The Mãori presence in Victoria, Australia, 1830-1900 : A preliminary analysis of Australian sources
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: New Zealand Journal of History Vol. 48, no. 1 (2014), p. 109-126
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This essay explores the presence of M
Why did squatters in colonial Victoria use Indigenous placenames for their sheep stations?
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Indigenous and minority placenames : Australian and international perspectives (Aboriginal history series) Chapter 12 p. 225-238
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The archival records of many squatters in 19th century Victoria (formerly known as the Port Phillip District) often contain brief references to the processes involved in and decisions that led to the naming of their pastoral leases. This documentation is hardly surprising given that a squatter wishing to obtain a pastoral license would have to register a legal document with the colonial government, stating among other things the name of the run. What is perplexing is why a large number of pastoralists chose an Indigenous name - given that squatters were not under any instructions to bestow 'native names' whenever possible - unlike the surveyors who came after them.
"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
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'I suppose this will end in our having to live like the blacks for a few months': reinterpreting the history of Burke and Wills'
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten Narratives p. 301-303
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The Aboriginal story of the Burke and Wills Expedition and relief expeditions is at once multi-faceted and complex with many interconnected threads that have rarely been teased out in historical analyses. In many respects the Aboriginal story has been overshadowed by the tragedy and misfortune of the expedition in which seven men, including Burke and Wills, died. Yet the exclusion of Aboriginal perspectives is a structural matter, as epitomised in Moorehead’s analysis. The description of central Australia as a ‘ghastly blank’ (Moorehead 1963, p. 1) where the land was ‘absolutely untouched and unknown, and except for the blacks, the most retarded people on earth, there was no sign of any previous civilization whatever’, is representative of the exclusion of Aboriginal people from the narrative and if Aboriginal people are discussed, it is often in racist tones. As Allen (2011, p. 245) rightly pointed out:
'We have received news from the blacks '. Aboriginal messengers and their reports of the Burke relief expedition
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Aboriginal story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten narratives p. 261-277
- Full Text: false
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The Aboriginal contribution to the expedition, observed through Germanic eyes
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Aboriginal story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten Narratives p. 81-111
- Full Text: false
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The aboriginal legacy of the Burke and Wills expedition: An introduction
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Aboriginal story of Burke and Wills: Forgotten narratives p. 1-14
- Full Text: false
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The Aboriginal Story of Burke and Wills : Forgotten narratives
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP110100088
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The first major study of Aboriginal cross-cultural exchanges with the Burke and Wills expedition of 1860-61.
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
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- 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
Black Gold: Aboriginal people on the goldfields of Victoria 1850-1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- 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.
Murnong: Much more than a food
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Artefact Vol. 35, no. (01// 2012), p. 29-39
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Unquestionably, the most impressive historical evidence for Indigenous plant management in south-eastern Australia has been brought to our attention through the work of Dr Beth Gott. Gott's (1983) paper 'Murnong - Microseris scapigiera: a study of a staple food of Victorian Aborigines' stands as an epoch in Australian ethnobotany as it clearly defined the importance of murnong as a staple food for Victorian Aboriginal people. This chapter seeks to further examine the importance of Aboriginal vegetable foods in south-eastern Australia such as murnong, from a cultural, political and economic perspective in the midst of frontier rupture during the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Artefact is the property of Copyright Agency Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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
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- 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.
Understanding Ngamadjidi: Aboriginal perceptions of Europeans in nineteenth century Western Victoria
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australian Colonial History Vol. 13, no. 1 (2011), p. 105-124
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This article considers how Aboriginal people in western Victoria understood the arrival of Europeans, particularly how Aboriginal groups in that region reportedly recognised Europeans as deceased clan members who had returned to life. According to R.H. Mathews, the belief in transmigration or reincarnation was widespread during the early years of European settlement, being 'observed in every part of Australia where investigations have been made'. In western Victoria these resuscitated people were known as ngamadjidj (generally translated by linguists as 'stranger' or 'white man'). Tony Swain argues that the classification of Whites as deceased Aboriginal people have been misunderstood as merely 'a quaint instance of an aboriginal failure to comprehend novel events' reflecting a general poverty of scholarship in the area. This article will consider numerous first-hand accounts by whites identified as ngamadjidj, as well some of the more recent anthropological and historical comments on the subject, in order to make observations on what this phenomenon tells us about Aboriginal and European interpretations of one another, and how it shaped racial relationships.
- Description: 2003008921
Are you off to the Diggings?': Aboriginal guiding to and on the goldfields
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The La Trobe Journal Vol. 85, no. (2010), p. 22
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- Description: The Tracker is a Dream for filmmakers, explorers, myth makers, writers, politicans, academics alike. He can represent Aboriginal privilege, Aboriginal complicity, oppression, containment. He can represent settler powerlessness, powerfulness, arrogance, ignorance and illegitamacy.
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
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- 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
‘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 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
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- 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'.
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 Comfort of Strangers’:Hospitality on the Victorian Goldfields, 1850–1860
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management Vol. 15, no. 2 (2008), p. 2-7
- Full Text: false
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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
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- 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