Warning: Images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, now deceased, are located within this article and will be displayed during the presentation.
Sunday, 27 September 2020
11:00am to 12:30pm
Police HQ, 200 Roma Street,
Brisbane QLD 4000
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The Native Mounted Police were a crucial force for race relations and the main colonising instrument across all new mining and pastoral districts in 19th century Queensland. Before the completion of the Archaeology of the Queensland Native Mounted Police project – a 5 year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research project, we knew little of their domestic, workforce or disciplinary organisation, the hierarchical relationships between Aboriginal troopers and European officers, the roles played by Indigenous women and the interconnections between the NMP, local Aboriginal groups and non-Aboriginal transients and settlers.
This Sunday Lecture will be presented by Archaeologist Bryce Barker from the University of Southern Queensland, who, as part of the project, has most recently been out in the field excavating NMP Camp sites and talking to local Indigenous peoples. In a previous lecture, presented at the beginning of the project in 2016, he outlined how through archaeological research the project aimed to integrate and analyse the full range of information and documentation of hitherto unrecorded aspects of the frontier experience. This follow up lecture presents the final results of this 5-year project culminating in the launch of the publicly accessible database which contains 11,000 documents, records for over 170 NMP camps, records 1800 different conflict events as well as primary archival documents on the lives of 400 officers and 850 Aboriginal troopers, highlighting the crucial role of the NMP to the colonisation of Queensland in the face of sustained Aboriginal resistance.
About the Presenter
Prof Bryce Barker has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and an Honours and PhD in Archaeology from the University of Queensland. His research focusses on reconstructing Indigenous pasts in the Australasian region through archaeology and anthropology with an emphasis on Australian Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer Societies. This research is community-based and involves working in partnership with indigenous communities. Prof Barker has published widely in both national and international journals and currently have research projects in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, on the central Queensland coast and in the western Gulf of Papua in Papua New Guinea.
The Museum opens its doors to the public on the last Sunday of each month from 10am to 3pm from February to November in addition to the standard Monday to Thursday 9am to 4pm opening hours. Monthly Sunday openings feature guest speakers from across the historical and crime-solving spectrums.
PLEASE NOTE: The Police Museum will open Sunday, September 27 from 10am to 3pm, and is located on the ground floor of Police Headquarters, 200 Roma Street, Brisbane.
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