https://hcommons.org/groups/settler-colonialism/ Activity feed for the group, Settler Colonialism. Sun, 05 Apr 2026 11:53:18 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 a55b4a77e181caebb929ba9296e5d6cd https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1901425/ Sat, 12 Oct 2024 03:01:40 -0400 The 2024 Back to Belgenny festival showcased living history at Belgenny Farm, featuring reenactments, traditional trades, and various activities such as sheepdog trials and guided tours. The event included a demonstration by Governor Macquarie’s regiment and highlighted the farm's historical significance, providing visitors with an immersive g…[Read more]

]]> 0 857b34315f35f69abcfc478dea7e254e https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1901078/ Tue, 08 Oct 2024 03:00:29 -0400 This newspaper article examines policing in the Camden district of NSW. Policing was an integral part of the NSW colony, as was the building of residences for the local police constables and premises to keep offenders. Policing started in the Camden village in 1840, with the first police presence at the Nepean River crossing in 1804. With the…[Read more]

]]> 0 39ee4f9640abb8b8dee9298ca61ac684 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1900695/ Fri, 04 Oct 2024 03:00:23 -0400 This blog post explores The Cowpastures, a region in New South Wales that originated in the late 18th century with the escape of cattle from the First Fleet. It evolved through European settlement, shaping cultural landscapes influenced by Aboriginal peoples. By the 1840s, it had become a defined regional identity, later overshadowed by the…[Read more]

]]> 0 b9e864001f337c298f9440a4476b1946 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1898808/ Mon, 16 Sep 2024 03:00:12 -0400 The blog post explores the history of Denbigh, a significant colonial farming complex in Australia that recently opened its gardens to the public for a rare charity viewing. The property, with a dark history of conflict and anxiety, reveals layers of history, from dispossession of Aboriginal lands to dairying to urban invasion. Denbigh's fortified…[Read more]

]]> 0 edb2b43e32e3a52622f3380e19cf1ad1 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1898151/ Sun, 08 Sep 2024 03:00:15 -0400 This newspaper article examines the arrival of Hawaiian music and dance after sweeping the rest of the country on the stage, at the movie and broadcast across the radio waves. The craze of the 1920s and 1930s was centred on hula dancing and the steel guitar. The first mention of Hawaiian culture in Camden occurred in 1925 when young Daphne Butt…[Read more]

]]> 0 3e4bf9b298a42e4a42046bcbc2375b2f https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1898033/ Fri, 06 Sep 2024 03:00:16 -0400 Australia Historical Association Newsletter 5 September 2024
History Week 2024, ‘The Memory Landscape of the Cowpastures’, Ian Willis
Camden Library, John Street, Camden, Saturday 7 September 2024, 1.00pm AEST
In this talk, Dr Ian Willis OAM will offer a new look at the Cowpastures story in the Macarthur region. Ian will use examples of mem…[Read more]

]]> 0 321547887f02d5fad1aa3885ba60e573 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1894676/ Fri, 26 Jul 2024 03:01:03 -0400 Mirza Athar Baig is a unique and unconventional novelist of Urdu. Each of his works of art constructs a new world. On top of that, his works also change the way we look at the world. His writings seem to be the stories of an adventurer, always trying to discover a new world. In 2022, when his novel Khafif Makhfi Ki Khwab Beeti came out, readers…[Read more]

]]> 0 f30a8bfb2ab73dfd716aa561485deea3 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1891545/ Thu, 11 Jul 2024 03:00:16 -0400 This newspaper article is about the Cowpastures Region, which emerged as a regional concept in the late 18th century. It starts with the story of the cattle that escaped from the Sydney colony in 1788 and were brought to New South Wales by the First Fleet. The region is a cultural construct of European settler society. It was based on the…[Read more]

]]> 0 69ed42a054cdf13dd1162ffdcf6f5225 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1891250/ Mon, 08 Jul 2024 03:02:13 -0400 A novel is at least a new world, or a new understanding of it. Is it possible to present the new world with old words? Or it requires new words. If the existing social structure (ethos) and concept of reality (world view) is to be changed, then mere wording does not work, one has to do experiments of form. Then, in a post-colonial society, it is…[Read more]

