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Abstract

Frontispiece 1. Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial by Nicholas Galanin, at Cockatoo Island, as part of the 22 nd Biennale of Sydney (2020). The installation was commissioned by the Biennale with assistance from the U.S. Government and features a trench cut in the shape and size of the monument to Captain James Cook that stands in Sydney's Hyde Park. Cook's monument has been a focus of recent protests, and the artist describes the installation as a call to bury not only Cook's statue, but also his wider colonial legacy. By adopting the form and methods of an archaeological excavation to open a grave for the monument, Galanin subverts one of the technologies through which Indigenous populations were deprived of their heritage.