ABSTRACT
The indigenous autonomy and reciprocity entailed by Macassan-Aboriginal histories is especially appealing in the continuing, oppressive climate of the Northern Territory Emergency Response. The history's Muslim element is perceived to counter the overwhelmingly white British cast of dominant Australian historiographical frameworks. Perhaps most significant, foregrounding the mobility and creativity of Indigenous Australians undermines the static and fixed identities imposed upon them by processes of recognition. This chapter explores the production and circulation of Macassan photographs within this developing visual taxonomy, and the value that such data came to possess as scientific evidence for race. Despite the contemporary enjoyment of its exoticism, in many ways the recent celebration of a hybrid, cosmopolitan Aboriginal history neatly reverses nineteenth-century views. Scientists such as Wallace and the Italians Odoardo Beccari, Luigi Maria D'Albertis and Enrico Giglioli sought to prove difference, and sameness, on the basis of visual appearance, drawing on photographic evidence.
