Originally posted on Embruns:
Saint-Louis mission girls, 1890. Source: Collection service des Archives de la Nouvelle-Calédonie 1 Num 2 148, fonds de l’Archevêché de Nouvelle-Calédonie. Women played an integral part in the “civilising mission” in New Caledonia and elsewhere in the Pacific. The Marists were in New Caledonia from 1843 and the male missionaries were…
Author Archives: karinspeedy
Pacific Island Labour in mid-19th Century Sydney
Originally posted on Embruns:
When examining the shipping records for goods that were being brought into Sydney by Franco-Australian merchant Didier-Numa Joubert, I was struck by how many “Pacific Islanders” were coming and going on his ships, often accompanied by Marist priests. The first arrivals were fourteen young Melanesian evacuees from New Caledonia who fled…
The Mysterious “Arab” Castaways: Mobilities, Border Protection and White Australia
Originally posted on Embruns:
This paper was given at the Colonial Formations Conference, University of Wollongong, 23-25 November, 2016. The arrival, in 1901, on the Far North Queensland coast of a suspicious group of brown men, ‘Arabs’ in a boat, or ‘refugees’, as they were initially referred to in some headlines, provides interesting insights into…
The Night Before Waitangi Day
Originally posted on Embruns:
I wrote this poem when living in Sydney. I always felt like I was living in exile there. It was February 5, 2015, the night before my birthday, the night before Waitangi Day. I was feeling nostalgic, thinking of home and the Treaty (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) and what it means…
Cuttings From a Pacific Garden
Originally posted on Embruns:
Today is National Poetry Day in Aotearoa! New Zealand is celebrating poets and poetry. Here is a poem I wrote in 2011 at a hui in Wellington on Pacific literature. It speaks to roots and renewal, themes that were very important to me at that moment and it pays homage to…
A Pacific Blackbirding Narrative
This post was first published on The Coastal History Blog, blog 34. Georges Baudoux’s Jean M’Baraï the Trepang Fisherman, is a masterful, ambiguous, semi-fictional novella that relates the brutal history of the Kanaka trade and highlights 19th century imperial connections between the French and British Pacific.[1] First published in 1919, based on the real lives of three métis orContinue reading “A Pacific Blackbirding Narrative”
A Taste of Transnational Writing from the Pacific Region
Originally posted on Embruns:
A number of years ago now, I had the pleasure of translating a book of short stories, Half-Moon Lands, by New Caledonian writer Hélène Savoie. I wrote a fairly extensive introduction to the book, which you can read here. Hélène Savoie takes the reader of Half-Moon Lands on a poetic, poignant…
Trove beyond borders
Originally posted on Embruns:
Last week, news came that Trove, the National Library of Australia’s fabulous digital repository, was under threat from funding cuts. A flood of users from all walks of life began tweeting their support under the #fundTrove hashtag. (See an article in the Conversation outlining the funding cuts here.) They also shared…
The Lost and Found column in colonial newspapers
Originally posted on Embruns:
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about archival work is the volume of ever-so-interesting-yet-not-related-to-what-you-are-actually-researching snippets of life that you notice (and get distracted by) along the way. Much of my research centres on the Colonial archive, particularly the archives pertaining to New Caledonia. A few years ago, I combed through thousands of pages…
Flame Tree
Originally posted on Embruns:
Flame trees (les flamboyants) have become somewhat ubiquitous in New Caledonia. They are, however, exotic plants, native to Madagascar. They arrived in New Caledonia with the first Reunionese settlers who disembarked in the early 1860s. A sugar crisis in Reunion, France’s previously booming sugar island in the Indian Ocean, forced large numbers…
Speedy Research & Consulting 