History Now: Cultural Heritage in Danger: Current Crises and Practical Solutions

This discussion will feature contemporary case studies of cultural heritage destruction from abroad and locally, including recent damage to the National Museum of Sudan. However, it is not just conflict scenarios, the conversation will cover case studies of damage due to earthquake and natural damage and wilful damage. We will also consider how sites of historical trauma become historical sites themselves, and how they are reflected in contemporary perspectives.

With presentations by Dr Julien Cooper (Macquarie University), Professor Richard Mackay (Australia ICOMOS and Deakin University) and Dr Charlotte Feakins (University of Sydney), this wide-ranging talk will take us around the world and examine a range of issues around the fight to preserve the past, international obligations to protect historic sites and traditions and what we may be able to contribute from Australia.

The History Council of NSW and the Chau Chak Wing Museum, and the Vere Gordon Childe Centre at the University of Sydney are pleased to present the 2025 History Now series.

The History Council of NSW has been supported in 2025 by the NSW Government through a grant from Create NSW.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Framing The Theme
• 4:16 Why Heritage Destruction Matters Globally
• 9:53 Introducing The Speakers
• 13:13 Weaponising Heritage In Modern Conflicts
• 23:45 Natural Disasters And Policy Gaps
• 31:42 Development Versus Conservation
• 36:51 Sudan’s Heritage And Why It Matters
• 45:55 Inside The Sudan National Museum’s Ruin
• 53:12 Beyond Khartoum: Sites, Looting, And Refugees
• 59:24 What Help Looks Like On The Ground
• 1:04:42 Trauma Heritage: Concepts And Practice
• 1:14:35 From Theory To Community Healing
• 1:23:00 Q&A: Practical Responses And Prevention
• 1:30:20 Closing Invites And Next Events

Transcript

Catherine Shirley: 0:01

Welcome to the History Now 2025 podcast series, brought to you by the History Council of New South Wales in partnership with the Chau Chak Wing Museum and the Vere Gordon Childe Centre at the University of Sydney. In this episode, we discuss the intentional and unintentional destruction, damage or loss of human cultural history through armed conflict, natural disaster, human intervention, or deliberate attempts to erase cultural identity. We will also consider how sites of historical trauma become historical sites themselves and then how they're reflected in contemporary perspectives. With presentations by Dr. Julian Cooper from Macquarie University, Professor Richard Mackay from Australia Icomos and Deakin University, and Dr. Charlotte Feekins from the University of Sydney, this wide-ranging talk will take us around the world and examine a range of issues such as the fight to preserve the past, international obligations to protect historic sites and traditions, and what we can contribute from Australia.

Craig Barker: 1:17

Good evening, everybody. And that this truly is unceded Gadigaland and always has and always will be. My name's Craig Barker. I'm an archaeologist, educator, and I'm head of public engagement at the Chow Chak Wing Museum. It's been my great honor to convene the 2025 series of History Now Talks on behalf of the History Council of New South Wales and the Chow Chak Wing Museum and the Vere Gordon Child Centre for Historical Investigation here at the University of Sydney. The series is presented with the support of Create New South Wales. The History Now series has a long history, ironically. And so I'd like to invite the History Council of New South Wales Executive and Strategic Development Officer, Catherine Shirley, to the microphone, just to talk for a few minutes about the History Now series before I introduce our presenters tonight and what we aim to achieve in tonight's presentation. Catherine.

Catherine Shirley: 2:50

Well, hello and welcome to all of you, and thanks for coming out here tonight on such a cold winter's night. It's great to see you all. And I'm just going to say a brief welcome on behalf of the History Council of New South Wales. We've been associated with this series for the last few years now, and then on and off over a number of other years as well.

Catherine Shirley: 3:12

History Now owes its existence to passionate historians, many of whom I've seen in the audience over the last year or so. And they wanted to bring new perspectives to all aspects of historical practice when they first established this series. And as we're witnessing in this time of global affairs, historical perspective helps us make sense of current chaos. It shines a light on our culture as well as other cultures. And it helps us comprehend the true value of the human experience and living in a civilised society. Our speakers tonight to be introduced shortly by Craig, are renowned in their fields and more than well equipped to examine the range of issues around the fight to preserve the past and international obligations to protect historic sites and traditions. So I'll now hand back to Craig for what promises to be a very stimulating discussion. Thank you.

Craig Barker: 4:15

Thank you, Catherine. The destruction of cultural heritage, whether through conflict, deliberate political or commercial imperatives, natural disaster, or regrettably, increasingly climate change, is a key issue to the heart of all of us interested in heritage management, museums like this one, and understanding human history more broadly. And yet it is occurring globally, including as we'll hear tonight here in Australia. Whilst less significant compared to the loss of human life in the case of many of these scenarios, the destruction of any cultural heritage is a devastating loss, not just to its immediate community, but to humanity as a whole. So, what can be done to help prevent such losses in the future? Tonight, it's my great pleasure to bring together three Australian thinkers to discuss various aspects of the struggle to preserve, protect, and rebuild cultural heritage, uh sites and uh markers that are endangered, threatened, and damaged. Obviously, a much wider conversation than we can fit within an hour. But each of our presenters tonight are going to speak for 20 minutes each, and then we're going to have a very quick question and answer session at the end, where we'll try to pull together some of those threads and I will uh allow some questions from the floor too, if uh anyone has any burning issues that come up from the conversation that our presenters might be able to approach. I'll introduce all three of the presenters now, and then each of them will come up one at a time. Um, so firstly, it's my great privilege to introduce Richard Mackay. Uh, Richard is the Director of Possibilities at Mackay Strategic, a member of the Australian Heritage Council, an adjunct professor in the Cultural Heritage and Museum Study Program at Deakin University. Richard has worked in heritage management for more than four decades. He was a founder, a founding partner of GML Heritage, my one-time boss, former chair of the Australian World Heritage Advisory Committee, a long time ago now, and inaugural chair of the New South Wales Heritage Council's State Heritage Register Committee. Richard is an ICOMOS cultural advisor to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, where he's just been in Paris, just returning from the committee's 47th session, which amongst many other matters considered the impact of natural disasters and conflict on World Heritage properties in Asia and the Middle East, as well as the current conflict in Ukraine. Richard will be followed by Dr. Julian Cooper, an Egyptologist, nubiologist, and archaeologist with a focus on the archaeology of the eastern desert region of Africa and the history of its nomadic peoples. He is the director of the Atvi? Is that right? Yes, Atvi survey project, a fieldwork project surveying the vast deserts between the Nile and the Red Sea. These surveys aim to shed new light on the varied heritage of this desert, from Neolithic rock art to ancient Egyptian trade routes and medieval gold mines. Julian from Macquarie University is a recipient of an ARC Future Fellowship, Rescuing Pharaoh's Gold Mines, Archaeological Conservation in East Sudan. And he will be tonight providing a case study, a deep depth into a complex zone that many of us in Australia are not conscious of, and that is cultural heritage destruction within Sudan, including the National Museum. Our third presenter is Dr. Charlotte Feekins, an internationally recognized heritage researcher, practitioner, and lecturer, whose work sits at the intersection of heritage studies, historical and contemporary archaeology, and mental health sciences. Based here at the University of Sydney with the Discipline of Archaeology and the Museum's and Heritage Studies program. Her interdisciplinary and future-focused research explores the emotional and effective dimensions of heritage, objects, places, and practices, to advance social justice, healing, and resilience, particularly in contexts shaped by trauma, marginalization, and climate-driven environmental change. Committed to community-led engagement, Charlotte integrates critical theory with applied heritage practice to bring about transformative impact and meaningful change. She has a wide range of research interests, including trauma-informed and healing-centered heritage. Also, just on a private note, I'd like to congratulate Charlotte on her recent successful ARC funded project, Restoring Kakadoo National Park, which is great news. It's well done. Thank you to all three of you for your time. Richard, I will hand the microphone over to you. Thank you very much.

