Julie McIntyre is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. In much of her research, she analyzes how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are connected with, or disconnected from, places through ancestry, family, work, activism, or tourism. Her books First Vintage: Wine in colonial New South Wales (2012) and Hunter Wine: A history (2018, with John Germov) were both shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s History Awards. You can read her article in JCHA/RSHC 33, no. 2 (2023) by clicking here.
The global diffusion of winegrapes since the fifteenth century is often historicized as a benefit bestowed upon those colonial places rather than an invasion of ecologies where sovereign Indigenous peoples knowingly managed their land. In her article, Julie McIntyre discusses winegrowing and consumption in Australia to highlight First Nations’ experiences of colonization.
“Following this increased awareness and with the intention to be an ally for First Nations — as there are no Indigenous Australian historians researching the role of Australian First Nations in winegrowing to collaborate with — I am holding space with a relational approach for Indigenous researchers who may seek in future to enter the field.” Can you elaborate more on how non-Indigenous scholars can work with and support Indigenous histories and historians/knowledge keepers?
Many non-Indigenous Australian historians whose work I am influenced by have been closely involved with Indigenous communities to conduct their research. Immersion with Indigenous communities is not however a practice I have engaged in as a non-Indigenous historian because my research is focused mainly on explaining a form of settler colonial commodity production. Even so, being influenced by post-colonialism, new imperial history’s ‘reading against the grain’ and Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s advice for decolonising western knowledge, I frame my research questions to find Indigenous perspectives.
Not so long ago I worked on a project with a non-Indigenous historian who listed key themes in that project as People and Indigenous People. More and more historians agree that it is unacceptable to refer to colonists who participated in imperial and colonial processes and the settler colonists who stayed as a default, prefix-less people and then naming colonised people with a modifier because they are somehow deviant from a purported norm.
Now it is common in Australia for non-Indigenous scholars to work with and support Indigenous histories and historians/knowledge keepers by using the names of Indigenous people and places as given by Indigenous people not colonists. Dual naming, with Indigenous names preceding non-Indigenous place names are also an important innovation that is a part of government policy in the broader community as well as convention among scholars.
Non-Indigenous historians, and Indigenous historians working on topics and the Country of ancestors other than their own are now expected to ask permission of the elders of First Nations about which they are writing, and foster collaborations with Indigenous knowledge-keepers. When, as a non-Indigenous historian, I have attempted to address these conventions and yet permission or collaboration is not possible, I have learned to acknowledge this lack and also to acknowledge that the knowledge space I am making is created with the intention of supporting Indigenous participation in future. It feels unscientific to state our identities as historians in formal research forums such as journal articles, yet I found it very instructive to be asked by Bundjalung scholar Samia Goudie – after reading aloud from my new manuscript at a writers retreat: who are you? Samia wanted to know my story and why I hold the values I do as a settler colonial-descendant to recognise Indigenous people and their histories. It feels uncomfortable to talk about myself in academic publications but this approach, recommended by Samia, does circuit-break the tradition that assumes being scientific in the humanities can only mean conducting objective and replicable studies that produce universal truths, or working as an ethnographic insider-outsider bound by other methodological codes of practice to prevent confirmation bias. Samia taught me that I can be both scientific – in the sense of being rational and evidence-based, and all of the other rules of integrity and rigour we follow in western scholarship – and also assume an Indigenous audience for my work is curious to know why I care about an Indigenous perspective beyond the exercise of ticking a box for equity targets or career advancement.
What drew settler colonists to wine production?
Settler colonists in the British colonies of the geography we now call Australia were first interested in wine production from what they knew from patterns of British and European imperial processes aimed at the extraction and accumulation of economic and social value. British colonists in New South Wales, and later other British Australian colonies, knew that certain environmental qualities suited specific commodity crops. For example, the early modern English colonial agent John Locke’s contribution to English colonisation in North America included identification of the adaptability of Mediterranean crops such as winegrapes. This is part of the patterns of British imperial attitudes to colonisation of lands in temperate climates. That said, it is fascinating to consider that although experiments with winegrowing in New South Wales failed for many decades, some elite settler colonists nevertheless persisted with efforts to create a wine industry. This persistence was due, I argue, to the social as well as economic value perceived in winegrowing as an instrument for the ‘civilisation’ of lower social orders, as well as an expression of ‘settled’ Arcadia replicating the ‘best’ qualities of European economy, society and culture. Despite these persistent aspirations being continually evident in various parts of Australia from the outset of colonisation to the present, Australia’s wine industry didn’t, in fact, generate much domestic or export income until the 1990s, except in South Australia. Yet winegrowing has deeply shaped some settler colonial identity and environments, and there are facets of Australian wine culture that are quite distinct from wine culture in other parts of the world. I am so interested to see how the two new Indigenous wine brands that have emerged in Australia in recent years draw from history in their marketing narratives. Historical capital can be central to wine brand and wine tourism narratives. There is much to study in this fruitful field!
