globalising indigeneity? writing indigenous histories in a transnational world

Globalising Indigeneity? Writing Indigenous Histories in aTransnational World

Karen Fox*The Australian National University

Abstract

In recent decades, Indigenous histories have been increasingly significant and growing areas of his-torical research in white settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand. These rich veins ofhistorical enquiry have, for the most part, been explored within the framework of national bound-aries, and the state has been central to many analyses of Indigenous experiences of the past. Callsto write comparative Indigenous histories are not new, and since the 1990s, such projects haveappeared in growing numbers. Yet they remain relatively scarce, particularly outside the history ofthe British empire, or across empires. At the same time, more and more scholars have adopted themethods and approaches of transnational history. Trends in the writing of Indigenous histories andtrends in transnational historical scholarship, however, may be leading in opposite directions. Inthis paper I reflect on these trends, and on the longer history of comparative Indigenous historywriting, taking comparisons of Australia and New Zealand as a particular example. Exploring someof the problems and possibilities that have faced those embarking on such research, I reflect onthe implications for the transnational history project of the call to local and regional views emerg-ing from Indigenous histories.

Following the publication of We Are Going in 1964, Oodgeroo Noonuccal (formerlyknown as Kath Walker) was often described as the first Australian Aboriginal person tohave a collection of poems published. In the same year, on the other side of the Tasman,Hone Tuwhare’s collection of poems No Ordinary Sun was published, and he was hailedas the first Maori person to have a book of poems published in English in New Zealand.This intriguing parallel came to my notice while I was researching common representa-tions of Indigenous authors and filmmakers in the press in New Zealand and Australia inthe second half of the 20th century. This research formed part of my PhD thesis, a studyof depictions of well-known Indigenous women in the print media in Australia and NewZealand during that period.1 It was to be one of many parallels, as I was struck over andover by the connections between, and close trajectories of, various aspects of Maori andAboriginal histories in the latter half of the 20th century – the kinds of links and parallelsthat are all too familiar in the sorry histories of colonisation. Frequently these were histor-ical connections I felt I ought to have known more about, as a scholar of both NewZealand and Australian history.

A case in point are the parallel ‘tent embassies’ set up in the capital cities of Australiaand New Zealand in the 1970s. Australians are well aware of the tent embassy erectedoutside Parliament House in Canberra in 1972, after a speech by Prime Minister WilliamMcMahon repudiated Aboriginal land rights. New Zealanders are similarly well aware ofthe land march through the North Island led by (Dame) Whina Cooper in 1975, whichprotested the continuing alienation of Maori land. What fascinated me – and what I wasthen unaware of – was that after the march arrived in Wellington and presented its

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memorial of rights and petition to Parliament, a group of protesters remained camped inthe grounds around Parliament. The protest was sometimes referred to in newspapers as aMaori tent embassy, and the campers hung a banner proclaiming it the ‘Maori embassy’.2

Editorial comment in the New Zealand Herald explicitly compared it to that erected inAustralia three years earlier.3 Four Indigenous Australians who had been among the foun-ders of the Aboriginal tent embassy in 1972, including well-known activist Gary Foley,travelled to Wellington to support the protesters.4 These individual instances seemedindicative of something broader, suggesting not only parallel historical experiences, butalso a range of networks and connections stretching across the Tasman, and perhapsfarther afield.

Most commentary about Maori and Aboriginal experiences of colonisation, however,has focused upon differences and disconnections rather than similarities and connections,particularly in relation to early colonial experiences, when the dissimilarities were mostpronounced. Race relations have been one of the aspects of national life in Australia andNew Zealand where historical narratives and discourses of identity have displayed sharpdissonances, as opposed to the deep resonances which can be observed in other areas. AsI researched and wrote, I had conversations with many people about trans-Tasman differ-ences, conversations that often suggested an incommensurability in the experiences of theIndigenous inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand. Yet as I sat reading a variety ofAustralian and New Zealand newspapers and magazines published between 1950 and2000, I began to notice recurring themes in many depictions of prominent Aboriginaland Maori people. Moreover, there were undeniable parallels in the broader histories ofthese former British colonies. In the second half of the 20th century, the period uponwhich my research was focused, both experienced considerable social and politicalchange, and the increasingly strong Aboriginal protest movements pressing for civil andland rights in Australia were paralleled by an intensification of Maori demands for changein New Zealand (in particular, regarding land rights and recognition of the Maori lan-guage). Strengthening assertions of Indigenous cultural identity were also evident on bothsides of the Tasman. In this paper I discuss the past and future of comparative and trans-national Indigenous history writing, exploring some of the problems and possibilities thathave faced scholars embarking on such research projects, and reflecting on the implica-tions of concurrent trends towards transnational research methodologies in the historicaldiscipline as a whole and towards local and regional approaches in the writing of Indige-nous histories. I place trans-Tasman histories at the centre of my discussion, while alsoconsidering broader perspectives drawn from the new imperial history and global history.

Nations, Empires, Histories

It is often observed that historians have in the past tended to focus upon the nation as anorganising principle in their research and writing. As a discipline, history ‘was constitutedto serve the business of nation building’, and historians were involved in ‘forg[ing] anational community’.5 From the mid-20th century, Australian and New Zealand histori-ans were especially preoccupied with the nation, seeking to create national histories, andto delineate national identities independent of colonial ties to Britain. During the 1950sand 1960s in Australia several radical nationalists emerged who were interested in therise of ‘a distinctively Australian culture’.6 One such author was Russel Ward, whoseinfluential work The Australian Legend, published in 1958, attempted to trace the develop-ment of the Australian national character.7 In New Zealand, Keith Sinclair’s A History ofNew Zealand, which first appeared in 1959, emphasised ideas of national character; his

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later work A Destiny Apart (1986) outlined the evolution of a specifically New Zealandnationalism.8 One limitation of this nationalistic approach to the past, as Ann Curthoysnoted in the Australian context, was that in repudiating methods that treated Australianhistory as a derivative of British history, historians ‘tended to lose their international andcomparative perspective’.9 Similar comments have been made of New Zealand history atthe same time, as of historical scholarship in many parts of the world.10 A further weak-ness of nation-centred approaches is a tendency to marginalise Indigenous histories, asN�epia Mahuika has noted in relation to ‘the nationalist focus’ of New Zealand history.11

