The wedge collection and the conundrum of humane colonisation
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
MeanjinVolume
76Issue
4, Summer 2017Pagination
34-55ISSN
0025-6293Department/School
College Office - College of Arts, Law and EducationPublisher
Meanjin Company LtdPlace of publication
131 Barry St, Carlton, Australia, Vic, 3053Rights statement
© Rebe Taylor 2017Repository Status
- Open