Aboriginal History Journal

Aboriginal History Volume 31 2007 Aboriginal History Incorporated Aboriginal History is a refereed journal that presents articles and information in Australian ethnohistory and contact and post-contact history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Historical studies based on anthropological, archaeological, linguistic and sociological research, including comparative studies of other ethnic groups such as Pacific Islanders in Australia, are welcomed. Subjects include recorded oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, archival and bibliographic articles, and book reviews. 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 2007 Managing Editor Ingereth Macfarlane; Volume Editor Kitty Eggerking; Book Review Editor Luise Hercus; Review Editor Ann McGrath; Copy Editor Geoff Hunt 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 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, Australian National University. WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication may contain names or images of deceased persons. © 2007 Aboriginal History Inc, Canberra, Australia. 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. Typesetting: Tikka Wilson Cover design: Dick Barwick Printed in Australia by ANU Printing, Canberra ISSN 0314-8769 Cover image courtesy of Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Mickey of Ulladulla collection (image number 105856), 'River with boat, fish, kangaroos and sawmill', detail. Aboriginal History Volume 31 2007 Kitty Eggerking Preface v Rebe Taylor The polemics of eating fish in Tasmania: the historical 1 evidence revisited David Trudinger The language(s) of Love: JRB Love and contesting 27 tongues at Ernabella Mission Station, 1940–46 Joanne Scott and Colonialism on display: Indigenous people and 45 Ross Laurie artefacts at an Australian agricultural show Anna Haebich and Modern primitives leaping and stomping the earth: 63 Jodie Taylor from ballet to bush doofs Michael Bennett The economics of fishing: sustainable living in colonial 85 New South Wales Judith Littleton Time and memory: historic accounts of Aboriginal 103 burials in south-eastern Australia Kelly K Chaves ‘A solemn judicial farce, the mere mockery of a trial’: 122 the acquittal of Lieutenant Lowe, 1827 Notes and documents Darrell Lewis Death on the Cooper: King’s secret? 141 Chris Warren Could First Fleet smallpox infect Aborigines? – a note 152 Anne Brewster ‘That child is my hero’: an interview with Alf Taylor 165 Hilary Charlesworth What Good Condition? Reflections on an Australian 178 Aboriginal Treaty 1986-2006 – Launch speech Indigenous history research resources online at 181 AIATSIS The Sally White / Diane Barwick Award for 2008 181 Reviews Ann Curthoys A Frontier Conversation, produced by Wonderland 182 Productions for the Australian Centre for Indigenous History Margaret Jacobs A response to A Frontier Conversation 183 iv ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2007 VOL 31 Book reviews Kim McCaul First peoples, indigenous cultures and their future by 188 Jeffrey Sissons Paul Black The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: 190 comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region edited by Nicholas Evans Stuart Cooke Piercing the Ground: Balgo women’s image making and 193 relationship to country by Christine Watson Niel Gunson Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians 195 by Jane Lydon Lawrence Niewójt Campfires at the Cross: an account of the Bunting Dale 199 Aboriginal Mission at Birregurra, near Colac, Victoria 1839-1851 by Heather Le Griffon Nicholas Brown Rob Riley: An Aboriginal Leader’s Quest for Justice 202 by Quentin Beresford Thalia Anthony Black Glass, Western Australian Courts of Native Affairs 203 1936–54 by Kate Auty Kim McCaul Unfinished Constitutional Business? Rethinking 205 Indigenous Self-determination edited by Barbara A Hocking Sharon Sullivan Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous peoples and the colonial 208 culture of archaeology by Ian McNiven and Lynette Russel Dick Kimber God, guns and government on the Central Australian 210 Frontier by Peter Vallee Contributors 215 Preface Commemorations, myths and new histories Could it possibly be that in the year marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referen- dum we are witnessing the symbolic eclipse of that referendum? Once it was widely held that the referendum made Indigenous people Australian citizens by giving them the vote or by counting them in the national census or by somehow bestowing (unspec- ified) citizenship rights. It was also believed that the referendum gave the Common- wealth the power to control Aboriginal affairs, a prerogative, which, if true, the federal government has been reluctant to exercise. If, as Reconciliation Australia now says,1 the referendum conferred neither citizenship nor Commonwealth power, its remaining sig- nificance can only be attributed to the fact that over 90 per cent of the Australian elec- torate voted in favour of ridding the Australian Constitution of two discriminatory clauses. And this, of course, is sufficient reason for the referendum to be remembered in its own right, though Reconciliation Australia chooses to interpret it ‘as the first stage of the reconciliation movement in Australia’.2 The 1967 Referendum illustrates the processes typically involved in commemora- tion: events can always be fashioned and refashioned to suit current sensibilities and purposes. When certain stories – such as the association between the referendum and citizenship – become outmoded or are found not to stand up to close scrutiny, new stories and new ideas can be attached to the event. Thus, it was on 27 May 1997, the 30th anniversary of the referendum, that the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation3 deliberately connected the referendum with reconciliation by hosting the Australian Reconciliation Convention. And it was not by chance that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission chose to launch its Bringing them home report just ahead of the convention, thereby linking the referendum to the issue of the Stolen Generations as well. And it was through his refusal to offer an apology to those generations and their families at the convention that the then Prime Minister, John Howard, inadvertently cemented the association between the referendum, reconciliation and the Stolen Generations. If the deeds of the Federal Parliament are anything to go by, the 1967 referendum may soon be supplanted entirely in the Australian collective memory by the issue of 1. Reconciliation Australia 2007, ‘Fact Sheet: The 1967 Referendum: Important Facts and Interesting Pieces of Information’. 2. Available at www.reconciliation.org.au/i-cms.isp (accessed 17/12/2007). 3. The Council was established by federal legislation in 1991 for a period of ten years. Reconcilia- tion Australia was set up to continue the work of the council with funding from the federal government, but is not an agency of the federal government. vi ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2007 VOL 31 saying sorry. In 1997 the parliament marked the 30th anniversary of the referendum by debating the meanings of both the referendum and ‘practical reconciliation’, while this year it chose instead to observe the 10th anniversary of the Bringing them home report by debating the merits of making an apology. Reconciliation Australia chose to celebrate all those who made the outcome of the referendum possible in a weekend of festivities with the theme of ‘Their Spirit Still Shines’, at Old Parliament House: by all accounts, a splendid (though none too political) time was had by all. We end 2007 with the prospect of an apology to the Stolen Generations; we can look forward as well to some amelioration of the Howard Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory and to some new Indigenous consultative body that may give the Rudd Government some independent, timely and sage advice. *** Each of the articles in this volume sheds light on a range of subjects that have hitherto received little attention. In a finely researched and argued piece, ‘The polemics of fishing’, Rebe Taylor revisits a long-debated issue, concerning the history of fish eating by Tasmania’s Indigenous people. She considers whether, in coming to his interpretation

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