Embodied Places in Indigenous ecotourism: the Yarrawarra research project

Abstract

Little research has been done on how places with shared Indigenous and colonial pasts are communicated to tourists. One problem is that many tourists lack an understanding of Indigenous cultural landscapes and have stereotyped views of Indigenous peoples and places. In order to address this problem we argue that an embodied presence in the landscape, focusing on knowledge by the body as well as knowledge by the mind, is essential to understanding Indigenous place stories, and for seeing the landscape in new ways. On the mid-north coast of New South Wales, where ecotourism is increasingly important,we are carrying out a collaborative research project to develop interpretive materials with the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Corporation. In the Yarrawarra Place Stories project (1997–2000) we have carried out oral history and archaeological research, and through a series of five books based on individual places, we attempt to convey Aboriginal places in complex and layered ways which focus on an embodied presence in the landscape, and explore how tourists may construct places visited in new ways. In this article we provide a reading of an example of the place representations from this project (Yarrawarra Place Stories Books 1–5) to make evident the embodied nature of local place stories in this interdisciplinary research project.