History Now: Cultural Heritage in Danger: Current Crises and Practical Solutions

Episode Transcript
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Catherine Shirley (00:01):
Welcome to the History Now 2025 podcast
series, brought to you by theHistory Council of New South
Wales in partnership with theChau Chak Wing Museum and the
Vere Gordon Childe Centre at theUniversity of Sydney.
In this episode, we discuss theintentional and unintentional
destruction, damage or loss ofhuman cultural history through

(00:23):
armed conflict, naturaldisaster, human intervention, or
deliberate attempts to erasecultural identity.
We will also consider how sitesof historical trauma become
historical sites themselves andthen how they're reflected in
contemporary perspectives.
With presentations by Dr.

(00:43):
Julian Cooper from MacquarieUniversity, Professor Richard
Mackay from Australia Icomos andDeakin University, and Dr.
Charlotte Feekins from theUniversity of Sydney, this
wide-ranging talk will take usaround the world and examine a
range of issues such as thefight to preserve the past,
international obligations toprotect historic sites and

(01:07):
traditions, and what we cancontribute from Australia.

Craig Barker (01:17):
Good evening, everybody.
And that this truly is uncededGadigaland and always has and

(01:57):
always will be.
My name's Craig Barker.
I'm an archaeologist, educator,and I'm head of public
engagement at the Chow Chak WingMuseum.
It's been my great honor toconvene the 2025 series of
History Now Talks on behalf ofthe History Council of New South
Wales and the Chow Chak WingMuseum and the Vere Gordon Child

(02:17):
Centre for HistoricalInvestigation here at the
University of Sydney.
The series is presented withthe support of Create New South
Wales.
The History Now series has along history, ironically.
And so I'd like to invite theHistory Council of New South
Wales Executive and StrategicDevelopment Officer, Catherine

(02:38):
Shirley, to the microphone, justto talk for a few minutes about
the History Now series before Iintroduce our presenters
tonight and what we aim toachieve in tonight's
presentation.
Catherine.

Catherine Shirley (02:50):
Well, hello and welcome to all of you, and
thanks for coming out heretonight on such a cold winter's
night.
It's great to see you all.
And I'm just going to say abrief welcome on behalf of the
History Council of New SouthWales.
We've been associated with thisseries for the last few years
now, and then on and off over anumber of other years as well.

(03:12):
History Now owes its existenceto passionate historians, many
of whom I've seen in theaudience over the last year or
so.
And they wanted to bring newperspectives to all aspects of
historical practice when theyfirst established this series.
And as we're witnessing in thistime of global affairs,

(03:35):
historical perspective helps usmake sense of current chaos.
It shines a light on ourculture as well as other
cultures.
And it helps us comprehend thetrue value of the human
experience and living in acivilised society.
Our speakers tonight to beintroduced shortly by Craig, are

(03:55):
renowned in their fields andmore than well equipped to
examine the range of issuesaround the fight to preserve the
past and internationalobligations to protect historic
sites and traditions.
So I'll now hand back to Craigfor what promises to be a very
stimulating discussion.
Thank you.

Craig Barker (04:15):
Thank you, Catherine.
The destruction of culturalheritage, whether through
conflict, deliberate politicalor commercial imperatives,
natural disaster, orregrettably, increasingly
climate change, is a key issueto the heart of all of us
interested in heritagemanagement, museums like this

(04:37):
one, and understanding humanhistory more broadly.
And yet it is occurringglobally, including as we'll
hear tonight here in Australia.
Whilst less significantcompared to the loss of human
life in the case of many ofthese scenarios, the destruction
of any cultural heritage is adevastating loss, not just to
its immediate community, but tohumanity as a whole.

(05:00):
So, what can be done to helpprevent such losses in the
future?
Tonight, it's my great pleasureto bring together three
Australian thinkers to discussvarious aspects of the struggle
to preserve, protect, andrebuild cultural heritage, uh
sites and uh markers that areendangered, threatened, and

(05:21):
damaged.
Obviously, a much widerconversation than we can fit
within an hour.
But each of our presenterstonight are going to speak for
20 minutes each, and then we'regoing to have a very quick
question and answer session atthe end, where we'll try to pull
together some of those threadsand I will uh allow some
questions from the floor too, ifuh anyone has any burning

(05:41):
issues that come up from theconversation that our presenters
might be able to approach.
I'll introduce all three of thepresenters now, and then each
of them will come up one at atime.
Um, so firstly, it's my greatprivilege to introduce Richard
Mackay.
Uh, Richard is the Director ofPossibilities at Mackay

(06:01):
Strategic, a member of theAustralian Heritage Council, an
adjunct professor in theCultural Heritage and Museum
Study Program at DeakinUniversity.
Richard has worked in heritagemanagement for more than four
decades.
He was a founder, a foundingpartner of GML Heritage, my
one-time boss, former chair ofthe Australian World Heritage

(06:24):
Advisory Committee, a long timeago now, and inaugural chair of
the New South Wales HeritageCouncil's State Heritage
Register Committee.
Richard is an ICOMOS culturaladvisor to the UNESCO World
Heritage Committee, where he'sjust been in Paris, just
returning from the committee's47th session, which amongst many
other matters considered theimpact of natural disasters and

(06:46):
conflict on World Heritageproperties in Asia and the
Middle East, as well as thecurrent conflict in Ukraine.
Richard will be followed by Dr.
Julian Cooper, an Egyptologist,nubiologist, and archaeologist
with a focus on the archaeologyof the eastern desert region of
Africa and the history of itsnomadic peoples.

(07:09):
He is the director of the Atvi?
Is that right?
Yes, Atvi survey project, afieldwork project surveying the
vast deserts between the Nileand the Red Sea.
These surveys aim to shed newlight on the varied heritage of
this desert, from Neolithic rockart to ancient Egyptian trade
routes and medieval gold mines.

(07:30):
Julian from MacquarieUniversity is a recipient of an
ARC Future Fellowship, RescuingPharaoh's Gold Mines,
Archaeological Conservation inEast Sudan.
And he will be tonightproviding a case study, a deep
depth into a complex zone thatmany of us in Australia are not
conscious of, and that iscultural heritage destruction

(07:52):
within Sudan, including theNational Museum.
Our third presenter is Dr.
Charlotte Feekins, aninternationally recognized
heritage researcher,practitioner, and lecturer,
whose work sits at theintersection of heritage
studies, historical andcontemporary archaeology, and
mental health sciences.
Based here at the University ofSydney with the Discipline of

(08:15):
Archaeology and the Museum's andHeritage Studies program.
Her interdisciplinary andfuture-focused research explores
the emotional and effectivedimensions of heritage, objects,
places, and practices, toadvance social justice, healing,
and resilience, particularly incontexts shaped by trauma,

(08:36):
marginalization, andclimate-driven environmental
change.
Committed to community-ledengagement, Charlotte integrates
critical theory with appliedheritage practice to bring about
transformative impact andmeaningful change.
She has a wide range ofresearch interests, including
trauma-informed andhealing-centered heritage.

(08:57):
Also, just on a private note,I'd like to congratulate
Charlotte on her recentsuccessful ARC funded project,
Restoring Kakadoo National Park,which is great news.
It's well done.
Thank you to all three of youfor your time.
Richard, I will hand themicrophone over to you.
Thank you very much.

Richard Mackay (09:22):
Good evening, friends and colleagues.
And I commence by acknowledgingthat I'm speaking on Gadigal
land.
Um, and I acknowledgetraditional owners, uh, past and
present, that land was neverceded, and I pay my respects to
elders.
Deliberate destruction ofcultural heritage is no new

(09:44):
phenomenon.
Over the course of millennia,those in ideological ascendancy
have sought to use militarymight or convenient laws to
replace idols with icons,justify damage and destruction
in the names of the dominantreligious or other ethical
paradigm.
But destruction of heritage,deliberate destruction, doesn't

(10:06):
only happen for iconoclasticreasons.
It also happens as a matter ofconvenience.
And it has been happening formillennia.
In other circumstances,classical sites have been mined
to make to provide materials,which have then been used in uh
constructing Renaissanceheritage in turn to become a

(10:29):
convenient source of materialsfor subsequent development
activity.
And then as technology hasimproved, and particularly in
terms of contemporary society,there is just destruction for
convenience where a decision ismade that a form of new
development or intervention ismore important than the existing

(10:51):
heritage.
So you have this sort of valueset of judgments that are made
by contemporary consentauthorities or government
agencies about what stays andwhat goes.
And then, of course, um we havea whole other raft of
destruction of heritage arisingfrom things like military
conflicts or from naturaldisasters.
And I am going to just meanderthrough some of those uh forms

(11:16):
of heritage, sharing someanecdotes and some experience.
Probably the most disturbingtrend in all of that is the 20th
and early 20th, 21st centuryweaponization of heritage.
And to my observation, itprobably starts with the
deliberate demolition of theMostar Bridge in Bosnia

(11:41):
Herzegovina in um the early1990s, 1993.
But that was picked up uh notvery much later in the early
2000s by the Taliban regime whenwe saw the destruction and
indeed the broadcasting of theum blowing up of the two Bamiyan

(12:01):
Buddhas, the giant Buddhas inthe in the Bamiyan Valley.
Um, I mean, an extraordinarycultural landscape containing
all manner of artistic work,archaeological sites, um dating
for more than a millennium ofhistory from the sort of first
to 13th century.
And the point of the demolitionwas not the attack on that site