]]> 0 4b472678d05c90e9850c443d03b8e622 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1891246/ Mon, 08 Jul 2024 03:02:10 -0400 A novel is at least a new world, or a new understanding of it. Is it possible to present the new world with old words? Or it requires new words. If the existing social structure (ethos) and concept of reality (world view) is to be changed, then mere wording does not work, one has to do experiments of form. Then, in a post-colonial society, it is…[Read more]

]]> 0 6499ce1e35ad252bb4806af1b480d218 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1888403/ Wed, 05 Jun 2024 03:00:58 -0400 This blog post examines Australian writer Nancy Phelan's "Some Came Early, Some Came Late" (1970) and how it explores the historical significance of the Cobbitty region in New South Wales. It focuses on the efforts of early colonial English immigrants to recreate a 'little England'. Phelan's unique perspective, influenced by her own experiences…[Read more]

]]> 0 a57d0595bdf47619b1b56041dae4b26d https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1886922/ Thu, 23 May 2024 03:00:23 -0400 This newspaper article examines the four bridges at the Ford on the Nepean River at the entry point to the country town of Camden NSW. Access to the southern side of the Nepean River has been an issue since European settlement and the discovery of the Wild Cattle in 1795. Governor Hunter named the area the Cowpastures, and it became a restricted…[Read more]

]]> 0 c67f1ef9e6cd618f70697c9282764118 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1886669/ Mon, 20 May 2024 03:00:32 -0400 This blog post examines Elizabeth Farm, which was the home of John and Elizabeth Macarthur for over 35 years and played a central role in Australia's wool industry. Following years of neglect, it was transformed into a house museum in 1984. With extensive gardens and historical significance, it stands as one of the oldest surviving buildings in Australia.

]]> 0 8e3a3ddedef711ebd0a6b43816782402 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1885795/ Fri, 10 May 2024 03:01:29 -0400 The 4B worldwide movement has captivated the attention of many feminists and childfree women. The 4B movement calls for the refusal to date, marry, have sex with, or birth children for men. Starting in South Korea in 2019, the movement has quickly spread around the world. The 4B movement in the U.S. adds momentum from the legacy of the childfree…[Read more]

]]> 0 20bcbeea2c2330dc4885a7893ee4a806 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1885144/ Sat, 04 May 2024 03:01:18 -0400 In this unpublished work, I set out to critically analyze the film 'Killers of the Flower Moon.' The purpose is to begin developing a framework that incorporates feminist, post-colonial critique into critical media literacy practices. While this is the first attempt to do so, this blog entry lays the groundwork for what this could look like in practice.

]]> 0 06211f5ab7409e9690e388d86389809f https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1885001/ Fri, 03 May 2024 03:00:41 -0400 In this previously unpublished scholarship, I hope to unpack the question of how land is narrated in K-12 spaces through the settler memory using the elementary Land Run reenactments as a case study. While this project is situated as part of my larger dissertation work, what I hope to offer here is how I am thinking about settler memory as an…[Read more]

]]> 0 911a545a908536fae7baf9498dcc6562 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1884512/ Wed, 01 May 2024 03:04:38 -0400 The Camden History Journal is a bi-annual Camden Historical Society NSW publication.
Camden History March 2024 v5n7 (editor: Ian Willis) :
Dianne Matterson: Camden Bags Store: An Intriguing and Enigmatic Past, p. 301.
Lee Stratton: Honouring Brian Stratton, p. 308.
Max Walker: Building the Cowpastures: The Legacy of Convicts in the…[Read more]

]]> 0 70aa2f7eb16077297b0eec28d7eb56b6 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1882905/ Fri, 12 Apr 2024 03:00:33 -0400 This book details the history of the presence of Chinese market gardeners on the Nepean River floodplain at Camden NSW from the late 19th century for over one hundred years. It is a collection of articles written by Camden identities, starting with RE Nixon in the 1970s and then moving to contemporary times and the extensive research by Julie…[Read more]

]]> 0 2b12f1684e2bd8a90cc81416eee0a2c0 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1882901/ Fri, 12 Apr 2024 03:00:21 -0400 This newspaper article tells the story of a clump of Agave americana, which is native to Mexica and southern USA, that has grown on the verge of Cawdor Road south of the Camden town centre for decades. The plants have created a lot of conjecture and are a bit of a local mystery. It is hard to tell fact from fiction. One story says that it is the…[Read more]

