Critical Australian Indigenous Histories
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Transgressions critical Australian Indigenous histories Transgressions critical Australian Indigenous histories Ingereth Macfarlane and Mark Hannah (editors) Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated Aboriginal History Monograph 16 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Transgressions [electronic resource] : critical Australian Indigenous histories / editors, Ingereth Macfarlane ; Mark Hannah. Publisher: Acton, A.C.T. : ANU E Press, 2007. ISBN: 9781921313448 (pbk.) 9781921313431 (online) Series: Aboriginal history monograph Notes: Bibliography. Subjects: Indigenous peoples–Australia–History. Aboriginal Australians, Treatment of–History. Colonies in literature. Australia–Colonization–History. Australia–Historiography. Other Authors: Macfarlane, Ingereth. Hannah, Mark. Dewey Number: 994 Aboriginal History is administered by an Editorial Board which is responsible for all unsigned material. Views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily shared by Board members. The Committee of Management and the Editorial Board Peter Read (Chair), Rob Paton (Treasurer/Public Officer), Ingereth Macfarlane (Secretary/ Managing Editor), Richard Baker, Gordon Briscoe, Ann Curthoys, Brian Egloff, Geoff Gray, Niel Gunson, Christine Hansen, Luise Hercus, David Johnston, Steven Kinnane, Harold Koch, Isabel McBryde, Ann McGrath, Frances Peters- Little, Kaye Price, Deborah Bird Rose, Peter Radoll, Tiffany Shellam Editors Ingereth Macfarlane and Mark Hannah Copy Editors Geoff Hunt and Bernadette Hince Contacting Aboriginal History All correspondence should be addressed to Aboriginal History, Box 2837 GPO Canberra, 2601, Australia. Sales and orders for journals and monographs, and journal subscriptions: T Boekel, email: [email protected], tel or fax: +61 2 6230 7054 www.aboriginalhistory.org ANU E Press All correspondence should be addressed to: ANU E Press, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected], http://epress.anu.edu.au Aboriginal History Inc. is a part of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University and gratefully acknowledges the support of the History Program, RSSS and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, The Australian National University. Cover design by Teresa Prowse Cover photo: Clint Spencer. iStockphoto, File Number: 4387298 Printed by University Printing Services, ANU Apart for any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. This edition © 2007 ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Inc Table of Contents Contributors ix Preface xiii 1. François Péron and the Tasmanians: an unrequited romance, Shino Konishi 1 2. Moving Blackwards: Black Power and the Aboriginal Embassy, Kathy Lothian 19 3. Criminal justice and transgression on northern Australian cattle stations, Thalia Anthony 35 4. Dreaming the circle: indigeneity and the longing for belonging in White Australia, Jane Mulcock 63 5. Resisting the captured image: how Gwoja Tjungurrayi, `One Pound Jimmy', escaped the `Stone Age', Jillian E Barnes 83 6. On the romances of marriage, love and solitude: freedom and transgression in Cape York Peninsula in the early to mid twentieth century, Jinki Trevillian 135 7. `Hanging no good for blackfellow': looking into the life of Musquito, Naomi Parry 153 8. Leadership: the quandary of Aboriginal societies in crises, 1788 ± 1830, and 1966, Dennis Foley 177 9. Sedentary topography: the impact of the Christian Mission Society's `civilising' agenda on the spatial structure of life in the Roper Region of northern Australia, Angelique Edmonds 193 10. Sinful enough for Jesus: guilt and Christianisation at Mapoon, Queensland, Devin Bowles 211 11. Corrupt desires and the wages of sin: Indigenous people, missionaries and male sexuality, 1830-1850, Jessie Mitchell 229 v List of Illustrations 1.1. Fois. [i.e. Francois] Peron, nd, engraving by Lambert designed by Lesueur, Charles Alexandre, 1778-1846, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Tasmania 3 4.1. Face painting in the sewing circle 69 4.2. Our headband ceremony 69 4.3. Women dancing Water Dreaming 70 4.4. Evening meal in ochre 70 5.1. ‘Denitive’ Commonwealth stamp 1950. 83 5.2. Bamboro-Kain 1839. 84 5.3. Photograph of Gwoja Tjungurrayi 1935. 84 5.4. Indian Detour on The Chief, 1929 Grand Canyon Line, Santa Fe Railroad. 86 5.5. Indian-Detours 1920s Santa Fe Railroad/Harveycars. 89 5.6. Poster: Winter Tours to Central Australia. 89 5.7. ‘The Aboriginal … as … seen by early explorers’. 91 5.8. ‘As primitive today as were the natives who slew Kennedy’. 