Exchange on the maritime frontier of southern Australia
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The First Wave: Exploring coastal contact history in Australia Chapter 12 p. 174-192
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The intimate cross-cultural narratives that ocure when British and other European mariners maded early contacts with Australian Aboriginal people have been investigated in a number of influential historical works, including Reynolds's "The other side of the frontier", Shellam's SHaking hand on the fringe', and Clendinnen's Dancing with strangers, This chapter will draw onfrom the concepts established in these workks and explore three facets of early interculturla exchange on the maritime frontier of south-eastern Australia (1790s-1840s) through written narratives focusing on food, tools and story-telling. "From chapter".
Winda lingo parugoneit or Why set the bush on fire? Fire and Victorian Aboriginal people on the colonial frontier
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , McMaster, Sarah , Clark, Ian , Kerin, Rani , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 47, no. 2 (2016), p. 225-240
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: There is an ethnographic and historical record that, despite its paucity, can offer specific insight into various contextual matters (purpose, motivations, acknowledgement) relating to how and why fire was being used by Victorian Aboriginal people in the nineteenth century. This insight is essential to developing cross-culturally appropriate land and fire management strategies in the present and into the future. This article demonstrates the need for further research into historical accounts of Aboriginal burning in Victoria.
The centrality of Aboriginal cultural workshops and experiential learning in a pre-service teacher education course: a regional Victorian University case study
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred) , Pickford, Aunty Marjorie
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Higher Education Research & Development Vol. 36, no. 4 (2017), p. 838-851
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper discusses a cross-cultural pedagogical approach, couched in a theory-practice nexus, used at a Victorian regional university to guide non-Indigenous pre-service teachers' (PSTs) engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and cultures. We have drawn on qualitative and statistical data, and current issues in Australian and international literature, to explore the relevance and success suggested by data from this cross-cultural pedagogical approach, in particular the notion of teacher ethnicity in racialised spaces. In doing so, we have addressed recent sentiments about a lack of quantitative and qualitative research that explores inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content and discussions of ways in which tertiary educators construct and influence teachings about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. It is anticipated that this paper will generate further dialogue and research-based evidence on ways in which other tertiary education providers may draw on cross-cultural theories to guide inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content and perspectives in PST education courses.
The children of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate : An anthology of their reminiscences
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: During the life of the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate from 1839 until late 1849 some 35 children of the Protectors were associated with the Protectorate. These children have been largely neglected by scholars and rendered historically invisible. Six of them have however left 28 distinct records of their experiences. In this work we hear the voice of Protectorate children - the authors bring them out of the shadows of their fathers and allow them to appear as influential actors in their own right, with their own motivations, goals, ideas, and relationships with Aboriginal people. Detailed biographical entries, where possible, are included on every protectorate child and on their spouses. For the first time, the reminiscences of William Jackson Thomas and Albert Le Souef are published in their entirety, and all of the writings of the Protectorate's children are brought together so that their contribution to our understanding of the Protectorate may be acknowledged and interpreted.
The mystery of the Moranghurk sculptures
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Goldfields and the gothic : A hidden heritage & folklore p. 143-150
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Since the earliest colonial days in Australia there have been a large number of reports of what have variously been described as stone carving, rock sculptures, earthen sculptures and rock engravings by Aboriginal people. The most prominent of these has been on the wooden sculptures emanating from northern Australia. Few anthropologists have minutely reported on what McCarthy described as examples of Aboriginal 'plastic art'. Aboriginal sculptures 'crudely fashioned' from beeswax, some of them 'made to represent human figures' but more generally 'modelled' to represent 'kangaroos, turtles, goannas, crocodiles and birds'. One of the most widely reported earthen carvings in what is now known as Victoria was described as the Challicum Bunyip. This was reputed to be an outline of a creature known as a bunyip, which was gouged into the ground. Other accounts of life-sized Aboriginal sculpture in Victoria are not numerous but certainly extant.
Aboriginal use of fire as a weapon in Colonial Victoria : a preliminary analysis
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred) , Wilkie, Benjamin , Tout, Dan , Clark, Jidah
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 54, no. 1 (2023), p. 109-124
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The use of fire as an offensive and defensive weapon on the colonial frontier in Australia has received little scholarly attention. This article aims to build on insights from current historiography about the customary use of fire by Aboriginal peoples within the borders of Victoria, Australia. Specifically, our aim is to highlight the historically significant role Aboriginal peoples’ use of fire played in resisting the colonists in Victoria during the colonial period. By closely scrutinising documentary records it is possible to demonstrate that Aboriginal people used fire, both offensively and defensively, against the colonists. © Editorial Board, Australian Historical Studies 2023.
