Aboriginal History Journal
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ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume 38, 2014 ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume 38, 2014 Published by ANU Press and Aboriginal History Inc. The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://press.anu.edu.au All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Aboriginal History Incorporated 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 School of History and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, The Australian National University. Aboriginal History Inc. 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. Editor Shino Konishi, Book Review Editor Luise Hercus, Copy Editor Geoff Hunt. About Aboriginal History 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Subjects include recorded oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, archival and bibliographic articles, and book reviews. Contacting Aboriginal History All correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Aboriginal History Inc., ACIH, School of History, RSSS, Coombs Building (9) ANU, ACT, 0200, or [email protected]. Sales and orders for journals and monographs, and journal subscriptions: Thelma Sims, email: [email protected] WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication may contain names or images of deceased persons. Cover design and layout by ANU Press Printed by Griffin Press. This edition © 2015 ANU Press and Aboriginal History Inc. ISSN 0314-8769 (print) ISSN 1837-9389 (electronic edition) Contents Preface . vii Shino Konishi Special Section: Western Australian Aboriginal History Kooral Dwonk-katitjiny (listening to the past): Aboriginal language, songs and history in south-western Australia . 1 Clint Bracknell ‘Keep the magistrates straight’: Magistrates and Aboriginal ‘management’ on Australia’s north-west frontiers, 1883–1905 . 19 Amanda Nettelbeck This man’s tracks: Laurie O’Neill and post-war changes in Aboriginal Administration in Western Australia . 39 Anne Scrimgeour The ‘allurements of the European presence’: Examining explanations of Wongatha behaviour in the northern Goldfields of Western Australia . 59 Craig Muller Articles From ‘Miss Dalrymple’ to ‘Daring Dolly’: A life of two historiographical episodes . .89 Nicholas Dean Brodie Infanticide at Port Phillip: Protector William Thomas and the witnessing of things unseen . .109 Marguerita Stephens ‘Socialist paradise’ or ‘inhospitable island’? Visitor responses to Palm Island in the 1920s and 1930s . 131 Toby Martin Aboriginal military service and assimilation . 155 Noah Riseman Book Reviews Aborigines and the ‘Sport of Kings’: Aboriginal Jockeys in Australian Racing History by John Maynard . 179 Blind Moses: Moses Tjalkabota Uraiakuraia, Aranda Man of High Degree and Christian Evangelist by Peter Latz . .181 Calling the Shots: Aboriginal Photographies by Jane Lydon . .185 Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire by Alan Lester and Fae Dussart . .187 v Coranderrk: We Will Show the Country by Giordano Nanni and Andrea James . 189 Country of the Heart: An Indigenous Australian Homeland by Deborah Bird Rose with Nancy Daiyi, Kathy Deveraux, Margaret Daiyi, Linda Ford and April Bright . .193 Dark Emu, Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident by Bruce Pascoe . .195 Darwin by Tess Lea . .199 Dharmalan Dana: An Australian Aboriginal man’s 73-Year Search for the Story of his Aboriginal and Indian Ancestors by George Nelson and Robynne Nelson . 201 Dwoort Baal Kaat an old story retold by Kim Scott, Russell Nelly and the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project, with artwork by Helen (Ing) Hall . Inspired by the story Bob Roberts told Gerhardt Laves in 1931 at Albany in Western Australia .. 205 Law’s Anthropology: From Ethnography to Expert Testimony in Native Title by Paul Burke . .209 Our Stories Are Our Survival by Lawrence Bamblett . .213 Protest, Land Rights and Riots: Postcolonial Struggles in Australia in the 1980s by Barry Morris . .215 Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment edited by Alexander Cook, Ned Curthoys and Shino Konishi . .217 The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten Narratives edited by Ian D Clark and Fred Cahir . 221 The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania by Tom Lawson . 225 Book Note Treasured Possessions: Indigenous Interventions into Cultural and Intellectual Property by Haidy Geismar . .229 Contributors . 231 Information for authors . 233 Aboriginal History Monograph Series . .235 vi Preface Volume 38 features a rather serendipitous special section on Western Australian Aboriginal history. Just as I moved back home to Western Australia, the journal coincidentally received a number of submissions exploring diverse Indigenous histories of the state. For me, this was an opportune introduction to the latest research in the field, and for readers, I trust it offers an exciting overview of new insights into Western Australia’s Aboriginal past. This special section begins with Clint Bracknell’s commissioned article on nineteenth-century Noongar songs. Through his translations and careful reconstructions of the diverse contexts in which the songs were performed and recorded, Bracknell highlights the Noongar response to the arrival of the Europeans and the early colonisation of the state’s south-west. Amanda Nettelbeck and Anne Scrimgeour both examine the policing and administration of Aboriginal people in the north-west. Nettelbeck considers the role of magistrates and justices of the peace in the ‘frontier legal networks’ of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. She reveals that these networks contributed to the government’s fraught attempt to pacify and regulate Aboriginal people in the late nineteenth century. Scrimgeour takes us to the middle of the twentieth century, revealing that governmental attempts to legally regulate and administer Aboriginal people in this region were still flawed. She traces the changing approach to the administration of Aboriginal people through the biography of Laurie O’Neill, a former mounted policeman and travelling inspector. Initially renowned and celebrated for his brutal methods of controlling Aboriginal people, his heavy-handed response to the Pilbara Strike demonstrated that the was distastefully out of step with the Department of Native Welfare’s policy shift away from the punitive control of Aboriginal people towards new post- World-War II concerns for their welfare and ‘advancement’, so was removed from the region. Finally, this special section concludes with Craig Muller’s detailed study on the history of the Wongatha of the north-east part of the Goldfields. This is not just a meticulous history, but also an important critique of the prima facie acceptance of the research of ‘bygone anthropologists’ in Native Title cases. Muller finds that Elkin’s account of his brief 1930 visit to the region was used as evidence in the recent Wongatha native title case without sufficient historical contextualisation. He demonstrates that there is significant historical documentary evidence that challenges Elkin’s assertions, and questions the privileged status that historic anthropological accounts have in the native title process, over that of other historical evidence. These four stimulating studies illustrate the vitality of current research on Western Australian Aboriginal history. Together, the papers draw on rich archival sources, complicate our understandings of the way in which Aboriginal lives were controlled in the past, and highlight Aboriginal voices and perspectives. These vii ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2014 VOL 38 studies also reveal the material impact historical research has on Aboriginal lives today in terms of the recognition of native title and the revival of Aboriginal languages. *** Volume 38 also features four fascinating articles exploring Aboriginal histories from other parts of Australia. Two of the articles have a biographical focus. Nicholas Brodie reconstructs the life of Dalrymple Briggs, a Vandemonian woman of mixed-descent whose biography has been contorted in a number of primary and secondary sources. His painstaking study not only adds to our understating of Tasmanian frontier history, but also, like Muller’s, cautions us on the prima facie acceptance of well-known primary sources. Noah Riseman in turn examines the lives of three Aboriginal servicemen who all had media profiles as successful examples of assimilation. In his discussion of their experiences of assimilation, he highlights the way in which these men, despite being ‘success stories’, experienced the policy’s shortcomings. The other two articles examine different non-Indigenous accounts of Aboriginal