In response to increasing reports of frontier conflict between Aboriginal and European people in Tasmania, Governor Arthur issued proclamation boards like the one below. The idea was to encourage friendship and show equality between Aboriginal and European people.
A proclamation board illustrating that Aboriginal and European people could live harmoniously with each other and were equal before the law.
The proclamation boards were nailed to trees in 1830 in the hope that both Aboriginal and European people would read and abide by them. Of course, it was presumed that Aboriginal people would understand the pictograms and adopt the European law! Unfortunately, the equality implied in the pictograms did not translate into society.
We use the proclamation board in our program ‘Investigating Sources’ to illustrate the usefulness and reliability of a public document. It is really interesting to observe how students ‘read’ the pictograms, not just the intended meaning but also which direction they read the board (top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right etc). We use the students’ interpretations of the pictograms to illustrate how there could have been many readings from both Aboriginal and European people.
This is a great source and has inspired as many interpretations as methods of reading. It also encourages students to contemplate what relations were like between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians at various times in history (including prior to European settlement).
Today and tomorrow we are briefing the Museum’s Visitor Services Hosts on Education programs, providing them with an insight into what we do, how and why we do it.
We looked at Investigating Sources today and Host Anthony was inspired by the Proclamation Board. He said he would like to see a mirror placed at the bottom of the board so that the Board reads (top to bottom) as a history of where we have been – i.e. all the way through to the end of the proclamation board itself and then through two more mirrored ‘lines’ of murder and punishment. He said that he hoped we were heading in the future to the final two mirrored lines – the handshake and then the harmonious image .
I thought that was such a wonderful and beautiful idea.