Professor Nicolas Peterson
Areas of expertise
- Social And Cultural Anthropology 160104
- Other Studies In Human Society 1699
Research interests
Social organisation, economic anthropology, ritual and symbolism, land and sea tenure, fourth world people and the state, social change and applied anthropology, anthropology of photography, ethnographic film, history of Australian Anthropology, anthropology of native title.
Biography
After three years working as Research Officer in the Northern Territory for the Austrlaian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, as it then was in the late 1960s, I took up a Research Fellowship at the Australian National University in 1971. In 1975 I was appointed to a lectureship in what is now the School of Archaeology and Anthropology also at the ANU. My doctoral reserch had been carried out in northeast Arnhem Land prior to moving to Canberra, where I moved the focus of research to central Australia learning about desert land tenure and its relationship with ceremonial life. The opportunity to work for the Royal Commission in to Aboriginal Land Rights as Research Officer has resulted in a long term commitment to applied anthropology mainly in the preparation of statutory and common law land and sea claims. Recently I have been the foundation Director of the Centre for Native Title Anthropology. This Centre, established in 2010, has been funded by the Attorney-General's Department, Canberra, to contribute to the professional development of anthropologists working in the native title area and to attract younger scholars into making a career in native title work. The Centre has been refunded for a further three years till 2025. Emeritus Professor David Trigger and Ms Petronella Vaarzon-Morel are now the Co-Directors of the Centre, but day to day the Centre is run by Dr Julie Finlayson.
Researcher's projects
Reconnecting Warlpiri communities with cultural heritage materials (LP220200211) held withe Dr Gerogiqa Curran (primary investigator), Professor Linda Barwick, Dr Amanda Harris, Emeritus Professor Nicolas Peterson, Professor Clint Bracknell, Associate Professor Myfany Turpin, Ms Endid Gallagher, Mr Karl Hampton, for the period 2023-2026.. The project aims to reconnect Warlpiri communities with past documentation and recordings of their cultural heritage. Centred in Yuendumu, the project expects to unpack the significance of past documentation of cultural heritage for present day Warlpiri people who live in vastly different social worlds from their forebears. Through collaborations with Warlpiri families, and Partner Orgnaisation - Printupi Anmatyerr Warlpiri (PAW) Media and Communications - the project will see the set up of activities to engage with those materials and the production of resources for use by future generations.
While the following projects have been formally finished there is on-going work related to each of them by myself, and the other researchers involved in each of the projects, including the doctoral students who have all completed their theses.
Vitality and change in Warlpiri songs at Yuendumu (Linkage Project LP160100743 held with Professor Linda Barwick the primary investigator, Dr Myfany Turpin, Mr Simon Fisher and Ms Valerie Martin running from 2016-2019). the project seeks to understand the reasons behind the reported decline in knowledge of songs amongst younger generations at Yuendumu in the past 40-50 years. I will analyse selected songs cycles over time to look at differences in content and interpretation.
Heritage in the limelight: the magic lantern in Australia and the world (Discovery grant DP160102509 held with Dr Martyn Jolly the primary investigator, Dr Martin Thomas, Professor Jane Lydon, Professor Paul Pickering and Dr Joe Kember, running from 2016-2018). The project aimed to discover and analyse the large number of glass magic lantern slides that remain under-utilised in public collections. In particular to understand how diverse audiences affectively experienced these powerful forms of early media. I examined the lantern slides used by the Bible Society in Australia to raise funds for the printing of Bibles in Aboriginal languages.
The long-term dynamics of higher order social organisations in Aboriginal Australia (Discovery grant DP140102983 held With Dr Patrick McConvell the primary investigator running from 2014-2016).The two principal aims of this project were to show that the Holocene prehistory of Australia was dynamic, involving signiificant expansion and migration of language groups, and that in such expansion and migration, and resistance to them, higher-order social groupsing were formed. These were the nations reported by earlier anthropologists and the cultural bloc of recent anthropology. This grant provided a PhD scholarship for Mr Tony Jefferies, now Dr Jefferies, as well as research time for Dr McConvell and myself.
Rescuing Carl Strehlow's Indigenous cultural heritage legacy: the neglected German tradition of Arandic ethnography (ARC Linkage grant LP110200803, 2011-2014). This Linkage grant is held with the Central Land Council and the Strehlow Research Centre, both of Alice Springs. The researchers involved are: Dr Anna Kenny post doctoral fellow; Dr John Henderson, linguist from the University of Western Australia; Michael Cawthorn, Director of the Strehlow Research Centre; Helen Wilmot, anthropologist at the Central Land Council; and myself.