92 5.9. ‘A Family of New South Wales’ 1792 by William Blake (1757-1827) after sketch by Governor Phillip Gidley King (1758-1808). 94 5.10. ‘Arunta Man’, FJ Gillen 1896. 94 5.11. ‘Aborigines examining a motor car’. 95 5.12. ‘Go North to Adventure! By TAA Jetliner’. 95 5.13. ‘Aborigines Seeking Food and Knowledge’. 97 5.14. Tjungurrayi’s Ancestral Estate. 102 5.15. Pastoral Holdings re-territorialise Ancestral Country. 103 5.16. ‘A mark of respect’. 106 5.17. Cliord Possum Tjapaltjarri with daughters, Gabriella and Michelle (left to right). 108 5.18. ‘The most publicised [A]boriginal in Australia’. 109 5.19. Cropped image of ‘One Pound Jimmy’. 111 5.20. Uncropped photograph taken by Penhall and sent to MacGregor by Holmes. 111 5.21. ‘Latest addition to MacGregor’s stamp collection’. 112 vii Transgressions 5.22. Hale River men Tjeria and Woritarinja, TGH Strehlow, Arltunga, 1935. 113 5.23. ‘One Pound’ Jimmy and ‘Old Billy’. 118 5.24. ‘Mamaragan, the Thunder-man’. 120 5.25. Roy Dunstan, photographer as he preferred to be seen. 121 122 5.27. Woritarinja and Tjungurrayi as never portrayed by Holmes. 123 5.28. Tjungurrayi on Dawn’s masthead, Dawn magazine cover, 1952 and Dawn digitised DVD cover, 2004. 124 9.1. Children lined up for breakfast at Roper River Mission, no date. 197 9.2. The new School at Roper Mission 1937. 197 9.3. School children with work outside the school, no date. 197 9.4. Mission station at Roper River, no date. 200 9.5. Roper River mission showing gardens, no date. 200 9.6. Mission quarters at Roper River, no date. 200 viii Contributors Thalia Anthony wrote this paper in the transitional period between completing her PhD thesis in history and recommencing her law degree, both at The Australian National University. She is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney. Thalia is passionate about interdisciplinary Indigenous studies and embraces this volume's expression of critical Indigenous histories. Jillian Barnes has a business background in arts marketing and industrial management consulting. She has recently worked on a documentary film in Central Australia with members of the Arrernte community choir at Hermannsburg. This article was written during her doctoral research in History at the University of Sydney. Her thesis, `Tourism's possession of the Centre': Seeing and performing kinship and belonging at Uluru, 1929-1958', will be submitted in 2007. She has edited Historia, and tutored in a new History subject at the University of Sydney titled `Race relations and Australian frontiers'. She was awarded the Australasian Pioneers Club Prize for her Honours thesis in Australian history in 2000. Devin Bowles' paper is based on his work for a Master of Arts in anthropology at The Australian National University, 2003. He is now studying for an Honours degree in psychology at The Australian National University. Angelique Edmonds completed her PhD at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, The Australian National University in 2007. She trained as an architect at the University of NSW and Kingston University in London and completed a Master of Philosphy at Cambridge University. Her PhD research focused upon Aboriginal relationships to place and expressions of Aboriginal agency in determining the structure of their living environments. At the time of research and writing of this paper, Angelique was living in the Roper River Region of South East Arnhem Land, contracted by the Northern Territory government to facilitate a community planning project for future housing in Ngukurr. Dennis Foley is a Fulbright Scholar, a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University and a lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, University of Swinburne, forging a new field in Indigenous entrepreneurship. He has completed postdoctoral studies at The Australian National University in the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, and the College of Business and Economics. His publications cross several disciplines, from Indigenous literature and history, to business management-entrepreneurship and education. Dennis's principle areas of research are Indigenous entrepreneurship and Indigenous epistemology. His PhD recently won the 2006 Best Doctoral Thesis Award, Gold Medal, World Business Institute. Although an academic in the western definition, Dennis was born in his matrilineal place and is of salt-water law. His blood connection to this land is ix Transgressions with the Gammeray, the Gatlay and the Gaimai. This also includes the sub-groups of the Cannaigal and the Boregal. His father is a descendant of the Capertee/Turon River people of the Wiradjuri, north of Bathurst. Dennis identifies