Richard Mackay: 9:22

Good evening, friends and colleagues. And I commence by acknowledging that I'm speaking on Gadigal land. Um, and I acknowledge traditional owners, uh, past and present, that land was never ceded, and I pay my respects to elders. Deliberate destruction of cultural heritage is no new phenomenon. Over the course of millennia, those in ideological ascendancy have sought to use military might or convenient laws to replace idols with icons, justify damage and destruction in the names of the dominant religious or other ethical paradigm. But destruction of heritage, deliberate destruction, doesn't only happen for iconoclastic reasons. It also happens as a matter of convenience. And it has been happening for millennia. In other circumstances, classical sites have been mined to make to provide materials, which have then been used in uh constructing Renaissance heritage in turn to become a convenient source of materials for subsequent development activity. And then as technology has improved, and particularly in terms of contemporary society, there is just destruction for convenience where a decision is made that a form of new development or intervention is more important than the existing heritage. So you have this sort of value set of judgments that are made by contemporary consent authorities or government agencies about what stays and what goes. And then, of course, um we have a whole other raft of destruction of heritage arising from things like military conflicts or from natural disasters. And I am going to just meander through some of those uh forms of heritage, sharing some anecdotes and some experience. Probably the most disturbing trend in all of that is the 20th and early 20th, 21st century weaponization of heritage. And to my observation, it probably starts with the deliberate demolition of the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia Herzegovina in um the early 1990s, 1993. But that was picked up uh not very much later in the early 2000s by the Taliban regime when we saw the destruction and indeed the broadcasting of the um blowing up of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, the giant Buddhas in the in the Bamiyan Valley. Um, I mean, an extraordinary cultural landscape containing all manner of artistic work, archaeological sites, um dating for more than a millennium of history from the sort of first to 13th century. And the point of the demolition was not the attack on that site or the heritage, but the impact on the culture and the identity of the people to reflect the ideology of the new regime and the regime change. So we see that the demolition of the heritage is not just the destruction and the loss of those cultural values, it's actually deliberately undertaken in many respects, um, you know, for the for the first time on a kind of global scale with a global prominence in the early part of the 21st century. And I'm sad to say that that activity becomes a template which is embraced um in parts of the Middle East, particularly by the Islamic State of Israel and the Levant, ISIL, um, as they take over areas of Syria and uh Iraq. Um, we probably see it at its absolute apogee in terms of this destructive mindset and process in the Syrian sites. Um, and we could talk a lot about this, but just to take one example at Palmyra, um, in 2015, there was this really sad sequence of destruction activities. I mean, Palmyra was an ancient site on the Silk Road. It probably reached its pinnacle during the Roman Empire when we see a very grand array of structures um known to all of the archaeology students in the room, um, elements like the the Triumphal Arch and the Temple of Bell, series of monumental tombs of nobles. And during during 2015, what happens in Palmyra is that ISIL progressively destroys virtually all of these elements. It it places explosives, it places social media advertisements, and then it blows up the Temple of Bell, and everyone's online to sort of see it happen. Uh, three months later, it does the same to the Triumphal Arch. And then progressively there's a series of media posts and destruction as they blow up the tombs of the nobles down the valley one by one. And the point that I make particularly about Palmyra is it is by no means a military target, right? Palmyra is away from the town. And the only reason, there's no strategic reason, there's no advantage. The only reason to do this is the attack on culture. So that the cultural values and the heritage is weaponized, is weaponized as a form of attack on the community. Um, and look, I could talk more about that, but I'm mindful of our short time together. But it's it's also happened in some of the more active sites at Aleppo and Damascus and Kraktash Chevalier, Bosra, and in the villages in northern Syria. And I'm just devastated. This time last week, I was telling some people earlier I was in a meeting in Paris with a group of Syrians where we were looking at the reconstruction plans for Aleppo and dealing with conceptual issues about whether to prioritize mosques or services. And indeed, is it is it more important to restore an icon to make the community see it and feel good, or more important for them to have a flushing toilet? And of course, what's happened over the weekend is we have Israel launching missiles into the heart of Aleppo. And uh I mean, goodness knows what the effect of that will be. We also, of course, through the conflict, see ins incidental damage. And uh a sad example of that from the last 10 years is what's been happening in Yemen with um the capital Sanaa, where the uh the World Heritage Property has been subject to bombing by the Saudi regime and a lot of difficult issues there, where bombs clear out the neighborhood, people immediately rush back to rebuild. But of course, what they can't do is rebuild and reconstruct. So they rebuild shanty towns using whatever materials they have. They don't even wait for the bomb clearance. And so you have a progressive, um incremental, almost accidental erosion of the integrity of the historic sites because understandably the contemporary community is moving to look after the livelihoods of their own. And more recently, um, we have a very interesting phenomenon happening in Ukraine. And paradoxically, um the Russian invasion of Ukraine does not involve direct attacks on the cultural sites. Do you know why? Because the Russians regard them as Russian, they provide them as part of their culture. So you get this sort of inverse iconoclasm where they are intended to be protected. And yet, in March this year, um we saw the unfortunate um event where a missile went off very close to the um the monastery of uh St. Sophia in the center of Kiev, and all of the cornices came off the eastern facade of the building. Um but as recently again as the week before last, um, Russia is denying um that this was a result of the adjacent missile and explaining that it was, in fact, poor maintenance on the part of the Ukrainians. And look, while my colleagues and I are providing, you know, the guidance and support, um it it's it's an all an awful situation where I mean I've learned far more than I ever wanted to learn about radiated heat or vibration waves and the um accidental damage that is happening simply because there is a conflict happening in the precinct and in the region. How am I going for time? I've got 10. Good. Um there is, of course, a whole um international convention about this, and one of the quick points to make is that the Hague Convention about the protection of cultural property, which is very seldom invoked, predates the World Heritage Convention by almost two decades. And I just quote quickly from its preamble to say that damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind. Sorry about the sexist language, since each people makes its contribution to the culture of the world. The protection of the cultural heritage is of great importance for all peoples of the world, and it's important that this heritage should receive international protection. That is 1954. Um, and we've gone a long way backwards since. Um, heritage is also destroyed, of course, by natural disasters, and I'm only going to highlight um two in this very brief presentation. There was a horrendous um Gorkha earthquake in Nepal in 2015, which pretty much flattened um Kathmandu and the seven um components of the World Heritage Property there, including some of the major pagodas in Derber Square. And international agencies have mobilized. But sadly, um the Nepalese government sees it as a matter of national pride that they should be able to cope with the recovery process themselves and have actually resisted avenues of assistance, such as having the property inscribed on the list of World Heritage in Danger and opening up international assistance through things like the World Heritage Fund. Um, and what is tragic is that a lot of the damage is not only to the iconic monuments that make the evening news, but also to the residential communities in the valleys. And there are people in Kathmandu Valley still living under sheets of plastic, some 10 years on from the earthquake. The other paradox there is that the damage that was caused, interestingly, was mostly caused to the buildings where there had been 20th century interventions. So the major buildings that were timber, um and including particularly those that were either strapped or held together with tension rods, shook around and they still don't have any right angles, but they're standing. Whereas the buildings that had had modern conservation um heritage mafia interventions, uh concrete framing, that's in fact what snapped and tumbled down most quickly in the earthquake. And it's it's a it's a very interesting challenge because the timber in Kathmandu was long ago burnt and there is no local supply line for timber. And so one of the biggest challenges with the conservation is supporting the traditional technology through supply lines of materials, but the Nepalese government resists um the offers of international support because they see it as a criticism of their management. Sadly, we've had um two other earthquake events in the region that have had major impact on World Heritage properties, both at Bagan in Myanmar, which of course has its own problems and its own military regime. And one of the one of the difficulties at Bagan is that during the first period of military junta, um, a lot of work was done to the pagodas. So Bagan is this sort of 9th to 13th century um sacred Buddhist cultural landscape with something like 3,000 pagodas. It's a lived-in landscape where the Buddhist practice and the votive offering is very much a part of the significance of the place, as well as the magnificent architecture and the internal artworks, both statuary and murals. And during the first phase of the military junta, uh, a lot of reconstruction work was done that put hard masonry shells around the exterior of these pagodas. So they they look as though they had been recently built. Um, but inside the murals and the artwork are largely intact. Except that in 2016 there was a major earthquake, um, a lot of physical damage to roughly 70% of the pagodas. And the worst aspect of that damage is the cracking of these hard shells that have been recently installed by the military, which then, when the monsoonal rain comes, act as little humidity cribs that keep all of the moisture inside. Now, a lot of that work's been repaired in the years since 2016. We saw the inscription have begun on the World Heritage List in around uh 2018 or 2019, only to have another earthquake happen in March, 28th of March this year. And the thing that I find really frustrating is that the current regime is saying not to worry, the damage that's occurred at the site is only the minor cracking. And I'm sitting here thinking, yep, it's the minor cracking that lets the moisture in so that the murals will fret away from salt effervescence and moisture from the inside out. And my final remarks in my last couple of minutes are going to be about development and perception. Stonehenge is not only a megalithic circle of stones, it's a circle of stones that exists in a landscape that dates back to at least the Beaker period, covers a couple of millennium of above-ground and underground structures. Um, it's also the site of the worst traffic jam in the United Kingdom because there is a four-lane highway coming out from London, a four-lane highway all the way down to Cornwall, and through Stonehenge between two roundabouts, it's one lane each way. Um and I can see a lot of people in the room nodding, you know. And I'm, you know, if you've if you've been in that traffic jam with your young family where it takes you two and a half hours to travel three kilometers, you you kind of get it. Um, the obvious solution, um, you can't go to the north because there's a major airbase and there's residential communities. You can't go to the south because of the topography. So the obvious solution is to go under a long tunnel. And cutting a long and painful story short, over a period of about a decade, the UK government wanted to put a very small section of tunnel either side of the round stone henge itself. And then some giant culverts on either side. Think South Dowling Street, two lanes each way, right through the middle of the megalithic landscape. And we're constantly advised by the World Heritage Committee, by its advisory bodies, that this would have an unacceptable impact on the outstanding value of the landscape. But they prevailed and they pushed ahead and they played the politics. And at the 46th session of the committee last year, they got their way. Very depressing, except that a week later, the newly elected Labour government withdrew the £1.7 billion worth of funding for the project and it's not proceeding, right? Which proves that there is a God. And my final example is also a UK example. Um, and it's another example of a conscious decision that heritage will take second place. And it is the mercantile city of Liverpool, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List because of the intact mercantile waterfront in Liverpool that was a fulcrum for the geopolitical world that we know today in terms of global trade, um, both economic trade and slave trade. And remarkably, over a period of centuries, that waterfront had stayed intact with the docks, with the warehouses, the bond stores, and the commercial properties behind. So, in addition to its values as the venue for some pop band in the 1960s, Liverpool was also remarkable because of this intact horizontal mercantile waterfront. And in a strange quirk of UK law, which doesn't apply in Australia, when the national government doesn't intervene in a planning matter at the beginning of the process, there is no clawback. So once the Home Secretary says a local authority can make the decision, there is no longer a constitutional power for the national government to intervene, unlike here, where we have the Franklin Dam case and our Commonwealth environment legislation. So the city of Liverpool was able to take on planning control and it approved 11 billion, billion with a B pounds worth of new development on the Liverpool waterfront. Um, to put that in context, it's about six barangaroos, right? Right along where these historic docks are. And if that were not bad enough, right at the end of the process, it approved one more development, which was a brand new football stadium, right on top of the most intact of the historic docks, the new Everton football stadium. Well, I won't I won't go into lots of detail except to say that the approval of that development and then the construction of that development progressively destroyed the authenticity and integrity. And the property was one of only three ever to be removed from the World Heritage List, and that happened contrary to the wishes of the UK government in 2021. It didn't happen as the result of a conflict, it didn't happen as the result of a disaster, it happened as the result of a government decision to prefer new development over conservation of heritage. Thank you.

