Aboriginal History Journal
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ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume 37, 2013 ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume 37, 2013 Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated Aboriginal History 37 This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au Aboriginal History Incorporated 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), Rani Kerin (Monographs Editor), Shino Konishi (Journal Editor), Robert Paton (Treasurer and Public Officer), Ann McGrath (Deputy Chair), Isabel McBryde, Niel Gunson, Luise Hercus, Harold Koch, Tikka Wilson, Geoff Gray, Dave Johnson, Ingereth Macfarlane, Brian Egloff, Lorena Kanellopoulos, Richard Baker, Peter Radoll, Maria Nugent. Copy Editor Geoff Hunt, Book Review Editor Luise Hercus, Assistant Book Review Editor Liz Conor 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Subjects include recorded oral traditions and biographies, narratives in local languages with translations, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, archival and bibliographic articles, and book reviews. WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication may contain names or images of deceased persons. Contacting Aboriginal History All correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Aboriginal History, ACIH, School of History, RSSS, Coombs Building (9), ANU, ACT, 0200, or [email protected] or [email protected] or shino.konishi@ anu.edu.au. Sales and orders for journals and monographs, and journal subscriptions: Thelma Sims, email: [email protected] or [email protected] Contacting ANU E Press All correspondence should be addressed to: ANU E Press, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. Email: [email protected], Website: http://epress.anu.edu.au Aboriginal History Inc. is a part of the Australian Centre for Indigenous Studies, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University and gratefully acknowledges the support of the School of History RSSS and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, The Australian National University. Cover design: by ANU E Press Cover image: Percy Haslam takes notes at the Baime shelter at Broke near Newcastle. Printed by Griffin Press. Aboriginal History Inc and ANU E Press, 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. This edition © 2013 ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Inc ISSN 0314-8769 (print) ISSN 1837-9389 (electronic edition) Contents Preface . vii Articles Imperial literacy and indigenous rights: Tracing transoceanic circuits of a modern discourse . 1 Tracey Banivanua Mar Encountering Aboriginal knowledge: Explorer narratives on north-east Queensland, 1770 to 1820 . 29 Michael Davis ‘Black Velvet’ and ‘Purple Indignation’: Print responses to Japanese ‘poaching’ of Aboriginal women . 51 Liz Conor Awabakal voices: The life and work of Percy Haslam . 77 John Maynard Notes and Docs The Aboriginal people in Sydney as seen by Eugène Delessert, December 1844 to August 1845 . 93 Colin Dyer Obituary Challenging the moral issues of his time: Proud Ngarrindjeri man of the Coorong, Thomas Edwin Trevorrow (1954–2013) . 111 Karen Hughes Book Reviews Rethinking Social Justice: From ‘Peoples’ to ‘Populations’ by Tim Rowse . 117 A Way Through: The Life of Rick Farley by Nicholas Brown and Susan Boden . 125 Aboriginal Australians: A History since 1788 by Richard Broome . 129 The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts by Mike Smith . 133 The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World by Shino Konishi . 137 Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Communities and Archaeology into the 21st Century edited by Caroline Phillips and Harry Allen . 139 Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing-Times by Timothy Bottoms . 143 Desert Lake: Art, Science and Stories from Paruku edited by Steve Morton, Mandy Martin, Kim Mahood and John Carty . 147 The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights by Jane Lydon . 151 Forgotten War by Henry Reynolds . 155 How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art: Writing on Aboriginal Contemporary Art edited and introduced by Ian Mclean . 157 Indigenous Women and Work: From Labor to Activism edited by Carol Williams . 161 Justice: A History of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia by Fiona Skyring . 163 Kurlumarniny: We Come from the Desert by Monty Hale (Minyjun) . 167 Learning Spaces: Youth, Literacy and New Media in Remote Indigenous Australia by Inge Kral and Robert G (Jerry) Schwab . 171 The Lone Protestor: A.M. Fernando in Australia and Europe by Fiona Paisley . 175 Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal Children and Human Rights by Hannah McGlade . 179 The Paper War: Morality, Print Culture, and Power in Colonial New South Wales by Anna Johnston . 181 Roving Mariners: Australian Aboriginal Whalers and Sealers in the Southern Oceans 1790–1870 by Lynette Russell . 185 Where is Dr Leichhardt? The Greatest Mystery in Australian History by Darrell Lewis . 189 William Cooper Gentle Warrior: Standing Up for Australian Aborigines and Persecuted Jews by Barbara Miller . 193 Contributors . 199 Information for authors . 201 Aboriginal History Monograph Series . 203 Preface This volume includes four fascinating articles each exploring indigenous history in rich, new ways. Tracey Banivanua Mar’s analysis of three moments of Indigenous protest in Tahiti, Victoria and New Zealand presents a new transnational history of indigenous political agency in the 1840s. Their significance, she argues, lies not in whether they succeeded or failed in preventing the spread of European colonisation, but instead in the way in which the various indigenous leaders – Queen Pomare, Billibellary, and the Maori Confederacy – adapted Imperial discourses, for instance on ‘protection’ and ‘sovereignty’, to articulate their own demands, and thus reveals a shared, transnational political consciousness. In his study of British explorers’ encounters with Indigenous people in Queensland, Michael Davis analyses the interplay and connections between Indigenous knowledge and western ideas about the local environments. Whilst acknowledging that tension, misunderstanding and conflict marked these early cross-cultural encounters, his research also reveals that such encounters resulted in trade, exchange, and communication, and produced new forms of colonial knowledge about natural ecology and Indigenous economies. Liz Conor offers a fresh new perspective on our understandings of cross-cultural gender relations by tracing the ‘black velvet’ trope which characterised settler ideas about Aboriginal women in Northern Australia, and finding that it exclusively pertained to white men’s sexual relations with Indigenous women. By contrasting the alarmist colonial discourses which demonised Asian-Aboriginal relations, Conor finds that the ‘black velvet’ trope affirmed Anglo-Australian male perceptions of proprietary ownership over the female Aboriginal body. Lastly, John Maynard’s study of Percy Haslam, an amateur enthusiast of the Awabakal language and culture, provides new insights into the way in which unique individuals such as Haslam, shaped by their own personal histories with Aboriginal communities, amassed important archives at a time when professional academics had little interest in Indigenous culture, which, in this instance, enabled the revitalisation of the local language. In the Notes and Docs section Colin Dyer has contributed a new resource for researchers by translating the nineteenth-century French traveller, Eugène Delessert’s observations of Aboriginal people and culture, based on his visit to Sydney in 1844–45. Finally, Volume 37 includes Karen Hughes’ obituary of the highly-respected elder Thomas Edwin Trevorrow who was instrumental to both the Ngarrindjeri and broader South Australian communities. Shino Konishi vii Imperial literacy and indigenous rights: Tracing transoceanic circuits of a modern discourse Tracey Banivanua Mar In 1838, amidst French imperial aggression in Tahiti, the reigning Indigenous monarch Queen Pomare wrote the first of many letters as a ‘sister Queen’ to Britain’s Queen Victoria. In it she asserted her and her people’s right to seek the protection of the British government who, after all, had brought colonisation to her shores. Two years later, Wurundjeri elder Billibellary, counselled a gathering of his clanspeople on a newly selected site of residence in Narre Narre Warren, a few miles remote from the burgeoning British settlement of Melbourne. Following his reportedly spirited address, he and other residents walked off the Narre Narre Warren station in a sovereign withdrawal of cooperation with colonial authorities. Earlier that same year, a few thousand miles to the east of Melbourne at Waitangi in Aotearoa New Zealand, a gathering of Maori chiefs walked out on treaty negotiations with