Reading indigeneity without race: colour, representation and uncertainty in photographic evidence

Reading indigeneity without race: colour, representation and uncertainty in photographic evidence

Indigenous histories are notoriously obscured in official and documentary records. Recovering past Indigenous perspectives depends on finding and reading fragmentary and incidental evidence. Photographic images are one such source and can potentially provide rich insights into Indigenous histories. However, the ways in which we read Indigenous people into these images, especially in settler societies such as Australia, is largely through physical differences. Such analyses often rely heavily on observed differences in skin colour.

The problems and social consequences of racial classification based on skin colour are well known within anthropology, and increasingly the discipline seeks to reject or find alternative means to discuss difference. However, in the context of reading the past through imagery, we rely on the identification of physical characteristics. This raises issues for what or who can be read as Indigenous when individuals’ cultural identities might be obscured or misrepresented by skin colour. It also has implications for representations and recognition of Indigenous peoples today and in the future.

This paper analyses some of the challenges of reading Australian Aboriginal people in images, including where Aboriginal people have (or may have) been used to represent an ‘other’ that is not necessarily their own identity; and where skin colour is not a defining element of self- identity.