]]> 0 0e20a253586581b9639b0d7ee9fd0bb1 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1881893/ Tue, 02 Apr 2024 03:00:20 -0400 This blog post tells the story of the agave plants near Cawdor Road, Camden, which have become part of local folklore. Stories span murder, historical colonial gardens, and Indigenous conflict. These slow-growing succulents have sparked controversy and conjecture, with their true history and significance remaining a mystery. Despite attempts to…[Read more]

]]> 0 f3c2548f7fb017bee79841a06e81780a https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1873819/ Mon, 29 Jan 2024 03:00:12 -0500 Dr Ian Willis presents a talk for the ISAA Work-in-Progress seminar on 'The memory landscape of the Cowpastures in memorials, monuments and murals'. The talk is held at the State Library of NSW on 9/2/24 in the Flinders Room at 11am.

]]> 0 a5dddc0713a127274c9167611e0b3c51 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1869178/ Tue, 26 Dec 2023 03:01:05 -0500 This study explores the changing relationship of communities in Colonial and Post-colonial Urdu Literature. It attempts to map out the communal space in the symbolic world of literature given to the Christians over a century by Urdu fiction writers. In colonial India, the missionary activities especially for female education evoked different…[Read more]

]]> 0 fcd74cbebb2dc05a60012a96cd99ecf7 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1867271/ Sat, 09 Dec 2023 03:00:55 -0500 Colonial predicament made the life and its understanding complex in the Subcontinent. To represent this complexity, Urdu writers found the polyphonic genre, i.e. the novel helpful. They used different techniques of characterization to narrate the social hierarchy of characters. The novel also provided the space for them to attract the people with…[Read more]

]]> 0 ed0e455d3f1ae7852c7fa705bb064e25 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1866941/ Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:01:07 -0500 This article explores the connection between the development of new literary genres in Urdu and colonial authority. British Colonial authorities tried to develop a system of scrutiny for local literatures. To limit the 'vernacular' literatures within the 'suggested' traits, colonial administration used its local subordinates in disseminating the…[Read more]

]]> 0 0b29e2d59c02c1e3c9a5e04e538e4a4e https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1866935/ Wed, 06 Dec 2023 03:00:21 -0500 All around the community in the Macarthur region are cultural artefacts that are representations of the settler-colonial narrative of the Cowpastures, which was variously a colonial frontier, a government reserve, and a formal region.
Today, the material culture of the Cowpastures is hidden in plain sight and appears to have been ‘forgotten’ by…[Read more]

]]> 0 89b3411524a0f080c2f363dbca310463 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1863137/ Tue, 31 Oct 2023 03:00:21 -0400 The Narellan Heritage Walking Tour is an interesting and informative way to observe and learn about the history and heritage of this Cowpastures village.
First published in 2010 by photographers Kylie and Peter Lyons.

]]> 0 58312b8d34335af665eb9dbdcf5d55a6 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1860324/ Mon, 02 Oct 2023 03:00:23 -0400 This paper contributes to a project called Camdens Worldwide to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the Elizabethan historian/antiquarian William Camden. It is a worldwide project to mark places called Camden conducted by the Camden History Society in the UK.
The establishment of Camden, New South Wales, the town in 1840, was a private…[Read more]

]]> 0 57974ae3721a4160828028497a9183f5 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1856297/ Thu, 24 Aug 2023 01:13:03 -0400 The article takes account of the colonial archives and analyses the strategies of colonizers, which brought about not only the new forms of knowledge in India but also restructured the society and statecraft here. I argue that the colonial administration developed the public instruction department to impart a new character to the natives and used…[Read more]

]]> 0 0074bafbe51aa20a7d01d15f39be855c https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1850413/ Wed, 28 Jun 2023 02:24:06 -0400 The Burragorang Valley is one of those lost places that people fondly remember from the past. A place of imagination and dreaming where former residents fondly re-tell stories from their youth. These places create potent memories and nostalgia for many people and continue to be places of interest. They are localities of myths and legends and…[Read more]

]]> 0 14c417eca8f7525c15e5877987ac57dd https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1847588/ Wed, 31 May 2023 02:23:58 -0400 The story of European settlement in the Cowpastures is intimately connected to the story of the convicts and their masters. This story has not been told, and there is little understanding of the role of the convicts in the Cowpastures district before 1840. Who were they? What did they do? Did they stay in the district?

