Patrolling the Past
Reviewed by: María F. Buitrago
Review started: February 28, 2023
Review last updated: May 4, 2023
Site Links
Data and Sources
- Student Blog posts
- Papua New Guinea Patrol Reports gathered in the Melanesian Archive at the University of California San Diego
- Student Essays
Processes
- Archival research through the UC San Diego Library
- Analysis of primary sources and editing of blog post
- Curation of student’s blog post via WordPress and organization of content tagging
Presentation
- Content is divided between two iterations of the class in which students analyzed the archive. The first cohort to work with the Patrol reports was during the Summer of 2018. The second group was from Deakin University and worked on the material during 2020–2021
- Syllabus of each class.
- Links to the archives and other research material.
- Student blogs and essays are organized and searchable using a total of 41 thematic tags such as: Agriculture, Decolonialism, Gardens, Rites and Ceremonies, etc.
- The content is also organized by dates.
Digital Tools Used
- WordPress Grid as Content Delivery Network
- WordPress as Content Management System
Languages
- English
Review
Patrolling the Past is a WordPress site that gathers the work of two groups of students analyzing, reviewing and reflecting upon material found in the Papua New Guinea Patrol Reports gathered in the Melanesian Archive at the University of California San Diego. The archive is composed of accounts made by government officials from the World War II era up to 1975. The reports are, according to the UC San Diego Library, a “major source of primary information on Papua New Guinea’s colonial-era history”. The text-based reports provide detailed descriptions on census counts, tax collections to missionaries, languages and more. One can also find, through the blog posts, images hosted at the library, such as the “Tabibuga, line of men carry cargo past the jail building” or a collection of photographs, “On Patrol in Papua New Guinea” published by The National Archives of Australia via Flickr.
Students at the University of San Diego California (2018 – USA) and at the Deakin University (2021 – Australia) were asked to review this digitized archive and “conduct an analysis of the patrol reports identifying topics and themes.” Their topics, tags and analysis give structure to the website and enable users to search their essays and posts by date, university, or theme. Reading through their work, one can find many interesting and nuanced accounts of the daily interactions between the Patrols and the population of Papua New Guinea. At the same time, the students reflect on the difficulties of analyzing the text —many of the accounts seem to be illegible and difficult to understand. Furthermore, they engage in complex questions regarding the construction of knowledge and interpretation of people’s past through the accounts of their colonizers. Professors Rachel Emerine Hicks, Cristela Garcia-Spitz and Dr. Jonathan Ritchie gives the students the guidelines and prompts to work through the archives with questions such as “What are the key characteristics noted by these ‘explorers’?” and “Who controls knowledge?”
As a pedagogical exercise the website is a very thoughtful resource where one can find, not just the archive itself, but the very process through which historians engage with primary material and build narratives from it. It seems very useful for educators, as well, given that the professors shared the syllabus and prompt questions for each blog post and essay. The website is organized and easy to navigate. Finally, the level of student engagement with the analysis and the documentation of their process, as they explore the archive, reveals how the sources are discursively recreated, and should not be taken as factual representations of the past. The students often pointed out the difficulties of choosing how to present the material, speaking to the effectiveness of the project to inspire thoughtful consideration of how to portray complex colonial histories.
On the other hand, the website could be enriched by adding a more cohesive and general context that suits a more general audience in the region and era. It is only while scrolling through the student blog posts that one discovers essential information about the topic. For example, the fact that Papua New Guinea’s independence was obtained in 1975 or that the population has 853 distinct languages. Also, the use of the term “remote” to describe the indigenous populations seems odd given the fact that the group wanted to explore the archive with a “(de) Colonial gaze.” One might be inclined to ask, “remote” from where or from whom? Isn’t “remote” another category to establish a hierarchy of space according to a colonial mindset? Or, perhaps, even though the author’s intention is to provide a decolonial analysis of Papua New Guinea's past, given their primary sources, it might not be possible to do so? In short, the project truly makes you grapple with an urgent question: How can you decolonize the archive?