(12:25):
or the heritage, but the impacton the culture and the identity
of the people to reflect theideology of the new regime and
the regime change.
So we see that the demolitionof the heritage is not just the
destruction and the loss ofthose cultural values, it's
actually deliberately undertakenin many respects, um, you know,

(12:50):
for the for the first time on akind of global scale with a
global prominence in the earlypart of the 21st century.
And I'm sad to say that thatactivity becomes a template
which is embraced um in parts ofthe Middle East, particularly
by the Islamic State of Israeland the Levant, ISIL, um, as

(13:11):
they take over areas of Syriaand uh Iraq.
Um, we probably see it at itsabsolute apogee in terms of this
destructive mindset and processin the Syrian sites.
Um, and we could talk a lotabout this, but just to take one

(13:32):
example at Palmyra, um, in2015, there was this really sad
sequence of destructionactivities.
I mean, Palmyra was an ancientsite on the Silk Road.
It probably reached itspinnacle during the Roman Empire
when we see a very grand arrayof structures um known to all of

(13:55):
the archaeology students in theroom, um, elements like the the
Triumphal Arch and the Templeof Bell, series of monumental
tombs of nobles.
And during during 2015, whathappens in Palmyra is that ISIL
progressively destroys virtuallyall of these elements.
It it places explosives, itplaces social media

(14:16):
advertisements, and then itblows up the Temple of Bell, and
everyone's online to sort ofsee it happen.
Uh, three months later, it doesthe same to the Triumphal Arch.
And then progressively there'sa series of media posts and
destruction as they blow up thetombs of the nobles down the
valley one by one.
And the point that I makeparticularly about Palmyra is it
is by no means a militarytarget, right?

(14:39):
Palmyra is away from the town.
And the only reason, there's nostrategic reason, there's no
advantage.
The only reason to do this isthe attack on culture.
So that the cultural values andthe heritage is weaponized, is
weaponized as a form of attackon the community.

(15:00):
Um, and look, I could talk moreabout that, but I'm mindful of
our short time together.
But it's it's also happened insome of the more active sites at
Aleppo and Damascus andKraktash Chevalier, Bosra, and
in the villages in northernSyria.
And I'm just devastated.
This time last week, I wastelling some people earlier I
was in a meeting in Paris with agroup of Syrians where we were

(15:22):
looking at the reconstructionplans for Aleppo and dealing
with conceptual issues aboutwhether to prioritize mosques or
services.
And indeed, is it is it moreimportant to restore an icon to
make the community see it andfeel good, or more important for
them to have a flushing toilet?
And of course, what's happenedover the weekend is we have
Israel launching missiles intothe heart of Aleppo.

(15:45):
And uh I mean, goodness knowswhat the effect of that will be.
We also, of course, through theconflict, see ins incidental
damage.
And uh a sad example of thatfrom the last 10 years is what's
been happening in Yemen with umthe capital Sanaa, where the uh
the World Heritage Property hasbeen subject to bombing by the

(16:05):
Saudi regime and a lot ofdifficult issues there, where
bombs clear out theneighborhood, people immediately
rush back to rebuild.
But of course, what they can'tdo is rebuild and reconstruct.
So they rebuild shanty townsusing whatever materials they
have.
They don't even wait for thebomb clearance.
And so you have a progressive,um incremental, almost

(16:28):
accidental erosion of theintegrity of the historic sites
because understandably thecontemporary community is moving
to look after the livelihoodsof their own.
And more recently, um, we havea very interesting phenomenon
happening in Ukraine.
And paradoxically, um theRussian invasion of Ukraine does

(16:52):
not involve direct attacks onthe cultural sites.
Do you know why?
Because the Russians regardthem as Russian, they provide
them as part of their culture.
So you get this sort of inverseiconoclasm where they are
intended to be protected.
And yet, in March this year, umwe saw the unfortunate um event

(17:16):
where a missile went off veryclose to the um the monastery of
uh St.
Sophia in the center of Kiev,and all of the cornices came off
the eastern facade of thebuilding.
Um but as recently again as theweek before last, um, Russia is
denying um that this was aresult of the adjacent missile
and explaining that it was, infact, poor maintenance on the

(17:38):
part of the Ukrainians.
And look, while my colleaguesand I are providing, you know,
the guidance and support, um itit's it's an all an awful
situation where I mean I'velearned far more than I ever
wanted to learn about radiatedheat or vibration waves and the
um accidental damage that ishappening simply because there

(18:00):
is a conflict happening in theprecinct and in the region.
How am I going for time?
I've got 10.
Good.
Um there is, of course, a wholeum international convention
about this, and one of the quickpoints to make is that the
Hague Convention about theprotection of cultural property,
which is very seldom invoked,predates the World Heritage

(18:21):
Convention by almost twodecades.
And I just quote quickly fromits preamble to say that damage
to cultural property belongingto any people whatsoever means
damage to the cultural heritageof all mankind.
Sorry about the sexistlanguage, since each people
makes its contribution to theculture of the world.
The protection of the culturalheritage is of great importance
for all peoples of the world,and it's important that this

(18:43):
heritage should receiveinternational protection.
That is 1954.
Um, and we've gone a long waybackwards since.
Um, heritage is also destroyed,of course, by natural
disasters, and I'm only going tohighlight um two in this very
brief presentation.
There was a horrendous umGorkha earthquake in Nepal in

(19:06):
2015, which pretty muchflattened um Kathmandu and the
seven um components of the WorldHeritage Property there,
including some of the majorpagodas in Derber Square.
And international agencies havemobilized.
But sadly, um the Nepalesegovernment sees it as a matter

(19:26):
of national pride that theyshould be able to cope with the
recovery process themselves andhave actually resisted avenues
of assistance, such as havingthe property inscribed on the
list of World Heritage in Dangerand opening up international
assistance through things likethe World Heritage Fund.
Um, and what is tragic is thata lot of the damage is not only

(19:51):
to the iconic monuments thatmake the evening news, but also
to the residential communitiesin the valleys.
And there are people inKathmandu Valley still living
under sheets of plastic, some 10years on from the earthquake.
The other paradox there is thatthe damage that was caused,
interestingly, was mostly causedto the buildings where there

(20:14):
had been 20th centuryinterventions.
So the major buildings thatwere timber, um and including
particularly those that wereeither strapped or held together
with tension rods, shook aroundand they still don't have any
right angles, but they'restanding.
Whereas the buildings that hadhad modern conservation um
heritage mafia interventions, uhconcrete framing, that's in

(20:37):
fact what snapped and tumbleddown most quickly in the
earthquake.
And it's it's a it's a veryinteresting challenge because
the timber in Kathmandu was longago burnt and there is no local
supply line for timber.
And so one of the biggestchallenges with the conservation
is supporting the traditionaltechnology through supply lines
of materials, but the Nepalesegovernment resists um the offers

(21:00):
of international supportbecause they see it as a
criticism of their management.
Sadly, we've had um two otherearthquake events in the region
that have had major impact onWorld Heritage properties, both
at Bagan in Myanmar, which ofcourse has its own problems and
its own military regime.
And one of the one of thedifficulties at Bagan is that

(21:25):
during the first period ofmilitary junta, um, a lot of
work was done to the pagodas.
So Bagan is this sort of 9th to13th century um sacred Buddhist
cultural landscape withsomething like 3,000 pagodas.
It's a lived-in landscape wherethe Buddhist practice and the
votive offering is very much apart of the significance of the

(21:45):
place, as well as themagnificent architecture and the
internal artworks, bothstatuary and murals.
And during the first phase ofthe military junta, uh, a lot of
reconstruction work was donethat put hard masonry shells
around the exterior of thesepagodas.
So they they look as thoughthey had been recently built.

(22:05):
Um, but inside the murals andthe artwork are largely intact.
Except that in 2016 there was amajor earthquake, um, a lot of
physical damage to roughly 70%of the pagodas.
And the worst aspect of thatdamage is the cracking of these
hard shells that have beenrecently installed by the
military, which then, when themonsoonal rain comes, act as

(22:28):
little humidity cribs that keepall of the moisture inside.
Now, a lot of that work's beenrepaired in the years since
2016.
We saw the inscription havebegun on the World Heritage List
in around uh 2018 or 2019, onlyto have another earthquake
happen in March, 28th of Marchthis year.
And the thing that I findreally frustrating is that the

(22:50):
current regime is saying not toworry, the damage that's
occurred at the site is only theminor cracking.
And I'm sitting here thinking,yep, it's the minor cracking
that lets the moisture in sothat the murals will fret away
from salt effervescence andmoisture from the inside out.
And my final remarks in my lastcouple of minutes are going to

(23:12):
be about development andperception.
Stonehenge is not only amegalithic circle of stones,
it's a circle of stones thatexists in a landscape that dates
back to at least the Beakerperiod, covers a couple of
millennium of above-ground andunderground structures.
Um, it's also the site of theworst traffic jam in the United
Kingdom because there is afour-lane highway coming out

(23:34):
from London, a four-lane highwayall the way down to Cornwall,
and through Stonehenge betweentwo roundabouts, it's one lane
each way.
Um and I can see a lot ofpeople in the room nodding, you
know.
And I'm, you know, if you've ifyou've been in that traffic jam
with your young family where ittakes you two and a half hours
to travel three kilometers, youyou kind of get it.
Um, the obvious solution, um,you can't go to the north

(23:56):
because there's a major airbaseand there's residential
communities.
You can't go to the southbecause of the topography.
So the obvious solution is togo under a long tunnel.
And cutting a long and painfulstory short, over a period of
about a decade, the UKgovernment wanted to put a very
small section of tunnel eitherside of the round stone henge
itself.
And then some giant culverts oneither side.

