MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh #3: A Conversation about Extraction - MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sovay Berriman (00:00):
Dydh da ha dynnargh pub huni dhe bodkastow
MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh ostyesgenev, Sovay Berriman. Hello

(00:25):
and welcome everyone to theMESKLA | Brewyon Drudh podcasts,
hosted by me Sovay Berriman.MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh is a
multi platform project, usingsculpture making and
conversation to explorecontemporary Cornish cultural
identity. Through workshops,podcasts, a symposium, and an

(00:50):
exhibition. The project invitespeople to share their
experiences of identity andCornwall, and their views on
Cornish culture and itsrelationship to land, language,
heritage, tourism, the Cornishdiaspora, and much, much more.
These podcasts were calledConversations with guests whose

(01:14):
research or lived experiencetouches on the project themes.
The views, thoughts and opinionsexpressed the speaker's own. All
conversations are carried outwith a spirit of generosity and
openness, creating space for thediscussions to twist and turn.
And I'm very grateful to all whohave taken part. In this third

(01:40):
podcast, Emma Gilboa thoughtprofessor of anthropology at the
University of East Anglia andDr. Hilary orange Senior
Lecturer in industrial heritageat Swansea University, join me
to talk about their work and therelationships and impacts of
tourism and mining, on cultures,communities and landscapes. We

(02:05):
join the conversation with Emmaintroducing her work and
research.

Proff. Emma Gilberthorpe (02:12):
Yeah, so the projects that I mainly
work on are on the impact ofextractive industries, on social
networks, mainly, but alsoeconomic structures. So I work
with indigenous peoples, mainlyin Papua New Guinea. But I've
also worked in West Africa, inGuinea, and in Central Africa,
in Zambia, and in the MiddleEast a little bit as well. Yeah,

(02:35):
so that's, that's the main focusof my research is how large
scale mining and oil and gasextraction impact the way that
people interact with each other,not just with each other, from
the grassroots perspective, butalso with each other in terms of
state corporations andgrassroots interconnections as

(03:00):
well.

Dr. Hilary Orange (03:01):
I'm Hillary, nice to be here, I'm really
pleased to be invited to takepart in this. And funnily
enough, is slightly similar. SoI'm an archaeologist by
background. But I work more inheritage now. And I work
specifically on two things to dowith extractive industries. One
is what happens when sitesclosed down, and how those post

(03:26):
industrial sites are then coopted us just used and how they
become part of community actionand also inaction. And the
second thing is that I'minterested in public perceptions
of industrial landscape. So mywork has been quite various I

(03:48):
actually lived in Cornwall for awhile when I when I wasn't an
archaeologist, and I wasn't anacademic. I'm not actually from
Cornwall, and I was take carewhen I do research to say that
I'm not Cornish. But I did livein work down there for nearly a
decade. And so I've continued todo research on Cornish heritage

(04:08):
on mine in heritage ever sinceback 2005. And then I've done
some work on industrial tourismand Japan. Spent some time out
in West Germany, looking atnighttime industrial landscapes,
and art practice as well. Andnow I'm at Swansea University in

(04:29):
Wales, and I'm part of a largetransnational research project
looking at deindustrialization,that's called depot. And that's
deindustrialization and thepolitics at that time. And I
think that over time, I'mmigrating more towards social
history. And so I tend tointegrate different different

(04:50):
lumps of literature anddisciplinary perspectives.

Great, thank you. I'm interested if I might
ask you First off aboutrelationships to land, and how
the presence of extractiveindustry sort of impacts that or
shifts or changes that. MaybeEmma, if you answer sort of

(05:21):
answer that question first,

well, can I just ask you something?
You know, because this is justcompletely intriguing me since I
found out about the project thatyou're working on, and about
Cornwall, and Cornish culture,and Cornish identity, is the
self identification of Cornishpeople as indigenous?

Not necessarily. And there's, there's sort of
split. This, there's, you know,there's some people who do claim
that, and there's others whodon't, personally, I sort of sit
in a place of that, I thinkwe're far distant from

(06:10):
indigeneity, in, like beingindigenous peoples. We're
recognised as having anindigenous language. And
there's, you

know, saw that

there's a lot of, what I have found through my
own research, and this has beenin a sort of, sort of anecdotal
and what I'd call, maybe a softresearch way, That what, there's
a lot of shared experience with,with, of relationship to land,

(06:46):
relationship to identity, andhow that sits with tourism, and
other sort of overarching,perhaps politics or,

yeah, so that's why I asked you,
because that's when you askedabout the connection to the
land. Or obviously, a lot ofindigenous people that I've
worked with have a very strongconnection to the land. But the
use of the term indigenous isreally helpful to presenting
that identity in a political, umin a political sphere, I

(07:23):
suppose. And from what you'vejust said, that seems to be
quite a similar case in Cornwallas well

I would say, it is, my hesitancy around that,
and sort of, being carefularound that identification is
that it would be very easy foran awful lot of people in
Cornwall to claim that space,without acknowledging all the

(07:53):
other experiences that they donot share with indigenous
nations peoples around theworld. And I think that's a
really vital difference.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's quite a
controversial thing to claim,isn't it? And a lot of the, the,
you know, the politicalconversation around indigeneity
and an indigenous peoplesindigenous Kapalai. Is, is very
political, and it's all about aclaim, claiming, claiming

(08:31):
sovereignty, right, I was gonnasay ownership, which I don't
like to use, because it's not aconcept that is shared by a lot
of indigenous people, butsovereignty of the land. So
yeah, I can see what I can seewhat you mean by you know, but
it struck me because you saidthat the Cornish language is
actually considered anendangered indigenous language.
I mean, that in itself is is isinteresting. Sorry, I went

(08:55):
completely off topic turned thetables started asking me all the
way around.