This nationalist trend began to shift in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. AsCurthoys pointed out, one reason for this shift was that paying heed to ‘questions of raceand gender … forced a more comparative and international perspective’.12 The rise oftransnational history, with its focus on global movements and circulations of people,ideas, practices, technologies and material items, further expanded the view of muchhistorical scholarship. Transnationalism is not only about ‘spatial movements and physicalconnections’, but also about ‘multilocal sets of identities and memories, fluid and hybridforms of cultural reproduction, and transnational flows of money and expertise’.13 Trans-national history seeks to move beyond the nation, looking across national borders, con-sidering the importance of factors outside the nation and critiquing nationalist approachesto the past. It is wide-ranging in subject matter, including among other topics biographi-cal studies of individuals or studies of institutions as well as histories of ideas, politicalmovements, environments or migration.14 A particular focus of attention has been the‘British world’, growing out of a series of British World conferences held between 1998and 2007. In these conferences, and in the edited collections of papers which resultedfrom them, the focus was bringing together British imperial history and the histories ofthe former British Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.15 Asis suggested by this series of conferences, there has been a renewal of concern with impe-rial and colonial histories from the 1990s. The ‘new imperial history’ aimed to situate themetropole and the colonies in ‘the same analytical frame’, and thus ‘to write the historyof the British Empire as a whole’.16

Alongside these broader trends, there has been in recent years a revival of interest inwriting comparative histories of Australia and New Zealand, adopting a trans-Tasmanrather than a wider transnational perspective. Two settler societies located in close prox-imity to each other, with closely intertwined histories at many points in the past, mightseem an obvious subject for comparative history research. Yet historians paid scant atten-tion to trans-Tasman comparisons and links before the 1990s.17 As Philippa Mein Smithand Peter Hempenstall have pointed out, Australia and New Zealand ‘were good atignoring each other during the 20th century’.18 Recent work has sought to revive theconcept of ‘Australasia’, and to ‘remak[e] the Tasman world’ of the long 20th century.19

As this burgeoning scholarship has demonstrated, many links were shared betweenAustralia and New Zealand throughout the past two centuries.

The turn to transnationalism has reinvigorated the writing of imperial and colonial his-tory. Its potential influence upon the writing of Indigenous histories, however, is morecomplicated. Mahuika has observed that for Maori at least, transnationalism might not bean approach to embrace unreservedly. Since ‘the nation itself is a problematic construc-tion for M�aori’, he argues, ‘the issue of how research on ‘‘transnationalism’’ might add tothose tensions is a major concern’.20 Instead, Mahuika has begun mapping a way forwardthat emphasises local specificities, centred in iwi- and hapu-focused, that is tribal, knowl-edge. Looking beyond postcolonial theory, Mahuika builds on what has been termed a‘Kaupapa Maori’ approach. Such a methodology places Maori matauranga (knowledge or

Globalising Indigeneity? 425


understanding) at the centre, creating a theoretical approach that is liberating and transfor-mational. Furthermore, the call is to all historians writing in and about New Zealand, notmerely to those consciously writing Maori history.21 Likewise in Australia, and elsewhere,locally- and regionally-based scholarship is a powerful and significant force in Indigenoushistorical work.22 The danger of transnational history writing for Indigenous peoples liesin the potential for such histories to perpetuate the marginalisation of Indigenous voicesand stories that took place for so long. As Katie Pickles puts it in relation to the growthof British world scholarship, ‘revealing a British past’ can shade all too close to ‘reassertingit in the present, in the process denying indigenous and multicultural voices’.23 On theother hand, as Mahuika has remarked, ‘notions of ‘‘revitalization’’, liberation and reclama-tion... are common not only to M�aori but also to other indigenous and marginalizedgroups who share our dreams of emancipation’.24 As this suggests, there are possibilitiesas well as problems in a transnational methodological approach.

This paper is a reflection on these possibilities and problems. It responds particularlyto the call to locally-centred historical scholarship that is embodied in Mahuika’s vision,at a moment when transnationalism appears to be in the ascendancy in the historicalprofession. What are the implications of these trends for the writing of comparativeand transnational Indigenous histories? What place is occupied by Indigenous historiesin a historical discipline increasingly focused upon transnational themes and modes ofthinking? And do we, in focusing on transnational approaches, risk perpetuating thevery marginalisation of Indigenous pasts that scholars such as Mahuika invite us totranscend?

Comparative Indigenous history, as I discuss below, has had a chequered past. Despitethis, and despite the many pitfalls that await researchers attempting comparative projects,it has continued to be advocated, particularly for the broader perspectives on settler colo-nialism and Indigenous-newcomer relations it can provide. In 2005, for example, KenCoates argued for greater attention to ‘the formidable task of developing a comparativehistory of indigenous-newcomer relations’.25 It might seem, given the advocacy oflocally- and regionally-based research discussed above, that this project has been invali-dated before being fully embraced. To assess this possibility, and to consider the future ofsuch research, it is necessary to briefly survey the field of comparative Indigenous history.

Although ‘comparisons between the histories of settler societies are increasingly advo-cated’, they remain ‘all too rare’.26 In the areas of Indigenous or Indigenous-newcomerhistories, most scholarship ‘assumes the importance and centrality of the nation-stateand ⁄ or national boundaries’.27 There are, of course, important exceptions. One of theearliest comparative works on the experiences of Indigenous peoples in white settler col-onies was Archibald Grenfell Price’s White Settlers and Native Peoples, published in 1949.28

In that work, which Price suggested might ‘assist those … conducting native policy andadministration’, three stages in the encounter between Indigenous peoples and white set-tlers were delineated: an initial period of invasion and decline, a subsequent period ofattempted protection driven by British humanitarianism, and a third period of recoverycharacterised by efforts towards the ‘scientific’ administration of native peoples.29 Some20 years later, Colin Tatz took up the topic in a lecture subsequently published as FourKinds of Dominion. Focusing upon Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa,Tatz sought to ‘assess what themes [were] either common or unique to each of these fourdominions’, and thus ‘whether white dominion over their dark inhabitants is of one or offour different kinds’.30 In Tatz’s account, similarities in policies and in the experiences ofIndigenous peoples were generally emphasised over differences, although South Africawas frequently observed to be unlike the other three dominions.