(24:18):
Think South Dowling Street, twolanes each way, right through
the middle of the megalithiclandscape.
And we're constantly advised bythe World Heritage Committee,
by its advisory bodies, thatthis would have an unacceptable
impact on the outstanding valueof the landscape.
But they prevailed and theypushed ahead and they played the
politics.
And at the 46th session of thecommittee last year, they got

(24:42):
their way.
Very depressing, except that aweek later, the newly elected
Labour government withdrew the£1.7 billion worth of funding
for the project and it's notproceeding, right?
Which proves that there is aGod.
And my final example is also aUK example.
Um, and it's another example ofa conscious decision that

(25:04):
heritage will take second place.
And it is the mercantile cityof Liverpool, which was
inscribed on the World HeritageList because of the intact
mercantile waterfront inLiverpool that was a fulcrum for
the geopolitical world that weknow today in terms of global
trade, um, both economic tradeand slave trade.

(25:27):
And remarkably, over a periodof centuries, that waterfront
had stayed intact with thedocks, with the warehouses, the
bond stores, and the commercialproperties behind.
So, in addition to its valuesas the venue for some pop band
in the 1960s, Liverpool was alsoremarkable because of this

(25:49):
intact horizontal mercantilewaterfront.
And in a strange quirk of UKlaw, which doesn't apply in
Australia, when the nationalgovernment doesn't intervene in
a planning matter at thebeginning of the process, there
is no clawback.
So once the Home Secretary saysa local authority can make the

(26:09):
decision, there is no longer aconstitutional power for the
national government tointervene, unlike here, where we
have the Franklin Dam case andour Commonwealth environment
legislation.
So the city of Liverpool wasable to take on planning control
and it approved 11 billion,billion with a B pounds worth of

(26:30):
new development on theLiverpool waterfront.
Um, to put that in context,it's about six barangaroos,
right?
Right along where thesehistoric docks are.
And if that were not badenough, right at the end of the
process, it approved one moredevelopment, which was a brand
new football stadium, right ontop of the most intact of the
historic docks, the new Evertonfootball stadium.
Well, I won't I won't go intolots of detail except to say

(26:53):
that the approval of thatdevelopment and then the
construction of that developmentprogressively destroyed the
authenticity and integrity.
And the property was one ofonly three ever to be removed
from the World Heritage List,and that happened contrary to
the wishes of the UK governmentin 2021.
It didn't happen as the resultof a conflict, it didn't happen

(27:15):
as the result of a disaster, ithappened as the result of a
government decision to prefernew development over
conservation of heritage.
Thank you.

Julien Cooper (27:30):
Great.
Uh thank you, Richard, for thatstimulating talk.
Uh, and thank you, Craig, forintroducing me this morning.
And uh, like Richard, I'd liketo acknowledge uh Gadigal elders
past, present, and emerging.
Uh, in this talk, I'm going todo a bit of a deep dive into a
topic that might be a bit aliento some people in the room and
in Australia, which is theheritage situation in the

(27:52):
Republic of Sudan.
Sudan isn't a country we heartoo much about in Australian
media, uh, even in Western mediain Europe and America.
And to bring some context tohow I come into this topic, as
uh Craig mentioned, I'm a fieldwork director of an
archaeological mission in Sudan.
So every year I would go toSudan for a number of months to

(28:13):
work in the field uh in easternprovince on the Red Sea.
Uh, but as part of that, wewould always have to spend some
time in this place uh you seehere, the Sudan National Museum
in the capital, Khartum.
Every year you would go to thefield, you would excavate some
objects, and then these objectswould be recorded into the Sudan
National Museum.
And on a personal note, youfelt like you were adding to

(28:35):
Sudanese history doing this.
You were bringing objects tothe museum, perhaps for
exhibitions and public display,but more often and more likely
for scientific purposes.
These could be studied not justby yourself, not just by your
team, but by other people.
We flip to 2023, and we havethe conflict in Sudan.
I'm not a political scientist,and there are people in this

(28:58):
very room that are much betterversed in the history and
politics of modern Sudan.
I study Sudan several thousandyears ago.
Um, but what we have in theopening echelons of this war
between the General Khemeti uhof the Rapid Support Forces and
the government forces is aconflict that comes to the
streets of Khartoum.
It comes to parts of Sudan thathave never experienced

(29:21):
conflict.
For those of you that know alittle bit about African or
Sudanese history, there havebeen conflicts in Sudan, various
civil wars, especially with theSouth and in Darfur, the
western province.
But very rarely has theconflict come to the streets of
the capital.
This would be analogous to itcoming to the streets of
Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne,etc.
And this is also where all thevarious heritage institutes of

(29:44):
Sudan lie, including thismuseum.
And what I'm going to talk inthis presentation is a little
bit about what's happening inthe museum, what we know has
been destroyed, and the broaderheritage situation around Sudan.
Now, I'm not going to justpropel all this.
Negativity your way withoutexplaining a little bit why
Sudan is important in historicalterms.

(30:06):
When you study history in highschool or university, it's
pretty rare that you'll hearabout Sudan.
Maybe if you do a degree inEgyptology like myself, you'll
hear about it a bit.
But it we certainly don't rankit in the media on the same
level as, like, say, Greece,Rome, China, ancient India, and
in Australian consciousness,it's certainly not on the same
level as, say, Polynesianhistory, of course, Australian

(30:28):
Indigenous history or SoutheastAsian history, like Angkor Wat.
But I want to say, and I thinkthis is something that me and my
colleagues that study Sudan andAfrican archaeology feel
throughout our careers, is thisnarrative is changing.
Ancient Sudan is becoming much,much more important in our
narratives of the ancient world.
And there are a few reasons forthat.

(30:49):
Number one is Sudan is amicrocosm for various different
ideologies and various differentphases of human civilization.
And we have great and evenperfect data in some periods of
Sudanese history and archaeologyto be able to study things like
the origins of agriculture, tostudy the origins and conversion

(31:10):
of Christianity in Sudan, thesame with Islam, the emergence
of the first metropolises in theAfrican continent, uh, the
emergence of trade routes thatexpanded from what we think of
the Middle East and North Africato the sub-Saharan African
world, a bridge between thesetwo worlds that are very well
known to us.
This is what Sudan is.

(31:30):
And in this image here, this issome of the objects that we
associate with Sudan.
True a unique pottery you willsee nowhere else in the world.
The phase of Sudanesecivilization that most people
think of, and if you've beenlucky enough to be a tourist in
Sudan, that you'll see is whatthis statue represents here.
This is the Kushitecivilization, a time in Sudanese

(31:52):
history when the Kushites,these peoples, conquered most of
what's now Sudan, evenconquering Egypt and going into
the Levant, built largepyramids, did all the things
that we would sort of expect ofin the height and greatest
phases of Egyptian civilizationand history.
This happened in Sudan.
All these objects I'm puttinghere in front of you are objects

(32:13):
that are housed in the SudanNational Museum.
And they've been there since uhthe English, sorry, the
Anglo-Egyptian administration, Ishouldn't just say English or
British, uh since the colonialperiod.
And this museum and itscollection have been preserved,
studied, informs the Sudanesepublic from that period and
onwards.
And it's been something that'scelebrated in Sudan and around

(32:36):
the world.
In my opinion, and I know I'mbiased because I study Sudan,
but it does rank in the schemeof world museums in its
chronological breadth, in itsdiversity of cultures.
Sudan is not just the NileRiver.
Sudan is various regions,cultures outside the Nile River.
There's about, I think, about100 languages spoken in

(32:57):
contemporary Sudan.
And this ancient history andheritage in the Sudan National
Museum records and communicatesall of this.
And just a few other images uphere.
You can see the Christiangallery in the top of the Sudan
National Museum.
It's basically two floors withan outside area.
And the outside area houseswhole temples from the Nubian

(33:19):
salvage campaign in the 1960sand 70s.
A very important thing forSudanese and Egyptian history,
but also important for UNESCO asone of the best examples of
international cooperation tosolve and rescue heritage.
Now that shifts to an imagelike this as of the last years.
This is what the interior ofthe Sudan National Museum looks

(33:42):
like as of the last month.
And I want to say from here onout, most of what informs me is
my own conversations withSudanese heritage officials who
I regularly meet.
In the Sudan National Museum,there's something like six
figures of objects.
We have at least 100,000objects.
And as the Janjaweed or RSFtook Khartoum, the Sudan

(34:04):
National Museum is located veryclose to the general
headquarters of the army and thepresidential palace.
So it was a target.
And since the beginning of thewar, no one knew what happened
to the museum.
It's what we'd call the fog ofwar.
We can skip forward a littlebit.
We had a few videos come out ofthe museum of the RSF,
literally in the labs of themuseum.