Tthree books have been published from this project. The first appeared with the publication of Dr Anna Kenny's book "The Aranda' pepa" by ANU Press which can be downloaded free in electronic form from the Press's website or bought in hard copy. A co-edited book by myself and Anna Kenny on "German ethnography in Australia" appeared late in 2017, and in 2018 "Carl Strehlow's 1909 comparative heritage dictionary" transcribed, translated from the German and edited by Anna Kenny was published, accompanied by five introductory essays both on-line and in hard copy.
This project had three interconnected aims:
* To bring the last major ethnography of classical Aboriginal life into the world of Australian scholarship by setting out its ethnographic significance to Aboriginalist anthropology and in so doing exploring the contribution of the neglected German tradition of humanistic anthropology to contemporary issues and debates. * To repatriate Indigenous intellectual property by collaborating with Arrernte and Luritja speakers to translate Carl Strehlow's unpublished 10,000 word dictionary and other cultural materials currently unavailable to them because of the language and scripts in which they are written, or being research notes and, * To examine the relationship, and sources of difference, between the work of TGH Strehlow and that of his father Carl in the areas of genealogy, territorial organisation, mythology, and totemism as a contribution to reducing contemporary conflict over traditional lands in particular, and to understanding the trajectories of change in Arrernte and Luritja social orders in the 20th century
Pintupi dialogues: reconstructing memories of art, land and
Community through the visual record (ARC Linkage grant LP100200359, 2010-2013).
This ARC Linkage grant was held with Papunya Tula Artists Ltd and the National Museum of Australia, Professor Fred Myers of New York University, Dr Peter Thorley of the National Museum of Australia, and Ms Philippa Deveson and myself of ANU. Together with the members of the Kintore community used film and photography to reflect on a pivotal period in Pintupi history. In 1964, internationally renowned filmmaker, Ian Dunlop accompanying Jeremy Long, had photographed Pintupi people still living a self-provisioning life in central Australia's western desert. He returned in 1974 to film these same people, now living at Yayayi outstation where Fred Myers was carrying out his doctoral fieldwork.
People like the Pintupi have been referred to as 'People without History'. Such a view emphasises the difficulty of creating a history when they have no written records of their own. This is culturally compounded by the lack of any notion of a chronological career or biographical narrative among many remote Aboriginal people. Rather, Pintupi lives and past events are encompassed in a rich array of contextually elicited or triggered stories about particular episodes and events. This leads to episodic accounts of the past that obscure the persistence of motivations, the long-term commitment to particular courses of action and the ways people have consistently worked towards specific goals, making their lives seem fragmented, reactive and lacking in clear direction. However, with a layered dialogic approach, incorporating multiple perspectives, it is possible to work collaboratively to overcome these difficulties and create a nuanced and evidence based narrative account of intent and purpose that can bridge this cultural difference in historical consciousness.
Pintupi Dialogues is built around a unique research resource ideally suited to the cultural specificities of the Pintupi historical consciousness:
- thirteen hours of raw synchronous sound film, shot by internationally renowned
ethnographic filmmaker Ian Dunlop at the Pintupi outstation of Yayayi in 1974, and
- over 600 still photographs, taken by Dunlop in 1964 of some of the same people,
and their parents, when they were living a completely independent traditional life
'beyond the frontier'.
Anthropological and Aboriginal perspectives on the Donald Thomson Collection: material culture, collecting and identity (ARC Linkage grant 2003-2006). In conjunction with Museum Victoria, Dr Louise Hamby, post doctoral fellow, and I, from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University, and Ms Lindy Allen, Senior Curator, from Museum Victoria have been working on the Donald Thomson Arnhem Land Collection made between 1935-43. His Arnhem Land Collection of photographs, objects and notes together form the most comprehensive record of any fully functioning, self-suporting Aboriginal society we shall every have. The project has involved, among other things, digital modes of repatriation, extensive field based documentation of the many hundreds of images, exploration of material culture and ethnotechnology and research on Donald Thomson's place in Australian anthropology. Many Indigenous knowledge holders have been brought down to work at the Museum with the more than 4,500 objects and over 2000 photographs as well. Work related to this project will continue well into the future.
