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.
'John and Jackey': An exploration of Aboriginal and Chinese people's associations on the Victorian goldfields
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Australasian Mining History Vol. 13, no. No. (2015), p. 23-41
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: While much has been written about Chinese miners, much less has been said about Aboriginal miners and even less about Aboriginal-Chinese relations on the gold fields and elsewhere. Historians and other writers, such as Stephenson, Dunstan, Gittins, Cronin, Ramsay and Edwards and Shen, have largely ignored Aboriginal associations with Chinese people in colonial Victoria. Eric Rolls's study is representative of this absence - when discussing Australia's colonial racial policies towards the Chinese on the Victorian gold fields, Rolls is reluctant to draw many parallels between the Chinese, one group of people largely hidden from the historical gaze, and Aborigines, another group almost expunged from memory. A similar pattern can be seen in the historiography of encounters in other nations between Indigenous and Chinese people, such as in New Zealand and British Columbia where the paucity of the records initially led Yu to note: 'Here was a world only glimpsed'.
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
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:
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
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
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