ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume forty-two 2018 ABORIGINAL HISTORY Volume forty-two 2018 Published by ANU Press and Aboriginal History Inc. The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at 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. Members of the Editorial Board Maria Nugent (Chair), Tikka Wilson (Secretary), Rob Paton (Treasurer/Public Officer), Ingereth Macfarlane (Editor), Annemarie McLaren (Review Editor), Rebecca Collard (Associate Review Editor), Rani Kerin (Monograph Editor), Liz Conor, Brian Egloff, Karen Fox, Sam Furphy, Niel Gunson, Geoff Hunt, Dave Johnston, Shino Konishi, Harold Koch, Ann McGrath, Ewen Maidment, Isabel McBryde, Peter Read, Julia Torpey, Lawrence Bamblett. Editor: Ingereth Macfarlane; Book Review Editor: Annemarie McLaren; Copyeditor: Geoff Hunt. About Aboriginal History Since 1977 the peer-reviewed annual journal Aboriginal History has pioneered interdisciplinary historical studies of Australian Aboriginal peoples’ and Torres Strait Islander’s interactions with non-Indigenous peoples, principally in Australia but also transnationally. It promotes publication of Indigenous oral traditions, biographies, narratives in local languages, archival and bibliographic guides, previously unpublished manuscript accounts, critiques of current events, and research and reviews in the cognate fields of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, linguistics, demography, law, geography and cultural, political and economic history. For more information, please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au. Contacting Aboriginal History All correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Aboriginal History Inc., ACIH, School of History, RSSS, 9 Fellows Road (Coombs Building), Acton, ANU, 2601, or [email protected]. Sales and orders for back issues of journals and monographs: 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 This edition © 2018 ANU Press and Aboriginal History Inc. ISSN 0314-8769 (print) ISSN 1837-9389 (electronic edition) Contents Preface . ix Ingereth Macfarlane Contributors . xi Luise Hercus AM, FAHA 1926–2018 . xv Harold Koch with contributions from members of the Editorial Board of Aboriginal History Inc . Luise Hercus and Aboriginal History . xix Peter Sutton Articles NADOC and the National Aborigines Day in Sydney, 1957–67 . 3 Jonathan Bollen and Anne Brewster What we were told: Responses to 65,000 years of Aboriginal history . 31 Billy Griffiths and Lynette Russell A corroboree for the Countess of Kintore: Enlivening histories through objects . 55 Gaye Sculthorpe Contested destinies: Aboriginal advocacy in South Australia’s interwar years . 73 Robert Foster Benevolent Benedictines? Vulnerable missions and Aboriginal policy in the time of A .O . Neville . 97 Elicia Taylor Indigenous and other Australians since 1901: A conversation between Professor Tim Rowse and Dr Miranda Johnson . 125 Miranda Johnson and Tim Rowse Aboriginal camps as urban foundations? Evidence from southern Queensland . 141 Ray Kerkhove Book Reviews The Good Country: The Djadja Wurrung, the Settlers and the Protectors . 175 by Bain Attwood Review by Victoria Haskins Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: We’re Telling All of You . 179 by Donny Woolagoodja and Janet Oobagooma, compiled and written in collaboration with the Dambeemangaddee people and Valda Blundell, Kim Doohan, Daniel Vachon, Malcolm Allbrook, Mary Anne Jebb and Joh Bornman Review by Cindy Solonec From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories . 183 by Mark McKenna Review by Maria Nugent ‘Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future’ . 183 by Mark McKenna Review by Maria Nugent ‘Me Write Myself’: The Free Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land at Wybalenna, 1832–47 . 187 by Leonie Stevens Review by Gaye Sculthorpe Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission . 191 by Laura Rademaker Review by Helen Gardner The Contest for Aboriginal Souls: European Missionary Agendas in Australia . 195 by Regina Ganter Review by Tim Rowse Indigenous Archives: The Making and Unmaking of Aboriginal Art . 199 edited by Darren Jorgensen and Ian Mclean Review by Gretchen Stolte ‘Against Native Title’: Conflict and Creativity in Outback Australia . 203 by Eve Vincent Review by Diane Bell Australia: The Vatican Museum’s Indigenous Collection . 