Well, no, and it's quite, it's quite relevant
to like, actually, that reallyconnects with something Hilary's
spoken to me about around theidentification of the Cornish
miner. And I'm interested in theCornish miners role like
Cornish, the Aspera. And beingsort of representatives of, of,

(09:28):
yeah, colonial project, andthose extraction industries,
and, you know, being part andparcel of that,

because, well, wherever I work, in Papua
New Guinea, for example, a minerwouldn't necessarily have
identity to place an identity toland. I'd love to hear what you
think about this, Hilary. So thenotion of community is very
separate or the communityitself, the local community, the

(09:58):
indigenous peoples who have havea connection to the land to the
place are very separate to theminers. And the miners are often
conceived as strangers and theyactually use the term people
whose faces we do not know. Theyuse that term because there are
people who've come from otherplaces and they bring with them

(10:19):
there are other languages, thereare the customs and traditions.
And they and they also almostthe mining places, the mining
towns are like a melting pot ofall these different languages
and cultures and stuff. So theminers, the mining community are
outsiders.

Yeah, that's really interesting. This is
actually something that I washoping was going to come up
because this this absolutelyfascinates me. And so my my
impression live in living inCornwall and I actually had a
flatmate once who said to me inconversation that he thought his
blood was different to mine.Wow, because I was born in

(11:00):
England and he was, so I'm awarethat there are people that feel
very strongly about theirethnicity. I don't remember it
ever being expressed with wordindigenous. Certainly, Cornish.
But coming back to the diaspora,of course, there aren't just

(11:21):
people who self identify asCornish in Cornwall, there's,
there's people diasporiccommunities around the world
because of, of export of, ofmining, Cornish mining skill and
traditions. And I actuallylooked at the figures this
morning, it's this is from theCornish world mining World
Heritage Site website. They'resaying that there's around 6

(11:44):
million people abroad who coulddescend from

Australia didn't they? Went off to
Australia, yeah, Australia,

Australia, Chile, Mexico, North America. I
mean, you know, the four cornersof the world or however many
corners there are. So actually,that could potentially be more
people outside Cornwall, whoself identify as Cornish when
they're out in Cornwall, that'san interesting idea. But to me,
I always worked with a kind ofcardiac model that, you know,

(12:17):
it's people felt they wereCornish, but certainly with the
students that I taught, who weremore strongly aware of Cornish
identity, because not everybodyis it was to do with being born
and belong into place. So Ithink that the way I see it is
you get these kind of nestedidentities that people who were

(12:42):
born in Cornwall are more likelyto feel Cornish and those who
aren't that then you get peoplewho come in. And it's
interesting, what they tend todo is sometimes they tend to
establish a connection to placethrough finding out about local
history and heritage by joiningsocieties by joining cultural
organisations. And in the work Idid, I surveyed attitudes to

(13:07):
landscape land and to ideas ofCornish identity. And I found
that actually, if people hadbeen living in Cornwall, after
about 20 years, theirperceptions of belonging and
place were pretty much similar,identical, similar to the people
who've been born and brought upin Cornwall, as you know, from

(13:28):
from babies from children fromyoung people. And then you get
this whole idea of the outsiderwhich comes back to the miners
and that mining is a is a mobileworkforce. It's a certainly in
the 20th century as amultinational international
labour market. So

there's something in this for me around
the ability to other in asituation so like, in some of my
travels, they in the MolluscsHunt Wizards project when I was
in Australia, I was looking at,could I find Berrimans, who you

(14:09):
know, my surname who were partof that diaspora, and where
where would I find them? And Iwould, I did come across Cornish
communities who were reallyfervently and I found this also
some years before New Zealandwho were really fervently
Cornish and protective aroundCornish land. And yet, we're

(14:35):
actually quite dismissive ofindigenous peoples in those
lands and their theirguardianship and relationship to
that land, being different andhaving you know, being different
to the Cornish diaspora'srelationship to that land, if

(14:57):
that makes sense.

you mean land they were protective
of Cornish land in Cornwall orAustralia,

in Cornwall.

Right

So they would be really clear about their
relationship with Cornwall, andthat piece of land, but didn't
seem to respect the samerelationship

indigenous peoples in Australia.

Exactly.

Okay, that's so interesting.

So that's where I wonder about this kind of a
split like an othering split tobe able to? Yeah. And have you
come across that in yourresearch? Hillary, you're about
to say something

Well, what I noticed was that I met people
who had a very long knowledge oftheir own family histories. And
I met people who were comingback to research their family
history. So I think that I metpeople who could go back,
literally six, sevengenerations. I mean, in my

(16:00):
family, I'm not even sure weknow, know much about my my
great grandparents, not eventheir names. So I do think
there's definitely, I noticedthat as being quite particular.
In my time in Cornwall, thatkind of idea that, you know,
where you come from, you know,who your family, your families

(16:23):
are. That the other thing Ithink that's really important
about corpsman is thatessentially, it came across to
me as an island. I mean, if itwasn't the first four miles,
that join Cornwall to Devon,where the river tamer runs down,
then it would be an island it'sa maritime is a maritime
landscape, surrounded by sea,you know, river tamer, talking

(16:46):
about other in physical watersgoing up country, to Devon to
England, you know, and this isdirectionality about that, about
that culture and identity. Andthat directionality isn't just
about Cornwall versus England,that's essentially what it is.
There was no way of getting awayfrom that it's about it's about
Cornwall, in England, and if yougo back archaeologically, you we

(17:11):
can also be talking about youknow, Keltus ism, because that
is so much a part of Cornishidentity, the fact that Cornwall
is one of the Celtic nations.And you see archaeologically,
you see, you know, in the in theprehistoric and then monolithic
cultures, you see so manysimilarities across the Atlantic
seaboard between Ireland and andCornwall and Wales and Brittany.

