ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to hold the discipline of Heritage Studies to account by asking researchers to prepare the ground for a collective reimagining of their field, led by the work of previously marginalised voices. It starts with a story about a particular place, the town of Fitzroy Crossing, and explores the way many of its Aboriginal communities, their histories and futures have been pushed aside, beyond the line of sight. Borrowing from the work of Val Plumwood (“Shadow Places and the Politics of Dwelling.” Australian Humanities Review, 2008;44:139–150) and her notion of ‘shadow places’, the chapter draws attention to what she terms a singularisation of place, through which a limited set of values, knowledges and stories are routinely privileged while others are left hidden and invisible. In this regard, Fitzroy seems to provide a potent example of Australia's colonial heritage, particularly the way the huge social and environmental costs of colonialism are so often – and easily – pushed into the shadows. Importantly, however, this is not really a chapter about Fitzroy. Rather, it is a chapter that asks how we might change our practices as researchers and cultivate within our scholarship a consistent attention to colonial scaffolding – to the colonial values, concepts, and structures that undergird our field and the wider academy.
