What is it about?
Rocket launch sites, nuclear testing and waste storage, and high security detention facilities are often located in remote places with low populations, both to avoid scrutiny and to control hazards. However, these places are also often where local or Indigenous populations have been displaced by colonial processes. This is explored though the rocket launch sites of Woomera in South Australia and Kourou in French Guiana.
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Why is it important?
All too often, it's assumed that Indigenous people were not involved with the development of high technology like space exploration or nuclear power. These stories are important to redress colonial inequities and to facilitate more diverse voices in decision-making.
Perspectives
I visited the Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guiana in 2005, and was astonished to find that the talk I was to give there, including an account of refugee detention centres at the Woomera rocket launch site, had raised alarm bells with my hosts. I was asked to remove this part of the talk. This paper is an attempt to explore the issues around this and how I resolved them.
Dr Alice C Gorman
Flinders University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: La Terre et l’Espace: Rockets, Prisons, Protests and Heritage in Australia and French Guiana, Archaeologies, May 2007, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11759-007-9017-9.
You can read the full text:
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