(17:34):
So it's fair and it's alsowithin the links between the
languages so I often used to sayto people, if you can read
Cornish, can you read Welsh andvice versa? So I think there are
I believe there are some I don'tread I know a few phrases in
Cornwall, but I don't read itand I'm not fluent. I never

(17:54):
learnt it. But there are manyfluent speakers of Cornish now,
because the language has beenrevived. That coming back to
land I think the other importantthing is about the granite. I
know that you're going to betalking to Shelly Trower, who's
at Roehampton University, andshe's written this wonderful
book called rocks of nation. Andso if we're talking about

(18:14):
extractive industries and so wegot this i we got this almost
island that's fundamentally youknow, it's it's granite geology
is so important to the story ofof those extraction extractive
industries, not just for theHard Rock, but also the china
clay.

So if we think about Cornwall, having this
strong identity and mininghaving become an industry that
has really become entwined withCornish cultural identity, like
not for everyone, but in a sortof more popular way. How, how, I

(18:56):
suppose, in your anthropologicalanthropological research Gemma
had, what do you think aboutthose connections with like that
other ring we're talking about,or someone having this strong
identity? They're not, you know,they're a duchy. They're
different. They've got alanguage of Celtic nation, a

(19:17):
strong relationship with land,but then being perhaps part of
an extractive industry.

Yeah, I suppose them. I mean, it's
very interesting that they arelike Hillary says, an almost
island nation. I don't know ifnations the right word, duchy,
an almost island because thatdoes I mean, particularly in the
past if you're going back to,you know, pre history and and

(19:50):
the Celtic traditions there,they were isolated pockets of
people, weren't they? Becausethey were isolated by sea. They
were isolated by a river andThey were isolated by mores. So
there would have been pockets,social pockets of people who
would have had an identity to aparticular type of landscape,
whether that landscape wascharacterised by Granite, or you

(20:13):
know, Clay, or it was more landor it was, you know, the sea,
whatever it was, even beforemore formal types of mining,
there was a defined an isolatedcommunity wasn't that and that
must have had an impact on thesubsequent cultures?

I don't actually think it was that
isolated, because you have a tintrade across the sea. I mean,
I'm talking to go in a placelike Cambray, maybe, maybe you
could say something aboutCambray. Because for was helpful
to there. And the evidences of,of trade, you know, trade of,

(20:58):
of, of metal trade of materials,trade of material culture,
coming into and out of Cornwall.Going back to pre history, I
mean, I'm talking about prehistory here. So. So there's
been quite a lot of work done onthose trades, and of those,
those connections betweenCornwall and not just England,

(21:19):
but that Cornwall and placesacross the sea. So I don't think
it was that kind of isolation. Ithink there were people coming
in, and also people and thingsgoing out.

But they would they would still
retain their identity wouldn'tknow their cultural identity.
Well, I mean, in particular, interms of material culture as
well, probably Yeah, mate, who,who mined tin, for example, this
is where we get our tin from.And we and we exchange X for
tin.

Yeah, but we don't know exactly. I mean, you
know, I mean, there are thereare types of architecture that,
that, as I say, you you havemonolithic architecture,
architectural types in, inBrittany, in Cornwall, in, in,
in Wales, for example, or youhave some unusual things in

(22:14):
Cornwall that you might onlyfind in sort of figures, which
is unusual kind of tunnels. Butyou have courtyard. Buildings in
sales are silly, and in otherplaces in Cornwall that you
don't tend to find in otherplaces. So there are some
differences. And there aredifferences, material culture.
But I don't think we can saythat the people back then

(22:36):
thought they were Cornish.Because there isn't even
anything to say that some to usean 18th century miners thought
they were Corniche. From what I,I can gather, looking at the the
history, coordination, this isactually quite a modern idea
that even if you go back intothe 19th century, you're not

(22:59):
really going to come acrossreferences to to that kind of
concept of Cornish identity.Yeah, I mean, this is where it
gets slightly messy, doesn't it?Because I would never ever want
to, I would never want tosuggest that I am trying to
eradicate people's sense ofidentity. But when it comes down

(23:23):
to the history, it's actuallyit's actually fairly clear. It's
all connected actually, with thedecline of the industries. So
Philip Payton and Bernard Deakinhave written about this to
social historians based inCornwall, and other people have
written about this as well. Andso at the end of the 19th

(23:44):
century, when the miningindustry was in decline, and
there's this mass exodus ofCornish families, going off
abroad to seek, you know, toseek work, because things really
were so dire. And interested indoing that they actually in a

(24:04):
way accelerated the decline ofthe home industry because they
took their skill and technologyto other places, and built up
mine and elsewhere that thenended up competing. But at the
end of the 19th century, therewas this emergence of this
revivalist movement. And therewere concerns amongst the middle
classes at the time, about thedecline of the industry and

(24:28):
about the decline of Como. Andtourism was actually seen as an
economic panacea, it was seen asa way to solve this economic
problem. And so the revivalistmovements and the middle
classes, you know, theshopkeepers for the greater good

(24:49):
of a lamb came together and theystarted to revive these old
aspects of Cornwall to collectthese kind of archaic and they
Ancient fragments. And part ofthat was the old Cold War
society that was founded butalso that led into the
establishment of the gore Ceph.The Bard, the Bardic ghost. And

(25:16):
that that tourism was was prettymuch there on the agenda is kind
of you know, and then because ofthe rise of the motorcar and the
leisure industry, we get to the,to the mid 20th century, and
and, and get get past the SecondWorld War. And by by the
1960s 70s 80s, there were realconcerns about how corn is

(25:37):
changing.

