Deep History: Country and Sovereignty

What is deep history? How do histories make sovereignty on Country? What is history’s future?

For Aboriginal people, the past is the present. Competing histories form and transform the lands, peoples and nations of Oceania, from the Pacific Islands, New Guinea and Aotearoa/New Zealand to Australia. In nations impacted by colonialism, such questions are particularly pertinent. First Nations peoples have long made history, living on their Country far longer than the colonial invaders.

In Deep History: Country and Sovereignty, edited by Ann McGrath and Jackie Huggins, leading historians and thinkers explore Indigenous histories of caring for places and people over millennia. With contributions from Brenda L. Croft, Anna Clark, Lynette Russell and many more, Deep History considers how stories of the past and the future are inscribed on land, waterways and skies. Walking on Country, gardening and agriculture and rock art are historical practices that continue to play an important role in asserting sovereign rights.

While colonial powers crafted historical narratives of entitlement, First Nations people continue to perform deep histories of sovereignty. Deep History offers readers an invitation to walk the Country, to see how it reveals the most crucial of all histories for the planet.

‘Deep History is a rousing insurrection against the continuing colonial policing of history in Australasia and the Pacific. Indigenous Australian and Pasifika scholars lead in the reframing of our historical narratives, recognising, alongside white scholars, the urgency of truth telling for respectful acknowledgement of First Nations’ sovereignty. This postcolonial reframing of the space and tempo of past legacies and contemporary trajectories offers us new and deeper histories for better futures.’ – Warwick Anderson, author of The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia

‘Deep History attempts the timely, diﬃcult, and often discomforting task of blasting open the allied academic disciplines of History and Archaeology to Indigenous ways of representing the past and their sovereign sense of Deep Time. Going beyond the peaceful co-existence models of what was once called “bi-cultural history” in Aotearoa New Zealand and drawing on experiences of settler-colonial rule in the wider world of Oceania, the essays here experiment with a variety of creative strategies to take this challenging conversation forward. The result is an exciting and courageous volume that will speak to all students of decolonisation of knowledge.’ – Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

‘This wonderful collection of essays displaying the challenges and achievements of Deep History, draws our attention to history’s power, for good and ill, and its importance to the sovereignty of a people. From a rich and thought-provoking introduction to the series of exciting, informative, and well-written essays that follow we learn much about the very diﬀerent forms deep history can take – a long walk, rock art, stories and practices that nourish Country, scientiﬁc studies of changes in land and sea, works of historical ﬁction, and even the conventional historical archive. I came away with a heightened appreciation of the diﬀerent ways that Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories can and sometimes do communicate with one another, and the vital importance of doing so.’ – Ann Curthoys, co-author of Taking Liberty: Indigenous Rights and Settler Self-Government in Colonial Australia, 1830–1890

‘Deep History: Country and Sovereignty has the capacity to open so many new eyes to the profound timelessness of Indigenous history and how it is embedded everywhere – in the land, seas and skies that surround us. It adds new understanding to the connection between the “everywhen” and human and spiritual experience. It is a gift to the children and grandchildren of settler societies.’ – Paul Daley, author of Jesustown and Guardian writer

‘A powerful collection of connections to history, Country and culture – oﬀering new insights every Australian should read.’ – Terri Janke, author of True Tracks: Respecting Indigenous knowledge and culture

‘If you have ever wondered what it actually means when we say “sovereignty was never ceded”, this expansive volume holds a wealth of answers. Sovereignties of time, place, law, language, knowledge, memory, history, identity, logic, governance and art are explored by some of contemporary scholarship’s most critical and creative thinkers. Challenging, compelling, provocative and practical, Deep History is a book for head and heart alike. Here is vital and vibrant reading for our truth-telling – and truth-listening – age.’ – Clare Wright, Professor of History, La Trobe University and author of Näku Dhäruk The Yirrkala Bark Petitions

For the past seven years, Ann McGrath AM, who is the WK Hancock Chair at the Australian National University, has led a Laureate Program which, along with Indigenous knowledge holders, collaboratively explores the meanings of deep history. She has published various prize-winning books and held prestigious international fellowships, including at Princeton and the Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio.

Jackie Huggins is a Bidjara Elder of the Carnarvon Gorge area of Central Queensland, and the recipient of knowledge passed on by her last surviving cultural knowledge holder Uncle Frederick Conway from Rockhampton. She has worked in Aboriginal affairs for over four decades in community, government and non-government in areas of reconciliation, social justice and women's issues. An historian and author she is currently Professor, Director of Indigenous Research, School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Herston campus. She is author of Sister Girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, Identity and Reconciliation (2022).