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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 46 | August 2000


Bursting boundaries:
places, persons, gender and disciplines

The Millennial Conference of the Pacific History Association took place from Monday 26 to Friday 30 June at the far from tropical Australian National University in Canberra. The mercury reached a high of four degrees Celsius at lunchtime on Thursday, which was in keeping with one of the underlying themes of the conference—the gap between the imagined Pacific and contemporary reality.

The conference began with a formal welcome to the delegates by a representative of the Ngunnawal people from the Canberra region. The conference program was very full with more than 90 speakers and six to seven sessions a day, including parallel sessions. Session titles included ‘Negotiating Indigenous Identities in Australia’, ‘Globalism and Regionalism’ ‘Gender and Cultural Identity’, ‘Beyond Missionaries’, ‘Participants as Historians’, ‘Burdens of Citizenship’ and ‘Unsettled Communities’.

The fifth day provided an update on the situation in Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Extra activities that delegates could attend included book launches, book sales, film screening and dance and multimedia performances.

The papers ranged in time frame from pre- to contemporary history and were presented by speakers from a range of disciplines, including Pacific historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, educators, librarians, archivists, artists, writers and film-makers. Speakers came from Australia, Canada, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, United States and Wallis Island.

The papers were given in English, a third or fourth language for some participants. The presentations incorporated film, video, photographs, postcards, web site demonstrations and some included elements of performance, poetry and story reading.

The fourth day of the conference included a full-day parallel session ‘Casting the Net’. The session was centred on aspects of the Internet such as providing access to historical materials through web sites and digitisation projects, using the Internet for distance education and the potential for reclaiming cultural materials held in distant repositories.

The session provided an opportunity to showcase web sites and current digitisation projects, discuss some of the issues involved and share experiences. It brought into sharp contrast the resources available to some Pacific rim countries compared with Pacific island countries such as Vanuatu, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea. Three National Library staff contributed to this session. Chris Foster (Overseas Collection Development) gave a talk ‘Exploring the Highlands of Papua New Guinea Through the Resources at the National Library of Australia: Research Tools for Remote Access’. Amelia McKenzie (Acquisitions) chaired part of this session. Colin Webb (Preservation Services) participated in a round table discussion and spoke on the pitfalls and limitations of digitisation projects. During this session Dr Paul Turnbull of the ANU spoke on aspects of the South Seas Project, a collaboration between the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research and the National Library of Australia to digitise and mount on the web the journal of Cook’s first Pacific voyage and associated research materials.

For new and experienced conference attendees alike the breadth of material presented at the conference broadened appreciation of the current debates in Pacific history, anthropology and sociology. The range of speakers heightened awareness of indigenous issues and perspectives. There was also the added bonus of being able to put a face to the names of authors of Pacific books and articles, as well as meet librarians and archivists from the region. —Maxine Davis

Expedition party
This photograph from the Pictorial Collection was used in Chris Foster’s presentation. It shows expedition leaders Mick Leahy
and Mick Dwyer with their escorting party at camp on a 1930 journey of exploration from Lae to the coast of Papua.

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