(34:25):
They were damaging the humanremains in the bioarchaeology
lab.
But then there was about maybea year of no information,
nothing at all, because it wasbeyond the front lines of where
the Sudan government knew whatwas happening.
Various intelligence agenciesat the end of last year
ascertained that trucks wereleaving the gates of the Sudan

(34:45):
National Museum throughsatellite imagery.
And this was a huge warningsign to all heritage officials,
both in Sudan andinternationally, that something
bad was going to happen to themuseum because everyone figured
that these trucks would beloaded with antiquities and
these antiquities would bestolen and taken on to the
international market andeventually through illicit

(35:06):
trafficking, which we know fromRichard's presentation is
something ever present in theworld.
And to skip forward to earlierthis year, the government forces
successfully took back the cityof Khartoum and on demand and
even expanded a little bit tothe west.
And this is what we are leftwith today.
And these images are so recent,I don't think anything would

(35:28):
have changed in the last monthor so since these images were
taken.
Every room of the SudanNational Museum has been
ransacked, gutted.
Lots of objects are no longerthere, so they've been
physically taken, probably onthese trucks.
The safe of the museum, whichwas storing the gold objects,
was broken into.
Perhaps puzzlingly, from thesort of things that Richard just

(35:50):
spoke about, all the recordshave also been burnt.
So lots of documents andscientific literature that was
related to Sudanese heritage andexcavations have also been
destroyed.
So this is going somethingbeyond what I would say is just
taking antiquities for illicittrafficking.
And this is going something abit stranger than just

(36:11):
destroying heritage for noapparent reason.
This is lots of differentideologies and different uh
circumstances are taking placeto make the Sudan Museum into
this sort of destruction.
If I go back here, you can seein this bottom image, these
containers are the containersthat belong to various
international missions that workin the Republic of Sudan.

(36:34):
There's British missions,Italian missions, French
missions, uh hopefully in thefuture an Australian mission
with myself.
And my mission also rented oneof these containers when I was
uh living in the United States.
And all these containers, whichstored objects, which can store
our equipment, excavationrecords, have also been

(36:54):
destroyed.
So what the damage in themuseum is, is really beyond
anything that I think we've seenin analogous museums in the
sense of wanton destruction.
There has been deliberateillicit trafficking in the sense
of an organized and uh sorry, awell-organized um approach to

(37:15):
taking antiquities from themuseum in order to traffic them
on illicit antiquities markets.
But there's also just been whatwe would say is vandalism, and
then there's been showing of thetemples outside and everything
in between.
So what's happened here isreally on the same level, I
would say, as more famousexamples uh in conflict in

(37:35):
recent history.
We can think of what'shappened, say, in the Kabul
Museum or the museums innorthern Iraq and Baghdad or in
Syria today, as Richard justspoke.
This is ranking up here on oneof the most serious destructions
of cultural heritage in theworld, and not just Africa or
the Middle East.
And this is another image ofthe containers in the outside

(37:56):
yard of the museum, all of whichhave been opened, burnt, and
destroyed.
Uh, most of the objects withinthese containers, even if they
were intact when thearchaeologists found them, have
now been destroyed to a levelwhere it's almost impossible to
study them.
What you see in the other imagehere is the temples that were
taken from the Nubian salvagecampaign.
These are painstakingly uhdismantled by engineers, taken

(38:19):
from Lake Nubia in the north andin the border of Egypt and
Sudan, and then reassembled inthe gardens of the museum.
These have suffered fromvandalism and shelling and seem
to be used as a sort of barracksby soldiers of the RSF.
In fact, from what weunderstand, the whole museum
structure, because it was quitewell built and had quite high
vantage points, was used as asort of lookout post and

(38:43):
barracks by the soldiers duringthe conflict.
The heritage problem in Sudanis not just relating to the
Sudan National Museum.
I say that because it's thepinnacle, it's the signature
museum of Sudan, and it'ssomething that is in the public
eye much more than the Sudaneseprovinces.
To put it in perspective, Sudanis a very large country, and we

(39:05):
all know that what that feelslike in Australia.
And each province also has itsown regional museum, and each
province has its importantarchaeological sites, like sites
like Meraway with the pyramids.
Most of these sites on the NileRiver seem to have escaped
destruction.
What we do see at these sitesis development from the refugee
crisis in Sudan.
And I haven't mentioned thehumanitarian crisis yet, but of

(39:28):
course, most people in thepublic eye and in the media and
in various organizations aredeliberately, and I completely
acknowledge that, wanting tofocus first on the humanitarian
crisis.
What this has done internallyin Sudan is pushed people to
other provinces where there arearchaeological sites, and
they've had to build newdevelopments on these

(39:48):
archaeological sites.
The normal procedure in a placelike Sudan and also Egypt is
once an archaeological site isregistered and gazetted, a fence
is built around and that landbecomes um impossible to build
on according to the law.
But when we have a refugee ofcrisis, of course, all those
things um fade away.
And of course, we also have aneconomic crisis when we have a

(40:12):
conflict like this as well.
And that causes further crisesof economic development and land
development around the country.
Before the war, there werestill problems in the
preservation of Sudaneseheritage and Sudanese
archaeological sites.
There was looting.
I wouldn't say the looting wasas extreme as some countries in
the MENA region, but it didexist.

(40:33):
And in the region where I work,in the Eastern Desert, which is
one of the most lucrative goldmining regions in all of Africa,
there was a severe crisis ofdestruction of ancient gold
mines, which you can understandwhere that comes from.
So there were all thesechallenges which the Sudanese
government and Sudanese heritageofficials faced.
And now all these challengeshave been amplified by the

(40:55):
destruction of the RSF and theillicit trafficking of the RSF.
The next point is what can bedone now to solve these issues.
And I feel like solve isprobably the wrong word here.
It's what can be done to helpthese issues of heritage in
Sudan.
This news is so recent thatmost organizations haven't been

(41:17):
able to formulate a concreteplan on what to do next to
assist Sudanese authorities, theNational Corporation of
Antiquities and Museums, on howto fix the museum.
Or in the museum, really, thefirst problem is documenting
what's gone.
We don't actually know what'sgone.
Some of the objects I showedyou on that screen, we know what

(41:37):
are now missing or destroyed.
But most of the objects wedon't have a formal record.
Because they were ransacked,because they were taken out of
their shelving, all the displayswere destroyed.
We can't actually say what'sgone and what's missing.
And anyone that knows museumsknows that there's copious
amounts of records that tells uswhere an object is.
And once it's moved and lost,it's a pretty difficult, even

(41:58):
we've owned a museum that's notin this circumstance.
So there is a team of Sudaneseheritage officials that have
traveled to Khhartoum.
And I would say that conditionsin Khhartoum are very dire at
the moment.
There's a cholera outbreak inthe capital.
Uh, it's very difficult toaccess regular food and petrol
and things like this, and it'snot that far from the front
line.
The western city of Omdaman,which is just on the other bank

(42:21):
from Khhartoum, is not that farfrom the front with the RSF.
So this creates a new problemfor just how to analyze and
observe and document what'sgone.
And only then can they reallyassess what we can do next to
fix this?
What can we do to fill in thegaps?
And this is going to take allsorts of uh organizations and

(42:42):
collaborations between theSudanese and Interpol, UNESCO,
and all these organizations areinformed and trying to help.
But at the first place, we needto document what's gone.
And I wish it was just theSudan National Museum, but
basically every province thathas been affected by the
conflict, which is all theprovinces of Darfur and
Kordofan, Blue Nile, have hadarchaeological sites also being

(43:06):
destroyed and affected.
Some of these images show youother museums.
On the right, you have theSultan Ali Dinar Museum in
Al-Fasha and Darfur, which hasbeen subject to repeated
showing.
On the left, you have the umMuseum of On Demand, uh, which
has also been subjected tocomplete destruction.

(43:26):
So leaving that, I want to uhmake a small plea to this room
and to others listening.
Uh, there will be internationalcooperation to help heritage in
Sudan and including the SudanNational Museum, but there is a
real need right now to assist inthe documentation of the
museum.
The people that are there areliving in very difficult

(43:48):
conditions.
They're pumping water out ofthe Nile, which you probably
know is not a great source ofdrinking water.
Uh, and they're working in suchdifficult conditions to
photograph, document what isbeing lost in the museum and
what can be done next.
And it's only until theirmission is complete that we can
go forward with this.
Uh, as part of this talk, I umuh organized with the American

(44:10):
Sudanese Archaeological ResearchCenter, AMSAC, to put this QR
code online where you candonate.
And if you wish to donate, youcan actually write for the
museum to make sure that thedonation goes to the people
working at the Sudan NationalMuseum because AMSARC funds
another projects within theRepublic of Sudan.
Uh, that's all I've got to saytoday.

(44:31):
Thank you, everyone, for yourattention.
Uh, welcome any questions atthe end.

Charlotte Feakins (44:36):
Uh so um thank you.
Yes, I'm significantly shorterthan both Richard and Julian.
Um, so before we begin, uh Iwant to acknowledge that this
presentation includes images,narratives, and subject matter
that may be distressing.
Themes include colonialviolence, intergenerational
trauma, displacement, andinstitutional harm.

(44:58):
So please take care of yourselfand those around you as we move
through this material.
So before I begin, I'd like toacknowledge the unceded lands of
the Gadigal uh people of theEeura nation.
Uh I pay my respects to Gadigalelders, past and present, and

(45:18):
extend that respect to allAboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples here today.
Sovereignty was never ceded,these lands remain active sites
of story, resistance, care, andcontinuity.
I also thank the Darugcommunity, particularly the
Darug Strategic ManagementGroup, with whom I've worked
since 2020 on the BlacktownNative Institution project.

