Location of historic mass graves from the 1919 Spanish Influenza in the Aboriginal community of Cherbourg using geophysics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25120/qar.25.2022.3890Abstract
The Spanish Influenza of 1919 had a devastating effect on Aboriginal Australian communities, particularly Cherbourg (formerly known as Barambah Aboriginal Reserve), which resulted in a loss of ~15% of their population. Deaths happened so quickly that coffins were not built and, in some cases, trenches or mass graves were used to inter the dead in addition to individual graves. Although the trench locations were formally unknown by the Cherbourg community today, a major concern of the Cherbourg Elders is that they wanted to memorialise those affected by the 1919 pandemic, especially 100 years later. One attempt to locate the mass graves was to apply geophysical methods in the New and Old Cherbourg cemeteries to detect these unmarked burials. Our paper demonstrates how ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry were used along with oral histories and Indigenous knowledge to detect three mass graves associated with the Spanish Influenza. Outcomes such as this play an important role is supporting ‘Truth Telling’ for the Cherbourg Aboriginal community.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Kelsey M. Lowe, Eric Law AM
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the list of references. Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.
2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
5. An article will not be published until the signed Author Agreement has been completed and returned to the Editors by the contributor.