Not invisible, not silent, not nameless : Dja Dja Wurrung contributions to nineteenth-century Goldfields Society in central Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Carter, Rodney , Kerr, Jason , Burchill, Marlene , Kerr, Ron , Baksh, Tom , Nelson, Rick , Tout, Dan
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Cultural and Social History Vol. 20, no. 4 (2023), p. 517-535
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This article seeks to contribute to the emerging literature highlighting Indigenous peoples’ significant involvement in and contributions to goldfields society, in Australia and internationally. It does so by way of conversations with Dja Dja Wurrung voices and a careful examination and interpretation of written colonial records relating to the Dja Dja Wurrung, the Aboriginal people whose Country encompasses what is now called central Victoria in Australia. Further, the article aims to demonstrate that Dja Dja Wurrung participation in and contributions to the gold rushes themselves were not without impact on the colonial society in which they occurred. © 2022 The Social History Society.
"All that appears possible now is to mitigate as much as possible the trials of their closing years"
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Tout, Dan
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Politics and History Vol. 64, no. 2 (2018), p. 177-193
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This article examines Alfred Deakin’s attitudes towards, and impacts upon, Aboriginal people during the period 1880-1910, drawing on newspaper articles and parliamentary debates as principal source materials. The discussion begins by charting the long, influential and often positive relationships Deakin had with several Aboriginal communities during a period as a Victorian MLA between 1881 and 1884. It then proceeds to document Deakin’s extraordinary descent into paternalism and racially-based fatalism which pervaded his later association with Aboriginal affairs whilst Victoria’s Chief Secretary (1886–1890), Victorian MLA for Essendon and delegate to Federal conventions (1890-1900), as the Federation debates took shape. And finally, the article outlines the attitudes Deakin expressed towards Aboriginal people in his various post-Federation political roles, including Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs. In doing so, the discussion draws out the connections between Deakin’s advocacy of a white Australia and his attitudes towards Aboriginal Australia, and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of a new nation both informed and responded to socio-racial ideologies that mandated the exclusion of non-white identities from the nation-to-come