Julien Cooper: 27:30

Great. Uh thank you, Richard, for that stimulating talk. Uh, and thank you, Craig, for introducing me this morning. And uh, like Richard, I'd like to acknowledge uh Gadigal elders past, present, and emerging. Uh, in this talk, I'm going to do a bit of a deep dive into a topic that might be a bit alien to some people in the room and in Australia, which is the heritage situation in the Republic of Sudan. Sudan isn't a country we hear too much about in Australian media, uh, even in Western media in Europe and America. And to bring some context to how I come into this topic, as uh Craig mentioned, I'm a field work director of an archaeological mission in Sudan. So every year I would go to Sudan for a number of months to work in the field uh in eastern province on the Red Sea. Uh, but as part of that, we would always have to spend some time in this place uh you see here, the Sudan National Museum in the capital, Khartum. Every year you would go to the field, you would excavate some objects, and then these objects would be recorded into the Sudan National Museum. And on a personal note, you felt like you were adding to Sudanese history doing this. You were bringing objects to the museum, perhaps for exhibitions and public display, but more often and more likely for scientific purposes. These could be studied not just by yourself, not just by your team, but by other people. We flip to 2023, and we have the conflict in Sudan. I'm not a political scientist, and there are people in this very room that are much better versed in the history and politics of modern Sudan. I study Sudan several thousand years ago. Um, but what we have in the opening echelons of this war between the General Khemeti uh of the Rapid Support Forces and the government forces is a conflict that comes to the streets of Khartoum. It comes to parts of Sudan that have never experienced conflict. For those of you that know a little bit about African or Sudanese history, there have been conflicts in Sudan, various civil wars, especially with the South and in Darfur, the western province. But very rarely has the conflict come to the streets of the capital. This would be analogous to it coming to the streets of Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, etc. And this is also where all the various heritage institutes of Sudan lie, including this museum. And what I'm going to talk in this presentation is a little bit about what's happening in the museum, what we know has been destroyed, and the broader heritage situation around Sudan. Now, I'm not going to just propel all this. Negativity your way without explaining a little bit why Sudan is important in historical terms. When you study history in high school or university, it's pretty rare that you'll hear about Sudan. Maybe if you do a degree in Egyptology like myself, you'll hear about it a bit. But it we certainly don't rank it in the media on the same level as, like, say, Greece, Rome, China, ancient India, and in Australian consciousness, it's certainly not on the same level as, say, Polynesian history, of course, Australian Indigenous history or Southeast Asian history, like Angkor Wat. But I want to say, and I think this is something that me and my colleagues that study Sudan and African archaeology feel throughout our careers, is this narrative is changing. Ancient Sudan is becoming much, much more important in our narratives of the ancient world. And there are a few reasons for that. Number one is Sudan is a microcosm for various different ideologies and various different phases of human civilization. And we have great and even perfect data in some periods of Sudanese history and archaeology to be able to study things like the origins of agriculture, to study the origins and conversion of Christianity in Sudan, the same with Islam, the emergence of the first metropolises in the African continent, uh, the emergence of trade routes that expanded from what we think of the Middle East and North Africa to the sub-Saharan African world, a bridge between these two worlds that are very well known to us. This is what Sudan is. And in this image here, this is some of the objects that we associate with Sudan. True a unique pottery you will see nowhere else in the world. The phase of Sudanese civilization that most people think of, and if you've been lucky enough to be a tourist in Sudan, that you'll see is what this statue represents here. This is the Kushite civilization, a time in Sudanese history when the Kushites, these peoples, conquered most of what's now Sudan, even conquering Egypt and going into the Levant, built large pyramids, did all the things that we would sort of expect of in the height and greatest phases of Egyptian civilization and history. This happened in Sudan. All these objects I'm putting here in front of you are objects that are housed in the Sudan National Museum. And they've been there since uh the English, sorry, the Anglo-Egyptian administration, I shouldn't just say English or British, uh since the colonial period. And this museum and its collection have been preserved, studied, informs the Sudanese public from that period and onwards. And it's been something that's celebrated in Sudan and around the world. In my opinion, and I know I'm biased because I study Sudan, but it does rank in the scheme of world museums in its chronological breadth, in its diversity of cultures. Sudan is not just the Nile River. Sudan is various regions, cultures outside the Nile River. There's about, I think, about 100 languages spoken in contemporary Sudan. And this ancient history and heritage in the Sudan National Museum records and communicates all of this. And just a few other images up here. You can see the Christian gallery in the top of the Sudan National Museum. It's basically two floors with an outside area. And the outside area houses whole temples from the Nubian salvage campaign in the 1960s and 70s. A very important thing for Sudanese and Egyptian history, but also important for UNESCO as one of the best examples of international cooperation to solve and rescue heritage. Now that shifts to an image like this as of the last years. This is what the interior of the Sudan National Museum looks like as of the last month. And I want to say from here on out, most of what informs me is my own conversations with Sudanese heritage officials who I regularly meet. In the Sudan National Museum, there's something like six figures of objects. We have at least 100,000 objects. And as the Janjaweed or RSF took Khartoum, the Sudan National Museum is located very close to the general headquarters of the army and the presidential palace. So it was a target. And since the beginning of the war, no one knew what happened to the museum. It's what we'd call the fog of war. We can skip forward a little bit. We had a few videos come out of the museum of the RSF, literally in the labs of the museum. They were damaging the human remains in the bioarchaeology lab. But then there was about maybe a year of no information, nothing at all, because it was beyond the front lines of where the Sudan government knew what was happening. Various intelligence agencies at the end of last year ascertained that trucks were leaving the gates of the Sudan National Museum through satellite imagery. And this was a huge warning sign to all heritage officials, both in Sudan and internationally, that something bad was going to happen to the museum because everyone figured that these trucks would be loaded with antiquities and these antiquities would be stolen and taken on to the international market and eventually through illicit trafficking, which we know from Richard's presentation is something ever present in the world. And to skip forward to earlier this year, the government forces successfully took back the city of Khartoum and on demand and even expanded a little bit to the west. And this is what we are left with today. And these images are so recent, I don't think anything would have changed in the last month or so since these images were taken. Every room of the Sudan National Museum has been ransacked, gutted. Lots of objects are no longer there, so they've been physically taken, probably on these trucks. The safe of the museum, which was storing the gold objects, was broken into. Perhaps puzzlingly, from the sort of things that Richard just spoke about, all the records have also been burnt. So lots of documents and scientific literature that was related to Sudanese heritage and excavations have also been