]]> 0 cc3b0129bdfeccd8c48cbfa7a6237350 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1843227/ Tue, 02 May 2023 02:23:59 -0400 The Camden township is located 65 kilometres southwest of the Sydney CBD and, in recent years, has been absorbed by Sydney's urban growth. The main streets are a mix of Victorian, Edwardian and interwar architecture comprising commercial, government and domestic buildings. The town site was originally the entry point into what became Governor…[Read more]

]]> 0 aec372207aa32410d595d4be4a1e4e51 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1840219/ Thu, 06 Apr 2023 02:24:04 -0400 The Plough and Harrow Inn at 75-79 Argyle Street is the second oldest hotel in Camden and is still on the original site. The Camden Inn (1841) was the first hotel in Camden. Located on the Great South Road, the Plough and Harrow was part of the fabric of Macarthur's private village of Camden within the Cowpastures. By the early 20th century,…[Read more]

]]> 0 5175018d6bc941129a13336780720869 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1834848/ Mon, 20 Feb 2023 02:24:01 -0500 This is a thoroughly researched and readable book that provides a glimpse of life in western New South Wales during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the eyes of a woman, Rachel Kennedy (1845-1930). The book is a wonderful contribution to female biography and regional community history, and illustrates the precarity of life for women…[Read more]

]]> 0 4553b571af94ab3985e306ae8319003e https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1828000/ Sun, 01 Jan 2023 02:27:04 -0500 Any memorials, monuments, historic sites, and other public facilities commemorate, celebrate and generally remind us about the landscape of the Cowpastures. In recent decades there has been a nostalgia turn in recovering the memory of the Cowpastures landscape. This is cast in terms of the pioneers and the legacy of the European settlement.
Some…[Read more]

]]> 0 3149c6ef117500a99aa72bb9382b52ad https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1827994/ Sun, 01 Jan 2023 02:26:37 -0500 The establishment of Camden in 1840 was a private venture of James and William Macarthur, sons of colonial patriarch John Macarthur, at the Nepean River crossing on the northern edge of the family's pastoral property of Camden Park. The town's site was enclosed on three sides by a sweeping bend in the Nepean River and has regularly flooded the…[Read more]

]]> 0 545b20c822c9b26038bd3a5f160850f6 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1827273/ Wed, 21 Dec 2022 02:39:29 -0500 The Cowpastures was a vague area south of the Nepean River floodplain on the southern edge of Sydney's Cumberland Plain. The Dharawal Indigenous people who managed the area were sidelined in 1796 by Europeans when Governor Hunter named the 'Cow Pasture Plains' in his sketch map. He had visited the area the previous year to witness the escaped…[Read more]

]]> 0 c7caf3ccf7cc1e08121d43954aeec39a https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1818251/ Thu, 20 Oct 2022 02:25:58 -0400 The Cowpastures emerged as a regional concept in the late 18th century, starting with the story of the cattle of the First Fleet that escaped their captivity at the Sydney settlement. The region was a culturally constructed landscape that ebbed and flowed with European activity. It grew around the government reserve established by Governors…[Read more]

]]> 0 54754be04f1eb1c56dcca56f3ff248d3 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1818250/ Thu, 20 Oct 2022 02:25:57 -0400 This presentation was an overview of an ongoing project on how material culture across the Macarthur region of NSW is a store of collective memories of early colonial New South Wales and the Cowpastures region from 1795 to 1840. There are monuments, memorials, murals, and other items of material culture that prompt collective memories and tell…[Read more]

]]> 0 65196f887378ca64ba51dd12c50c51b6 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1815896/ Fri, 30 Sep 2022 02:25:45 -0400 Early European settlers were the key actors in a place-making exercise that constructed an English-style landscape aesthetic on the colonial stage in the Cowpastures district of New South Wales. The aesthetic became part of the settler colonial project and the settlers’ aim of taking possession of territory involved the construction of a c…[Read more]

