Professor Sarah Baker of Griffith University and Dr Zelmarie Cantillon have been running a project called “Reimagining Norfolk Island’s KAVHA” and funded by the Australian Research Council. It has been based on interviews and workshops and involves the publication of e-zines.
This project analyses how cultural injustices are reinforced or resisted within KAVHA as a living heritage site. Specifically, the researchers focus on Pitcairn Settler descendants’ relationships with Daun’taun, as well as that of other residents who have long and deep connections to the area, and their experience of heritage management in KAVHA. In addition to scholarly writing (e.g. peer-reviewed articles), the researchers aim to capture these relationships in “zines”.
The zines in this series are a form of public history and community archiving, enabling people to tell their stories on their own terms. The zines are a way to facilitate the sharing of memories, experiences, feelings and local knowledge. This isn’t about creating a definitive history of the subject at hand. Instead, the zines in this series provide a space where multiple voices can appear together, recording the emotional resonance of the past. As such, the zines are forms of heritage activism which emphasise the democratisation of history-making.
Their website https://reimaginingkavha.com/zines/explains the project.
Their scholarly article “Zines as community archive” was published in the journal Archival Science in February 2022. (This article is re-published here under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence).
Their first zine, “See You at the Paradise” (19.4MB), was published in September 2021, the second, “Mais Daun’taun Vol. 1” (19.1MB), in December 2021 and the third, “Mais Daun’taun Vol. 2” (352.5MB) in April 2022.
The research team acknowledges the Pitcairn Settler descendants as the custodians of the land on which the project takes place. We pay respect to the Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Norfolk Island people.