Since the 1990s comparative histories of settler societies have begun to return to favouras a historical enterprise. Edited collections have attempted to bring together the historiesof British settler societies in Australia, New Zealand, North America and South Africa.31

Other research has focused on closely comparing two such societies. In particular, com-parisons between Australia and the United States have received attention.32 Historianshave also made comparisons of specific aspects of Indigenous-newcomer relations, such asintermarriage between colonisers and Indigenous peoples, literary or filmic representationsof Indigenous peoples, or the policies adopted by metropolitan and settler governmentstowards Indigenous peoples.33 Scholars influenced by women’s and gender history haveoften been at the forefront of these developments.34 While these works have focused uponcolonial experiences in the British empire, the comparative lens can be expanded to takein a wider variety of colonial societies. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis tookthis broader view in their edited collection Unsettling Settler Societies (1995), and PatriciaGrimshaw and Russell McGregor did likewise in their edited book Collisions of Culturesand Identities (2007).35 In his call for increased attention to comparative work on Indige-nous-newcomer relations, Coates argued that scholars should look yet more widely,moving beyond a focus on European empires.36 Conferences such as the IndigenousBiography and Autobiography Conference held in Canberra in 2007 have allowed paral-lels in the experiences of Indigenous peoples, including in settings outside Europeanempires, to begin to be explored.37 I focus on the British empire in this paper, and moreparticularly on Australia and New Zealand, arguing in part that trans-Tasman connectionsand disconnections deserve greater attention than they have thus far received. However,I do not wish to detract from Coates’ advocacy of a global view. Instead, I suggest thattransnational approaches might provide fruitful ways to pursue such far-reaching compara-tive goals.

Trans-Tasman Race Relations

For many years, it has been a common refrain – and not only within New Zealand –that race relations in New Zealand were, and are, better than in other white settlersocieties. While comparative research on race relations or Indigenous affairs has notbeen a major preoccupation in New Zealand history, widely held ideas about NewZealand’s superiority in race relations contributed to a myth of racial harmony whichcame to form an important strand in conceptions of New Zealand’s national identity.38

New Zealanders frequently expressed the view that race relations in their country werebetter than was the case in other settler societies. In 1956, for example, an editorial inthe Maori Affairs Department magazine Te Ao Hou, even while advocating greaterunderstanding between Maori and Pakeha (non-Indigenous New Zealanders), beganwith the observation that visitors to New Zealand ‘frequently express amazement at theexcellent relationships they notice between Maori and European’.39 In 1971, KeithSinclair assumed the superiority of New Zealand race relations in a comparative articleseeking to explain why this was so. Focusing on a comparison with South Africa, SouthAustralia and South Dakota, Sinclair began his discussion with the observation that racerelations in New Zealand had been for the ‘past half century... much happier than inAustralia, South Africa or North America’.40 Commentators – including historians –working in other parts of the world sometimes reinforced this relatively positive viewof relations between Maori and Pakeha.41 Such assessments, in some cases unintention-ally, often seemed to rest both on an assertion that Maori were a superior type of nativepeople than in other places and that Pakeha were a better group of settlers than those



found elsewhere (notably Australia, where convicts formed a large part of the earlypopulation).

Echoes of these beliefs sometimes appeared in works in the 1970s and 1980s whichsought to explain the differences apparent in race relations in various settler societies.Both K. R. Howe and Elizabeth Palmer implied in their writings that one factor inMaori having occupied a comparatively better position in New Zealand was Maori mar-tial and cultural strength and willingness to adopt aspects of European culture, as againstAboriginal weakness and unwillingness.42 Robin Fisher made a similar point, suggestingthat Maori ‘were more flexible and adaptable in their response to the Europeans’, as wellas that Maori society was more settled, hierarchical and agricultural than was (in particu-lar) Australian Aboriginal society.43 Palmer also implied that the convict origins of Austra-lia were a factor in causing violence against Aboriginal people in the early years ofsettlement.44 While these authors were by no means endorsing the discredited racial sci-entific theories that ordered ‘races’ into a hierarchy (with white Caucasians at the top),such classificatory schemes have left a legacy that overshadows these and other efforts toexplain the different experiences of various Indigenous groups under colonisation.

It cannot be disputed that Maori experienced much suffering and loss through coloni-sation, and in New Zealand as in Australia, the legacy of this colonial past has not yetbeen transcended. However, there were reasons for considering race relations to be betterin New Zealand than in Australia, especially in the early colonial era. First, the existenceof a treaty was an important point of difference. Though the Treaty of Waitangi was fre-quently breached and has become contested in its meanings, it was nevertheless a recog-nition of native title that was denied Aboriginal people. In Australia, although theprinciple was not applied until many years after the arrival of the first convicts and set-tlers, the doctrine of terra nullius deemed the continent empty, until it was overturned inthe Mabo case in the High Court in 1992.45 As has been pointed out, the timing ofNew Zealand’s settlement and annexation, at a moment when humanitarian ideals werein the ascendant in Britain, was a significant factor in ensuring that Maori, at least ini-tially, were treated more equitably than were Aboriginal people.46 Moreover, Maori peo-ple were not denied civil rights such as the vote as were Aboriginal people, and from1867 separate Maori seats existed in the New Zealand parliament. Maori freedom ofmovement was not restricted to the extent that Aboriginal movement was, and the gov-ernment did not exercise the repressive control that Australian states did over aspects oflife such as wages and marriage. In the early decades of the 20th century Maori leaderssuch as Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Maui Pomare ‘held power and status far greater thanany Aborigine’ at the same time.47 Barbara Brookes has suggested that while NewZealand ‘shared with Australia a view of itself as a ‘‘white man’s country’’ ’, Maori were‘included in the definition of whiteness’ at least partially and strategically, and thus werenot so thoroughly ‘excluded from conceptions of the nation’ as were AboriginalAustralians.48 Several scholars, among them James Belich, Russell McGregor and PatriciaGrimshaw, have noted genuine reasons for considering the situation in New Zealand tobe less repressive than that in Australia.49 All the same, significant broader similarities areevident with respect to Indigenous-settler relations in Australia and New Zealand, in both19th- and 20th century contexts. Maori and Aboriginal people both suffered the impactsof violence, disease and social change after the arrival of Europeans, and both experiencedloss of language and culture under destructive assimilation policies. As settler societies,both Australia and New Zealand have had to acknowledge repressive colonial pasts inorder to move ahead to postcolonial futures. Neither has reached the end of that process,although New Zealand is arguably further along in it. As Claudia Orange observed in