(45:39):
This includes working with GMLHeritage on those important
projects.
So, um, yes, my name isCharlotte.
I'm a lecturer in archaeologyand heritage studies here at the
University of Sydney, and I'veworked across academic and
professional heritage sectorsfor nearly 15 years.
For the past three years, I'vebeen exploring the entanglement

(45:59):
of trauma and heritage, not justas overlapping themes, but as
mutually shaping forces.
I use the concept of traumaheritage to examine how trauma
is embedded in heritage makingand how heritage can carry or
reproduce trauma acrosspersonal, collective, and
structural scales.
I also study sentimentalobjects, uh, so thinking about

(46:22):
heritage making at this sort ofpersonal, individual level,
particularly in contexts ofdisplacement and loss.
So this talk draws from thatresearch, uh, including a recent
co-author paper with colleaguesat the Matilda Centre here at
the university.
We introduced the concepts oftrauma heritage and
trauma-informed heritage,challenging the tendency in

(46:45):
official heritage practice,perhaps to minimize or even
avoid trauma.
So we argue that trauma is notincidental to heritage, it's
structurally embedded in thecolonial systems and knowledge
regimes that shape what ispreserved, by whom, and for what
purposes.
Okay, so I want to begin with aquote or I want to think about

(47:10):
uh or start with this quote fromtrauma specialist Dr.
Garbo Mate.
Trauma is not what happens toyou, trauma is what happens
inside you as a result of whathappens to you.
So this quote reminds us thattrauma isn't just about the
event itself, it's about whatgets carried afterwards.
It's how the experience is heldin the body, in relationships,

(47:30):
and in the broader socialfabric.
In recent years, there's been amajor shift in how we
understand trauma rather thanasking what's wrong with you.
Trauma-informed approaches nowask, What has happened to you?
This shift is vital.
It places trauma in context,recognizing the external
conditions, systems, andhistories that cause harm,

(47:53):
rather than locating it inindividual weaknesses.
For heritage work, thisreframing matters because
heritage isn't just about whathappened in the past, it's what
happens now, what happenedcontinues to happen.
Trauma lives on in memories, inbodies, in communities and in
the places and objects that wedefine as heritage.
So over the last two decades,we've seen growing uh a kind of

(48:19):
growing body of scholarship onwhat might be called negative uh
dimensions of heritage.
Terms like dissonant,difficult, dark, displaced, and
disaster heritage, all beginningwith a D.
These frameworks invite us toconsider how heritage is
implicated in suffering,violence, and loss.
They also open up space tothink about healing, especially

(48:41):
in post-conflict andpost-disaster settings.
The concept of trauma heritagebuilds on this work but shifts
the focus further from heritageabout trauma to heritage as
trauma.
That is, heritage becomes asite in which trauma is not only
represented, but also produced,sustained, or potentially
transformed.
Closely linked istrauma-informed heritage, a

(49:04):
practice framework thatacknowledges the emotional risks
and responsibilities involvedin working with sites and
stories of harm.
And together these conceptsencourage us to move beyond
surface representations andtowards more relational,
ethical, and emotionally attunedforms of heritage practice.
So, as the following few slidesillustrate, heritage and trauma

(49:27):
are intimately entangled acrossspace and time, not just
conceptually, but materially andemotionally in the sites,
objects, and stories wepreserve.
Some of the more well-knownexamples include Pompeii and the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster, thedestruction of the Bamian
Buddhas in Afghanistan andindigenous massacre sites, or

(49:50):
the sinking of the Titanic andthe Indian Ocean tsunami in
2004, or the heritage of theSecond World War and the killing
fields in Cambodia.
We can also include in thislist the more recent 2023 fires
in Hawaii and the recentflooding in Lismore in Australia

(50:11):
in 2022.
And in thinking of the now,other examples might include the
ongoing processes ofcolonization or homelessness,
the current Israeli war on Gaza,or perhaps even the rise of
extremism, populism, andneonationalism that are becoming
increasingly prevalent acrossEurope and the US.

(50:32):
So these examples willdemonstrate the diversity, the
ubiquity in varying scales oftraumatic events that are
connected with heritage andtherefore trauma, present in the
past and currently unfolding inthe now.
And while traumatic events suchas these can serve as a
tangible nexus to locate trauma,the effects of trauma are far

(50:52):
more insidious and often lessvisible.
The scale and intensity ofdevastation caused by powerful
destructive events such asthose, or these that we've seen,
can be difficult to comprehend.
Their toll on lives,livelihoods, and emotional
well-being is both profound andcomplicated.
They affect individuals,families, and communities and

(51:12):
can result in trauma thatextends far beyond the events
through minds, brains, bodies,relationships, and practices.
Trauma can and often doesreverberate across generations.
So while these examples aredemonstrative of macro-level
events or big T trauma that haveaffected me millions of people

(51:33):
in myriad ways, trauma is alsocaused by relatively more
localized events or small Ttrauma, such as car accidents or
house fires, and everydayongoing occurrences that can be
hidden, systemic and structural,such as domestic violence,
bullying, racism, and childhoodneglect, or vicariously, such as
encountering graphic scenes asa first responder, and stories

(51:56):
and images of suffering onsocial media platforms.
So an important aspect to notewith this is that trauma begets
trauma, and individualspreviously affected by trauma
are more susceptible to itsimpacts, and that there are a
range of personal andsocio-political variables that
account for each individual'sexperience of trauma.

(52:16):
So it's important that weidentify and understand trauma
if we are actively or toactively prevent trauma, to
provide safe spaces for recoveryand healing, and strengthen
post-traumatic resilience in thepresent and even proactively
for the future.
So just a bit of background.
So since the 1990s, historicaltraumatic events and experiences

(52:40):
have been a focus among severaldisciplines and
interdisciplinary fields ofstudy in the humanities, namely
trauma studies, Holocauststudies, memory studies, and
more recently, genocide studiesand geography.
Yet, despite the breadth anddepth of literature on heritage
related to traumatic events inheritage studies and related
fields of archaeology andtourism studies, there's been

(53:02):
little attention given to theconcept of psychological trauma
as a phenomenon or on theinterconnectedness of trauma as
lived experience and heritage.
In general, there's a dearth ofinformation in these fields
about what trauma explicitly isand what trauma does.
So, although interest insubjects associated with human
suffering, conflict, anddisasters continues to grow in

(53:23):
this field, in these fields, weargue that there needs to be a
more comprehensive theoreticalbut also practical understanding
of trauma, how it affectsindividuals and collectively,
across personal, social andpolitical intersections,
historically and in the present,how trauma and heritage
entangle, and in turn, how toengage with people who have
experienced trauma to avoidcausing trauma or risking

(53:47):
re-traumatisation.
So that's the aim of ourresearch is to throw light on
trauma, explore some of thesekey ideas and themes, and
recognizes these potentialtrauma heritage entanglements
that can in turn inform andframe the development of
trauma-informed methodologies.
So in the broader traumastudies landscape, debates

(54:10):
continue around therepresentation of trauma,
whether focus should be on livedexperiences of pain and
suffering or survival,resilience, and recovery.
As trauma studies scholarsTraverso and Broderick argue, to
reduce all representation ofmemories and experiences marked
by conflict, violence, andatrocity to trauma is

(54:32):
problematic as it emphasizes avictim position and potentially
fails to give agency or dueattention to the expression of
agency.
Yet trauma is defined byabsence and invisibility.
Not recognizing, acknowledgingor witnessing trauma is also
deeply problematic.
By overlooking trauma in theprocess of heritage making, the

(54:55):
risk of re-traumatising andtraumatizing is increased
through words and actions,especially when working with and
for individuals and communitieswho have experienced trauma.
So in psychology and traumastudies, the idea of bearing
witness is an important aspectof the trauma landscape and
supporting social action.
It denotes trauma as a storythat has to be told in order for

(55:19):
healing to begin.
Therefore, providingtrauma-informed spaces for
individual and collective traumato be expressed and witnessed
is fundamental to healing.
In other words, for people whohave experienced trauma to be
seen and heard.
A trauma-informed approach isguided by the four following
assumptions.
The realization of trauma andhow it can affect people and

(55:41):
groups, recognizing the signs oftrauma, having a system that
can respond to trauma, andresisting re-traumatisation.
So there's numerous events inour contemporary world that are
now recognized as traumatic.
Here we can see some examplesearthquakes, wildfires,
terrorism, torture, racism, caraccidents, etc.

(56:03):
The list goes on.
Broadly, the impacts of traumacan be conceived along a
continuum from a single event oracute trauma to ongoing and
repeated experiences or chronicand complex trauma.
And generally, as I mentionedbefore, trauma can be conceived
as either large T trauma andsmall T trauma.

(56:24):
And while the latter doesn'tthreaten a person's physical
safety, they can produce thesame trauma responses as large T
trauma.
Furthermore, the rate at whichthese events can occur can
either be sudden or slow onset.
So when we think about how tolocate trauma heritage
entanglements, it's particularlyimportant when we're thinking

(56:46):
about engaging with communitiesand thinking about heritage or
history and practice.
And so when we want to thinkabout how we locate these trauma
heritage entanglements andmobilize or action
trauma-informed approaches inheritage or research, this can
be realized through either atop-down or bottom-up process,
as place-based or stories-based.