destroyed. So this is going something beyond what I would say is just taking antiquities for illicit trafficking. And this is going something a bit stranger than just destroying heritage for no apparent reason. This is lots of different ideologies and different uh circumstances are taking place to make the Sudan Museum into this sort of destruction. If I go back here, you can see in this bottom image, these containers are the containers that belong to various international missions that work in the Republic of Sudan. There's British missions, Italian missions, French missions, uh hopefully in the future an Australian mission with myself. And my mission also rented one of these containers when I was uh living in the United States. And all these containers, which stored objects, which can store our equipment, excavation records, have also been destroyed. So what the damage in the museum is, is really beyond anything that I think we've seen in analogous museums in the sense of wanton destruction. There has been deliberate illicit trafficking in the sense of an organized and uh sorry, a well-organized um approach to taking antiquities from the museum in order to traffic them on illicit antiquities markets. But there's also just been what we would say is vandalism, and then there's been showing of the temples outside and everything in between. So what's happened here is really on the same level, I would say, as more famous examples uh in conflict in recent history. We can think of what's happened, say, in the Kabul Museum or the museums in northern Iraq and Baghdad or in Syria today, as Richard just spoke. This is ranking up here on one of the most serious destructions of cultural heritage in the world, and not just Africa or the Middle East. And this is another image of the containers in the outside yard of the museum, all of which have been opened, burnt, and destroyed. Uh, most of the objects within these containers, even if they were intact when the archaeologists found them, have now been destroyed to a level where it's almost impossible to study them. What you see in the other image here is the temples that were taken from the Nubian salvage campaign. These are painstakingly uh dismantled by engineers, taken from Lake Nubia in the north and in the border of Egypt and Sudan, and then reassembled in the gardens of the museum. These have suffered from vandalism and shelling and seem to be used as a sort of barracks by soldiers of the RSF. In fact, from what we understand, the whole museum structure, because it was quite well built and had quite high vantage points, was used as a sort of lookout post and barracks by the soldiers during the conflict. The heritage problem in Sudan is not just relating to the Sudan National Museum. I say that because it's the pinnacle, it's the signature museum of Sudan, and it's something that is in the public eye much more than the Sudanese provinces. To put it in perspective, Sudan is a very large country, and we all know that what that feels like in Australia. And each province also has its own regional museum, and each province has its important archaeological sites, like sites like Meraway with the pyramids. Most of these sites on the Nile River seem to have escaped destruction. What we do see at these sites is development from the refugee crisis in Sudan. And I haven't mentioned the humanitarian crisis yet, but of course, most people in the public eye and in the media and in various organizations are deliberately, and I completely acknowledge that, wanting to focus first on the humanitarian crisis. What this has done internally in Sudan is pushed people to other provinces where there are archaeological sites, and they've had to build new developments on these archaeological sites. The normal procedure in a place like Sudan and also Egypt is once an archaeological site is registered and gazetted, a fence is built around and that land becomes um impossible to build on according to the law. But when we have a refugee of crisis, of course, all those things um fade away. And of course, we also have an economic crisis when we have a conflict like this as well. And that causes further crises of economic development and land development around the country. Before the war, there were still problems in the preservation of Sudanese heritage and Sudanese archaeological sites. There was looting. I wouldn't say the looting was as extreme as some countries in the MENA region, but it did exist. And in the region where I work, in the Eastern Desert, which is one of the most lucrative gold mining regions in all of Africa, there was a severe crisis of destruction of ancient gold mines, which you can understand where that comes from. So there were all these challenges which the Sudanese government and Sudanese heritage officials faced. And now all these challenges have been amplified by the destruction of the RSF and the illicit trafficking of the RSF. The next point is what can be done now to solve these issues. And I feel like solve is probably the wrong word here. It's what can be done to help these issues of heritage in Sudan. This news is so recent that most organizations haven't been able to formulate a concrete plan on what to do next to assist Sudanese authorities, the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums, on how to fix the museum. Or in the museum, really, the first problem is documenting what's gone. We don't actually know what's gone. Some of the objects I showed you on that screen, we know what are now missing or destroyed. But most of the objects we don't have a formal record. Because they were ransacked, because they were taken out of their shelving, all the displays were destroyed. We can't actually say what's gone and what's missing. And anyone that knows museums knows that there's copious amounts of records that tells us where an object is. And once it's moved and lost, it's a pretty difficult, even we've owned a museum that's not in this circumstance. So there is a team of Sudanese heritage officials that have traveled to Khhartoum. And I would say that conditions in Khhartoum are very dire at the moment. There's a cholera outbreak in the capital. Uh, it's very difficult to access regular food and petrol and things like this, and it's not that far from the front line. The western city of Omdaman, which is just on the other bank from Khhartoum, is not that far from the front with the RSF. So this creates a new problem for just how to analyze and observe and document what's gone. And only then can they really assess what we can do next to fix this? What can we do to fill in the gaps? And this is going to take all sorts of uh organizations and collaborations between the Sudanese and Interpol, UNESCO, and all these organizations are informed and trying to help. But at the first place, we need to document what's gone. And I wish it was just the Sudan National Museum, but basically every province that has been affected by the conflict, which is all the provinces of Darfur and Kordofan, Blue Nile, have had archaeological sites also being destroyed and affected. Some of these images show you other museums. On the right, you have the Sultan Ali Dinar Museum in Al-Fasha and Darfur, which has been subject to repeated showing. On the left, you have the um Museum of On Demand, uh, which has also been subjected to complete destruction. So leaving that, I want to uh make a small plea to this room and to others listening. Uh, there will be international cooperation to help heritage in Sudan and including the Sudan National Museum, but there is a real need right now to assist in the documentation of the museum. The people that are there are living in very difficult conditions. They're pumping water out of the Nile, which you probably know is not a great source of drinking water. Uh, and they're working in such difficult conditions to photograph, document what is being lost in the museum and what can be done next. And it's only until their mission is complete that we can go forward with this. Uh, as part of this talk, I um uh organized with the American Sudanese Archaeological Research Center, AMSAC, to put this QR code online where you can donate. And if you wish to donate, you can actually write for the museum to make sure that the donation goes to the people working at the Sudan National Museum because AMSARC funds another projects within the Republic of Sudan. Uh, that's all I've got to say today. Thank you, everyone, for your attention. Uh, welcome any questions at the end.

