School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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Chained to their signs: remembering breastplates

Healy, Chris ; Creed, Barbara ; Hoorn, Jeanette (Pluto Press, 2001)

At first glance, breastplates might seem to be just another device in the technology of colonial capture in Australia. Take the photograph of Bilin Bilin wearing a plate inscribed 'Jackey Jackey - King of the Logan and Pimpama'. The plate, the chain and the conventions of photography produce a Yugambeh elder as a shackled criminal on display - he is both a primitive in tableau and one of 'the usual suspects'. The image seems to both document captivity and evoke those 'frontier photographs' of Aboriginal prisoners in the desert bound together with heavy chains attached to manacles around their necks. This initial impression is right in that it recognizes some of the ways in which colonial captivity is not only about actual imprisonment but equally about how captivity is understood, represented, interpreted and made historical. Still, in this chapter I want to persuade you that breastplates and photographs of breastplates performed other roles: as cross-cultural objects and signs.