1987, New Zealand in several ways ‘has been merely a variation in the pattern ofcolonial domination of indigenous races’.50

Something more than scholarly curiosity was perhaps at work in comparative researchon colonisation and race relations in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. As Brookesand James Bennett have both observed, an understanding of New Zealand as maintainingharmonious relations between settlers and Maori was central to the ways in which PakehaNew Zealanders imagined themselves relative to other settler societies.51 This imaginingencompassed both Maori superiority over other Indigenous peoples, and that Maori weretreated better than were other Indigenous groups.52 Discussing the possibilities and prob-lems of writing comparative ethnohistory in 1997, Deborah Montgomerie noted thatcomparative studies of race relations in settler societies which drew ‘positive comparisons’had often been produced ‘within the framework of developing national histories’. Theresulting works, she observed, were frequently ‘permeated by unsubtle and shamelessnationalisms’.53 In this respect, it is significant that New Zealand’s foremost nationalisthistorian, Sinclair, wrote also of New Zealand’s superiority in race relations. This nation-alistic framework, and the resulting weaknesses in many comparative studies of settlersocieties and race relations, may go some way to explaining scholarly reluctance to revisitsuch colonial comparisons. Another factor may be the powerful and growing significanceof the local in Indigenous historical research.

A Transnational Future?

Both the similarities between the experiences of Indigenous peoples during colonisationand the weaknesses of past comparative research lie behind Montgomerie’s assertion in1997 that scholars must move ‘beyond the search for good imperialism’.54 Montgomerieadvocated the pursuit of comparative ethnohistory, and since the publication of her arti-cle, comparative Indigenous histories have begun to return to vogue, as already noted.Yet while comparative histories (including works exploring Indigenous-newcomer rela-tions) have increased in number, and more and more scholars have adopted a transna-tional history approach, relatively few attempts have thus far been made to bring the twotogether. Key trends in the historical discipline in settler societies like Australia and NewZealand appear to be pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand, transnationalscholars are broadening our vision, drawing intricate maps of connections and movementsaround the globe. On the other, scholars of Maori and Aboriginal histories are inviting usto look more locally, to produce deeper stories of the past grounded in place and culture.In the last part of this paper I offer some reflections on where these divergent trends leavethe transnational project. Are we in danger of once again marginalising Indigenous voices,writing transnational histories that exclude Indigenous experiences or that disregard thespecificities of local experience and knowledge, once more lumping different groups intosimplistic categories of ‘other’? Or might there be ways to draw on transnational method-ologies to find an approach to comparative Indigenous histories that avoids the traps sooften fallen into in the past – in particular, the trap of producing studies that are littlemore than exercises in deciding who treated ‘their’ Indigenous population worse – orbetter – than whom?

Transnational research now beginning to appear suggests several ways in which tobridge the concerns of both fields. On the one hand, historians have begun tracing thelinks between Indigenous activists throughout the British empire and further afield. Suchlinks across the oceans have often been key to Indigenous rights movements, especiallyin the 20th century. Just as scholars are now exploring the movement of ideas about



whiteness and the future of the so-called white race, it is possible to map the circulationof ideas about the oppression of Indigenous (and other non-white) peoples among Indig-enous groups both within and outside the empire.55 John Maynard has shown the signifi-cance for Aboriginal political organisation of contacts between Aboriginal dock workersand visiting black seamen in Sydney in the early 20th century, and the influence of blackleaders like Marcus Garvey on the aims and rhetoric of Aboriginal activists such as FredMaynard.56 Fiona Paisley has detailed the transnational travels of an Aboriginal man,Anthony Martin Fernando, who took his message about the mistreatment of Aboriginalpeople in Australia to Europe around the same time.57 Russell McGregor has pointed tothe ways in which aspects of Maori affairs policy in New Zealand provided ‘exemplars’for activists seeking Aboriginal advancement in Australia from the 1920s until the1970s.58 Much more such research awaits.

On the other side of the equation, much scope remains for examining the flow ofideas about Indigenous affairs and administration between officials and settlers in far-flungparts of the British empire (or perhaps across empires). When administrators and officialsmoved around the empire, for example, they naturally took ideas developed in one set-ting with them to the new location, and their tenure in each new place was influencedby the experiences of the previous ones. In the case of administrator and governorEdward Eyre, known in Australia as sympathetic to Aboriginal people and rememberedin Jamaica as brutal and repressive, Julie Evans has shown how his actions can fruitfullybe explored through examining his views of the encounter between the British and thelocal population in each setting in which he moved, as well as the particularities of thosesettings and the broader imperial context.59 Explicitly adopting a transnational approach,Rachel Standfield has investigated the development of racial thinking in the Tasmanworld between 1769 and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. In a discussionof the writings of missionary Samuel Marsden, she contrasts his views of Maori andAboriginal people, arguing that his different behaviour on either side of the Tasmaninfluenced racial thinking in the Australian colonies and New Zealand.60 More broadly,Alan Lester has explored ‘the ways in which discourses of colonial landscapes and theirinhabitants travelled across an imperial terrain’ in the first half of the 19th century. Exam-ining the ‘discursive contests’ between settlers, missionaries and humanitarians, he positsthe existence of ‘a ‘‘linked’’ terrain of colonial discourse’.61 These examples suggest thatthe movement and exchange of ideas and experiences played a crucial role both in theadministration of the British empire, and in the growth of increasingly powerful Indige-nous rights movements over the 20th century.

The growth of Indigenous rights movements around the world intensified in the sec-ond half of the 20th century. The term ‘the Fourth World’ emerged in the 1970s todescribe Indigenous peoples around the globe who suffered the impacts of colonisation insettler societies, distinguishing their historical experiences and the issues they faced fromthose of the settler populations in the ‘First World’ nations they inhabited, as well as fromthose of majority Indigenous populations in the nations of the ‘Third World’.62 Else-where I have referred to the rise of this awareness of a shared heritage of colonial oppres-sion as the globalisation of Indigeneity.63 Similarly, Tim Rowse uses the term ‘globalindigenism’ to describe the ‘modern and postcolonial tradition’ by which Indigenousgroups constitute themselves politically as Indigenous peoples, and through which gov-ernments and other organisations acknowledge indigeneity ‘as a distinct form of humanexperience’.64 Since the 1970s, an increasing number of initiatives have drawn Indigenouspeoples from around the world together in collective action for Indigenous rights. TheWorld Council of Indigenous Peoples, for instance, met for the first time in 1975, at Port



Alberni in Canada.65 As Coates has remarked, historians have ‘lag[ged] behind manyindigenous groups in recognizing the importance of comparative understanding andmutually beneficial collaborations’.66 He proposed that a path forward might be found in‘collaborative work, modelled after the extensive international indigenous organisationalactivity underway around the world’.67 Such a project could perhaps bring together therich possibilities of scholarship grounded in local or tribal knowledges, not only with eachother but also with the encompassing global vision embodied in transnational histories.