Charlotte Feakins: 44:36

Uh so um thank you. Yes, I'm significantly shorter than both Richard and Julian. Um, so before we begin, uh I want to acknowledge that this presentation includes images, narratives, and subject matter that may be distressing. Themes include colonial violence, intergenerational trauma, displacement, and institutional harm. So please take care of yourself and those around you as we move through this material. So before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the unceded lands of the Gadigal uh people of the Eeura nation. Uh I pay my respects to Gadigal elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today. Sovereignty was never ceded, these lands remain active sites of story, resistance, care, and continuity. I also thank the Darug community, particularly the Darug Strategic Management Group, with whom I've worked since 2020 on the Blacktown Native Institution project. This includes working with GML Heritage on those important projects. So, um, yes, my name is Charlotte. I'm a lecturer in archaeology and heritage studies here at the University of Sydney, and I've worked across academic and professional heritage sectors for nearly 15 years. For the past three years, I've been exploring the entanglement of trauma and heritage, not just as overlapping themes, but as mutually shaping forces. I use the concept of trauma heritage to examine how trauma is embedded in heritage making and how heritage can carry or reproduce trauma across personal, collective, and structural scales. I also study sentimental objects, uh, so thinking about heritage making at this sort of personal, individual level, particularly in contexts of displacement and loss. So this talk draws from that research, uh, including a recent co-author paper with colleagues at the Matilda Centre here at the university. We introduced the concepts of trauma heritage and trauma-informed heritage, challenging the tendency in official heritage practice, perhaps to minimize or even avoid trauma. So we argue that trauma is not incidental to heritage, it's structurally embedded in the colonial systems and knowledge regimes that shape what is preserved, by whom, and for what purposes. Okay, so I want to begin with a quote or I want to think about uh or start with this quote from trauma specialist Dr. Garbo Mate. Trauma is not what happens to you, trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. So this quote reminds us that trauma isn't just about the event itself, it's about what gets carried afterwards. It's how the experience is held in the body, in relationships, and in the broader social fabric. In recent years, there's been a major shift in how we understand trauma rather than asking what's wrong with you. Trauma-informed approaches now ask, What has happened to you? This shift is vital. It places trauma in context, recognizing the external conditions, systems, and histories that cause harm, rather than locating it in individual weaknesses. For heritage work, this reframing matters because heritage isn't just about what happened in the past, it's what happens now, what happened continues to happen. Trauma lives on in memories, in bodies, in communities and in the places and objects that we define as heritage. So over the last two decades, we've seen growing uh a kind of growing body of scholarship on what might be called negative uh dimensions of heritage. Terms like dissonant, difficult, dark, displaced, and disaster heritage, all beginning with a D. These frameworks invite us to consider how heritage is implicated in suffering, violence, and loss. They also open up space to think about healing, especially in post-conflict and post-disaster settings. The concept of trauma heritage builds on this work but shifts the focus further from heritage about trauma to heritage as trauma. That is, heritage becomes a site in which trauma is not only represented, but also produced, sustained, or potentially transformed. Closely linked is trauma-informed heritage, a practice framework that acknowledges the emotional risks and responsibilities involved in working with sites and stories of harm. And together these concepts encourage us to move beyond surface representations and towards more relational, ethical, and emotionally attuned forms of heritage practice. So, as the following few slides illustrate, heritage and trauma are intimately entangled across space and time, not just conceptually, but materially and emotionally in the sites, objects, and stories we preserve. Some of the more well-known examples include Pompeii and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas in Afghanistan and indigenous massacre sites, or the sinking of the Titanic and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, or the heritage of the Second World War and the killing fields in Cambodia. We can also include in this list the more recent 2023 fires in Hawaii and the recent flooding in Lismore in Australia in 2022. And in thinking of the now, other examples might include the ongoing processes of colonization or homelessness, the current Israeli war on Gaza, or perhaps even the rise of extremism, populism, and neonationalism that are becoming increasingly prevalent across Europe and the US. So these examples will demonstrate the diversity, the ubiquity in varying scales of traumatic events that are connected with heritage and therefore trauma, present in the past and currently unfolding in the now. And while traumatic events such as these can serve as a tangible nexus to locate trauma, the effects of trauma are far more insidious and often less visible.

