Talk:Gweagal shield

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Suggestions[edit]

Short page fleshing out the history behind the Gweagal Shield, please contribute and critisise! Chambordboy (talk) 16:06, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chambordboy. This article could do with fleshing out and the links made between this article and Gweagal#The Gweagal Spears and Shield. I think you will find that there is overlap, and quite a lot more info in the other article that could be copied here, and the other article afterwards reduced in size. (You can copy directly, but in your edit summary must write "Copied from Gweagal; see that article history for full attribution", for copyright purposes.) Also, the lead should explain the origin of its name and what exactly it is, before discussing its significance and the controversy. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:33, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Revisions to article[edit]

Hello all

I have rewritten the article to try to address its issues with accuracy and neutrality. The most recent scholarly and scientific research on the shield in the British museum indicates that it is almost certainly not the one collected by Banks and is more likely to have been collected after 1788 and to have come from an area at least 500 kilometres north of Botany Bay. The most authoritative sources for the provenance of the shield are Thomas, Nicholas (2018). "A Case of Identity: The Artifacts of the 1770 Kamay (Botany Bay) Encounter". Australian Historical Studies. 49:1: 4–27; and Maria Nugent & Gaye Sculthorpe (2018) A Shield Loaded with History: Encounters, Objects and Exhibitions, Australian Historical Studies, 49:1, 28-43. It's also important to note that it was a Gweagal elder, Dr Shayne Williams, who first raised doubts about whether the shield came from Gweagal territory and asked the British Museum to further investigate. While it is fine to quote scholars who disagree with the findings to the cited research, I don't think wikipedia should give space to critiques which impugn the motives of the researchers or assert that they got it wrong without providing evidence for this. In addition, calling the shield in the British museum the Gweagal shield is disrespectful to the Gugu Yimidhirr people from whom it is more likely to have originated. I have tried to get around this by using Gweagal shield to refer to the shield known to have been dropped by the Gweagal warriors (and which might no longer exist). I have tried to distinguish this from the Aboriginal shield held by the British Museum, which unfortunately doesn't have an accurate and catchy name. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 06:35, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Aemilius Adolphin and thanks for your work. I don't have time to go through this now, but will come back to it at some point. I've just added a few wikilinks in the lead, and would like to reiterate what I wrote above, that the article should contain at least what the Gweagal article currently contains (to which I have just added a link to this article), and after this one is as complete as possible, cut down the section in the other article (after deciding whether the spears should also be included here). Also, please add urls where the articles are available - Thomas' article that is behind a paywall at T&F is available upon request via ResearchGate, here - supplied in the other aricle. (The other article will also require a cleanup of citations no longer used once the relevant material has been copied here and removed from that one.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:30, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gweagal shield[edit]

Can you cite a source that considers the British Museum shield to not be the Gweagal shield? It would appear to me that the name 'the Gweagal shield' has always been used for the physical British Museum shield, not the idea of the shield taken by Banks. What I mean is, that although the British Museum shield may not be factually the shield taken at first contact, it is still most frequently called 'the Gweagal shield' and that name hasn't transferred to the lost shield. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Poketama (talk) 02:11, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All the sources you cited in the article on Cooman state that the shield picked up by Banks is the Gweagal shield. If the shield in the British Museum is not this shield then it can't be the Gweagal Shield. If it is from several hundred kilometres further north (as it almost certainly is) then it isn't even "a" Gweagal Shield. It originates from another Aboriginal nation. It would be very insensitive of wikipedia to call a shield originating from another Aboriginal nation The Gweagal Shield, wouldn't it? Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 07:26, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]