Finders not keepers : Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Eureka Reappraising an Australian Legend Chapter 12 p. 143-152
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The history of gold has traditionally excluded a whole quadrant from its landscape. This chapter aims to reconstruct the close association between Aboriginal people and Victoria's gold mining that undoubtedly existed during the nineteenth century. It is especially appropriate to do so in a book that reconsiders the Eureka story from unexpected angles in order to reflect generally upon the historical inheritance of the goldrushes upon Australian society.
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005225
Tales in a name : Discovering inter-cultural relations through place names
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 76, no. 2 (2005), p. 199-210
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001215
Dallong : Possum skin rugs
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance Vol. 4, no. 5 (2005), p. 1-14
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: In June 1835 John Batman, popularly acknowledged as the founder of Melbourne, recorded one of the first times that possum skin cloaks were traded by the Aboriginal people of Victoria with the European arrivals. Before he held the formal treaty meeting with the Woiwurrung clan heads near present-day Melbourne to purchase a tract of their country, Batman had distributed gifts including blankets, beads and knives. After the meeting he wrote in his journal: 'the chiefs, to manifest their friendly feeling towards me, insisted upon my receiving from them two native cloaks and several baskets made by the women, and also some of the implements of defence'.2 For the remainder of the nineteenth century these indigenous cloaks or rugs were clearly sought after by the white settlers.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001216
Black gold : A history of the role of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria, 1850-70
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
- Full Text:
- Description: Reconstructs the history of Aboriginal people and gold mining in Victoria from 1850-1870.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Tanderrum 'Freedom of the Bush' : The Djadjawurrung presence on the goldfields of Central Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: A1
- Description: 2003000767
The Wathawurrung people's encounters with outside forces 1797 -1849 : a history of conciliation and conflict
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Thesis , Masters
- Full Text:
- Description: Master of Arts
- Description: One of the difficulties in writing a regional history such as this thesis was the sensitivity surrounding the appropriate choice of terminology and spelling conventions. Conflicts have arisen between conforming to the standardisations of the History Discipline and a desire to accommodate the wishes of the indigenous communities in the geographical area of this study. The absence of trained linguists in the white community during the initial colonisation period has resulted in a considerable divergence of opinion over the nomenclature and spelling derivatives surrounding the indigenous people living in what is no w known as the Geelong-Ballarat region. The first white chroniclers referred to the Wathawurrung by a myriad of different names (over 100 different names were recorded by Clark for the people in this study area) including: Watowrong, Wartowrong, Wot o wrong, Watourong, Wodowrow . Throughout the text ofthis work 1 have applied the term Wathawurrung' to all indigenous groups in primary documents that involve the known language area of the Wathawurrung. Where there is some doubt as to which tribe is being referred to 1 have included other language groups that the writer ma y have also been referring to. " From Preface"
Why should they pay money to the Queen?: Aboriginal miners and land claims
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol. 10, no. 1 (2008), p. 115-128
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: There is little evidence of Aboriginal involvement in the events of the Eureka Stockade, but there are numerous ways in which Aboriginal people are relevant to the Eureka story. The events took place on Aboriginal land (an obvious but rarely articulated truth) and Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat diggings, as they were, indeed, on and around most Australian goldfields. The records are full of references to their fundamental and diverse contribution to life and work on the diggings, and to the complex and varied relationships they formed with the invaders. For Indigenous communities already reeling from the invasion of pastoralists, the arrival of 300,000 immigrant miners, swarming onto the alluvial districts of Victoria, represented a second wave of dispossession. But as we have noted elsewhere, there is abundant evidence that gold, at least in Victoria, brought many new economic opportunities for Aborigines, many of whom took advantage of these changed circumstances.' David Goodman argues persuasively for historians to consider an 'edgier interpretation' of the goldfields story. This could include a better appreciation of the social dislocation and cultural adaptations experienced by Indigenous people on the goldfields .