Charlotte Feakins: 50:55

The scale and intensity of devastation caused by powerful destructive events such as those, or these that we've seen, can be difficult to comprehend. Their toll on lives, livelihoods, and emotional well-being is both profound and complicated. They affect individuals, families, and communities and can result in trauma that extends far beyond the events through minds, brains, bodies, relationships, and practices. Trauma can and often does reverberate across generations. So while these examples are demonstrative of macro-level events or big T trauma that have affected me millions of people in myriad ways, trauma is also caused by relatively more localized events or small T trauma, such as car accidents or house fires, and everyday ongoing occurrences that can be hidden, systemic and structural, such as domestic violence, bullying, racism, and childhood neglect, or vicariously, such as encountering graphic scenes as a first responder, and stories and images of suffering on social media platforms. So an important aspect to note with this is that trauma begets trauma, and individuals previously affected by trauma are more susceptible to its impacts, and that there are a range of personal and socio-political variables that account for each individual's experience of trauma. So it's important that we identify and understand trauma if we are actively or to actively prevent trauma, to provide safe spaces for recovery and healing, and strengthen post-traumatic resilience in the present and even proactively for the future. So just a bit of background. So since the 1990s, historical traumatic events and experiences have been a focus among several disciplines and interdisciplinary fields of study in the humanities, namely trauma studies, Holocaust studies, memory studies, and more recently, genocide studies and geography. Yet, despite the breadth and depth of literature on heritage related to traumatic events in heritage studies and related fields of archaeology and tourism studies, there's been little attention given to the concept of psychological trauma as a phenomenon or on the interconnectedness of trauma as lived experience and heritage. In general, there's a dearth of information in these fields about what trauma explicitly is and what trauma does. So, although interest in subjects associated with human suffering, conflict, and disasters continues to grow in this field, in these fields, we argue that there needs to be a more comprehensive theoretical but also practical understanding of trauma, how it affects individuals and collectively, across personal, social and political intersections, historically and in the present, how trauma and heritage entangle, and in turn, how to engage with people who have experienced trauma to avoid causing trauma or risking re-traumatisation. So that's the aim of our research is to throw light on trauma, explore some of these key ideas and themes, and recognizes these potential trauma heritage entanglements that can in turn inform and frame the development of trauma-informed methodologies. So in the broader trauma studies landscape, debates continue around the representation of trauma, whether focus should be on lived experiences of pain and suffering or survival, resilience, and recovery. As trauma studies scholars Traverso and Broderick argue, to reduce all representation of memories and experiences marked by conflict, violence, and atrocity to trauma is problematic as it emphasizes a victim position and potentially fails to give agency or due attention to the expression of agency. Yet trauma is defined by absence and invisibility. Not recognizing, acknowledging or witnessing trauma is also deeply problematic. By overlooking trauma in the process of heritage making, the risk of re-traumatising and traumatizing is increased through words and actions, especially when working with and for individuals and communities who have experienced trauma. So in psychology and trauma studies, the idea of bearing witness is an important aspect of the trauma landscape and supporting social action. It denotes trauma as a story that has to be told in order for healing to begin. Therefore, providing trauma-informed spaces for individual and collective trauma to be expressed and witnessed is fundamental to healing. In other words, for people who have experienced trauma to be seen and heard. A trauma-informed approach is guided by the four following assumptions. The realization of trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system that can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatisation. So there's numerous events in our contemporary world that are now recognized as traumatic. Here we can see some examples earthquakes, wildfires, terrorism, torture, racism, car accidents, etc. The list goes on. Broadly, the impacts of trauma can be conceived along a continuum from a single event or acute trauma to ongoing and repeated experiences or chronic and complex trauma. And generally, as I mentioned before, trauma can be conceived as either large T trauma and small T trauma. And while the latter doesn't threaten a person's physical safety, they can produce the same trauma responses as large T trauma. Furthermore, the rate at which these events can occur can either be sudden or slow onset. So when we think about how to locate trauma heritage entanglements, it's particularly important when we're thinking about engaging with communities and thinking about heritage or history and practice. And so when we want to think about how we locate these trauma heritage entanglements and mobilize or action trauma-informed approaches in heritage or research, this can be realized through either a top-down or bottom-up process, as place-based or stories-based. So anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic traumatic stresses can be identified in the heritage context. For example, in roadside memorials to national memorials, or through stories and experiences across family, individual, family, and community scales. As illustrated before, stresses can vary, and in the table here we can see a range of trauma heritage entanglement examples based on the information before. Importantly, they all illustrate the necessity for developing trauma-informed approaches. For example, a mining accident is a historical and single event. It may have caused loss of life and injuries resulting in trauma. This can affect individuals, families, and communities, including first responders and witnesses. In the heritage context, the event may be commemorated with a memorial or plaque. A range of investigations across research and industry may be carried out, including archaeological investigations, interviews, or social values and built heritage assessments. But in this process of heritage making and working with and for individuals and communities who may have experienced trauma at the local level, recognizing the potential risks of retraumatisation is important and therefore carrying out trauma-informed approaches to mitigate the risk. Potential external triggers can include returning to the place, talking about the event, hearing stories, or seeing objects or archaeology, the buildings or structures, looking at photos or news related to the event. Many of these things are actually used in the representation of the event in heritage making and may also contribute to the reification of trauma through this process. Other considerations to note are whether the act was intentional or accidental, and that each individual's experience of that trauma will be different. Noting that trauma is complex, personal, and nuanced and affects people differently and in myriad ways. Similarly, the trauma can become the sole source of meaning for the individual or group who have experienced the event. And this is something to think about when it comes to understanding or assessing heritage significance. So importantly, the trauma heritage concept shines a light on complex and ongoing processes of trauma across personal, social, and political intersections. For example, migration and settler colonial heritage in the settler colonial context, creating spaces for trauma and to be witnessed can disrupt normative assumptions, assume certainties, and establish hegemonies across research and practice. However, as we know, cultural heritage legislation is inextricably tied to harmful policies, programs, and practices in settler colonial contexts that continue to cause trauma for First Nations peoples. Trauma-informed care means considering not only how safe the service delivery environment actually is, but also how safe it is perceived to be by the individuals or groups you're working with. So re-traumatisation of the traumatized subjects can occur in the hands of agents that purport to treat and advocate for them. Therefore, the trauma heritage concept shines a light on this issue, prompting the question can we meaningfully create safe spaces in these contexts? So, with that in mind, um, and using a trauma heritage lens, we can examine how traumatic events are embedded in heritage places and how responses to harm reflect broader systems of value, power, and recognition. On the left, we have an image of the Jukan Gorge rock shelters in the Pilbara in Western Australia. These were 46,000-year-old sacred sites of immense cultural and ancestral significance to the Muntalagura Garuma people, destroyed by Rio Tinto in 2020. This is for the expansion of their iron ore mine. On the right, we see the Anzac Parade Memorial Site in Canberra, which was vandalized earlier this year. So what's significant here isn't just the acts of destruction or defement, but the vastly different ways that these events were framed, responded to, and remembered. In the case of the Anzac Parade, the response was swift and highly charged. The graffiti was described by Defence Minister Richard Miles as a disgrace, completely unacceptable and unAustralian. He added, Whatever your position, their service, their sacrifice deserves the respect of the entire Australian community. And I condemn these horrible actions in the strongest possible terms. Police then launched an immediate investigation, and the incident was treated as an attack, an attack on national memory. Now contrast that with the Jook and Gorge event. Although there was an outcry and a federal inquiry was launched, followed by an attempt to reform heritage legislation, those new laws were scrapped after just five weeks under pressure from industry groups and political backlash. Traditional owners were left in their words to pick up the pieces. So for many of my direct colleagues, working on the Blacktown native institution, Jook and Gorge, and other events like this don't feel like a shocking failure. It feels like business as usual, a reminder of the systemic silencing and normalization of trauma in settler colonial heritage processes. So when we apply a trauma heritage framework, we not only trace the presence of trauma, but also expose how certain traumas are legitimized and memorialized, even weaponised, while others are erased, ignored, or rendered routine. Now, for the past four years, I've been working with the Darug Strategic Management Group on the Blacktown Native Institution site in Western Sydney, a profoundly significant place for Darug people and a powerful example of what a trauma-informed heritage approach can look like in practice. In 2018, the B and I was returned to Darug ownership. Since then, the community has led a series of powerful events and programs centered on truth telling, healing, and reconnection with Darug Nura or country. As part of this process and in collaboration with industry partner GML Heritage, we've co-developed a conservation management plan, which is a technical document required by New South Wales Heritage for managing state-listed sites. But rather than treat this as a bureaucratic exercise, the CMP became a living ethical framework, a way to honour lived experiences, hold space for ceremony and silence, and support community control and healing. This process took over three years, far longer than standard CMPs, because it centered direct decision-making, co-authorship, and cultural safety at every stage. A trauma-informed approach shaped everything, from deep listening and informed consent to recognizing invisible or intangible heritage to make space for community-led editing, pacing, and protocols. It also helped surface or highlight deeper ongoing challenges, such as how New South Wales heritage legislation continues to limit direct relationships with NURA and their ability to fully realise their vision for the B and I. So in this way, the CMP became not just a technical output, but a site of resistance, care, and transformation. So, as I've illustrated throughout this talk, you know, trauma and heritage are deeply or intimately intertwined across sites, stories, and everyday encounters with the past in and of the present. So in both my academic and collaborative work, I've seen how mobilizing trauma-informed heritage, even in small ways, can help mitigate harm, support healing, and embed ethical, empowering practices in everyday heritage work. So trauma-informed heritage is guided by four key principles from public health, um from SAMHSA. This is realizing the impact of trauma, recognizing the signs of trauma, responding with awareness and care, and resisting re-traumatization. At its heart, a trauma-informed approach fosters safety, self-determination, cultural humility, and respect for lived experience for both communities and practitioners. As Bessel van der Koek reminds us, being truly heard and seen by those around us and being held in the hearts and minds, in their hearts and minds, is essential to healing and post-traumatic growth. Thank you.

Craig Barker: 1:05:51

Thank you, Charlotte. I'm going to ask uh all of our presenters to join me up on the stools, where we'll have a very short uh QA session. Um, Lottie, I might start with you. In terms of bringing a trauma-informed heritage approach, yeah. What are some of the ways that that we as heritage practitioners might be able to bring that to a scenario, such as the damage to the Sedan Museum, in terms of the healing process of actually thinking the next steps of going forward? What are some of the practical ways that we might be able to bring this into the next time Richard's in a meeting in Paris? Um, yeah, how how how may we be able to bring some of these practices?

Charlotte Feakins: 1:06:39

It's a really good question. And um, you know, this isn't anything new or um, you know, radical. It's just you know developing projects with care. And I think it always comes back to co-design and ensuring that those decisions, the decision making is with the community. So working as a facilitator in that space, um, and you know, following the lead of the community and and you know, working with them to help them navigate some of those those processes. Um But yes, I mean how we how we develop it in practice can look different in different settings. But I think the first the first thing is always working with the community, within for the community. Yes.

Craig Barker: 1:07:24

Yeah. Yes, yes. I mean, clearly there will never be a one-size-fits-all model, but that ability to actually consider this as part of the process. I guess Richard, uh, to to bring it back to you, if you don't mind, but I mean, what are uh within current international uh protocols and uh and uh uh you know practices? I I know, for example, the World Heritage uh list uh of uh sites in danger, but what are some of the practical responses that can be done by the international community when a site is threatened or when a site is damaged currently?

Richard Mackay: 1:08:00

Well well, gosh, I think I think the first thing to say is that what is well established is a is a values-based um framework and that operates at an international level, it operates domestically. Um a lot of the current thinking actually has its genesis in Australia. Um, I mean, Australia ICOMOS Borough Charter, which itself has antecedents in the US Park Service. Um, it's a very um underdeveloped discipline when it comes to some of the issues that we're talking about tonight. I mean, all I can really say is that there is increasingly a move towards recognition of intangible attributes and a more holistic approach when you know conceiving what constitutes values. But as I as I mentioned sort of in passing in in the presentation, when you come to somewhere like Aleppo that has been absolutely trashed by deliberately placed um bombs and reconstruction phases. And when I say reconstruction, I'm talking about community as well as physical assets and the prioritizing of that. The kind of narratives and the kind of approaches that Lottie's talking about are just not yet on the radar because people are trying to get basic services like reticulated water or basic reconstruction like you know, housing and and mosques and madrasas up and running. So I think it's uh there's there's actually a long way to go. And that's a I mean, that's a very uh illuminating and um thought-provoking presentation.

