Paper short abstract:

This paper describes how a major pre-colonial centre for Aboriginal ritual and economic exchanges in north-western Australia became transformed into a labour camp for the pastoral and sandal-wood economies which evolved in this area in the early 1920s in the wake of settlement by de-mobbed veterans of the British Army.

Paper long abstract:

This paper describes how a major pre-colonial centre for Aboriginal ritual and economic exchanges in north-western Australia became transformed into a labour camp for the pastoral and sandal-wood economies which evolved in this area in the early 1920s in the wake of settlement by de-mobbed veterans of the British Army. The analysis combines the perspectives of an anthropologist and an historian to explore how indigenous and settler notions of spatiality and temporality in the north-eastern Kimberley region became articulated to sustain an uneasy accommodation for over forty years. This approach is intended to counter a strong tendency in Aboriginal studies to privilege experiences and imagery of spatiality over temporality as though these two could be considered in isolation from each other. The issue of transformations of indigenous trading networks alongside the rapid commoditisation of time and space in the colonial context allows these two imaginary schemata to be treated as interdependent.