New from "Pacific Historical Review": Mission Bells, Chinese Exclusion Act, Indigenous Land Rights
With summer in full swing, it’s time for the new issue of Pacific Historical Review. Bernard Gordillo Brockmann studies the sounds of California’s mission bells, Arang Ha traces how antislavery ideology was twisted around to justify the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Dean Kotlowski compares the policies of U.S. President Richard Nixon and Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on Indigenous land rights.
The Mission Soundscape: Church Bells, Spanish Colonization, and California Indians, 1769–Present
By Bernard Gordillo Brockmann
The California Missions and especially the mission bells have become evocative but controversial symbols of California. In his new article, historian Bernard Gordillo Brockmann investigates what the ringing of mission bells meant to the Native people who labored at the missions and what the bells mean today. When the missions were active—from 1769 to 1846—the sound of the bells played a vital role in the colonization of California Indian people and their land. Bell ringing served as a tool of discipline that shaped time, space, and movement. But by the twentieth century, some Californians saw the mission bell as a romantic symbol of California, even as many California Indians viewed the bell as a symbol of colonization. More than a memorial, the mission bell signifies changes in colonial power relations that echo into the present.
In her new article, historian Arang Ha offers a fresh perspective into the race and gender issues leading up to the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the law that forbade Chinese immigration to America. U.S. politicians debated Chinese Exclusion in the decades after the U.S. Civil War–a time of strong antislavery rhetoric in American politics. As Ha explains, these politicians stereotyped all Chinese women as slaves, believing that China was an absolute patriarchy that made “every woman a slave and every man a slaveowner.” If this was true, they argued, then it seemed only right to prevent the immigration of Chinese women. After all, a war had been fought to end slavery on U.S. soil. This paternalistic attitude was used to justify the exclusion of Chinese immigrants, especially Chinese women–twisting antislavery ideology to support a racist law.
Richard Nixon, Gough Whitlam, and Indigenous Land Rights: Statecraft, Stagecraft, and Legacy-Building in the United States and Australia
By Dean Kotlowski
The 1970s were a watershed moment in the global fight for Indigenous self-determination and decolonization. Throughout the decade, Australian and U.S. activists, government leaders, and policymakers worked tirelessly to redefine Indigenous rights to land and to national sovereignty. Historian Dean Kotlowski offers an innovative comparison of U.S. President Richard Nixon and Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s policy agendas on land rights to show how deeply First Nations’ history intersected with each man’s political leadership and legacy building. As Kotlowski points out, Indigenous rights were not won without the international transmission and translation of ideas between grassroots groups, the larger public, and the people who governed them.
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