207 edited by Katherine Aigner Review by Louise Hamby Entangled Territorialities: Negotiating Indigenous Lands in Australia and Canada . 211 edited by Françoise Dussart and Sylvie Poirier Review by Kim McCaul Indigenous and Other Australians since 1901 . 215 by Tim Rowse Review by Ben Silverstein Information for authors . 219 Aboriginal History Monograph Series . 223 Preface Ingereth Macfarlane Welcome to the 42nd volume of Aboriginal History journal. The seven articles this year highlight the wealth of sources that feed into historical research of Indigenous Australia. Their arguments are based on material that ranges from comments on online internet forums to media photographs, from missionaries’ correspondence to local and self-published newspapers, from institutional records to personal diaries and interviews, and from town maps to archaeological surveys and museum collections. The role of performance in the events organised by the National Aborigines Day Observance Committee (NADOC) in 1957–67 in Sydney shows up the contest between state assimilationist goals and Indigenous participants’ insistence on distinction, continuity and survival (Bollen and Brewster). The then radical agenda – in a protectionist policy regime – of the advocacy group, the Aborigines’ Protection League in South Australia in the 1920s–30s, is examined in a detailed study of the group’s campaigns and campaigners (Foster). A picture of colonial reception of Aboriginal performance and the public assertion of local Aboriginal cultural priorities in 1893 Darwin is developed in the historical contextualisation of a collection of Aboriginal artefacts found in the Marischal Museum, Aberdeen (Sculthorpe). A nuanced analysis of the relationship between the Catholic Benedictine Mission at New Norcia and the Western Australian Native Welfare Department draws on the correspondence between the Abbot of New Norcia and A.O. Neville (Taylor). A large body of reader responses to a recent online article on the deep history of Aboriginal Australia provides a way to map the strengths and weaknesses in the general Australian public’s apprehension of that long history (Griffiths and Russell). A spatial history argues against the concept of ‘fringe camps’ and for a pattern of demonstrable continuities between precolonial, colonial and recent Aboriginal people’s favoured camp places and the locations of urban contemporary park spaces in Brisbane and townships in south-eastern Queensland (Kerkhove). In the format of an interview, the themes concerning the writing of ix ABORIGINAL HISTORY VOL 42 2018 Aboriginal history and contemporary political debates that are developed in Tim Rowse’s recent book Indigenous and Other Australians since 1901 (2017) are explored (Johnson and Rowse). Vale Luise Hercus We honour the creative life and exceptional scholarly contribution of Luise Hercus, who passed away in April 2018. She was a foundation member of the Editorial Board of Aboriginal History journal, and its book review editor from 1993 to 2017. Still working days before she died aged 92, she was dedicated and skilled in recording Aboriginal language accounts, especially for south-eastern Australia and the Lake Eyre region, and putting these in historical context. Her work has made these available to Aboriginal communities and to all those who want the land alive with its stories of the Ancestors and of the people. She is sorely missed by all, and especially by Aboriginal History Inc. Change to the referencing system in Aboriginal History volume 43, 2019 In the early years of publication, the editors of Aboriginal History journal spent much time developing an in-house system of referencing that worked for the full interdisciplinary range of papers that it was the editors’ goal to publish. That system achieved its purpose for four decades, but in the age of electronic publication and standardisation, simplification is possible and desirable. In volume 43, 2019, Aboriginal History Inc. will change the referencing for both journal articles and monographs to a more standard Chicago referencing format, with a few modifications. For detailed information and examples of the format for new submissions, please read the updated ‘Information for authors’ on our website at aboriginalhistory.org.au. Many thanks to the stalwart Editorial Board, to Geoff Hunt, and to