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The wedge collection and the conundrum of humane colonisation

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 18:32 authored by Rebe TaylorRebe Taylor

The first encounter

Saffron Walden Museum is a place of wonderment. For £2.50 visitors can see an Egyptian mummy, a lock of Napoleon’s hair and Wallace the lion, stilled by his taxidermist since 1838. When I first visited the museum nearly ten years ago, my interest took me up a wooden staircase to a space perhaps less visited. The ‘Worlds of Man’ gallery was filled with indigenous-made artefacts from around the world, many of which had been there for more than 150 years.1 African statues, Hawaiian bark cloths, American tomahawks, and what I had come to see: the wooden Indigenous artefacts collected by surveyor John Helder Wedge at the close of the Tasmanian ‘Black War’ and in the first months of settlement in Victoria in 1835.

History

Publication title

Meanjin

Volume

76

Issue

4, Summer 2017

Pagination

34-55

ISSN

0025-6293

Department/School

College Office - College of Arts, Law and Education

Publisher

Meanjin Company Ltd

Place of publication

131 Barry St, Carlton, Australia, Vic, 3053

Rights statement

© Rebe Taylor 2017

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Heritage not elsewhere classified; Conserving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and culture