Is wine history a part of the field of food history?
My research career began with an interest in the role of wine production, trade and consumption in the British colony of New South Wales. This has led me to branch out along historical themes of economy, society and environment in different times and places, and increasingly I attempt to re-entangle these themes and methodologies, rather than treating them as separate. I teach histories of wine, such as geographical indications, as part of global food history, but as a researcher I am interested in what commodity development reveals about social as well as economic systems at work, and more-than-human relationships. I don’t consider wine history to be only connected with food history, but it can intersect with that field, depending on the case study in a research question.
You wrote in your article about New Norcia Aboriginal Mission Station. I noticed that the New Norcia Aboriginal Mission Station closed in the 1970s, but the monastery is still active. Have there been attempts by the Benedictine monks to talk about its role in the Aboriginal-Australian interactions?
I have relied on the excellent scholarship of other historians, as cited in my article, to understand Indigenous-settler colonial relations at New Norcia. The librarian at the New Norcia archive was able to answer a brief question for me, as also cited in the article. My understanding is that the contemporary custodians of New Norcia’s archives cooperate as much as possible in allowing historians to access records. I can’t otherwise speak to how monks at New Norcia are participating in truth-telling about Aboriginal experiences at the mission, but it is a very good question.
Daybook entry from New Norcia Mission Station
In conducting the research for your article, were there any surprising or unexpected finds?
This study did not yield any spectacular surprises but a highlight of the research was going to the Osooyos Indian Band’s vineyard and wine tourism site. This was organised by colleagues I visited in British Columbia last year, Donna Senese and Ben Bryce. It was really very moving to visit a place where First Nations people are proud of their thriving winegrowing enterprise which employs many from the tribe, and an Indigenous vineyard manager and winemaker. There is not (yet) a similar site in Australia. Of course, we must ask: should Indigenous people be expected to participate in all economic avenues? Well, the answer to this is: yes, if they want to! Being free to choose to be economic agents was long denied to Indigenous Australians. The glimpsed historical details that I gathered for my Settler Vines research crystallised for me how being Indigenous since colonisation has been a profoundly different experience than being non-Indigenous, in quotidian and therefore seemingly banal ways that might be considered undeserving of attention but that over time are no less tragic than more overt forms of violence. Furthermore, there are varied views among Indigenous Australians about whether they ought to participate in the modern economy or resist it. This is an especially sensitive point around Aboriginal alcohol production. There is a history of Aboriginal alcohol addiction since colonisation and an assumed Aboriginal inability to drink alcohol responsibly, that has been debunked in research, but persists in popular thinking. Since Indigenous economic participation is favoured by many Indigenous leaders, it seems to me a salient point to document that Aboriginal participation in the wine industry is only very recent, as discussed in my article, compared particularly with Canada.
Label from Murrin Bridge Winery, New South Wales
Do you have a favourite wine?
That’s a difficult question to answer as I am from the country that produces the world’s best wine. This is a point on which I am free to express unfettered confirmation bias. Canadian historians are welcome to look me up when they visit Australia and debate this point over a glass of evidence.
Have you read anything good recently?
Yes! Clare Wright’s Naku Dharuk, The Bark Petitions is a non-Indigenous-insider narrative non-fiction account of Yolŋu resistance to settler colonial bauxite mining on their ancestral land. This is a history that has been traditionally told as a footnote to other histories of, say, national policy and economic benefit or Aboriginal protest and material culture. Wright leads her account with an Indigenous perspective on Yolŋu petitions against mining in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, far from the institutional centre of democracy in southeastern Australia, to tell the powerful story of a people’s movement for change. Wright is a historian who has made spectacular unexpected finds during her research. I urge you to ask your university library to order the book immediately.