"Dark in Complexion": The Indigenous war graves Workers
- Authors: Bakker, Peter , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian war graves workers and World War One : Devoted labour for the lost, the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 5 p. 76-93
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Indigenous peoples' participation in Australia's modern military conflict's has until the 1970's been largely sidelined by historians. Recent scholarship in this field has revealed far greater participation numbers than previously thought. The general consideration is now that Indigenous people in the Great War participated as an extension of their ongoing effort to shape and alter their social and political realities. "From abstract"
"Their Last Resting Place": Foundations of graves work
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian war graves workers and World War One : devoted labour for the lost, the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 1 p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Corroborees in Goldrush Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Pay dirt! : Ballarat and other gold towns Chapter 2 p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
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".
Understanding maritime explorers and others as ngamadjidj
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred) , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The First wave :Exploring early coastal contact history in Australia Chapter 3 p. 23-37
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This chapter examines Indigenous narratives of first contact in south eastern Australia with a particular focus on Victoria and draws on ethnohistory, ethnography and thick description to offer a nuanced understanding of these encounters. Early interactions were framed within an attempt to incorporate Europeans within existing cosmological and social orders. Fragments of Aboriginal accounts of their first interactions with Europeans survive in the written recordds of early settleers and public administratorsm and although they are not extensive they nevertheless provide us with glimpses of Aboriginal understanding of these initial encounters. Victorian Aboriginal perceptions of their first contact with European settlers have been studied by Clark, and Clark and Cahir.
“He Took Pleasure in Doing His Duty”: Staff Sgt. Frank Cahir DSM MM
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Weuffen, Sara , Smith, Matt , Bakker, Peter , Caminiti, Jo
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Australian War graves workers and World War One; Devoted labour for the lost the unknown but not forgotten dead Chapter 4 p. 55-73
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Clothing
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Chapter 10 p. 173-188
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Anthropological and ethnographical studies of the use of clothing among Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia indicate that garments for thermal protection were often not worn in the warmer months of the year. The increased use of Aboriginal clothing in the colder months of the year point to it being a behavioural adaptation to exposure to cold (Gilligan 2008). Colonial writers often remarked on Aboriginal people’s nudity or being scantily clad, which was really a Eurocentric social construct rather than an actual state of nakedness as Aboriginal people were known to make significant behavioural adaptations to cold weather in order to keep warm, including feathers, ochres and animal fat (Stephens 2014; Massola 1971; Smyth 1878). Dawson (1881) described some of the methods that Aboriginal people used to protect themselves from the cold that did not require ‘clothing’. "From abstract"
Fire in Aboriginal south-eastern Australia
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , McMaster, Sarah
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Chapter 7 p. 115-132
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: In south-eastern Australia, climatic, topographic and vegetative characteristics have combined to produce a landscape in which fires occur with some regularity (Cruz et al . 2012). The historic record suggests that the frequency of fire in this area was a common source of interest (and concern) for European explorers and colonists first encountering the area. In most instances, the Europeans attributed fires to Aboriginal people, and theorised the potential motivations and function of burning practices. This chapter will introduce archival material that illuminates these colonial perspectives on Aboriginal fire use in southeastern Australia, and will discuss the ethnographic observations that were made of ‘customary’ uses of fire. This will include the association that fire was seen to have with religious, mortuary, hunting and communication practices. This chapter will begin by discussing the impacts that explorers and colonists had on the customary fire practices of Aboriginal people, recognising that while the historical record contains invaluable material about Aboriginal burning practices, its descriptions of Aboriginal burning practices must be assessed carefully. As Indigenous and European cultures encountered one another on the colonial frontier, it is also interesting to consider how fire, a simultaneously essential and dangerous force, featured in the historical relationships between Aboriginal people and the newly arrived Europeans. To explore this question, this chapter will discuss the way that Aboriginal knowledge of fire was transferred cross-culturally, and question how this may have influenced the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. By drawing from the historical records, it will examine the effects that fire, including both its purposeful use and its accidental occurrence, had on frontier relationships.
Introduction: Aboriginal Bio-cultural Knowledge in Southeast Australia
- Authors: Clarke, Philip , Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Introduction p. xv-xxiv
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
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.
'We had a good many visits from them': Aboriginal/Scottish shared performance spaces on the Victorian frontier
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Scots Under the Southern Cross: Scottish Impressions of Colonial Australia p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Introduction : The songlines of the Scots in Australia
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Scots under the Southern Cross p. 7-12
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: 'Scots Under the Southern Cross' is a collection of essays from speakers at the Scottish Symposium held in Ballarat 9-11 May 2014. The chapters reflect the many styles, themes and formats embracing the Scottish Diaspora in Australia. This publication complements the Art Gallery of Ballarat Exhibition 'For Auld Lang Syne: Images of Scottish Australia from First Fleet to Federation'. The five interrelated sections of 'Scots Under the Southern Cross' are: 'Retrospect', 'The Scots in Aboriginal Australia', 'Biographical Studies of Scottish Australians', 'Scottish Artists on Australia' and 'Commemorating Scotland in Australia'. The essays tell the stories of Scottish immigrants and their successful establishment of economic and cultural networks in Australia. These chapters hopefully will form a basis for expansion into research of the Scottish diaspora and the way the Scots and their descendants have contributed to adapted to Australian conditions.
John Green, manager of Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, but also a 'Ngamadjidj? New insights into his work with Victorian Aboriginal people in the ninteenth century
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Colonial contexts and postcolonial theologies : Story weaving in the Asia-Pacific p. 129-144
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: As a result of recommendations from the New South Wales Legislative Council Select Committee appointed in June 1849 to assess the success or failure of the Aboriginal Protectorate system in Port Phillip, the protectorate was dismantled in late 1849. The abolition of the Protectorate heralded a decade of laissez faire policy and neglect of Aboriginal people in Victoria. William Thomas, the assistant protector responsible for the Melbourne or Western Port Protectorate District, was retained and given the title of 'Guardian of Aborigines', but he concentrated on Aboriginal people living or visiting Melbourne.
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
- Reviewed:
- 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
- Reviewed:
'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
- Reviewed:
- 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
- Reviewed:
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
- Reviewed:
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
- Reviewed:
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