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
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- 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.
Aboriginal fire-management practices in colonial Victoria
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian , Tout, Dan , Wilkie, Benjamin , Clark, Jidah
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Aboriginal History Journal Vol. 45, no. (2021), p. 109-130
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- Reviewed:
- Description: Through a close reading of particular episodes and a focus on the minutiae of action and context, this article adds to the literature on the customary use of fire by Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia by highlighting the historically significant role Aboriginal people played in toiling alongside colonists and fighting fires during the colonial period. By scrutinising the written colonial records it is possible to reveal some of the measures that Aboriginal people used to help the colonists avoid cataclysmic fire. Lacking many direct Indigenous sources due to the devastation caused by rapid colonisation, we do this for the most part through a detailed examination of sheep and cattle graziers' journals, newspapers and government records. The article commences with an overview of colonists' observations of and attitudes regarding Aboriginal practices in relation to fire with specific reference to the region now referred to as Victoria and New South Wales. It concludes with an examination of the few recorded instances in which Aboriginal people tutored colonists in fighting fires, educating them how to use fire as a management tool, and the significant value they placed in Aboriginal knowledge relating to fire. © 2022 Astra Salvensis. All rights reserved.
Volcanism in Aboriginal Australian oral traditions : ethnographic evidence from the newer volcanics province
- Authors: Wilkie, Benjamin , Cahir, David (Fred) , Clark, Ian
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research Vol. 403, no. (2020), p. 1-11
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- Reviewed:
- Description: This article collects and presents nineteenth-century ethnographic evidence from the Newer Volcanics Province of Australia and explores how volcanism was recorded and understood in Aboriginal oral traditions. It investigates whether Aboriginal Australian oral traditions can be understood as persistent eyewitness accounts of volcanic eruptions in the Newer Volcanics Province, how andwhat kind of geological and volcanological knowledge was embedded within Aboriginal Australian oral traditions, and considers what value the ethnographic evidence has for understanding both the socio-cultural and geological histories of the Newer Volcanics Province.