Equally, the histories of collaborations among Indigenous groups deserve greaterattention. As Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann note, ‘empires weresites of social and political movements that developed critiques of national sovereigntyand explored transnational identities of citizenship and belonging’.68 Examining thetransnational histories of Indigenous rights movements – and perhaps also of officialresponses to those movements – might reveal many illuminating examples of sharing,support and collaboration among activists and others concerned to advance Indigenousrights at home and around the world. A transnational study of resistance and self-deter-mination, for example, holds possibilities of bringing transnational histories into deeperconversation with Indigenous histories. Drawing on oral traditions as well as biographi-cal and autobiographical writings, images and recordings as well as governmental andorganisational records, such a project might explore the shared and specific objectivesand goals of Indigenous protest movements, and the direct and indirect links betweengroups in the transmission of ideas and energy in a global context. Given the develop-ment of a pan-Indigenous movement and identity since the middle of the 20th century,including recently the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly, a transnational understanding ofmovements of resistance and self-determination is vitally important. As Lake has pointedout, ‘groups subordinated by national political processes have often felt empoweredthrough engagement in transnational political movements’.69 Moreover, such a studyholds possibilities for traversing the local, the national and the global, without losingsight of regional and cultural specificities, or of imperial and transnational correlations.Since the nation has been a key arena in which issues such as land and citizenshiprights have been denied, articulated and fought for, and state governments often instru-ments of repression in Indigenous people’s lives, the national subject cannot be dis-solved entirely. Likewise, researchers cannot neglect local politics and audiences. Ideasand movements of resistance and self-determination, however, are local, national andtransnational.

In the United States context, Robin Kelley observed in 1999 that black history hadalways been transnational.70 This was partly because a key aspect of the historical narra-tive under discussion was forced migration and diaspora. Indigenous histories have notbeen similarly transnational, and this too is partly a result of the history itself. In revealingand resisting the dispossession and denial of rights resulting from colonisation, connectionsto land and place were and remain critical for Indigenous peoples, and hence central toIndigenous histories. We must not ignore these connections or their importance, and norshould we ignore calls to ground our histories in an understanding of Indigenous knowl-edges and frameworks. At the same time, with transnational history now a widelyadopted and advocated approach, it is important to ensure Indigenous voices and storiesare not marginalised once again. Transnational approaches ought not to become an ave-nue through which to avoid engaging with the Indigenous histories of the places wherewe as historians live and work. Putting Indigenous cultural knowledge at the centre ofhistorical scholarship need not mean only researching and writing in local frameworks,



but rather looking at the national and the transnational from a position grounded in thelocal.

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank Katie Pickles, Rani Kerin and the anonymous reviewers for their helpfulcommentary on an earlier version of this article.

Short Biography

Dr Karen Fox is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the National Centre of Biography, inthe Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Herresearch interests include 20th century Australian and New Zealand history, imperial andcolonial history, gender and feminist history, media history, and the history of fame andcelebrity. Fox completed her PhD at the Australian National University, and her MA atthe University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has taught Australianand colonial history at the Australian National University, and her research has appearedin the Women’s History Review and Aboriginal History. Her first book, Maori and AboriginalWomen in the Public Eye: Representing Difference, 1950–2000, was published by ANU EPress in 2011. It is a study of the shifting ways in which ideas about race, gender andnation were reflected and constructed in print media depictions of prominent Aboriginaland Maori women during the second half of the 20th century.

Notes

* Correspondence: The Australian National University, Coombs Building no. 9, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.Email: [email protected].

1 K. Fox, Maori and Aboriginal Women in the Public Eye: Representing Difference, 1950–2000 (Canberra: ANU E Press,2011).2 For example: ‘Maori Protesters Banned From Ngati Poneke Hall’, Evening Post, 17 Oct. 1975, 4; ‘Land CaseStudies Plan’, New Zealand Herald, 31 Oct. 1975, 3. The banner is visible in a photograph published in the EveningPost, 23 Oct. 1975, 34. Intriguingly, this was not the first time a tent embassy had been set up in New Zealand. In1972, the year that the Aboriginal tent embassy was first erected in Australia, a group of Maori people had put up atent as an embassy on the lawns of Parliament in Wellington. A. Harris, Hikoi: Forty Years of Maori Protest (Welling-ton: Huia, 2004), 43.3 ‘Harming Their Own Cause’, New Zealand Herald, 16 Oct. 1975, 6.4 ‘Australians Join Protesters’, Evening Post, 20 Oct. 1975, 34.5 A. Curthoys and M. Lake, ‘Introduction’, in A. Curthoys and M. Lake (eds.), Connected Worlds: History in Trans-national Perspective (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2005), 5.6 B. H. Fletcher, ‘National History and National Identity in Postcolonial Australia’, Journal of the Royal AustralianHistorical Society, 83 ⁄ 1 (1997), 6.7 R. Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1958).8 K Sinclair, A History of New Zealand (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959); K. Sinclair, A Destiny Apart: NewZealand’s Search For National Identity (Wellington: Allen and Unwin in association with Port Nicholson, 1986).9 Ann Curthoys in C. Backhouse et al., ‘ ‘‘Race’’, Gender and Nation in History and Law’, in D. Kirkby andC. Coleborne (eds.), Law, History, Colonialism: The Reach of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press,2001), 291.10 See for example: K. Pickles, ‘Transnational Intentions and Cultural Cringe: History Beyond National Bound-aries’, in C. Dummitt and M. Dawson (eds.), Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History,(London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2009), 141–61; K. Pickles, ‘The Obvious and the Awkward:Postcolonialism and the British World’, New Zealand Journal of History, 45 ⁄ 1 (2011): 85–101; K. Pickles, ‘Transna-tional History and Cultural Cringe: Some Issues for Consideration in New Zealand, Australia and Canada’, HistoryCompass, 9 ⁄ 9 (2011): 657–73.



11 N. Mahuika, ‘ ‘‘Closing the Gaps’’: From Postcolonialism to Kaupapa Maori and Beyond’, New Zealand Journalof History, 45 ⁄ 1 (2011): 19. See also N. Mahuika, ‘Revitalising Te Ika-a-Maui: Maori Migration and the Nation’,New Zealand Journal of History, 43 ⁄ 2 (2009), 134.12 Curthoys in Backhouse et al., ‘ ‘‘Race’’, Gender and Nation’, 291.13 K. Grant, P. Levine and F. Trentmann, ‘Introduction’, in K. Grant, P. Levine and F. Trentmann (eds.), BeyondSovereignty: Britain, Empire, and Transnationalism, c. 1880–1950 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1–2.14 Curthoys and Lake, ‘Introduction’, 6. Examples of the transnational turn include: A. Burton (ed.), After theImperial Turn: Thinking with and Through the Nation (New Haven: Duke University Press, 2003); G. Byrnes(ed.), The New Oxford History of New Zealand (Oxford and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2009); D.Deacon, P. Russell and A. Woollacott (eds.), Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World (Canberra: ANUE Press, 2008); K. Grant, P. Levine and F. Trentmann (eds.), Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transna-tionalism, c. 1880–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); M. Lake, ‘White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project’, Australian Historical Studies, 34 ⁄ 122 (2003): 346–63; I. Tyrrell, Transna-tional Nation: United States History in Global Perspective Since 1789 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Earlyenthusiasm for transnationalism came both from American history and from British imperial history. A. Burton,‘Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating ‘‘British’’ History’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 10 ⁄ 3 (1997): 227–48;A. G. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History’, Past and Present, 164 ⁄ 1(1999): 198–243; M. McGerr, ‘The Price of the ‘‘New Transnational History’’ ’, American Historical Review,96 ⁄ 4 (1991): 1056–67; I. Tyrrell, ‘American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History’, AmericanHistorical Review, 96 ⁄ 4 (1991): 1031–55.15 Pickles, ‘The Obvious and the Awkward’, 87. Collections arising from the conferences include: C. Bridge andK. Fedorowich (eds.), The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity (London: Frank Cass, 2003); P. Buckner andR. D. Francis (eds.), Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration and Identity (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006); K.Darian-Smith et al., (eds.), Exploring the British World: Identity, Cultural Production, Institutions (Melbourne: RMIT,2004); K. Darian-Smith, P. Grimshaw and S. Macintyre (eds.), Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Impe-rial Cultures (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2007). A new journal, Britain and the World, explores thehistory of the British world since 1688.16 J. Thompson, ‘Modern Britain and the New Imperial History’, History Compass, 5 ⁄ 2 (2007), 455.17 One significant exception is K. Sinclair, (ed.), Tasman Relations: New Zealand and Australia, 1788–1988 (Auck-land: Auckland University Press, 1987).18 P. Mein Smith, P. Hempenstall and S. Goldfinch, Remaking the Tasman World (Christchurch: CanterburyUniversity Press, 2008), 13.19 D. Denoon, ‘Re-Membering Australasia: A Repressed Memory’, Australian Historical Studies, 34 ⁄ 122 (2003):290–304; Mein Smith, Hempenstall and Goldfinch, Remaking the Tasman World. Other recent work taking a com-parative or trans-Tasman approach to Australian and New Zealand pasts includes: J. Bennett, ‘Redeeming the Imag-ination: A Trans-National History of Australia and Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand, 1890–1944’, PhD thesis (Melbourne:University of Melbourne, 1997); D. Denoon, P. Mein-Smith and M. Wyndham, A History of Australia, New Zea-land and the Pacific (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); R. Frances and M. Nolan, ‘Gender and the Trans-Tasman World ofLabour: Transnational and Comparative Histories’, Labour History, 95 (2008): 25–42; P. Mein Smith and P. Hem-penstall, ‘Australia and New Zealand: Turning Shared Pasts into a Shared History’, History Compass, 1 (2003): 1–10;P. Mein Smith, ‘New Zealand Federation Commissioners in Australia: One Past, Two Historiographies’, AustralianHistorical Studies, 34 ⁄ 122 (2003): 305–25; K. Pickles, ‘Colonial Sainthood in Australasia’, National Identities, 7 ⁄ 4(2005): 389–408; L. Robin and T. Griffiths, ‘Environmental History in Australasia’, Environment and History, 10 ⁄ 4(2004): 439–74; R. Standfield, ‘Warriors and Wanderers: Making Race in the Tasman World, 1769–1840’, PhDthesis (Dunedin: University of Otago, 2008); N. Thomas, Possessions: Indigenous Art ⁄ Colonial Culture (London:Thames and Hudson, 1999). As well, edited collections have addressed both Australian and New Zealand history,although in largely disconnected essays rather than with a properly comparative or transnational approach. Theseinclude: B. Attwood and F. Magowan, (eds.), Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zea-land (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2001); K. Neumann, N. Thomas and H. Ericksen, (eds.), Quicksands:Foundational Histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999).20 Mahuika, ‘Revitalising Te Ika-a-Maui’, 142.21 Mahuika, ‘ ‘‘Closing the Gaps’’ ’, 15–32. This call was repeated at the 2011 New Zealand Historical Associationconference held at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.22 For one example of a regionally-based history of Indigenous Australia, see D. J. Austin-Broos, Arrernte Present,Arrernte Past: Invasion, Violence, and Imagination in Indigenous Central Australia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2009). Furthermore, calls to think locally have been made more broadly, as in Tony Ballantyne’s exhortation to‘produce critical work that thinks under as well as across the nation’. T. Ballantyne, ‘Thinking Local: Knowledge,Sociability and Community in Gore’s Intellectual Life, 1875–1914’, New Zealand Journal of History, 44 ⁄ 2 (2010),138.23 Pickles, ‘The Obvious and the Awkward’, 91.24 Mahuika, ‘Revitalising Te Ika-a-Maui’, 142.



25 K. Coates, ‘Learning From Others: Comparative History and the Study of Indigenous-Newcomer Relations’,Native Studies Review, 16 ⁄ 1 (2005), 5.26 Backhouse et al., ‘ ‘‘Race’’, Gender and Nation’, 277.27 Coates, ‘Learning From Others’, 8.28 A. G. Price, White Settlers and Native Peoples (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1949). The work was a companionto Price’s earlier study, White Settlers in the Tropics, which focused upon the difficulties and prospects of white settle-ment in tropical areas. A. G. Price, White Settlers in the Tropics (New York: American Geographical Society, 1939).29 Price, White Settlers and Native Peoples, 1–2.30 C. M. Tatz, Four Kinds of Dominion: Comparative Race Politics in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa(Armidale: University of New England, 1972), 3.31 A. E. Coombes, (ed.), Rethinking Settler Colonialism: History and Memory in Australia, Canada, Aotearoa NewZealand and South Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); M. Daunton and R. Halpern, (eds.),Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600–1850 (London: UCL Press, 1999); J. Evans et al.Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights: Indigenous Peoples in British Settler Colonies, 1830–1910 (Manchester: Manchester Uni-versity Press, 2003); P. Havemann, (ed.), Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (Auckland:Oxford University Press, 1999); A. Holland and B. Brookes, (eds.), Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colo-nial Encounter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011).32 M. D. Jacobs, ‘Maternal Colonialism: White Women and Indigenous Child Removal in the American Westand Australia, 1880–1940’, The Western Historical Quarterly, 36 ⁄ 4 (2005): 453–76; M. D. Jacobs, ‘Indian BoardingSchools in Comparative Perspective: The Removal of Indigenous Children in the United States and Australia,1880–1940’, in C. E. Trafzer, J. A. Keller and L. Sisquoc (eds.), Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American IndianEducational Experiences, (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 202–31; A. McGrath, ‘PlayingColonial: Cowgirls, Cowboys, and Indians in Australia and North America’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial His-tory, 2 ⁄ 1 (2001), <http://muse.jhu.edu.virtual.anu.edu.au/journals/cch/v002/2.1mcgrath.html>, accessed 3 May2009; T. Rowse, ‘Indigenous Autobiography in Australia and the United States’, Australian Humanities Review, 33(2004), <http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-August-2004/rowse.html>, accessed 3 May 2009.33 For comparative work on intermarriage and ideas of ‘miscegenation’, see: K. Ellinghaus, ‘Indigenous Assimilationand Absorption in the United States and Australia’, Pacific Historical Review, 75 ⁄ 4 (2006): 563–85; K. Ellinghaus,Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887–1937 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2006); K. Ellinghaus, ‘Intimate Assimilation: ComparingWhite-Indigenous Intermarriage in the United States and Australia, 1880s–1930s’, in T. Ballantyne and A. Burton(eds.), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire, (Urbana and Chicago: University ofIllinois Press, 2009), 211–28; V. Freeman, ‘Attitudes Towards ‘‘Miscegenation’’ in Canada, the United States, NewZealand, and Australia, 1860–1914’, Native Studies Review, 16 ⁄ 1 (2005): 41–69; D. I. Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race,Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); A. Wanhalla, ‘Women ‘‘Liv-ing across the Line’’: Intermarriage on the Canadian Prairies and in Southern New Zealand, 1870–1900’, Ethnohis-tory, 55 ⁄ 1 (2008): 29–49. For comparisons of literary, filmic or other representations of Indigenous peoples andhistories, see: M. Chan, ‘Dawn and Te Ao Hou: Popular Perspectives on Assimilation and Integration, 1950s–1960s’,BA (Hons.) thesis (Dunedin: University of Otago, 2008); S. Clelland-Stokes, Representing Aboriginality: A Post-Colo-nial Analysis of the Key Trends of Representing Aboriginality in South African, Australian and Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand Film(Højbjerg: Intervention, 2007); T. Goldie, Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian andNew Zealand Literatures (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989); S. Healy, ‘Settler Visions: Representa-tions of Aboriginality in Australia and the United States, 1890s–1930s’ PhD thesis (Melbourne: University ofMelbourne, 2006);L. Veracini, Lorenzo and A. Muckle, ‘Reflections of Indigenous History Inside the National Museums of Australiaand Aotearoa New Zealand and Outside of New Caledonia’s Centre Culturel Jean-Marie Tjibaou’, Electronic Journalof Australian and New Zealand History (2002), <http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/articles/veracini_muckle.htm>,accessed 3 May 2009. For comparative research on official policies relating to Indigenous peoples, see: A. Armitage,Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995);E. Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and the Debates Over Virtueand Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and ColonialHistory, 4 ⁄ 3 (2003), <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v004/4.3el-bourne.html>, accessed 28 April 2011; P. Grimshaw, R. Reynolds and S. Swain, ‘The Paradox of ‘‘Ultra-Demo-cratic’’ Government: Indigenous Civil Rights in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, Canada and Australia’, inD. Kirkby and C. Coleborne (eds.), Law, History, Colonialism: The Reach of Empire (Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 2001), 78–90.34 Besides the works already mentioned, see P. Grimshaw, ‘Maori Agriculturalists and Aboriginal Hunter-Gather-ers: Women and Colonial Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand and Southeastern Austra-lia’, in R. R. Pierson and N. Chaudhuri (eds.), Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race, (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1998), 21–40; P. Grimshaw, ‘Settler Anxieties, Indigenous Peoples, and Women’s Suffragein the Colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai’i, 1888 to 1902’, Pacific Historical Review, 69 ⁄ 4 (2000):



553–72; A. McGrath and W. Stevenson, ‘Gender, Race, and Policy: Aboriginal Women and the State in Canadaand Australia’, Labour History, 71 (1996): 37–53; P. Scully, ‘Malintzin, Pocahontas, and Krotoa: Indigenous Womenand Myth Models of the Atlantic World’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 6 ⁄ 3 (2005), <http://muse.j-hu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v006/6.3scully.html>, accessed 12 March 2009.35 P. Grimshaw and R. McGregor (eds.), Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples (Mel-bourne: The Department of History, The University of Melbourne, 2007); D. Stasiulis and N. Yuval-Davis (eds.),Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London: Sage, 1995).36 Coates, ‘Learning From Others’, 8.37 Some of the papers presented at this conference are gathered in P. Read, F. Peters-Little and A. Haebich, (eds.),Indigenous Biography and Autobiography (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2008).38 On this issue see also Salesa, Racial Crossings.39 ‘Race Relations’, Te Ao Hou: The New World, 4 ⁄ 3 (1956), 1.40 K. Sinclair, ‘Why are Race Relations in New Zealand Better Than in South Africa, South Australia or SouthDakota?’, New Zealand Journal of History, 5 ⁄ 2 (1971), 121.41 For instance: R. Fisher, ‘The Impact of European Settlement on the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, NewZealand, and British Columbia: Some Comparative Dimensions’, Canadian Ethnic Studies 12 ⁄ 1 (1980): 1–14.42 K. R. Howe, Race Relations Australia and New Zealand: A Comparative Survey 1770’s–1970’s (Wellington:Methuen, 1977), 1–9; E. Palmer, ‘British Colonisation and Indigenous Peoples, 1815–45: Cape Colony, NewSouth Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand’, ANU Historical Journal, 14 (1979–1980), 50–72.43 Fisher, ‘The Impact of European Settlement’, 6–7. Fisher was at pains to point out that these differences did notmean that Aboriginal people were ‘inferior’; nevertheless, popular beliefs about Maori superiority over other Indige-nous peoples are the looming shadow over this argument.44 Palmer, ‘British Colonisation and Indigenous Peoples’, 54–5.45 On the application of the principle of terra nullius, and the significance of a broader framework of Europeanthought in the colonisation of Australia, see B. Buchan, ‘Traffick of Empire: Trade, Treaty and Terra Nullius inAustralia and North America, 1750–1800’, History Compass 5 ⁄ 2 (2007), 386–405. For the Mabo judgement, see:Mabo and Others v State of Queensland (1992) 107 ALR 1 (HC).46 See for example Palmer, ‘British Colonisation and Indigenous Peoples’, 63.47 R. McGregor, ‘Looking Across the Tasman: New Zealand Exemplars in Australian Indigenous Affairs, 1920s–1970s’, History Compass, 5 ⁄ 2 (2007), 408.48 B. Brookes, ‘Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘‘Hybrid Race’’ in 1920s New Zealand’, Gender and History, 19 ⁄ 3(2007), 502. As Brookes notes, the idea that Maori and Britons had ‘a common Aryan heritage’ was ‘vigorouslypromoted’ in the late 19th century in New Zealand. Brookes, ‘Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘‘Hybrid Race’’ ’,502, citing T. Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), 74–7.49 J. Belich, ‘Myth, Race and Identity in New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History, 31 ⁄ 1 (1997), 20; P. Grim-shaw, ‘Interracial Marriages and Colonial Regimes in Victoria and Aotearoa ⁄ New Zealand’, Frontiers 23 ⁄ 3 (2002),21; McGregor, ‘Looking Across the Tasman’, 421.50 C. Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi (Wellington: Allen and Unwin in association with Port Nicholson, 1987), 5.51 J. Bennett, ‘Maori as Honorary Members of the White Tribe’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 29 ⁄ 3(2001), 34; B. Brookes, ‘ ‘‘Assimilation’’ and ‘‘Integration’’: The Maori Women’s Welfare League in the 1950s’,Turnbull Library Record, 36 (2003), 6.52 Bennett, ‘Maori as Honorary Members’, 38; Belich, ‘Myth, Race and Identity’, 12.53 D. Montgomerie, ‘Beyond the Search for Good Imperialism: The Challenge of Comparative Ethnohistory’,New Zealand Journal of History, 31 ⁄ 1 (1997), 157.54 Montgomerie, ‘Beyond the Search for Good Imperialism’, 153–68.55 See M. Lake and H. Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the InternationalChallenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Curthoys and Lake have observed theexistence of connections between Indigenous Australian and African-American political movements. A. Curthoysand M. Lake, ‘Introduction’, in A. Curthoys and M. Lake (eds.), Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective(Canberra: ANU E Press, 2005), 11.56 J. Maynard, ‘ ‘‘In the Interests of Our People’’: the Influence of Garveyism on the Rise of Australian AboriginalPolitical Activism’, Aboriginal History, 29 (2005): 1–22.57 F. Paisley, ‘An ‘‘Education in White Brutality’’: Anthony Martin Fernando and Australian Aboriginal Rights inTransnational Context’, in A. E. Coombes (ed.), Rethinking Settler Colonialism: History and Memory in Australia,Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand and South Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 209–26.58 McGregor, ‘Looking Across the Tasman’, 406–26.59 J. Evans, Edward Eyre: Race and Colonial Governance (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005).60 Standfield, ‘Warriors and Wanderers’. See also R. Standfield, ‘Violence and the Intimacy of Imperial Ethnogra-phy’, in T. Ballantyne and A. Burton (eds.), Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 31–48.



61 A. Lester, ‘Colonial Settlers and the Metropole: Racial Discourse in the Early 19th-Century Cape Colony,Australia and New Zealand’, Landscape Research, 27 ⁄ 1 (2002), 39. See also A. Lester, ‘British Settler Discourse andthe Circuits of Empire’, History Workshop Journal, 54 ⁄ 1 (2002): 24–48.62 See C. Allen, ‘Blood as Narrative ⁄ Narrative as Blood: Declaring a Fourth World’, Narrative, 6 ⁄ 3 (1998), 239; G.Manuel and M. Posluns, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1974). The term has alsobeen used more broadly, to describe Indigenous peoples in ‘First’, ‘Second’ and ‘Third World’ nations. Allen,‘Blood as Narrative’, 239.63 Fox, Maori and Aboriginal Women in the Public Eye, 17.64 T. Rowse, ‘Global Indigenism: A Genealogy of a Non-Racial Category’, in A. Holland and B. Brookes, (eds.),Rethinking the Racial Moment: Essays on the Colonial Encounter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011),229.65 Allen, ‘Blood as Narrative’, 236.66 Coates, ‘Learning From Others’, 13.67 Coates, ‘Learning From Others’, 3. Similarly, Martina Masaquiza and Pakal B’alam in 2000 proposed ‘the forma-tion of a pan-indigenous intellectual network in which indigenous studies would play a leading role’. M. Masaquizaand P. B’alam, ‘A Pan-Indigenous Vision of Indigenous Studies’, Indigenous Nations Studies Journal, 1 ⁄ 1 (2000), 7.68 Grant, Levine and Trentman, ‘Introduction’, 2.69 M. Lake, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Feminist Scholarship, and the Promise and Problems of New Transna-tional Histories: The Australian Case’, Journal of Women’s History, 19 ⁄ 1 (2007), 183.70 R. D. G. Kelley, ‘ ‘‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950’, TheJournal of American History, 86 ⁄ 3 (1999): 1045–77.

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globalising indigeneity? writing indigenous histories in a transnational world

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