It's quite interesting, because this
is almost identical to what ishappening in places like Papua
New Guinea at the moment withmine closures, and they're not
just happening in either lots ofplaces where people have been
mining and and the mines areclosing, and they're looking for
that something that that willreplace it, what is it that will

(26:00):
keep communities there, inconnected to the land, what will
allow the communities who livein those places to continue to
have electricity, to continue tohave running water, all these
resources, which have beenprovided by mining companies,
what will what will allow, Imean, the local people want it

(26:23):
as much as probably more thananyone else, because they're
used to the resources that havecome with mining, and the people
that brings as well aselectricity and things like
that. And tourism is very muchbeing presented as the answer to
post mining context. And it's avery different type of to have

(26:45):
tourism, of course, in in PNG,and other places as well. You
know, it's bird watching and,you know, the kind of indigenous
experience which, you know, alot of talking about middle
classes, a lot of the middleclass desire to have that kind

(27:06):
of otherworldly experience andto and to go somewhere and
experience a different way oflife. And to and the selling of
culture. That's what it that'swhat it is across the world, in,
in, in not just in old miningcommunities. But also just in,
in, in places where conservationand things like that are being

(27:29):
promoted as as new places fortourists.

And have you seen, have you come across other
examples of places that are,like paste

tourism in not anywhere where I've
worked everywhere that I'mworking at the moment is in that
phase of coming towards the endof mining? And what happens when
mining goes, What's What do wedo, it's almost that panic phase
of what happens next, what'sgoing to happen when everything
goes when the electricity goesin the water goes. So it's it's

(28:04):
that real desire at the momentto keep those things and the
kinds of things that makepeople's lives better, like
running water and likeelectricity, and like hospitals
having a hospital nearby, whichis only there at the moment,
because there's a mine there. SoI think that's a very different
situation for than Cornwall. ButI imagine that Cornwall mean,

(28:27):
the tourist industry, likeyou're saying, Hilary that
started it was quite a long timeago, wasn't it? Many, many
decades ago. So for thatgenerations who've lived with
it, it becomes a differentnarrative doesn't it becomes a
different experience. And itpushes the prices up, like you
say, and it becomes the peoplewho would have advocated for it

(28:50):
decades ago, would never haveimagined what it could what it
could create, and that it wouldpush prices up in the way that
it has. And that statistic thatyou provide a survey that was
incredible, the statistic thatthe number of homeless people is
equivalent to the number ofholiday homes, which is just

I can't I'll share a link on the resource
page for the project for that.Now recently post COVID I mean,
there's been they're justmassive COVID Exodus to como it
really it it really is a hugeproblem. Yeah.

I mean, I've noticed it since I was living
there and also the influence ofa TV so we have the kind of a
the Poldark phase of masses ofpeople going down to Cornwall
because they've been watching orpulled out that really
romanticised kind of hero minornarrative following the the

(29:57):
Winston Graham novels from 1950salso Roseman, Pilcher is written
on Cornwall. So that's anotherway that it's been popularised
through literature. But now itseems like because of lockdowns
and people holiday in at homerather than overseas, everybody
I know seems to go down toCornwall on holiday.

It seems to be this it's tourist season all
year round. And during the COVIDsort of era there, there was a
lot of people hearing, hearingfrom people saying, yeah, when

(30:37):
we're not social distancing,we're on holiday, we've come
down to get away from that, ormaking complaints that ours are
shut. Because people have gotCOVID, there was a massive lack
of respect for the fact thatthis is somewhere that people
live and work. And the fact thatwe got really reduced

(30:59):
facilities, hospital facilities,you know, it's really common
that you have to go over thetamer to get medical treatment.
So I think if, like that, that'spart of that kind of brain
split, that I'm interested in,that sort of happens with this

(31:22):
possibility of orderingsomething, I mean, this, I mean,
this guy's now I'm on a tourist,I might be a really caring a
really caring, empatheticindividual otherwise, but now
I'm on holiday. And I wonder ifthat's like a shared, like, I'm

(31:45):
interested in, if that's asimilar experience to the minor.
I really care, you know, that Ireally care about my land at
home, and about my relationshipto my land. But now I've
travelled overseas, and I'm, I'mat work. And it's a different
relationship.