(57:06):
So anthropogenic andnon-anthropogenic traumatic
stresses can be identified inthe heritage context.
For example, in roadsidememorials to national memorials,
or through stories andexperiences across family,
individual, family, andcommunity scales.
As illustrated before, stressescan vary, and in the table here
we can see a range of traumaheritage entanglement examples

(57:30):
based on the information before.
Importantly, they allillustrate the necessity for
developing trauma-informedapproaches.
For example, a mining accidentis a historical and single
event.
It may have caused loss of lifeand injuries resulting in
trauma.
This can affect individuals,families, and communities,

(57:51):
including first responders andwitnesses.
In the heritage context, theevent may be commemorated with a
memorial or plaque.
A range of investigationsacross research and industry may
be carried out, includingarchaeological investigations,
interviews, or social values andbuilt heritage assessments.
But in this process of heritagemaking and working with and for

(58:13):
individuals and communities whomay have experienced trauma at
the local level, recognizing thepotential risks of
retraumatisation is importantand therefore carrying out
trauma-informed approaches tomitigate the risk.
Potential external triggers caninclude returning to the place,
talking about the event,hearing stories, or seeing
objects or archaeology, thebuildings or structures, looking

(58:37):
at photos or news related tothe event.
Many of these things areactually used in the
representation of the event inheritage making and may also
contribute to the reification oftrauma through this process.
Other considerations to noteare whether the act was
intentional or accidental, andthat each individual's
experience of that trauma willbe different.

(59:00):
Noting that trauma is complex,personal, and nuanced and
affects people differently andin myriad ways.
Similarly, the trauma canbecome the sole source of
meaning for the individual orgroup who have experienced the
event.
And this is something to thinkabout when it comes to
understanding or assessingheritage significance.

(59:20):
So importantly, the traumaheritage concept shines a light
on complex and ongoing processesof trauma across personal,
social, and politicalintersections.
For example, migration andsettler colonial heritage in the
settler colonial context,creating spaces for trauma and
to be witnessed can disruptnormative assumptions, assume

(59:41):
certainties, and establishhegemonies across research and
practice.
However, as we know, culturalheritage legislation is
inextricably tied to harmfulpolicies, programs, and
practices in settler colonialcontexts that continue to cause
trauma for First Nationspeoples.
Trauma-informed care meansconsidering not only how safe

(01:00:03):
the service delivery environmentactually is, but also how safe
it is perceived to be by theindividuals or groups you're
working with.
So re-traumatisation of thetraumatized subjects can occur
in the hands of agents thatpurport to treat and advocate
for them.
Therefore, the trauma heritageconcept shines a light on this

(01:00:23):
issue, prompting the questioncan we meaningfully create safe
spaces in these contexts?
So, with that in mind, um, andusing a trauma heritage lens, we
can examine how traumaticevents are embedded in heritage
places and how responses to harmreflect broader systems of
value, power, and recognition.

(01:00:44):
On the left, we have an imageof the Jukan Gorge rock shelters
in the Pilbara in WesternAustralia.
These were 46,000-year-oldsacred sites of immense cultural
and ancestral significance tothe Muntalagura Garuma people,
destroyed by Rio Tinto in 2020.
This is for the expansion oftheir iron ore mine.
On the right, we see the AnzacParade Memorial Site in

(01:01:07):
Canberra, which was vandalizedearlier this year.
So what's significant hereisn't just the acts of
destruction or defement, but thevastly different ways that
these events were framed,responded to, and remembered.
In the case of the AnzacParade, the response was swift
and highly charged.
The graffiti was described byDefence Minister Richard Miles

(01:01:30):
as a disgrace, completelyunacceptable and unAustralian.
He added, Whatever yourposition, their service, their
sacrifice deserves the respectof the entire Australian
community.
And I condemn these horribleactions in the strongest
possible terms.
Police then launched animmediate investigation, and the
incident was treated as anattack, an attack on national

(01:01:52):
memory.
Now contrast that with the Jookand Gorge event.
Although there was an outcryand a federal inquiry was
launched, followed by an attemptto reform heritage legislation,
those new laws were scrappedafter just five weeks under
pressure from industry groupsand political backlash.
Traditional owners were left intheir words to pick up the

(01:02:14):
pieces.
So for many of my directcolleagues, working on the
Blacktown native institution,Jook and Gorge, and other events
like this don't feel like ashocking failure.
It feels like business asusual, a reminder of the
systemic silencing andnormalization of trauma in
settler colonial heritageprocesses.
So when we apply a traumaheritage framework, we not only

(01:02:37):
trace the presence of trauma,but also expose how certain
traumas are legitimized andmemorialized, even weaponised,
while others are erased,ignored, or rendered routine.
Now, for the past four years,I've been working with the Darug
Strategic Management Group onthe Blacktown Native Institution

(01:02:57):
site in Western Sydney, aprofoundly significant place for
Darug people and a powerfulexample of what a
trauma-informed heritageapproach can look like in
practice.
In 2018, the B and I wasreturned to Darug ownership.
Since then, the community hasled a series of powerful events
and programs centered on truthtelling, healing, and

(01:03:20):
reconnection with Darug Nura orcountry.
As part of this process and incollaboration with industry
partner GML Heritage, we'veco-developed a conservation
management plan, which is atechnical document required by
New South Wales Heritage formanaging state-listed sites.
But rather than treat this as abureaucratic exercise, the CMP

(01:03:42):
became a living ethicalframework, a way to honour lived
experiences, hold space forceremony and silence, and
support community control andhealing.
This process took over threeyears, far longer than standard
CMPs, because it centered directdecision-making, co-authorship,
and cultural safety at everystage.

(01:04:03):
A trauma-informed approachshaped everything, from deep
listening and informed consentto recognizing invisible or
intangible heritage to makespace for community-led editing,
pacing, and protocols.
It also helped surface orhighlight deeper ongoing
challenges, such as how NewSouth Wales heritage legislation

(01:04:24):
continues to limit directrelationships with NURA and
their ability to fully realisetheir vision for the B and I.
So in this way, the CMP becamenot just a technical output, but
a site of resistance, care, andtransformation.
So, as I've illustratedthroughout this talk, you know,

(01:04:44):
trauma and heritage are deeplyor intimately intertwined across
sites, stories, and everydayencounters with the past in and
of the present.
So in both my academic andcollaborative work, I've seen
how mobilizing trauma-informedheritage, even in small ways,
can help mitigate harm, supporthealing, and embed ethical,

(01:05:06):
empowering practices in everydayheritage work.
So trauma-informed heritage isguided by four key principles
from public health, um fromSAMHSA.
This is realizing the impact oftrauma, recognizing the signs
of trauma, responding withawareness and care, and
resisting re-traumatization.
At its heart, a trauma-informedapproach fosters safety,

(01:05:29):
self-determination, culturalhumility, and respect for lived
experience for both communitiesand practitioners.
As Bessel van der Koek remindsus, being truly heard and seen
by those around us and beingheld in the hearts and minds, in
their hearts and minds, isessential to healing and
post-traumatic growth.

(01:05:50):
Thank you.

Craig Barker (01:05:51):
Thank you, Charlotte.
I'm going to ask uh all of ourpresenters to join me up on the
stools, where we'll have a veryshort uh QA session.
Um, Lottie, I might start withyou.
In terms of bringing atrauma-informed heritage
approach, yeah.
What are some of the ways thatthat we as heritage

(01:06:12):
practitioners might be able tobring that to a scenario, such
as the damage to the SedanMuseum, in terms of the healing
process of actually thinking thenext steps of going forward?
What are some of the practicalways that we might be able to
bring this into the next timeRichard's in a meeting in Paris?
Um, yeah, how how how may we beable to bring some of these

(01:06:37):
practices?

Charlotte Feakins (01:06:39):
It's a really good question.
And um, you know, this isn'tanything new or um, you know,
radical.
It's just you know developingprojects with care.
And I think it always comesback to co-design and ensuring
that those decisions, thedecision making is with the
community.
So working as a facilitator inthat space, um, and you know,

(01:07:02):
following the lead of thecommunity and and you know,
working with them to help themnavigate some of those those
processes.
Um But yes, I mean how we howwe develop it in practice can
look different in differentsettings.
But I think the first the firstthing is always working with
the community, within for thecommunity.

(01:07:23):
Yes.

Yeah.
Yes, yes.
I mean, clearly there willnever be a one-size-fits-all
model, but that ability toactually consider this as part
of the process.
I guess Richard, uh, to tobring it back to you, if you
don't mind, but I mean, what areuh within current international
uh protocols and uh and uh uhyou know practices?

(01:07:45):
I I know, for example, theWorld Heritage uh list uh of uh
sites in danger, but what aresome of the practical responses
that can be done by theinternational community when a
site is threatened or when asite is damaged currently?

Richard Mackay (01:08:00):
Well well, gosh, I think I think the first thing
to say is that what is wellestablished is a is a
values-based um framework andthat operates at an
international level, it operatesdomestically.
Um a lot of the currentthinking actually has its
genesis in Australia.
Um, I mean, Australia ICOMOSBorough Charter, which itself

(01:08:25):
has antecedents in the US ParkService.
Um, it's a very umunderdeveloped discipline when
it comes to some of the issuesthat we're talking about
tonight.
I mean, all I can really say isthat there is increasingly a
move towards recognition ofintangible attributes and a more

(01:08:45):
holistic approach when you knowconceiving what constitutes
values.
But as I as I mentioned sort ofin passing in in the
presentation, when you come tosomewhere like Aleppo that has
been absolutely trashed bydeliberately placed um bombs and

(01:09:05):
reconstruction phases.
And when I say reconstruction,I'm talking about community as
well as physical assets and theprioritizing of that.
The kind of narratives and thekind of approaches that Lottie's
talking about are just not yeton the radar because people are
trying to get basic serviceslike reticulated water or basic

(01:09:26):
reconstruction like you know,housing and and mosques and
madrasas up and running.
So I think it's uh there'sthere's actually a long way to
go.
And that's a I mean, that's avery uh illuminating and um
thought-provoking presentation.

Yeah.

But heritage is a luxury in those scenarios.
Indeed, indeed.
I mean, and look, to answer thequestion more technically, um,
yes, in terms of a WorldHeritage place, the Committee on
the Advice of UNESCO's WorldHeritage Centre and the advisory
bodies, ICOMOS for culturalheritage, can place a property
on the list of World Heritage indanger.

(01:10:01):
And when that happens, what isthen described as a desired
state to remove it and a set ofcorrective measures.
And as I mentioned in the caseof Nepal, when that happens,
there are some processes thatare freed up and funding that is
unlocked to help that happen.
Um, but you need to be on thelist of World Heritage in Danger

(01:10:23):
to do that.

Um I I wanted as much as possible for the Q ⁇ A
to to sort of focus on somepositive.
So, Julian, in terms of, andindeed it might be a good
opportunity just to remindeveryone of the opportunity to
make donations towards Sudan,but on a on a on a practical
level, and I know again it'svery early days, but you know,
how can how can authorities, howcan the Australian public help

(01:10:49):
in a scenario such as the uhsuch as the uh the damage that's
been done in Sudan?

Julien Cooper (01:10:54):
Um I think the Australian public, like many in
the international arena, canraise awareness with heritage
officials in their owncountries, their own
politicians.
Uh Sudan is a uh under how do Isay strategic competition
currently in internationalaffairs and people care about
the heritage of Sudan, not justhere, but in the States, Europe,

(01:11:16):
Africa, Asia.
Uh but I think making umraising awareness is the main
way, really.
And and of course, donating tospecific bodies which are uh
trying to address these issues.
Um, I think obviouslyaddressing humanitarian concerns
as we just discussed is isprimary.
Like in the at the moment inKhartoum, water and electricity

(01:11:39):
is in short supply.
So that needs to happen, evenfor the forms of documentation
in the museum.
They need electricity in orderto be able to do that properly.
So those things are definitelyfirst on the agenda.

Yes, yes.

Yes, I have a uh response to Richard.
Uh I think it's um, you know,uh thinking about the work that
I do in New South Wales in theNorthern Territory, working with
communities, it always comesdown to co-design,
collaboration, genuinecollaboration.
I think in your setting, youknow, I think recognizing the

(01:12:15):
emotional impact of thedestruction of their heritage is
probably the first steptowards, you know, understanding
the significance of that impactand the uh the emotional toll
that that's taken on the on thecommunities and individuals that
you're working alongside.
Yeah.

Look, I might open the uh uh the questions to the
floor.
So if anyone does have aquestion, I'll get you put your
hand up, but I'll ask you towait till I come across with the
microphone, uh, just for thepodcast recording, but also for
our audience members at home.

Question 1 (01:12:51):
Thanks for three fantastic presentations.
It struck me that each one ofyou were linked in a sense with
the cultural and heritageworkers as well, who are not
traditionally first respondersin any of these crises, but they
are now in the front line.
And I wondered how muchrepetitive and slow violence is
affecting the industry as awhole, and whether you're seeing

(01:13:14):
that in terms of the way thatpeople are responding or not
responding to these crises, andwhether there are some creative
responses that are coming outthat we can take hope from.

Thanks.
I think that's a a really umprescient observation.
Um there is a developingdiscipline.
Um there are, for example, umnow well-articulated published
guidelines on um reaction.
There is an internationalorganization to which ICOMOS is
party called the Blue Shield.

(01:13:44):
There are task force and teamsthat look at triage and
emergency um responses that lookat safeguarding.
I mean, there's a lot of work.
Um, it it quite often doesn'tget the um the prominence um
that other conservationinitiatives might undertake.
But for example, ICOMOSglobally is doing a large amount

(01:14:09):
of work to capacity build inUkraine, and the training there
has morphed away from moretraditional conservation
disciplines towards the whole umfocus on uh trauma response and
safeguarding and recovery.

I would say um just you know, someone who's
quite passionate abouttrauma-informed approaches, the
idea is that you knowtrauma-informed approaches isn't
just about you know developingbest or ethical practices with
the communities or individualsthat you're working with, but
it's also about looking afteryourself as well in that space
and knowing when things, youknow, taking a toll on your own

(01:14:50):
um emotional kind of well-being.
Um, so it's it it works bothways and it's uh it's very
helpful as well.
Yeah.

Uh just an anecdote on that.
I don't have anything to sayfrom a regulations point of but
just to talk to my Sudanesecolleagues who are sometimes
site guardians, sometimes museumofficials, during the conflicts
they've on a daily basis had toweigh up whether they
physically can go to some ofthese places to look after them.
And uh, you know, I hear thatin their voice, and I think that

(01:15:21):
that's just such a difficultset of decisions because uh as
Lottie spoke about, there's uh atrauma relating to their
themselves having worked atthese places for decades, uh,
knowing that it might be gone,uh, but not having uh
observational data that it'sgone.
And so they have to weigh up,especially amongst their family,
uh, if it's okay to go to someof these places.

(01:15:43):
And they usually talk to thepolice or something like this,
or the military first, but eventhen they would not uh could not
guarantee safety to those inplace.
And I I feel that was righthere that when I speak to them
about these issues, and that'suh very emotional to touch on uh
my question is to uh Dr.

Question 2 (01:16:04):
Kuba.
Um so first of all, thank youfor the uh nice talk.
Um my question is uh is thereany common or standard practice
to track uh to track down the uhthe lost item uh from the
National Museum?
And is there any successfulexample maybe that the uh
Sudanese authorities can learnfrom?

Uh yeah, that's a good question.
Um at first there was a lot ofobjects being sold on eBay uh
that said they were from Sudan,but the heritage officials and
others, and and Richard Bott isin the room and he was looking
at this, uh that they all turnedout to be fakes, so they
weren't from the Sudan NationalMuseum.
So some people even trying tosell things as if they were from
the Sudan National Museum thatweren't from the Sudan National

(01:16:46):
Museum.
But I think the illicittrafficking was of a uh, how do
I say, a higher intellectuallevel than simply selling it on
eBay.
I imagine there's otherchannels.
We know that most of theobjects that were taken were
headed to the border near Dafur,which includes Chad, South
Sudan, Central African Republic,and then would go on to other
networks from there.

(01:17:06):
Uh from my own conversations, Iknow some police authorities
have had some success in gettingsome objects from within the
boundaries of Sudan, but most uhexperts assume that some of the
objects have gone from beyondthe boundaries of Sudan and are
now in international marketsunknown, uh, which is very
different to say what's happenedin Iraq and other places where

(01:17:28):
there has been, uh, is myunderstanding, more success in
locating these objects that havebeen stolen.

It might be worth noting at this point, too, just
the huge efforts beingundertaken by various
governments to haverepatriations of looted
material.
Um, I know I I can speakfirsthand in terms of Cyprus,
where I work, that uhparticularly over the last
decade, a real concerted effort,and we see that reflected in in
other nations as well.

(01:17:55):
But part of that is the broaderconversation of changing the
marketplace for antiquities andfor cultural items as well.
Um any other questions from thefloor?

Question 3 (01:18:08):
Yes.
So what seems to me to bemissing from this whole
presentation is something whichI'm particularly interested in
and maybe um was touched on bythe trauma talk, is what can we
do to prevent happening in thefirst place?
It's all very well to try andfix things up after that
happened.
And obviously, with things likeearthquakes and floods, as
well, live places like that, butearthquakes and tsunamis,

(01:18:28):
there's nothing you can do aboutit.
But it seems to me moreimportant than anything you've
talked about as far and as faras just um rebuilding, finding,
discovering, is what can we doto um prevent to the extent we
can't prevent totally, but tominimize this happening in the
future, such as educating oreducation or accepting um from

(01:18:53):
local people in the areaconcerned the value of these
things to them as a society.
See, it seems to me thecultural heritage, the word
cultural, and you use the wordum a luxury, and I that that
struck me as a discordant notein my note in my my mind,
because that's how it's oftenseen by the people who build
things on Liverpool docks,people who um build freeways

(01:19:17):
under the under the Stonehenge,people who blow up the Hamden
Bridge in Wagga, so it's apersonal thing.
Um that's seen as a luxury,whereas it does inform the
identity of a whole community.
And it seems to me the best wayto prevent this, including
wars, including um stuff usedfor the UK, is to educate and

(01:19:38):
picking up the trauma stuff,which I'm not totally on board
with, but let's go over there.
That accepting from thecommunity itself, it's a two-way
street.
Um they have value, they didn'tthey didn't so people
themselves will try not to do itin the first place, or to the
extent to which foreign forcesdo do it to try and prevent it.
That seems to be totallymissing from this, and I'm
somewhat disappointed that Icame to hear that.

Um look, can I begin by saying we're talking
about different levels ofdamage, and you're absolutely
right.
An an act of God, a naturaldisaster, other than addressing,
you know, climate changeglobally.
There's there's limits that towhat you can do about monsoonal
rain in Pakistan, you know,impacting on some of their major

(01:20:24):
cultural sides.
And then there are acts of war,like what is happening in
Ukraine where the damage isincidental.
There are acts of war where thedamage is deliberate.
Um, but I think the substantiveanswer to the concern is in
fact the notion of heritageitself as inheritance, and the
fact that we do now bother toidentify it, uh, to assess its

(01:20:47):
value, to articulate its valuein many jurisdictions, to
protect its value under statuteor under treaty.
So that you can't just go andchange your house in a suburban
context, just go and put afreeway under your World
Heritage Site in aninternational context.
You go through a process.
Is the process perfect?

