Remembering Deep Pasts for the Present: the Transformative Potential of Indigenous Memory Cultures in Australia and Globally

Australia is witnessing a surge of public works by Indigenous creatives across the arts that broadcast the message of ‘ever present’ and ‘always will be’. Despite the centrality of memory in these works, Indigenous remembrance of the deep past remains marginalised in memory studies and historiography, fields originating in Europe. This project, grounded in Indigenous arts and heritage from Australia, with its 65000-year history of Indigenous culture, develops the innovative concept of the ‘deep present’. Its transformative potential stems from systematically forging cross-disciplinary connections between deep history, memory studies and Indigenous knowledges, which in turn enables a rethinking of core concepts including temporality, transmission, sovereignty, ecology and decoloniality. By analysing the ways in which the deep Indigenous past is being imagined and activated in the present — in literature, film, museum exhibitions, sculptures and commemorative heritage projects – the resulting monograph will pioneer new thinking about decolonization in the public sphere and will identify the vital imaginative resources Indigenous knowledges offer in our planetary era of climate change and species extinction. A STIAS Visiting Fellowship will enable me to research and write the last chapter, tracing connections between deep Indigenous pasts in Australia and (South) Africa, and revise the full manuscript.