J. H. Wedge and the problem of ‘humane colonisation’

Rebe Taylor, Coral Thomas Fellow, will deliver this inaugural lecture on her recent findings at the State Library of NSW. In the early 1830s, surveyor John Helder Wedge collected early south-eastern Aboriginal wooden artefacts from Tasmania and Victoria, now housed in the Saffron Walden Museum in Essex. It has been suggested that Wedge sought the artefacts out of a rare ‘humanitarian’ interest in the Indigenous people. Rebe Taylor’s research in the Library’s collections investigates this idea and wonders: was there a more disturbing aspect to Wedge’s collecting? Following her lecture, Rebe, Mitchell Librarian Richard Neville and Kirsten Thorpe, Manager, Indigenous Services, will lead a Q&A with the audience on the ongoing and challenging questions surrounding Australia’s early frontier history and the collections of Indigenous cultural material in overseas museums.