(01:21:07):
No, it's absolutely not.
Um, but I think it's actually ahuge improvement in the 21st
century to have these placesidentified and have systems in
place that very often will giveus um values-based
decision-making, transparentdecisions, even if we don't

(01:21:30):
always like the outcome.
And it can't it can't um solvethe kind of bigger picture
systemic issues, such asheritage being weaponized or
being damaged in war, or eventhe current US government's
complete dismantling, you know,of the kind of cultural heritage
side of the US Park Service,which I find very distressing.

(01:21:53):
Um at the end of the day, it'suh I mean I'm I'm I'm I'm
tempted to quote Sir DonaldBradman that you know, the um
the difficult I'll get ontoright away, the impossible is
going to take a little longer.
Um, you know, this we we we canwork at the margins, we can
make good decisions or give goodadvice about places, but at the
end of the day, if a governmentis determined to demolish a

(01:22:18):
historic building at Parramattain order to create a new museum,
a sovereign elected governmentis entitled to govern, you know.
So vote them out next time.

Yeah, I so one of the projects that I'm
working on at the moment um isperhaps thinking about heritage
at a different scale, and that'sat the personal level.
So I'm working with communitiesin the northern rivers and
thinking about disasterpreparedness.
So currently, uh, when it comesto disaster events,
particularly um you know,flooding and fire in Australia,

(01:22:53):
the kind of messaging fromgovernment is to pack your
passport, your identitydocuments or your insurance
documents, but all of thesethings can be replaced.
And what the fundamentalargument that we're making in
our research is that thesesentimental objects that get
passed down, inherited throughfamilies, are incredibly

(01:23:15):
important for people's emotionalwell-being.
And the loss of those objectsum causes immense pain for a lot
of people.
So we're developing guidelinesaround helping people to think
through the objects that areimportant for them, objects that
spark joy or love or representsomething important in their

(01:23:37):
lives so they can be carriedwith them through that event,
um, and help to sort of bridgethe disruption of trauma, which
um helps to sort of navigatesome of those feelings and helps
to anchor them in the post-uhdisaster space.
Yeah.

Uh just to add to that as a very quick answer.
I think the education andawareness and regulation works
well with the problems of saydevelopment and good faith, but
accidental damage.
But as as Richard said, whenyou have bad faith actors like
oysit traffickers or uh warsituations where so much
destruction, I don't see anactual uh easy path to um, how

(01:24:22):
do I say?
If you tell them not to do it,that's not going to stop them.

Question 3 (01:24:25):
I'm not disagreeing that not everything is possible
and there's a and we're justtrying to increment incremental
change.
What I'm saying is say take thesedan thing, okay.
The RSF is a mob of gangsters,okay?
But it but there are people inthat mob of gangsters.
And if they themselves felt asense that their heritage, even
if they're not from Khartoumitself, they're from Darfur or

(01:24:47):
or the Blue Nile, was NellarRegion, whatever.
But if they themselves feltidentification of that as being
part of their heritage,notwithstanding that they're of
they don't agree with thegovernment, would not they um
sitto with the people whofanatics are fanatics, I suppose
not much you can do about theBurmist statues because in
because they're fanatics.
But fanatics aside, if you givepeople a sense of picking up

(01:25:11):
what you were saying withnorthern rivers, but taking a
bit further rather than justphotos and photos and stuff like
that, but taking your largerheritage, we we identify as a
people, say Sudanese people, weare not Egyptians, we are not
Arabs, we are not um Uganda, weare Sudanese or whatever.
I don't know, Sudan.
Um, so a sense of identifyingso that the people themselves,

(01:25:34):
even the soldiers in the army,the people in there will do
something to prevent ithappening.
I'm not after perfection, I'mjust after improvement.
And I think saying all thingswhy it won't work is a bad
start.
Sorry, I'll just finish there,thank you.

I might um I might recommend you join us for our
history now next Thursday, whichis specifically about history
education and how we need tosupport history teachers in
schools um at a point in the21st century where, as we all
know from universitydepartments, but uh at the
ground level of actuallybuilding the next generation of
historians.
Excellent.

(01:26:12):
Thank you.
Good.
We've got one final questiontonight.
Thank you.

Question 4 (01:26:16):
Thanks so much for three wonderful talks.
I feel like I've been from themonumental to the everyday, the
this the sort of all that scale.
Um, I guess I'm interested inthe that notion of tangible
heritage.
And I think you mentioned it,Richard, about thinking more
expansively or situatingheritage in a more expansive

(01:26:40):
kind of um frame, if you like.
And so you know, you mentionedthe Mostar Bridge, and just a
really good example of how youknow you can reconstruct
something forensically as it wasdone, but the community is
divided, so it means somethingtotally different now, and um

(01:27:00):
it's a it's still it remains acontested site, um, and and many
things in that landscape havechanged.
Um, and I was thinking about umthat sort of dialectic, I
guess, between remembering andforgetting, and the sort of when
that happens and when it youknow perhaps shouldn't happen.

(01:27:20):
So I guess thinking along youknow the intangible and the
tangible, and um, you know,shifting meanings and how things
your work um um the the work ontrauma can sort of both
reanimate trauma, but sometimesthere's you know the work of
forgetting is also reallyimportant.

(01:27:42):
So yeah, I perhaps more of acomment.

I mean, look, I I I I I think absolutely, and
and Mostar Bridge, I mean,there's a whole issue about was
it was it about utility or wasit about symbolism?
Um, I mean, a a real example ofthat right now is the triumphal
arch um of I think SeptimusCerverus in Palmyra, which was
blown up.

(01:28:06):
However, it was also um 3Dscanned, you know, recorded in
Point Cloud before it was blownup.
And indeed, over the lastdecade, when Boris Johnson was
Lord Mayor of London before hewas prime minister, um, he had a
3D print made in Polystarin andit was erected in Trafalgar

(01:28:26):
Square as a protest.
And there's now a possibilitythat it could be printed in
stone and re-erected.
And do you?
I mean, because the technologyis there, but it wouldn't be the
real thing.
Um, and to my mind, that hingesvery much on that values-based
framework about engaging withthe local community to

(01:28:47):
understand, you know, does a 3Dreplica achieve something in
terms of cultural identity orpushback?
Or is it better to have the thedeconstructed, destroyed site
as the memory and some otherkind of interpretation or
education?
And um, I mean, I'm I'm anAustralian coming from a

(01:29:07):
particular viewpoint, but Ithink our methodological um
approach of trying to unpack,understand, consult, um, lay out
values and constraints beforemaking decisions is exactly the
right way to approach such aproblem.
And there will be as many rightanswers as there are people in
the room.

(01:29:28):
More than that if you have anarchaeologist.

Well, that's possibly a good point to uh
finish the conversation, butobviously the conversation does
go on um on a whole range oflevels.
Here at the Chowchak WingMuseum, we have a number of
forthcoming events that are uhsomehow related to tonight's
presentation.
Um, one in particular onMonday, the uh 18th of August.

(01:29:53):
Um please join us for alunchtime talk where Julian will
expand in a little more detail.
Detail and presumably any moreinformation that's coming out of
Khatoum, but a more specificdeep dive into the current
heritage crisis in Sudan.
I would also issue aninvitation for you to join us on

(01:30:15):
the evening of Friday, the 8thof August, where we will host a
conversation between Australia'sformer human rights
commissioner, Chris Sadotti, andEhab Schalbach from uh the
University of Sydney staff, um,specifically on Chris's work on
the United Nations IndependentInternational Commission of
Inquiry on the occupiedPalestinian territory, and

(01:30:37):
specifically the uh sections ofthat report that came out in
June on the destruction ofheritage sites and cultural
institutions within Gaza.
So I'm hope I hope that you'llbe able to join us for both of
those presentations.
In terms of the next HistoryNow event, um uh Thursday, the
31st of July next week, uh joinus on a session on teaching

(01:31:00):
history with Tim Allender fromhere at the University of Sydney
and Jonathan Dalymore from theHistory Teachers Association,
uh, where we discuss the needfor supporting history teachers
to help us produce the nextgeneration of historians,
archaeologists, and heritagepractitioners, and hopefully not
have the same conversationsthat we're having right now as

(01:31:21):
well.
Can I finally uh uh say a bigthank you to uh the wonderful
team from the History Council ofNew South Wales for their
support for tonight's events andfor next week's event as well?
And a big, big thank you to ourthree presenters.
So, Dr.
Charlotte Freakin, uh Feekins,sorry.
Uh what did I just call it?
Dr.
Charlotte Feekins, Dr.

(01:31:43):
Julian Cooper, and ProfessorRichard Mackay.
Thank you.

Catherine Shirley (01:31:47):
Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
If you'd like to hear more,subscribe to our series via your
favourite streaming platformand join us for our next History
Now episode, Teaching History,the future of history education
in New South Wales.
For a full list of HistoryCouncil cultural partners, along
with a list of other podcastsproduced by us, please visit our

(01:32:09):
websiteHistoryCouncilnsw.org.au,
forward slash podcasts.
I'm Catherine Shirley.
Thank you.

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