Warlpiri songlines: anthropological, linguistic and Indigenous perspectives (ARC Linkage grant 2005-2007). In conjunction with the Warlpiri Janganpa Association, and the Central Land Council, the School of English at the University of Queensland and the Schools of Music and Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University have a three year research project into Warlpiri songlines. The project combines anthropologists, linguists, musicologists, Indigenous knowledge holders and Indigenous bicultural linguists to record, transcribe and translate many of the cycles of songs that are no longer frequently performed, and, therefore, not being passed on to the younger generations. Warlpiri songs link ancestral power with the landscape, emotions and aesthetics and are central to Warlpiri religious life. The project is creating a cultural archive at Yuendumu informed by indigenous exegesis that is also integrating appropriate aspects into the world of scholarship and eventually providing materials for Warlpiri school curricula. This project includes a postgraduate research student, Georgia Curran, who is working with Warlpiri collaborations over a fifteen month period at Yuendumu, Dr Mary Laughren, Dr Stephen Wild and Ms Anna Meltzer. Key Warlpiri collaborators are Mr Thomas Rice Jangala and Ms Jeannie Egan Nungarrayi.
Other Current Research
Economy and culture: I am interested in the relationship of Indigenous Australian forms of sociality, organisation and economic practices with those of the encompassing nation-state. Currently I am investigating the modernising of the Indigenous domestic moral economy (see 1991, 1993, 2005 and Peterson and Taylor 2003; 2013; 2015).
Early twentieth century photography of Aboriginal people: In this project I am examining the ways in which Aboriginal people were represented in popular imagery (eg see 2003; 2006; 2020).
Publications
- Peterson, N 2022, 'Obituary for Jeremy Long', Oceania, vol. 92, no. 1, pp. 2-6.
- Peterson, N 2022, 'Beyond Narratives of Aboriginal Self-deliverance: Land Rights and Anthropological Visibility in the Australian Public Domain', Anthropological Forum, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 125-137.
- Peterson, N 2020, 'Culture, development and the future of remote Aboriginal communities', in Julie D Finlayson & Frances Morphy (ed.), Ethnographer and Contrarian: Biographical and anthropological essays in honour of Peter Sutton, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, pp. 120-132.
- Peterson, N 2020, 'Pre-colonial inequality in Aboriginal Australia', Pervobytnaya Arkheologiya/Prehistoric Archaeology. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 1 (2020), pp. 55-63.
- Peterson, N 2020, 'The Missionaries' Servant: Babel, Funding and the Bible Society in Australia', in Martyn Jolly & Elisa deCourcy (ed.), The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, Routledge, New York, pp. 88-101.
- Peterson, N 2018, 'The Thinness of Accounts, in Comments. In T. Neale. What Tradition Affords: Articulations of Indigeneity in Contemporary Bushfire Management', Current Anthropology, vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 95-96.
- Laughren, M, Curran, G, Turpin, M et al 2018, 'Women's yawulyu songs as evidence of connections to and knowledge of land: the Jardiwanpa', in Peter K Austin, Harold Koch and Jane Simpson (ed.), Language, Land and Song: Studies in honour of Luise Hercus, Batchelor Institute Press, Australia, pp. 344-371.
- Peterson, N 2017, 'Is There a Role for Anthropology in Cultural Reproduction? Maps, Mining, and the "Cultural Future" in Central Australia', in Francoise Dussart and Sylvie Poirier (ed.), Entangled Territorialities: Negotiating Indigenous Lands in Australia and Canada, University of Toronto Press, Canada.
- Laughren, M, Curran, G, Turpin, M and Peterson, N 2016, 'Women's yawulyu songs as evidence of connections to and knowledge of land: the Jardiwanpa', in Peter K Austin, Harold Koch and Jane Simpson (ed.), Language Land & Song: Studies in Honour of Luise Hercus, EL Publishing, London United Kingdom, pp. 419 - 449.
- Myers, F. and Peterson, N 2016, 'The origins and history of outstations as Aboriginal Life projects', in Nicolas Peterson, Fred Myers (ed.), Experiments in Self-Determination : Histories of the outstation movement in Australia, ANU Press, Canberra, pp. 1-22.
- Peterson, N & Myers, F, eds, 2016, Experiments in Self-Determination : Histories of the outstation movement in Australia, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia.
- Peterson, N 2016, 'What is the policy significance of the hybrid economy?', in Will Sanders (ed.), Engaging Indigenous Economy: Debating diverse approaches, ANU Press, Acton ACT 2601, pp. 55-64.
- Peterson, N 2016, 'What was Dr Coombs thinking? Nyirrpi, policy and the future', in Nicolas Peterson and Fred Myers (ed.), Experiments in Self-Determination: Histories of the outstation movement in Australia, ANU Press, Canberra, Australia, pp. 161-179.
- Peterson, N 2015, 'Place, Personhood and Marginalization: Ontology and Community in Remote Desert Australia', Anthropologica, vol. 57, no. 9, pp. 491-500.