Yeah, I don't think there was sentimentality
about lands and about mining. Imean, what I find fascinating
about the mines is that a lot ofmining heritage now just looks
at the surface, you know, it'sjust connected with engine
houses and chimneys, and thesepointy things in the landscape.
And the surface tends to getoverlooked. But then, then,

(32:26):
because so much of thesubsurface has now been closed
off, the mind shafts are beinggrilled and collared and kept
for safety reasons, which isunderstandable, you no longer
get that kind of breathinglandscape that used to get
where, because of the differenttemperatures from below to above
ground, you'd actually get thiskind of breathing, I'm talking

(32:48):
literally, sort of vapour outvapours coming out of a
landscape so So I find the wholeembodiment of landscape around
mining, also really interestingway people talk about it and
connect to the underground. Andthat that is basically lost. I
mean, it's a minute landscapethat's essentially being closed,
closed at surface. But myunderstanding, accredit Peters

(33:13):
has talked about this because ofthe influence of Methodism on
Cornish religion, that the landwas just basically seen as a
commodity, it was fair to beworked. And the Methodists or
Wesleyans actually tried to getrid of a lot of quick Cornish
folklore, and persuade peopleaway from those kind of older
traditions, and put them on theroad to goodness and you know,

(33:37):
don't drink, don't misbehave,don't don't believe in all these
kind of magical creatures. Andand the land was a commodity, it
was just fair to be used, it wasthere to be worked. So that's,
that's why I think that whenmines closed down, it's very
common for for the valuablestuff to be moved, you know, the
engine to be moved for thebuilders to be robbed of useful

(34:00):
materials. But then, what yousee particularly in the 60s and
70s, before municipal waste,sites are opened, the mining
land was used as by children toplay in and B is places to dump
rubbish. And that wasn't a lackof care, that was just a
continuation of, of land needsto be useful, it needs to be

(34:22):
productive. And if it's notgoing to be productive for
extraction, it can be aproductive place where I can
take my Volvo, or my old fridgeand I can mine shafts are really
handy if you want to get rid ofdead livestock or, you know, or
polluting materials or largehousehold objects. And so so

(34:43):
that sentimentality, I actuallythink is it wasn't there and,
and the centre sentimentalityaround the idea of heritage and
heritage is is quite a newthing. It came in, during the
sort of the factory governmentsthe heritage industry emerged
free Thatcherism and fascistpolicies connected with national

(35:04):
nationalism. And so that's anew, that's a recent thing. And
so old new mining always got ridof the older mining. So

that's, it's, it's interesting some of those
things that you say, obviously,from your research perspective,
I mean, I concur. People didused to throw rubbish, they're
mine shafts. And I was born inthe early 70s. So I am people
used to disappear, downloadshafts quite regularly. And I

(35:38):
played around countless byworkings, like that was just
normal, but my family's faircould have other parts of my
sort of ethnicity or heritage,but my Cornish families on both
sides, and absolutely, alwaysspoken about by parent too. And

(36:02):
my parents aren't that into callthat parents and grandparents
always speak about where we'refrom it for hundreds of years
back, and we talk about sorelatives who might have died
generations before. I spokenabout as they they're present.

(36:26):
And the place that you're fromhistorically, sort of spoken
about as almost like itspresent. That's where you're
from. So I'm in this, I'minterested in some of these ways
that we talk about land is I cansee some of that sentimentality

(36:49):
around it. Definitely being afabrication. But I think there's
something else that's perhapsthe theme that's been that's run
through Emma.

Yeah, I was thinking that it's, it's
probably a bigger Britishcultural issue. From what, from
what you're saying, because andthis has been completely
exacerbated by COVID. But justthe fact that a lot of British
culture, a lot of Britishsocieties commoditize the

(37:30):
landscape, and they would see, Imean, tourism is a commodity,
right. And if you go toCornwall, on your holiday, that
land, the heritage is acommodity. And that's something
that British culture has become,isn't it over time, because
we've been isolated, since theThatcher government, we've been
isolated into smaller andsmaller boxes piled on top of

(37:53):
each other, and flats orwhatever it may be. So that
sense of community that you'rejust talking about there, in
relation to your grandparentssurvey, is very, very different
to most British people'sexperience of culture. It's very
isolated, even pre COVID veryisolated, no sense of community,

(38:14):
you only have to watch thesehome shows, you know, location,
location, location, whateverescaped to the country, that's a
good one, where everybody whogoes on it says we don't want
neighbours. We don't want to beoverlooked. We don't want to
have people around us. And as ananthropologist, I'm just sitting
there going, really, you don'twant to be around people. It's

(38:38):
the most bizarre thing. But yousee that more and more. And this
has been completely exacerbatedby COVID. But somewhere like
Cornwall, for whatever reason,whether it be geographical, or
geological, they seem to havemaintained this sense of
community. And this sense ofbelonging that that has a

(39:01):
generational past, which manypeople can't, like we said
earlier, many people can't savefrom what their grandparents
were. But you But as you'retalking, you're saying that your
grandparents, you can trace yourCornish history back
generations, which is very, veryunusual. And, and Cornwall has
somehow been able to maintainthat sociality, that everywhere,

(39:24):
not everywhere beyond I don'twant to, you know, put a broad
brushstroke on this. But it'svery, very common now across
Britain, that sense of socialityas gone.

And that's where I'm interested in the landscape.
relationship to that. I mean,the actual is to traverse
aspects of the landscape, theedges of it where the water is.