Craig Barker: 1:09:40

Yeah.

Richard Mackay: 1:09:41

But heritage is a luxury in those scenarios. Indeed, indeed. I mean, and look, to answer the question more technically, um, yes, in terms of a World Heritage place, the Committee on the Advice of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and the advisory bodies, ICOMOS for cultural heritage, can place a property on the list of World Heritage in danger. And when that happens, what is then described as a desired state to remove it and a set of corrective measures. And as I mentioned in the case of Nepal, when that happens, there are some processes that are freed up and funding that is unlocked to help that happen. Um, but you need to be on the list of World Heritage in Danger to do that.

Craig Barker: 1:10:26

Um I I wanted as much as possible for the Q ⁇ A to to sort of focus on some positive. So, Julian, in terms of, and indeed it might be a good opportunity just to remind everyone of the opportunity to make donations towards Sudan, but on a on a on a practical level, and I know again it's very early days, but you know, how can how can authorities, how can the Australian public help in a scenario such as the uh such as the uh the damage that's been done in Sudan?

Julien Cooper: 1:10:54

Um I think the Australian public, like many in the international arena, can raise awareness with heritage officials in their own countries, their own politicians. Uh Sudan is a uh under how do I say strategic competition currently in international affairs and people care about the heritage of Sudan, not just here, but in the States, Europe, Africa, Asia. Uh but I think making um raising awareness is the main way, really. And and of course, donating to specific bodies which are uh trying to address these issues. Um, I think obviously addressing humanitarian concerns as we just discussed is is primary. Like in the at the moment in Khartoum, water and electricity is in short supply. So that needs to happen, even for the forms of documentation in the museum. They need electricity in order to be able to do that properly. So those things are definitely first on the agenda.

Craig Barker: 1:11:51

Yes, yes.

Charlotte Feakins: 1:11:52

Yes, I have a uh response to Richard. Uh I think it's um, you know, uh thinking about the work that I do in New South Wales in the Northern Territory, working with communities, it always comes down to co-design, collaboration, genuine collaboration. I think in your setting, you know, I think recognizing the emotional impact of the destruction of their heritage is probably the first step towards, you know, understanding the significance of that impact and the uh the emotional toll that that's taken on the on the communities and individuals that you're working alongside. Yeah.

Craig Barker: 1:12:35

Look, I might open the uh uh the questions to the floor. So if anyone does have a question, I'll get you put your hand up, but I'll ask you to wait till I come across with the microphone, uh, just for the podcast recording, but also for our audience members at home.

Question 1: 1:12:51

Thanks for three fantastic presentations. It struck me that each one of you were linked in a sense with the cultural and heritage workers as well, who are not traditionally first responders in any of these crises, but they are now in the front line. And I wondered how much repetitive and slow violence is affecting the industry as a whole, and whether you're seeing that in terms of the way that people are responding or not responding to these crises, and whether there are some creative responses that are coming out that we can take hope from.

Richard Mackay: 1:13:24

Thanks. I think that's a a really um prescient observation. Um there is a developing discipline. Um there are, for example, um now well-articulated published guidelines on um reaction. There is an international organization to which ICOMOS is party called the Blue Shield. There are task force and teams that look at triage and emergency um responses that look at safeguarding. I mean, there's a lot of work. Um, it it quite often doesn't get the um the prominence um that other conservation initiatives might undertake. But for example, ICOMOS globally is doing a large amount of work to capacity build in Ukraine, and the training there has morphed away from more traditional conservation disciplines towards the whole um focus on uh trauma response and safeguarding and recovery.

Charlotte Feakins: 1:14:28

I would say um just you know, someone who's quite passionate about trauma-informed approaches, the idea is that you know trauma-informed approaches isn't just about you know developing best or ethical practices with the communities or individuals that you're working with, but it's also about looking after yourself as well in that space and knowing when things, you know, taking a toll on your own um emotional kind of well-being. Um, so it's it it works both ways and it's uh it's very helpful as well. Yeah.

Julien Cooper: 1:14:59

Uh just an anecdote on that. I don't have anything to say from a regulations point of but just to talk to my Sudanese colleagues who are sometimes site guardians, sometimes museum officials, during the conflicts they've on a daily basis had to weigh up whether they physically can go to some of these places to look after them. And uh, you know, I hear that in their voice, and I think that that's just such a difficult set of decisions because uh as Lottie spoke about, there's uh a trauma relating to their themselves having worked at these places for decades, uh, knowing that it might be gone, uh, but not having uh observational data that it's gone. And so they have to weigh up, especially amongst their family, uh, if it's okay to go to some of these places. And they usually talk to the police or something like this, or the military first, but even then they would not uh could not guarantee safety to those in place. And I I feel that was right here that when I speak to them about these issues, and that's uh very emotional to touch on uh my question is to uh Dr.

Question 2: 1:16:04

Kuba. Um so first of all, thank you for the uh nice talk. Um my question is uh is there any common or standard practice to track uh to track down the uh the lost item uh from the National Museum? And is there any successful example maybe that the uh Sudanese authorities can learn from?

Julien Cooper: 1:16:23

Uh yeah, that's a good question. Um at first there was a lot of objects being sold on eBay uh that said they were from Sudan, but the heritage officials and others, and and Richard Bott is in the room and he was looking at this, uh that they all turned out to be fakes, so they weren't from the Sudan National Museum. So some people even trying to sell things as if they were from the Sudan National Museum that weren't from the Sudan National Museum. But I think the illicit trafficking was of a uh, how do I say, a higher intellectual level than simply selling it on eBay. I imagine there's other channels. We know that most of the objects that were taken were headed to the border near Dafur, which includes Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and then would go on to other networks from there. Uh from my own conversations, I know some police authorities have had some success in getting some objects from within the boundaries of Sudan, but most uh experts assume that some of the objects have gone from beyond the boundaries of Sudan and are now in international markets unknown, uh, which is very different to say what's happened in Iraq and other places where there has been, uh, is my understanding, more success in locating these objects that have been stolen.

Craig Barker: 1:17:35

It might be worth noting at this point, too, just the huge efforts being undertaken by various governments to have repatriations of looted material. Um, I know I I can speak firsthand in terms of Cyprus, where I work, that uh particularly over the last decade, a real concerted effort, and we see that reflected in in other nations as well. But part of that is the broader conversation of changing the marketplace for antiquities and for cultural items as well. Um any other questions from the floor?

Question 3: 1:18:08

Yes. So what seems to me to be missing from this whole presentation is something which I'm particularly interested in and maybe um was touched on by the trauma talk, is what can we do to prevent happening in the first place? It's all very well to try and fix things up after that happened. And obviously, with things like earthquakes and floods, as well, live places like that, but earthquakes and tsunamis, there's nothing you can do about it. But it seems to me more important than anything you've talked about as far and as far as just um rebuilding, finding, discovering, is what can we do to um prevent to the extent we can't prevent totally, but to minimize this happening in the future, such as educating or education or accepting um from local people in the area concerned the value of these things to them as a society. See, it seems to me the cultural heritage, the word cultural, and you use the word um a luxury, and I that that struck me as a discordant note in my note in my my mind, because that's how it's often seen by the people who build things on Liverpool docks, people who um build freeways under the under the Stonehenge, people who blow up the Hamden Bridge in Wagga, so it's a personal thing. Um that's seen as a luxury, whereas it does inform the identity of a whole community. And it seems to me the best way to prevent this, including wars, including um stuff used for the UK, is to educate and picking up the trauma stuff, which I'm not totally on board with, but let's go over there. That accepting from the community itself, it's a two-way street. Um they have value, they didn't they didn't so people themselves will try not to do it in the first place, or to the extent to which foreign forces do do it to try and prevent it. That seems to be totally missing from this, and I'm somewhat disappointed that I came to hear that.