- Peterson, N 2015, 'Studying man and man's nature: A history of the institutionalisation of Aboriginal anthropology (1990 Wentworth Lecture)', in Robert Tonkinson (ed.), The Wentworth Lectures: Honouring fifty years of Australian Indigenous Studies, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp. 102-124pp.
- Peterson, N & Merlan, F 2014, 'Two takes on social problems in Central Australia', Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 1, pp. 88-89.
- Peterson, N 2014, 'The present and the ethnographic present: change in the production of anthropological knowledge about Aboriginal Australia', International Symposium on Australian Aboriginal Anthropology, ed. Michael Houseman, Musee du Quai Branly, France.
- Martin, D. Trigger, D. Burke, P. Memmott, P. Holcombe, S. Veth, P. Winn, P, N. Peterson and Palmer, K. “Forensic Social Anthropology” Chapter 36 in Expert Evidence. Thomson Reuters.
- Merlan, F & Peterson, N 2013, 'Anthropology, Public Policy and Social Process in Indigenous Australia', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 297-303.
- Peterson, N 2013, 'Community development, civil society and local government in the future of remote Northern Territory growth towns', Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 339-352.
- Peterson, N 2013, 'Finding one's way in Arnhem land', in Shore, C. and Trnka, S. (ed.), Up close and personal: on peripheral perspectives and the production of anthropological knowledge, Berghahn Books, United States, pp. 108-124.
- Peterson, N 2013, 'On the persistence of sharing: Personhood, asymmetrical reciprocity, and demand sharing in the Indigenous Australian domestic moral economy', Australian Journal of Anthropology, The, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 166-176.
- N. Peterson, D. Gardner and J. Urry, 2012, 'Australasian contrasts.' in R. Fardon, O. Harris, T. Marchand, M. Nuttall, C. Shore, V. Strang and R. Wilson (ed.), The SAGE handbook of social anthropology, 2 vols, SAGE, London, pp.443-464.
- Peterson, N, Gardner, D & Urry, J 2012, 'Australasian Contrasts', in Richard Fardon, John Gledhill (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology, Sage Publications Inc, United Kingdom, pp. 443-448.
- Peterson, N 2011, 'Is the Aboriginal landscape sentient? Animism, the new animism and the Warlpiri', Oceania, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 167-179.
- Peterson, N 2010, 'Other peoples lives: Secular assimilation, culture and ungovernability', in Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson (ed.), Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, pp. 248-258.
- Peterson, N 2010, 'Common law, Statutory law and the Political economy of the recognition of Indigenous Australian rights in land', in Knafla, L. A and Westra, H (ed.), Aboriginal Title and indigenous peoples: Canada, Australia and New Zealand, UBC Press, Vancouver, pp. 171-184.
- Peterson, N 2009, 'The cultural context of art from the desert', in Claudette Chubb & Nancy Sever (ed.), Indigenous Art at the Australian National University, Palgrave Macmillan Ltd, Melbourne, pp. 127-152.
- Peterson, N 2008, 'Just Humming: the Consequence of the Decline of Learning Contexts among the Walpiri', in J. Kommers and E. Venbrux (ed.), Cultural Styles of Knowledge Transmission: Essays in Honour of Ad Borsboom, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp. 114-118.
- Peterson, N 2008, ''Too sociological'? Revisiting 'Aboriginal territorial organization'', in M. Hinkson and J. Beckett (ed.), An Appreciation of Difference: W.E.H. Stanner and Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp. 185-197.
- Peterson, N, Allen, L & Hamby, L 2008, 'Introduction [to The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections]', in Nicolas Peterson, Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby (ed.), The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne, pp. 1-26.
- Peterson, N, Allen, L & Hamby, L, eds, 2008, The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections, Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne.
- Peterson, N 2006, 'Culture', Indigenous Socioeconomic Outcomes: Assessing Recent Evidence, ed. B.H. Hunter, ANU ePress, Canberra, pp. 269-277.
- Peterson, N 2006, 'Early 20th Century Photography of Australian Aboriginal Families: Illustration or Evidence?', Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 21, no. 1-2, pp. 11-26.
- Peterson, N 2006, 'I cant follow you on this horde-clan business at all: Donald Thomson, Radcliffe-Brown and a Final Note on the Horde', Oceania, vol. 76, pp. 16-26.
- Peterson, N 2006, 'Repositioning Anthropology, 1972-1980', in Robert Layton, Stephen Shennan & Peter Stone (ed.), A Future for Archaeology, Cavendish Publishing Ltd, United Kingdom, pp. 31-40.
- Peterson, N 2006, 'Visual Knowledge: Spencer and Gillens use of photography in The Native tribes of Central Australia', Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 2006, no. 1, pp. 12-22.
