A Nyungar Rail History
Buch, Englisch, 269 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm
ISBN: 978-981-959458-0
Verlag: Springer Verlag, Singapore
is a Nyungar history of Western Australia’s rail network. The phrase ‘deep timetable’ refers to a precolonial communications network of bidi (tracks) and kaleeps (camping places, water sources) that formed the basis of infrastructural colonisation. It alludes to two profoundly different understandings of how places are connected and people related.
Information for the project came from documentary sources, notably employment records kept in the Western Australian Government Railways’ archives, but most importantly from over fifty ‘Nyungar-on-Nyungar’ yarning sessions. In a departure from conventional ethnographic method, participating Elders determined which memory tracks and railway places were visited.
captures the profoundly ambiguous impact of the spreading rail network on Aboriginal life. Contributing Elders emphasised the positive role rail played in empoyment, housing – and limited escape from Native Welfare surveillance. At the same time, post-1905 government policies of racial segregation, family break-up and child removal, depended critically on the existence of convenient transportation: better connections often meant easier separation.
As a narrative method, yarning re-enacts memory as a journey in the present.Destinations and distances are secondary, what counts is relating, in both senses. Talking about the rail network like this turns it into a network of family survival. Weaving continuities of consciousness between one generation and the next, it shows how a beleaguered community repeatedly found ways to make the system work for them.
Zielgruppe
Research
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
- Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
- Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Oral History (Zeitzeugen)
Weitere Infos & Material
1. Introductory: On the platform, the project’s conductor.- 2. Nyungar rail connections: a sketch map.- 3. Networks inside networks: a yarning history.- 4. Working families: survival and sacrifice.- 5. Relating to place: Norm Hayward’s story.- 6. Associations: the railway in everyday life.- 7. Accidents: yarning’s deeper timetable.- 8. Future directions: a Nyungar rail network.- 9. Concluding: Different platforms, shared journeys.