Like, yeah, well, maybe that's easier
to move around Cornwall as well.I mean, if you come from London,
if you is second home inCornwall, but your basis in
London, that movement around thelandscape isn't quite as fluid
is it as it perhaps is in inCortland. And the movement that
you make the pathways that youtraverse, don't have any
heritage, but any connection toyou as an individual, you

(40:16):
couldn't say, Oh, my grandfatherwent along this pathway, my
grandmother climb that hill, youdon't have that kind of geo
geographical connection, whichin Cornwall, you probably do.
That's what connects people toplace because they say my
grandfather passed along thispath. My mother came along this
path, my my grandfather sat atthat rock, my great great

(40:36):
grandfather, all my brotherdrowned in that river, you may
it may be quite a tragic past,but there's something has a
meaning to everyone. And ifyou're surrounded by a landscape
where that historical meaninghas gone, then that sense of
connectivity and that isolation,that social isolation just
becomes more and moreemphasised.

Yeah, I agree. And I think it comes back
to two shared culture andtradition. And one of those a
dominant one was, of coursemining. So even though the
actual mine workings might havebeen kind of seen as something
to be used, the actualindustrial communities where
were, you know, this is whatyou're describing. And this is
where those social bonds were.It wasn't just at the mine,

(41:22):
which was the heart of thecommunity when it was when it
was living when it was working.But it was also in the
industrial communities. And andif you look at the world
heritage site, the mining siteof a world cohort on West Devon,
mining landscape World HeritageSite, as its long name, was

(41:42):
something like 80,000 peoplereside in that UNESCO inscribed
world heritage sites. So it iscompletely entwined.

It's a connection as well, isn't it?
Hillary? So people say my fatherused to work at that mine or my
grandfather, you saw my greatgrandfather that's, that's also
a connection through the miningitself.

Yeah, it's this. It is. But I think there
are wider connections. I mean,one thing that I tend to bang on
about is, is that the worldparishes cite that the temporal
boundaries for this inscriptionis from 1700, to 1914. And mine
and really changed in the 20thcentury, massively reduced in

(42:27):
scale, but also the labourdemographics change. So in the
Second World War, you have a bedand boys, you also had prisoners
of war, working in the mines.And then after that, you had a
much more multinationalinternational labour force. So
one of the things that comesback to so these original points

(42:49):
about my work on the Cornishminor is that often the imagery
narrative around the Cornishminor is that that peak
industry, you know, the, the18th 19th century, the
diasporic, Cordish minor goingabroad is colloquially known as
cousin Jack, by the 20thcentury, it's really different.
And that that difference doesn'ttend to emerge so much in the

(43:12):
heritage narratives. In fact, Ithink it's pretty much hidden.
Because we're binders I talkedto, you know, when I kind of
tried to touch on the subject ofidentity, and ethnicity, they
don't care. They're theunderground labour force. You
know, they're the undergroundworkers, they, they're the
miners and they, it just reallymatter if you come from

(43:35):
Scotland, England, Yorkshire,you know, you're the same,
you're, you're the same, you'reworking underground. And, and I
think that that narrative isbroken up in the 20th century,
and because much more messy, butalso much more interesting,
because it's much more a storyof people coming into Cornwall
again, as they always have done.So that concerns me a little bit

(43:59):
to be honest.

What What concerns you

that that story isn't told that that story
that 20th century story isn'tisn't evidence in, in heritage
narratives. So um, you know, andalso, you know, you get the kind
of heroic rise of poor dark ism.And then it's just another kind
of resurgence of this, this,this mod it, you know, earlier

(44:28):
image of a Cornish miner and Ithink that the they're ageing
than the miners age, and they'renot going to be with us for much
more and I think their storiesalso deserve to be told. And so
one thing that I've writtenabout and one thing I find
fascinating when I go to give atin mine is that you look at all

(44:48):
the interpretation inside thethe dry, which was wherever the
managers offices were and alsowhere the mind has changed, and
and had their belongings Isn'tshowered and all of
interpretation. It doesn'tmention Cornish minor. It's all
about the workers, theunderground workforce for a lot

(45:10):
of names a redolent of Polishsurnames or Scottish names or
Irish names, or Italian names.This is this is this is Cornish
mine in in in the second half ofthe 20th century. Polish
Italian, Scottish, English,Welsh. And when mines closed

(45:34):
down, of course, miners wentabroad, worked on the Channel
Tunnel Project, some worked inthe Middle East. And you have
Camborne School of Mines, whichis one of the world's foremost
schools of mine mining and ofmine engineering and they take
international students and trainthose students up. And some of
those students carry on workingin Cornwall. So Cornish mining

(45:56):
isn't dead. You know, there arestill engineers and there are
still people working at SouthCrofty, and people working in
the mining industry in Cornwall,it's not dead, and those people
are not necessarily going toself identify as being Cornish.
And I think that story isimportant, I think it ought to
be to be told because it itneeds to be balanced up.

We've now like we've been talking about mining
in the 20th century, and thenthis romanticise mining. And we
now have a new wave of mining inCornwall with lithium. And
there's, there's always talkedabout reminding copper or tin

(46:43):
and geothermal activity. Sothere's a new, there's a new
wave of sort of using the landand extracting from the land.
Yeah, I wonder if either of youhave got any thoughts on that,
or how that might relate toculture or impact culture?

(47:05):
Again.

