucial to the understanding any \u2018transnational\u2019 relationship.That’s something I hope to keep at the forefront of my mind as I continue to practice transnational history in the future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Transnational Lives\u00a0this week I stumbled across Shellam\u2019s \u2018Travelling Knowledge in Western Australia\u2019s Southwest\u2019. Her article dismantled the \u2018binary\u2019 model of \u2018power and passivity\u2019 assumed to characterize 19thcentury indigenous-European relations in Australia by charting the career of Manyat; an Aboriginal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-iM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}