Mapping Living Heritage in Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area, Norfolk Island: Routes, Customary Practices and Emotions

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn heritage management plans, maps have long been used to draw boundaries around regions and plot natural and cultural sites, trails and routes. Attention to participatory mapping and counter-mapping has increased alongside trends towards bottom-up approaches to heritage that recognise local communities as experts in their own heritage. This article reflects on participatory mapping activities undertaken on Norfolk Island, home to the UNESCO World Heritage listed Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area. Since the production of the first management plan in 1980, heritage management of Kingston has overwhelmingly privileged the preservation and interpretation of its convict heritage, with historically little attention paid to the island’s past Polynesian settlement and the ongoing Pitcairn settlement since 1856. The article presents findings from collaborative mapping exercises centred on routes, customary practices, and emotions undertaken with Pitcairn Settler descendants and others with long and deep connections to Norfolk Island. In particular, we focus on participants’ commentaries on Kingston’s heritage management. Our analysis highlights the importance of protecting heritage in ways that account for everyday and contemporary experiences, emotional resonances, and unbounded uses of this living heritage site.KEYWORDS: Heritage managementliving heritageWorld HeritageNorfolk IslandKingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic AreaAustralian Convict Sitesparticipatory mappingcounter-mappingmobilitiesemotions Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. Poulios, “Discussing Strategy in Heritage Conservation,” 21.2. Ibid., 23.3. Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts et al., Conservation Management Plan, 66.4. Smith, “Towards a Theoretical Framework,” 62.5. Department of Home Affairs and Environment, KAVHA Management Plan.6. Smith, Uses of Heritage.7. Avrami, “Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation,” 35.8. Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts et al., Conservation Management Plan, 22.9. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power”10. Campos-Delgado, “Counter-Mapping Migration”11. Sletto, “We Drew What We Imagined,” 445.12. e.g. Peluso, “Whose Woods Are These?”; Boatca, “Counter-Mapping as Method”13. e.g. Lobo et al., “Practising Lively Geographies”; Boschmann and Cubbon, “Sketch Maps and Qualitative GIS”14. e.g. Sletto, “We Drew What We Imagined”; Rye and Kurniawan, “‘Claiming Indigenous Rights”15. Wainwright and Bryan, “Cartography, Territory, Property,” 153.16. Ibid., 169.17. Reitz, “Back to the Drawing Board,” 328.18. Ibid. 327.19. Campos-Delgado, “Counter-Mapping Migration”20. Kim, “Critical Cartography 2.0,” 215.21. Avrami, “Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation”; Brown, “Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Management and Mapping”; Byrne and Nugent, Mapping Attachment; Byrne, “Counter-Mapping”; Harrison, “’Counter-Mapping’ Heritage, Communities and Places”; La Frenierre, “Mapping Heritage”; Nanda and Khare, “Spatial Mapping of ‘People – Place Ties’.”22. Schofield, “Heritage Expertise and the Everyday,” 2.23. Álvarez Larrain and McCall, “Participatory Mapping and Participatory GIS,” 663.24. Harrison, “’Counter-Mapping’ Heritage, Communities and Places,” 81.25. Ibid., 91.26. De Nardi, “Senses of Place, Senses of the Past,” 6.27. Hussain, “’Drawing In’ Other Worlds,” 127.28. Harrison, “’Counter-Mapping’ Heritage, Communities and Places,” 90.29. Álvarez Larrain and McCall, “Participatory Mapping and Participatory GIS’; Avrami, ‘Spatializing Values in Heritage Conservation”30. Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Ancestry, Language and Birthplace”31. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, “Territorial Limits”32. Australian Government, Norfolk Island Act 1979, 3; Wettenhall, “Norfolk Island as Region.”33. Ibid.34. Nobbs, Fateful Choices.35. See, e.g. Gibbs et al., “The Free and Unfree Settlements”; Nobbs, “KAVHA: Part II”36. Nobbs, Procrustes Ascendant, 44.37. Norfolk Island Council of Elders and Norfolk Island People for Democracy, “Media Release”38. Department of Home Affairs and Environment, KAVHA Management Plan.39. Australian Government, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts et al., Kingston Site Master Plan.40. Baker et al., Popular Music Heritage, 61.41. See Baker and Cantillon, ‘Zines as Community Archive’42. Muzaini and Minca, “Rethinking Heritage, but ‘From Below’”43. Smith, “Foreword,” xi.44. Buffett, Speak Norfolk Today; Nobbs-Palmer, A Dictionary of Norfolk Words.45. To contextualise the locations mentioned throughout this section, we encourage readers to refer to the official Kingston visitors’ map: https://kingston.norfolkisland.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/kavha_visitors_map.pdf.46. Hutchinson, “Bounty Street Bridge”47. GML Heritage + Context, “Cultural Landscape Management Plan”48. See, e.g. Green, “Notions of Town Character”49. See Poulios, “Discussing strategy in heritage conservation”50. Wijesuriya, “Living Heritage,” 43.51. Australian Government, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts et al., Kingston Site Master Plan, 4, 5, 10, 20, 28.52. Ibid., 38.53. Ibid., 38, 42.54. Ibid., 42, 43.55. Ibid., 45.56. Macdonald, Difficult Heritage.57. Waterton et al., “The Utility of Discourse Analysis,” 339.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Australian Research Council [SR200200711].