Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 18
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Aboriginal History Volume eighteen 1994 ABORIGINAL HISTORY INCORPORATED The Committee of Management and the Editorial Board Peter Read (Chair), Rob Paton (Secretary), Peter Grimshaw (Treasurer/Public Officer), Isabel McBryde, Luise Hercus, Ewan Morris, Elspeth Young, Ian Clark, Richard Baker, Robyne Bancroft, Neil Andrews, Valerie Chapman, Niel Gunson, Bill Jonas, Diane Smith, Harold Koch, Ricky Mullett, Brian Egloff. ABORIGINAL HISTORY 1994 Editors: Peter Read, Ewan Morris. Review Editor: Luise Hercus. CORRESPONDENTS Jeremy Beckett, Ann Curthoys, Eve Fesl, Fay Gale, Ronald Lampert, Campbell Macknight, John Mulvaney, Andrew Markus, Boh Reece, Henry Reynolds, Shirley Roser, Lyndall Ryan, Bruce Shaw, Tom Stannage, Robert Tonkinson, James Urry. Aboriginal History aims to present articles and information in the field of Australian ethnohistory, particularly in the post-contact history of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Historical studies based on anthropological, archaeological, linguistic and sociological research, including comparative studies of other ethnic groups such as Pacific Islanders in Australia, will be welcomed. Future issues will include recorded oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, resumes of current events, archival and bibliographical articles, and book reviews. Aboriginal History is administered by an Editorial Board which is responsible for all unsigned material in the journal. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of signed articles and reviews are not necessarily shared by Board members. The editors invite contributions for consideration; reviews will be commissioned by the review editor. All editorial correspondence should be addressed to The Editors, Aboriginal History, Department of History, The Faculties, Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia. Subscriptions and related inquiries should be sent to Box 2837, GPO Canberra 2601, ACT Australia. © Copyright Aboriginal History Inc., Canberra, Australia, ISSN 0314-8769. Apart from 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. Typeset by Manukailopa Grcic Printed by ANU Central Printery, Canberra ISSN 0314-8769 ABORIGINAL HISTORY VOLUME EIGHTEEN 1994 Part 1 O bituaries Oodgeroo Noonuccal, No mum Barnett Tindale and Catherine Helen Bemdt 1 Gordon Briscoe The Struggle for Grace: An Appreciation of Kevin John Gilbert 13 Livio Dobrez From the English Department 33 David Headon A Response to Gordon Briscoe 39 Michael Dodson A Response to Gordon Briscoe 45 Eleanor Gilben Briscoe's Erroneous and Mis-named 'Appreciation' of Kevin Gilbert 47 S. Robinson The Aboriginal Embassy: An Account o f the P rotests o f 1972 49 Michael Hess Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike 1946 65 Part 2 Y sola B est An Uneasy Coexistence: An Aboriginal Perspective of 'Contact History' in Southeast Queensland 87 Bernard Whimpnss Johnny Mullagh: Western District Hero or the Black Grace? 95 Peter Gilford Murder and 'The Execution of the Law' on the Nullarbor 103 Michael Organ Australian Aboriginal Dreaming Stories: A Chronological Bibliography 123 Bill Edwards Mutuka Nyakunytja - Seeing a Motorcar 145 Rowena MacDoiald Between Two Worlds 159 REVIEWS 167 INDEX Vols 146 217 Editorial This issue contains obituaries of three key figures in Aboriginal Australia, an important bibliographic collation, and an account of consultative processes involved in the production of a historical exhibition. There is a plea for considering afresh the Aboriginal contribution to contact history, an Aboriginal text about seeing the first motor car, new evidence about the Pilbara walk-off and the first detailed account of the Tent Embassy. There are accounts of the Aboriginal cricketer Johhny Mullagh and of little-known but important events in southern Western Australia. The volume begins with a controversial account of the life of the late Kevin Gilbert. Gordon Briscoe's article contains many challenges and insights; but, such was the controversial nature of the article, the editors and editorial board invited responses which we have printed without alteration. Although, regrettably, distress was caused in some articles while the article was circulated during 1994 before publication, we took the view that all national figures are likely to attract controversy, and that Kevin Gilbert had been already a controversial figure in his own lifetime. Most, perhaps all, people reconstruct their identities in the course of a lifetime. To suggest that an Aboriginal person might have done so is not to suggest that that person was not 'really' Aboriginal, but rather that identity is a more complex matter than is often supposed. Does it matter if an Aboriginal person who adheres to one identification is descended also from other groups or communities? We answer: no it doesn't. Given that such divergent opinions are represented in the original article and in the responses, the Editorial Board recommends that all five articles be read together, providing as a group a broad context for consideration of such issues. Peter Read Ewan Morris ABORIGINAL HISTORY VOLUME EIGHTEEN 1994 PART 1 Obituaries John Collins Oodgeroo Noonuccal 1 Philip Jones Norman Barnett Tindale 5 B. & M. Tonkinson Catherine Helen Bemdt 9 Gordon Briscoe The Struggle for Grace: An Appreciation of Kevin John Gilbert 13 Livio Dobrez From the English Department 33 David Headon A Response to Gordon Briscoe 39 Michael Dodson A Response to Gordon Briscoe 45 Eleanor Gilbert Briscoe 's Erroneous and Mis-named 'Appreciation' of Kevin Gilbert 47 S. Robinson The Aboriginal Embassy: An Account of the Protests of 1972 49 Michael Hess Black and Red: The Pilbara Pastoral Workers' Strike, 1946 65 OBITUARY: OODGEROO OF THE TRIBE NOONUCCAL John Collins Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal, Custodian of the Land Minjerribah (formerly known by her Anglicised name of Kath Walker), died on 16 September 1993. Minjerribah is the Noonuccal word for the great sand island which fringes Moreton Bay opposite the city of Brisbane. The Noonuccal-Nughie tribes occupied both North and South Stradbroke islands and fished the waters of the bay, which was known to them as Quandamooka. Visitors from many countries sailed into the bay in the early days, and when Kathleen Jane Mary Ruska was born on 3 November 1920 there was plenty of variety in her blood line. Her father was the caretaker of the local aged and infirm asylum on the island but he also maintained traditional ways. The young Kathie (one of seven children) knew the bay, its beach and forested dunes: Children of nature we were then No clocks hurrying crowds to toil.1 Schooling at the local primary school had to be endured rather than enjoyed but, at 13, like so many other Aboriginal girls of her age, she was drafted into domestic service in Brisbane. This meant that she had to live in a white world; that she had to obey the orders of the women and to keep clear of the men. She managed to do this until the Second World War, when she joined the Women's Army. She became a telephonist and was on the way to accumulating skills that would see her move out of the cramped 'no highway' that was the lot of her people, until illness forced her back into domestic service. She married, had a son and settled into suburban Brisbane, but the marriage was not to last. Now with two young boys, Dennis and Vivian, Kath (as I shall call her) might have been overcome with the burdens of single parenthood in a very hostile society. Instead, she enrolled in a repatriation stenographic course and joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). As she said many times, she was political by genes as well as by upbringing and the only political party she could find in post-war Australia that did not have White Australia as a major plank of policy was the CPA. She stayed a member and benefited greatly, but left when they wanted to write her speeches. She had already begun to write verses and was attracted to the Realist Writers' Group that formed in Brisbane in 1954.2 Kath Walker’s first volume of poems, We are Going, was published in 1964 in Brisbane and the following year in New York. The reaction was varied; nevertheless, immediate reprintings followed to keep up with demand. This was the first publication of poetry written by an Australian Aboriginal person, and Kath Walker immediately became a public figure. Language had now become a weapon and some critics responded with malicious comments: 'She wasn't a full black, so it was the white blood John Collins was formerly a teacher at the Universities of Melbourne and the South Pacific and managing director of Jacaranda Wiley Press (publishers of Oodgeroo's books). This is an edited version of an article originally written for 'Race and Class', 35/4 (1994). 1 'Then and now' in Walker 1964. 2 On the Realist Writers' Group see Syson 1993. 1 ABORIGINAL HISTORY 1994 18:1 that was writing'; 'someone ghosted the work, if not wrote it'. This doubt as to genesis hurt Kath then and remained with her for most of her life. In the foreword to her second volume, The Dawn is at Hand (1966), Kath hit back at critics who called her poems bitter 'as though even atrocities were not mentioned to nice people’ and who sought to quash protests against social injustice by accusing their author of being a communist. The decade of the 1960s saw Kath travelling the length and breadth of the continent as a leader of the movement which eventually forced the Liberal-Country Party government to hold the 1967 referendum. As the decade drew to a close, Kath, worn out and penniless after her years of exertion and battle, retired to her 'sitting-down' place on Stradbroke Island (Moongalba), but not for long.