- Description: C1
The attraction of gold mining in Victoria for aboriginal people
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 6, no. (2008), p. 46-69
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Aboriginal people were a very visible presence on the goldfields in nineteenth century Victoria. This paper examines why Aboriginal people were attracted to the gold fields of nineteenth century Victoria and explores the extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors such as new wealth, new sights, new sounds, new alliances which prompted Aboriginal people to participate in 'gold society'.
‘An edifying spectacle’ : A history of ‘tourist corroborees’ in Victoria, Australia, 1835–1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2009
- Type: Journal article
- Relation: Tourism Management Vol.31, no.3 (2010), p. 412-420
- Full Text:
- Description: Parsons [Parsons, M. (2002). “Ah that I could convey a proper idea of this interesting wild play of the natives” corroborees and the rise of indigenous Australian cultural tourism. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2(1), 14–27.] has persuasively argued that nineteenth century corroborees performed for non-indigenous audiences may be considered to be Australia's pre-eminent prototypical indigenous cultural tourism product. This paper extends Parsons' [Parsons, M. (1997). The tourist corroboree in South Australia. Aboriginal History, 21(1), 46–69; Parsons, M. (2002). “Ah that I could convey a proper idea of this interesting wild play of the natives” corroborees and the rise of indigenous Australian cultural tourism. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2(1), 14–27.] analyses of ‘tourist corroborees’ in nineteenth century South Australia to corroborees staged in Victoria during the pastoral period and the gold rushes of the 1850–1870s. It argues that an Aboriginal-grown ‘business acumen’ developed rapidly in the economic climate of the Victorian goldfields. It also provides a historical context to this commodification.
The case of Peter Mungett : Born out of the allegiance of the Queen, belonging to a sovereign and independent tribe of Ballan
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Provenance : The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria Vol. 8, no. (2009), p.15-34
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper is concerned with the jurisdiction of the British colonial criminal law over Indigenous Australians, particularly in the area of serious offences such as murder and rape. In particular, the paper examines the attempted use in the 1860 case of Regina v Peter of the legal demurrer that the accused Aboriginal man was not subject to the jurisdiction of the court because he was not born a British subject and had never entered into allegiance to the British Queen. The paper also discusses some of the difficulties which the legal authorities found in dealing with this issue, even as late as 1860. The issue of the amenability to British law was a significant one in the early colonial period; it then largely disappeared from serious public consideration but has resurfaced since the 1980s in the context of land rights, native title, and the status of Aboriginal customary law.
- Description: 2003007342
Black Gold: Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria 1850-1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This detailed examination of Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria provides striking evidence which demonstrates that Aboriginal people participated in gold mining and interacted with non-Aboriginal people in a range of hitherto neglected ways.
Nawi: Seeing the land from an Aboriginal canoe
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Signals Vol. , no. 100 (November, 2012 2012), p. 18-21
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Perhaps one of the most under-valued contributions Aboriginal people made in colonial times was guiding people and stock across the river systems of Australia. Dr Fred Cahir of the University of Ballarat draws on archival records, mainly from south-eastern Australia, to demonstrate how Aboriginal canoes and ferrying expertise regularly aided explorers and settlers.
The historic importance of the dingo in aboriginal society in Victoria (Australia) : A reconsideration of the archival record
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Anthrozoos Vol. 26, no. 2 (2013), p. 185-198
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Dingoes feature prominently in Australian Aboriginal Creation stories and are also widely regarded as having an intricate relationship with Aboriginal people. A large volume of anthropological work on the complex relationship between Australian Aboriginals and dingoes has determined a considerable uniformity in the human-dingo relationship across northern Australia. Whilst there are many parallels between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia, this reconsideration of the archival record explores the hitherto rarely considered evidence of the relationship between Aboriginal people, British colonizers in Victoria (south-eastern Australia), and dingoes. The data provide an insight into the unique relationship, which indicates some striking differences between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia; especially the utilitarian and symbolic significance of dingoes for Aboriginal communities in south-eastern Australia and how dingoes were used by both Aboriginal people and the colonial usurpers in a bid to spatially dislocate each other. © ISAZ 2013.
- Description: 2003011040
"Devil been walk about tonight - not devil belonging to blackfellow, but white man devil. Methink Burke and Wills cry out tonight " What for whitefellow not send horses and grub?" An exmination of Aboriginal oral traditions of colonial explorers.
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten narratives p. 149-168
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed: