CACHE Member Funding Success: The Macassan Road: Intercultural Connections between Northern Australia and South-East Asia
CACHE is delighted to announce the successful funding of four member initiatives for 2022! Our next mini-series for CACHE News introduces all our successful CACHE initiatives and the project teams throughout the week.
The next initiative is led by A/Prof. Tom Murray (Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature) and titled The Macassan Road: Intercultural Connections between Northern Australia and South-East Asia.
This initiative aims to improve our understanding of Australian pre-colonial isolation by demonstrating Indigenous Australia's connection to South-East Asian cultural and trading networks. It hence addresses the problem of the incorrect colonial notion of pre-colonial Australian geographic and cultural ‘isolation’ and the denial of Indigenous trade and regional cultural connections, including international mobility. By re-enacting and documenting centuries-old relationships between Indigenous Australia and Indonesia, the CI and community partners will demonstrate this trading connection as a cultural route of World Heritage Status akin to other major trading routes such as the ‘Silk Road’. The process of recording a collaborative, cross-cultural, documentary history of Australia’s very first international trading relationship, will produce insights into regional history with significant implications for understanding our present, and for conceiving more appropriate post-colonial relations.
The initiative has a number of phases, with research outcomes related to each phase. This initial phase, supported by CACHE funding, will produce:
- A proof-of-concept audio-visual work;
- Field notes and audio-visual material for incorporation into journal articles, and audio-visual works;
- Materials to develop Category 2 and 3 funding applications.
This research is being produced in collaboration with Yolngu (the people of NE Arnhem Land) communities in the Gove/Yirrkala and Blue Mud Bay areas. A/Prof. Tom Murray has worked with these communities for over twenty years and has established strong relationships with leaders in these communities and organisations. The initiative will embody Yolngu principles of ‘Balla-ga-lily’ (literally: give and take), a system of personal and intercultural measures to ensure reciprocity and deep collaboration (including the proper incorporation of Indigenous perspectives).
Congratulations to A/Prof. Tom Murray. CACHE looks forward to following his continued success exploring this important initiative.
Image 1: (Top) A blue and white flag on Baniyala beach. Symbol associated with Macassan voyagers. Image (c) Tom Murray 2018
Image 2: (bottom) Image (c) Tom Murray 2018. Funeral ceremony incorporating Macassan loanwords at Baniyala in Blue Mud Bay