I think it depends on how much of
the land the extraction takesup. So something like but mining
is, well depends on the type ofmining again, and open pit mine,
of course, is an enormousfootprint. You see, you can see
some mines from space, thefootprint is that big. And you

(47:29):
can see, so the lithium miningin Bolivia, you can see from
outer space, you can see thesalt flats from outer space.
Which is it? You know, so Ithink it depends on that really,
I think it depends on the sizeof the footprint, the impact on
the actual landscape. The waythat communities respond to the

(47:54):
extraction project itself verymuch depends on the size of the
footprint. And of course, thenthe pollution that comes with it
and the other elements of it. Soif tourism, I think that's
interesting that you refer totourism as a type of extractive
industry survey. I love that. Ilove that. But it I mean, it has
a footprint doesn't it has animpact, you know, not just in

(48:15):
terms of inflation, commodityinflation, but also in terms of
pollution, you know, other typesof impacts. But yeah, I think
that's

one of the reasons I refer to it as
extraction is simply what I seein my own lifetime. How tourism
takes from a culture, repackagesthat, and reframes that. And
then not only is that so totourists, like the target

(48:48):
audience, but it's also how theculture is sold back to the the
people pick the people who livein that area, the people of that
area. And that can create adisconnect from one's own
identity. And it's, it's, youknow, tourists marketing is very

(49:12):
successful marketing. So it'slike, it's always like the
equivalent of like, sweeties orsomething, isn't it? It's nice
and digestible, and it feelsgood. And I love another one,
please.

Which is a bit like the lithium
market. I mean, this is beingsold as being packaged in a way,
isn't it? It's been packaged andsold. This is the this is the
answer. This is the type ofmining that will get us out of
the horrible, polluted hole thatwe're in this is the answer to
climate change. It's beenpackaged in that way. Of course,

(49:45):
it's completely untrue.

Yeah. I think it's also about the things that
we all want. So although wecould say we can talk about the
pollution but the other side ofit we're also all consumers,
aren't we we, we carry you know,this idea of lithium being the
new battery of a smartphone ofthe future, then, you know, we,
we I try to remind myself thatfor everybody, everything in my

(50:09):
study and in my, my house in ourhouse is also part of the
prophecy. So, so it'sinteresting to me that we're
moved from the, this is anotherrevolutionary phase. But we're
now in the communicationrevolution, if you believe what
people say, and, and so nowwe're going back to extracting
things that we need from theland in order to be able to have

(50:31):
this new, this new way of lifehas new social system based
again on technology. So

I think it goes a little bit back
to what we were saying before aswell about the distancing of
individuals from the experience,I suppose. So we consumers of
these commodities, and be thatkind of battery for an electric
car, which is something that'sbeen really pushed at the
moment, electric cars, but justin our computers, and in our

(51:01):
mobile phones, and in ourclothes, even on the kind of,
you know, the use of oil andclothes. Not to mention the
machinery, but it's thedistancing, isn't it of people
from that extraction process. Sopeople are keep using London as
the example. But you know,people in London are very
distanced from the extraction oflithium. So the pushing of an

(51:22):
electric car is going to as theanswer to, to, you know, saving
the planet, as you drive down toCornwall to your holiday home,
is quite appealing, because theycan't see the extraction of the
lithium going on. They don'tknow the kind of social and
economic impacts it's having onthe indigenous peoples in
Bolivia, and don't really getthe the impact that they're

(51:47):
having on the fragmentation ofcommunity in Cornwall, because
they don't experience it forthemselves.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on. And,
you know, when you had the womenwho were breaking up the oran
surface as part of the process,and you know, how, how much more
visible that would have beenbeen a noxious, visible
sonically apparent, the sound ofmining as well compared some to

(52:14):
what it's like to be like, now,I wonder whether people will be
able to see anything of a modernlithium mine, or how that's
going to be I wonder how, howthat mine is actually going to
be visible to people. And Ithink that, that, that
disconnect, particularly for,let's say, the younger

(52:34):
generation, who may not haveever handled a lump of coal, or
or don't ever remember seeing achimney smoke, you know, or, or
a furnace light up at night,from an iron or steel works,
that I think you're gonna getthat you're bound to get that
generational shift. And I thinkthat generational shift is

(52:56):
already happening, thatindustrial heritage is, is is
becoming much more associatedwith with pollution than it is
perhaps with the kind of asocial lives and the way the
industry was a meshed withinplace and people's lives and
people's networks and that senseof community. I'm starting to

(53:19):
see that transition now. And Ithink it's partly generational.
And as as the workers die, thatthat that is going to be another
sort of fracture point. But Ithink I think that tourism could
help there I would like to thinkthat me that the mines were
actually operating for tourismback in the 19th century, you
could go down at the metallicmines, you could actually go

(53:43):
underneath seabed obey half orGuinea, a very these travellers
accounts of going under goingdown and out under the into the
submarine mines because it'sit's raw, the coastal mindset
also can be submarine by mindsetextend out the workings extend
out under the seabed for, youknow, one and a half k or

(54:04):
whatever. And there are thesecontemporary accounts of appear
of the boulders on the seabedrumbling over your head. And it
was an early form of mining,tourism and geevor even when
they were working and softcoffee. Visitors could go down
and experience the undergroundand experience what it was like

(54:26):
to be an underground worker. So,I don't know did you ever do
that Sovay As a kid, did youever go down the minds as a kind
of daytripper

um, when so Crofty, you weren't able, I
wasn't aware that you were ableto do tourist trips there. While
it was still a work in my mind.It just closed a few years after
it closed. They started thosetrips when it was Working mine,

(55:01):
schoolchildren retaken? Oh myLord. I used to find it so
boring. But now I'm reallypleased. I had that opportunity.
But back in, back in the daywhen I was at school, I was so
fed up with people talking aboutmine, I could see mines from my
bedroom window. It's like, I'm,but yeah, it was a rare

(55:23):
privilege. You know, and I'vebeen to give or as a tourist,
and seen the beds where theywould sort the metals. And know
that I've got the memory ofhaving seen them actually
working or gave or Crofty. Sothat's a really important part

(55:45):
of my heritage, I suppose. Yeah,I think there's something in
this around again, like, whatwork kinds of labour using
hands, a disconnect of things?And that, that connection to
class? And like, white collar,blue collar work, or? You Yeah,

(56:14):
wanting to distance? Noteverybody, but there's a
sensation of development beingdistancing oneself from dirt, or
mess.

Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Yeah.
And that's almost that theworker, the working class built
this the working class, I'm justthinking about it in Australian
terms, because you can go to amine, you can visit an old mine
in Australia, or an old miningtown even. And it's really

(56:47):
nostalgic. It's presented in areally nostalgic way. And you
can pan for gold, and you know,all this kind of thing. And it's
almost like, you know, it's soinappropriate in so many ways,
but it is very much presented asthis is how we built these are
the people who built ourcountry, you know, very
disrespectful to the indigenouspeoples who of course, lived

(57:09):
there before it was colonised.But that's how it's presented.
And there is you know, thatconnect that these are the
workers. These are the peoplewho built this place who built
the land that we now findourselves on and it sounds a
little bit like that.

When I visited Silverton Broken Hill, yeah, and
when I visited Australia a whileback for Mollison wizard, and my
and that was when I was, yeah,looking for sort of berry mints.
And I found berry mints andSilverton. And it really felt to
me like it was an exhaustedplace. Like, yeah, the land had

(57:53):
really been wrung out. Yeah. Andand, and it was and it was a
great time.

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a few of
them. I've never been to thatone. But there are place places
like that most similar, whichare ghost towns, and they're
presented in that way. So eventhough people live there,
there's an element of it that'sbeen preserved as a ghost town.
So that, you know, particularlyto give a sense of heritage.

(58:20):
This is our heritage. You know,it's a very white, as I said,
very white, colonial type ofheritage. But that's what it's
presenting. These are the, theseare the men that hands of the
men that built this land. Theseare the workers it's that you
know, that real working theworking man who built this land,
that kind of sense, which, youknow, you see it in North

(58:42):
Northern England as wellnortheast, in the old mining
places there. There's a lot ofold calories up in the Durham
district and you can go to someold mines and have a similar
kind of experience. I mean,there's a Heritage Centre come
from, it's called now off thetop of my head. You know, very
famous Heritage Centre where youcan go and you can go in the old
mine. There's a

place called morwellham Quay in Cornwall,
that I went there on a meritMark trip in school. And this is
like definitely a touristdestination. And you get to go
in a really old mine and peopleare wandering around in
Victorian clothing, but it's areally sanitised experience.

(59:27):
Exactly. Yeah. And I remembereven like as a child being I'm
not quite sure about this

is something that used to come up in my
research people were afraid ofDisneyfication that used to be
the phrase use you know that themining landscape would become
justified or it can find out andand I totally get that. I
totally appreciate that. And Ionce had a very interesting

(01:00:00):
meeting with a chat we weresetting quite a while a bit of
finding landscape, a bit mindlandscape that hadn't been tied
up, tidied up much. And he wascomplaining about the amount of
paving stones that wereunderneath all of these coastal
benches, you know, and he said,if you add all these paving
stones up, it's an entire areaof Cornwall is going to be paved

(01:00:24):
over and, and he had a good rantabout paving slabs, which I
thought was quite an interestinginsight into surfaces, you know,
tarmac fake fake grass.

Proff. Emma Gilberthorpe (01:00:38):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Sovay Berriman (01:00:42):
Well, I could carry on speaking with you both
for so long, and ask you moreand more questions. And I just
want to say thank you so much,Hillary. Thank you so much,
Emma. It's been reallyfascinating speaking with you.
And yeah, thanks for yourcontribution to my bit of

(01:01:02):
research here.

Proff. Emma Gilberthorpe (01:01:03):
Thanks so much for the invitation. It's
been great. Lovely to have aconversation with you both.

Dr. Hilary Orange (01:01:08):
Yeah, really fascinating. Thanks. So let's do
it again sometime. Next project.Next project.

Sovay Berriman (01:01:14):
Meur ras, a’gas goslowes, thank you for
listening.
further episodes of the MESKLA |Brewyon Drudh podcast can be
find on my website Sovayberriman.co.uk. That's

(01:01:42):
sovayberriman.co.uk Where youalso find guest's biographies
and a resource page of links tofurther reading on the topics
discussed. If you feel inspiredto join the MESKLA conversation

(01:02:04):
about contemporary Cornishcultural identity, please get in
touch with me Sovay Berriman.via my website or social media,
you'll find MESKLA | BrewyonDrudh on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter. The MESKLA |Brewyon Drudh podcast and

(01:02:24):
project has been made possibledue to a wealth of inkind help
and support for many parties,including the Lowender Peran
festival. Gorsedh Kernow,Cornwall Council's Cornish
language office, Kowethas anyeth Kernewek, Cornwall
neighbourhoods for change andFalmouth University Falmouth

(01:02:47):
campus. The project has beensupported using public funding
by the National Lottery throughArts Council England, and
further funding has beengratefully received from
Historic England by RedruthUnlimited. Meur ras dhywgh
a'gas termyn, agas gweles. Thankyou for your time. See you

(01:03:10):
later.

All Episodes

MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh #3: A Conversation about Extraction

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Crime Junkie

Ridiculous History

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}MESKLA | Brewyon Drudh #3: A Conversation about Extraction