Richard Mackay: 1:20:01

Um look, can I begin by saying we're talking about different levels of damage, and you're absolutely right. An an act of God, a natural disaster, other than addressing, you know, climate change globally. There's there's limits that to what you can do about monsoonal rain in Pakistan, you know, impacting on some of their major cultural sides. And then there are acts of war, like what is happening in Ukraine where the damage is incidental. There are acts of war where the damage is deliberate. Um, but I think the substantive answer to the concern is in fact the notion of heritage itself as inheritance, and the fact that we do now bother to identify it, uh, to assess its value, to articulate its value in many jurisdictions, to protect its value under statute or under treaty. So that you can't just go and change your house in a suburban context, just go and put a freeway under your World Heritage Site in an international context. You go through a process. Is the process perfect? No, it's absolutely not. Um, but I think it's actually a huge improvement in the 21st century to have these places identified and have systems in place that very often will give us um values-based decision-making, transparent decisions, even if we don't always like the outcome. And it can't it can't um solve the kind of bigger picture systemic issues, such as heritage being weaponized or being damaged in war, or even the current US government's complete dismantling, you know, of the kind of cultural heritage side of the US Park Service, which I find very distressing. Um at the end of the day, it's uh I mean I'm I'm I'm I'm tempted to quote Sir Donald Bradman that you know, the um the difficult I'll get onto right away, the impossible is going to take a little longer. Um, you know, this we we we can work at the margins, we can make good decisions or give good advice about places, but at the end of the day, if a government is determined to demolish a historic building at Parramatta in order to create a new museum, a sovereign elected government is entitled to govern, you know. So vote them out next time.

Charlotte Feakins: 1:22:29

Yeah, I so one of the projects that I'm working on at the moment um is perhaps thinking about heritage at a different scale, and that's at the personal level. So I'm working with communities in the northern rivers and thinking about disaster preparedness. So currently, uh, when it comes to disaster events, particularly um you know, flooding and fire in Australia, the kind of messaging from government is to pack your passport, your identity documents or your insurance documents, but all of these things can be replaced. And what the fundamental argument that we're making in our research is that these sentimental objects that get passed down, inherited through families, are incredibly important for people's emotional well-being. And the loss of those objects um causes immense pain for a lot of people. So we're developing guidelines around helping people to think through the objects that are important for them, objects that spark joy or love or represent something important in their lives so they can be carried with them through that event, um, and help to sort of bridge the disruption of trauma, which um helps to sort of navigate some of those feelings and helps to anchor them in the post-uh disaster space. Yeah.

Julien Cooper: 1:23:56

Uh just to add to that as a very quick answer. I think the education and awareness and regulation works well with the problems of say development and good faith, but accidental damage. But as as Richard said, when you have bad faith actors like oysit traffickers or uh war situations where so much destruction, I don't see an actual uh easy path to um, how do I say? If you tell them not to do it, that's not going to stop them.

Question 3: 1:24:25

I'm not disagreeing that not everything is possible and there's a and we're just trying to increment incremental change. What I'm saying is say take the sedan thing, okay. The RSF is a mob of gangsters, okay? But it but there are people in that mob of gangsters. And if they themselves felt a sense that their heritage, even if they're not from Khartoum itself, they're from Darfur or or the Blue Nile, was Nellar Region, whatever. But if they themselves felt identification of that as being part of their heritage, notwithstanding that they're of they don't agree with the government, would not they um sitto with the people who fanatics are fanatics, I suppose not much you can do about the Burmist statues because in because they're fanatics. But fanatics aside, if you give people a sense of picking up what you were saying with northern rivers, but taking a bit further rather than just photos and photos and stuff like that, but taking your larger heritage, we we identify as a people, say Sudanese people, we are not Egyptians, we are not Arabs, we are not um Uganda, we are Sudanese or whatever. I don't know, Sudan. Um, so a sense of identifying so that the people themselves, even the soldiers in the army, the people in there will do something to prevent it happening. I'm not after perfection, I'm just after improvement. And I think saying all things why it won't work is a bad start. Sorry, I'll just finish there, thank you.

Craig Barker: 1:25:51

I might um I might recommend you join us for our history now next Thursday, which is specifically about history education and how we need to support history teachers in schools um at a point in the 21st century where, as we all know from university departments, but uh at the ground level of actually building the next generation of historians. Excellent. Thank you. Good. We've got one final question tonight. Thank you.

Question 4: 1:26:16

Thanks so much for three wonderful talks. I feel like I've been from the monumental to the everyday, the this the sort of all that scale. Um, I guess I'm interested in the that notion of tangible heritage. And I think you mentioned it, Richard, about thinking more expansively or situating heritage in a more expansive kind of um frame, if you like. And so you know, you mentioned the Mostar Bridge, and just a really good example of how you know you can reconstruct something forensically as it was done, but the community is divided, so it means something totally different now, and um it's a it's still it remains a contested site, um, and and many things in that landscape have changed. Um, and I was thinking about um that sort of dialectic, I guess, between remembering and forgetting, and the sort of when that happens and when it you know perhaps shouldn't happen. So I guess thinking along you know the intangible and the tangible, and um, you know, shifting meanings and how things your work um um the the work on trauma can sort of both reanimate trauma, but sometimes there's you know the work of forgetting is also really important. So yeah, I perhaps more of a comment.

Richard Mackay: 1:27:46

I mean, look, I I I I I think absolutely, and and Mostar Bridge, I mean, there's a whole issue about was it was it about utility or was it about symbolism? Um, I mean, a a real example of that right now is the triumphal arch um of I think Septimus Cerverus in Palmyra, which was blown up. However, it was also um 3D scanned, you know, recorded in Point Cloud before it was blown up. And indeed, over the last decade, when Boris Johnson was Lord Mayor of London before he was prime minister, um, he had a 3D print made in Polystarin and it was erected in Trafalgar Square as a protest. And there's now a possibility that it could be printed in stone and re-erected. And do you? I mean, because the technology is there, but it wouldn't be the real thing. Um, and to my mind, that hinges very much on that values-based framework about engaging with the local community to understand, you know, does a 3D replica achieve something in terms of cultural identity or pushback? Or is it better to have the the deconstructed, destroyed site as the memory and some other kind of interpretation or education? And um, I mean, I'm I'm an Australian coming from a particular viewpoint, but I think our methodological um approach of trying to unpack, understand, consult, um, lay out values and constraints before making decisions is exactly the right way to approach such a problem. And there will be as many right answers as there are people in the room. More than that if you have an archaeologist.

Craig Barker: 1:29:33

Well, that's possibly a good point to uh finish the conversation, but obviously the conversation does go on um on a whole range of levels. Here at the Chowchak Wing Museum, we have a number of forthcoming events that are uh somehow related to tonight's presentation. Um, one in particular on Monday, the uh 18th of August. Um please join us for a lunchtime talk where Julian will expand in a little more detail. Detail and presumably any more information that's coming out of Khatoum, but a more specific deep dive into the current heritage crisis in Sudan. I would also issue an invitation for you to join us on the evening of Friday, the 8th of August, where we will host a conversation between Australia's former human rights commissioner, Chris Sadotti, and Ehab Schalbach from uh the University of Sydney staff, um, specifically on Chris's work on the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically the uh sections of that report that came out in June on the destruction of heritage sites and cultural institutions within Gaza. So I'm hope I hope that you'll be able to join us for both of those presentations. In terms of the next History Now event, um uh Thursday, the 31st of July next week, uh join us on a session on teaching history with Tim Allender from here at the University of Sydney and Jonathan Dalymore from the History Teachers Association, uh, where we discuss the need for supporting history teachers to help us produce the next generation of historians, archaeologists, and heritage practitioners, and hopefully not have the same conversations that we're having right now as well. Can I finally uh uh say a big thank you to uh the wonderful team from the History Council of New South Wales for their support for tonight's events and for next week's event as well? And a big, big thank you to our three presenters. So, Dr. Charlotte Freakin, uh Feekins, sorry. Uh what did I just call it? Dr. Charlotte Feekins, Dr. Julian Cooper, and Professor Richard Mackay. Thank you.

Catherine Shirley: 1:31:47

Thank you for joining us for this podcast. If you'd like to hear more, subscribe to our series via your favourite streaming platform and join us for our next History Now episode, Teaching History, the future of history education in New South Wales. For a full list of History Council cultural partners, along with a list of other podcasts produced by us, please visit our website HistoryCouncilnsw.org.au, forward slash podcasts. I'm Catherine Shirley. Thank you.