]]> 0 3e86104b7363dc9acf5c32ccd6bf9c88 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1780380/ Sun, 01 May 2022 02:25:09 -0400 Urdu literature saw a "Reform boom" in the second half of nineteenth century. Most of the literati were engaged in understanding, and presenting their views on, the rapidly changing world around them. This article analyses a text produced in 1893 by Shad Azeemabadi, enhancing the need for reform in the Zenana. By underscoring the relationship of…[Read more]

]]> 0 05b679968fb0f4d0eaf5650e78d4bd10 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1780377/ Sun, 01 May 2022 02:24:50 -0400 Nazir Ahmad, often considered to be the first Urdu novelist, used narratives for understanding the quickly changing world around him, and in his work, shaped expanding possibilities and new roles for Muslim ashrāf women. Although he is usually thought of as a cleric who had a traditional approach towards society and new forms of knowledge, in…[Read more]

]]> 0 556438aa4c2308c545cdda7edeba2549 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1780374/ Sun, 01 May 2022 02:24:32 -0400 This article explores the normalization of Ashraf Culture and Colonizers in Majalis un-Nisa. It is argued that the colonial authorities tried at their capacity to keep themselves at length from the colonized physically and disseminated the discourse of colonial difference to present themselves as role models symbolically. While preparing the…[Read more]

]]> 0 6bdb634fa08aeecce3ec5a06563172e7 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1780263/ Sat, 30 Apr 2022 02:24:32 -0400 Identity is the construction of the cultural process of a people, i.e. the social milieu in turn defines and shapes humans into the kinds of individuals they are. This shaping of identity is carried further and represented through the literature of a culture as well. It is the characters which come to stand for certain traits and the kinds of…[Read more]

]]> 0 4fd432e2a82505dc081406ecd861a3c0 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1780262/ Sat, 30 Apr 2022 02:24:31 -0400 To determine the social status of a person, Sorokin coined the idea of social space. This theme is useful in analyzing the relative position of a person in her/his group and her/his horizontal or vertical movement within and to other groups. Novel is a symbolic space, which makes possible for writers to construct the relative social status of…[Read more]

]]> 0 fc5a0ac37489112d20a84cb739d11cd3 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1770391/ Fri, 04 Feb 2022 02:25:39 -0500 Russian military aggression and diplomatic pressure against Ukraine stems from the neo-imperial thinking of Russian elites and ordinary citizens. This thinking requires reproduction of expansionist patterns that once led Russia to its “historical greatness”: construction of a territorially large state, rich in resources and demographically div…[Read more]

]]> 0 99a177cace10af7706d1a79ea5a12c1a https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1687981/ Wed, 20 May 2020 16:25:48 -0400 This autobiographical co-authored essay explores how hate speech wounds within the logic of the Palestine exception, whereby Israel-critical speech is subjected to censorship and silencing that does not affect other controversial speech. Three months after the UK government’s “adoption” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA)…[Read more]

]]> 0 a7a6b897aba5d7dba9c5edc625810451 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1669262/ Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:25:39 -0500 Ukraine’s current fight against Russian aggression carries deep historic resonances which we ignore at our peril.

]]> 0 47f321dccd041383da870bde9e497834 https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1669256/ Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:25:23 -0500 Post-communist Ukraine is in the midst of implementing reforms which it missed for centuries. It gradually evolves into a unique geopolitical entity which, finally, acquires a fair chance to be consistent and self-sufficient. However, if the West takes a neutral stance today – as it frequently happened in history – a “decentralized” Ukraine…[Read more]

]]> 0 b9d102ce59ae316edea453ac3ac13a0b https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1669216/ Sun, 03 Nov 2019 16:25:34 -0500 The article outlines the geopolitical rationale behind contemporary Russian expansionism, as well as presents the asymmetric and “hybrid” mechanisms utilized by the Kremlin to solidify its authority in the post-communist space. To do this, the article refers to the findings of American, British, Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals on the nature of…[Read more]

]]> 0 8220056c6fedb00aae80fa5c5dbebfae https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1625835/ Sat, 15 Dec 2018 16:25:24 -0500 While Anton Chekhov’s influence on Katherine Mansfield is widely acknowledged, the two writers’ settler colonial aesthetics have not been brought into systematic comparison. Yet Chekhov’s chronicle of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East parallels in important ways Mansfield’s near-contemporaneous account of colonial life in New Zealand…[Read more]

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