SASS and Cairns Institute

The focus of this paper is particularly on low lying coral islands of the Pacific, such as the outer coral atolls and islands of Chuuk state, in the Federated States of Micronesia. The paper explores the relevance of heritage research to climate science. Questions posed include the following: How is the discourse of global warming being taken up at the local level? What are the experiences, understandings and responses of peoples who live at the ‘front line’ of sea level change? We consider the heritage dimensions of climate change in Chuuk in terms of the notion of ‘loss’ and what it is to feel that one is losing one’s world, as well as the distinction between tangible and intangible heritage.  We argue that research on the ‘human dimensions’ of climate change must be expanded from its current socio-economic emphasis to include baseline local level ethnographic studies that enable understanding of non-market impacts and the complex transformative relationship between cosmologies of climate change and heritage values.

This paper outlines some of the ways early artefact collecting contributed to the definition of the Australian region now known and marketed as the 'World Heritage Wet Tropics'. While others have collected in this region, we focus on the collecting activities of Hermann Klaatsch and the work of Norman Tindale to explore some factors that contributed to their claims that certain artefacts represent a region and its history. We argue that these understandings of region and the past, along with the now widely dispersed artefacts, maintain a lively, albeit transformed, presence in current debates about Aboriginal regional culture, linking assertions of rights to lost and stolen cultural property with notions of large-scale environmental management within the 'Wet Tropics'.

ABSTRACT Transactions of ethnographic artifacts between Indigenous producers, European collectors, museums, and the state create and transform multiple notions of value. In this paper we discuss how an artifact's value is generated and transformed through various transactions linked to the documentation and property claims made by scientific collectors, such as Eric Mjöberg, Herman Klaatsch, and Ursula McConnel. Such artifacts have now entered a new dynamic given Aboriginal claims for repatriation and other forms of reappropriation. We argue that the entanglement of artifacts in the property claims of the collectors, the pro-ducers (or their descendants), the granting bodies, and the public institutions, exposes artifacts to complex processes of value accretion and transformation. We can say, as did the New Guinea man Yali when he found his community's sacred objects in an Australian Museum, "Our myths are there. . . . " James Weiner, The lost drum On October 31, 1905, the Brisbane Courier reported that during a sitting of the Queensland Parliament, when the matter of the reappointment of Dr. Roth to the position of Chief Protector of the Aborigines was raised, a debate ensued in regard to artifacts that he had collected in Queensland and sold to the Australian Museum in Sydney. The newspaper made the point that if Dr. Roth was collecting "ethno-logical specimens," "curios," and "articles" while employed by the Queensland Government, then it is only natural that some explanation should be made as to why a proportion of the curios should have found their way to a Southern

We describe here a pattern of archaeological sites that suggest that 'mainland' Aboriginal people were viewed by their Torres Strait neighbours as being specialists in particular ritual knowledge. The region under consideration includes the northern-most tip of the Australian continent and extends northward through Torres Strait to Papua. Our study area focuses on the southern end of the region: the Australian mainland as well as Pabaju (Albany Island), Muri (Mt Adolphus Island) and associated islands and islets. Archaeological investigation over many years reveals a high density of ritual sites over this relatively small area. These include sites on prominent headlands. The density and visibility of sites could be interpreted as both marking and 'marketing' ritual expertise. The location of some of the sites also suggests they served as 'sentinels' within a cosmo-political seascape. Far from having an impoverished role in regional exchange networks, Australian mainlanders clearly held something of extraordinary value that drew people from the Torres Strait to their shores. We contend that southern reciprocity in regional trade and exchange may have been based on intangible knowledge transactions, in particular, knowledge related to increase ritual.

We describe here a pattern of archaeological sites that suggest that 'mainland' Aboriginal people were viewed by their Torres Strait neighbours as being specialists in particular ritual knowledge. The region under consideration includes the northern-most tip of the Australian continent and extends northward through Torres Strait to Papua. Our study area focuses on the southern end of the region: the Australian mainland as well as Pabaju (Albany Island), Muri (Mt Adolphus Island) and associated islands and islets. Archaeological investigation over many years reveals a high density of ritual sites over this relatively small area. These include sites on prominent headlands. The density and visibility of sites could be interpreted as both marking and 'marketing' ritual expertise. The location of some of the sites also suggests they served as 'sentinels' within a cosmo-political seascape. Far from having an impoverished role in regional exchange networks, Australian mainlanders clearly held something of extraordinary value that drew people from the Torres Strait to their shores. We contend that southern reciprocity in regional trade and exchange may have been based on intangible knowledge transactions, in particular, knowledge related to increase ritual.