- Egloff, B, Peterson, N & Wendong, T 2005, Biamanga and Gulaga, Cultural Heritage Research Centre, University of Canberra.
- Peterson, N & Arthur, W 2005, 'Modes of research', in Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy (ed.), Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, Macquarie University, Macquarie University, pp. 248-257.
- Peterson, N 2005, 'On the visibility of indigenous Australian systems of marine tenure', New Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Indigenous Use and Management of Migratory Marine Resources, ed. N Kishigami and JM Savelle, National Museum of Ethnology Japan, Osaka, Japan, pp. 427-444.
- Peterson, N 2005, 'The use of Spencer's Photographic Imagery', in Philip Batty, Lindy Allen, John Morton (ed.), The Photographs of Baldwin Spencer (revised edition), Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne, pp. 154-157.
- Peterson, N 2005, 'Thomsons place in Australian anthropology', Donald Thomson Centenary Anniversary Symposium 2001, ed. Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Canberra Australia, pp. 29-44.
- Peterson, N 2005, 'What can the pre-colonial and frontier economies tell us about engagement with the real economy? Indigenous life projects and the conditions for development', in Diane Austin-Broos, Gaynor Macdonald (ed.), Culture, Economy and Governance in Aboriginal Australia, University of Sydney Press, Sydney, pp. 7-18.
- Peterson, N, McConvell, P, McDonald, H et al 2005, 'Social and cultural life', in Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy (ed.), Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, Macquarie University, Macquarie University, pp. 88?107.
- Rigsby, B & Peterson, N 2005, 'Introduction [to Donald Thomson: the man and scholar]', Donald Thomson Centenary Anniversary Symposium 2001, ed. Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Canberra Australia, pp. 1-16.
- Rigsby, B & Peterson, N, eds, 2005, Donald Thomson: The Man and Scholar, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Canberra, Australia.
- Peterson, N 2004, 'Myth of the walkabout: Movement in the Aboriginal Domain', in John Taylor and Martin Bell (ed.), Population Mobility and Indigenous Peoples in Australasia and North America, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London, pp. 223-238.
- Peterson, N & Taylor, J 2003, 'The modernising of the Indigenous domestic moral economy: Kinship, accumulation and household composition', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, vol. 4, no. 1&2, pp. 105-122.
- Peterson, N 2003, 'A Biographical Sketch of Donald Thomson', in Donald Thomson (ed.), Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (revised ed), Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Carlton, Victoria, pp. 1-21.
- Peterson, N 2003, 'Preface - Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land', in Donald Thomson (ed.), Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (revised ed), Melbourne University Press (an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing), Carlton, Victoria, pp. xi-xvi.
- Peterson, N 2003, 'The changing photographic contract: Aborigines and image ethics', in Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (ed.), Photography's Other Histories, Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 119-145.
- Pinney, C, and Peterson, N. eds, 2003, Photographys Other Histories, Duke University Press, Durham.
- Peterson, N & Taylor, J 2002, 'Aboriginal intermarriage and economic status in western New South Wales', People and Place, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 11-16.
- Peterson, N 2000, 'An expanding Aboriginal Domain: mobility and initiation journey', Oceania, vol. 70, no. 3, pp. 205-218.
- Peterson, N 2000, 'The popular image', BlackFlash: Canadian Journal of Photo-Based and Electronic Arts Production, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 24-35.
- Peterson, N 1999, 'Introduction: Australia', in <> (ed.), <>, pp. 317-323pp.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Centre for Native Title Anthropology Proposal for 2023-2025 (Primary Investigator)
- Native Title Anthropologist Grant Program 2019-22 (Primary Investigator)
- CNTA 2016-2019 Innovative professional development of native title anthropologists (Primary Investigator)
- Heritage in the limelight: the magic lantern in Australia and the world 1840-1940 (Secondary Investigator)
- The Long-term Dynamics of Higher Order Social Organisation in Aboriginal Australia (Secondary Investigator)
- Attorney-Generals Dept-Centre for Native Title Anthropology (2013-2016) (Primary Investigator)
- Centre for Native Title Anthropology (Primary Investigator)
- Rescuing Carl Strehlow's Indigenous cultural heritage legacy: the neglected German tradition of Arandic ethnography (Primary Investigator)
- Centre for Native Title Anthropology (Primary Investigator)
- Pintupi Dialogues: Reconstructing Memories of Art, Land and Community Through the Visual Record (Primary Investigator)
- Centre for Native Title Anthropology (Primary Investigator)
- Warlpiri songlines: Anthropological, linguistic and Indigenous perspectives (Primary Investigator)
- Warlpiri songlines: Anthropological, linguistic and Indigenous perspectives (Primary Investigator)