From the Wild West to the Wild North: Excavating the Memory of the Northern Australian Buffalo Shooting Industry

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In northern Australia, the buffalo hide industry was prevalent from the late 19th to mid-20th century. It involved Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and men working collectively for white male shooters to exploit feral water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) for their thick hides. Indigenous peoples dominated the workforce and often excelled in both experience and ability. Yet, in popular accounts, only the white shooters are heroicised. Their legend entangles in national imagining, obfuscates the valuable role of Indigenous peoples and influences the memory of the industry in the present. In this paper, I draw on my multi-scalar and inter-disciplinary study which 'excavates' the memory of the buffalo shooting industry across a cultural continuum. Combining historical archaeology and folkloristics, I explore how the Australian buffalo industry was imagined in popular accounts and how the ‘Wild West’ and ‘Buffalo Bill’ influenced the construction of the colonial legend of the Australian buffalo shooting industry.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Critical Archaeologies of Whiteness

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow