Description:
In June 1835 John Batman, popularly acknowledged as the founder of Melbourne, recorded one of the first times that possum skin cloaks were traded by the Aboriginal people of Victoria with the European arrivals. Before he held the formal treaty meeting with the Woiwurrung clan heads near present-day Melbourne to purchase a tract of their country, Batman had distributed gifts including blankets, beads and knives. After the meeting he wrote in his journal: 'the chiefs, to manifest their friendly feeling towards me, insisted upon my receiving from them two native cloaks and several baskets made by the women, and also some of the implements of defence'.2 For the remainder of the nineteenth century these indigenous cloaks or rugs were clearly sought after by the white settlers.
Description:
In June 1835 John Batman, popularly acknowledged as the founder of Melbourne, recorded one of the first times that possum skin cloaks were traded by the Aboriginal people of Victoria with the European arrivals. Before he held the formal treaty meeting with the Woiwurrung clan heads near present-day Melbourne to purchase a tract of their country, Batman had distributed gifts including blankets, beads and knives. After the meeting he wrote in his journal: 'the chiefs, to manifest their friendly feeling towards me, insisted upon my receiving from them two native cloaks and several baskets made by the women, and also some of the implements of defence'.2 For the remainder of the nineteenth century these indigenous cloaks or rugs were clearly sought after by the white settlers.
Description:
In the 1960s Australian historians were criticized for being the ``high priests'' of a cult of forgetfulness, for neglecting Aboriginal history, and for excluding a whole quadrant of the landscape from their research. In this article, the authors argue that the same criticisms may be leveled at the interpretation of goldfields history. Taking the Goldfields Tourism Region in western Victoria as their focus, the authors show the richness of the Aboriginal side of the goldfields story, and show that their exclusion from this story is not due to a lack of material. On the contrary, the barriers that exclude Aboriginal experiences from goldfields tourism are based on the perception and choice of tourism agencies and managers. The practice of history of the Sovereign Hill Museums Association in Ballarat serves as a case study for this article. The authors argue that the heritage industry has a responsibility to ensure that Aboriginal experiences are not excluded from their interpretation. Just as the writing of mainstream history had for many years dispossessed Aboriginal peoples and kept them out of sight, and out of mind, it is time for the historiography of gold to reappraise its ideology and find a balance that no longer excludes Aboriginal themes that have a legitimate place in goldfields history. There are several ways that Sovereign Hill may present indigenous perspectives as it interprets the history of gold mining in Ballarat and Victoria from 1850. More information can be made available, by such means as a series of publications ranging from books to Web pages and activity sheets for children. Interpretive displays focusing on the specificity of Aboriginal people and gold, centered around the themes reviewed in this article, could be constructed. Aboriginal guides could interpret this rich heritage for visitors to the museum. Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat goldfields, and elsewhere, in many capacities, as Native Police, as miners, guides, and gold finders, as wives and sexual partners, as farmers and entrepreneurs trading cultural items and food, and as local residents going about their everyday lives, staging corroborees and other forms of interaction with other inhabitants. Many of these interactions could be ``activated'' by Aboriginal people; for example, there is scope for activation of the corroborees staged in Ballarat in the 1850s, of the Aboriginal encounter of the traveling musical troupe as witnessed by Antoine Fauchery, of the trade between Aboriginal people and miners, and of the critical role played by the Aboriginal Native Police in maintaining law and order in Ballarat and other goldfields in the early 1850s.
Description:
In the 1960s Australian historians were criticized for being the ``high priests'' of a cult of forgetfulness, for neglecting Aboriginal history, and for excluding a whole quadrant of the landscape from their research. In this article, the authors argue that the same criticisms may be leveled at the interpretation of goldfields history. Taking the Goldfields Tourism Region in western Victoria as their focus, the authors show the richness of the Aboriginal side of the goldfields story, and show that their exclusion from this story is not due to a lack of material. On the contrary, the barriers that exclude Aboriginal experiences from goldfields tourism are based on the perception and choice of tourism agencies and managers. The practice of history of the Sovereign Hill Museums Association in Ballarat serves as a case study for this article. The authors argue that the heritage industry has a responsibility to ensure that Aboriginal experiences are not excluded from their interpretation. Just as the writing of mainstream history had for many years dispossessed Aboriginal peoples and kept them out of sight, and out of mind, it is time for the historiography of gold to reappraise its ideology and find a balance that no longer excludes Aboriginal themes that have a legitimate place in goldfields history. There are several ways that Sovereign Hill may present indigenous perspectives as it interprets the history of gold mining in Ballarat and Victoria from 1850. More information can be made available, by such means as a series of publications ranging from books to Web pages and activity sheets for children. Interpretive displays focusing on the specificity of Aboriginal people and gold, centered around the themes reviewed in this article, could be constructed. Aboriginal guides could interpret this rich heritage for visitors to the museum. Aboriginal people were present on the Ballarat goldfields, and elsewhere, in many capacities, as Native Police, as miners, guides, and gold finders, as wives and sexual partners, as farmers and entrepreneurs trading cultural items and food, and as local residents going about their everyday lives, staging corroborees and other forms of interaction with other inhabitants. Many of these interactions could be ``activated'' by Aboriginal people; for example, there is scope for activation of the corroborees staged in Ballarat in the 1850s, of the Aboriginal encounter of the traveling musical troupe as witnessed by Antoine Fauchery, of the trade between Aboriginal people and miners, and of the critical role played by the Aboriginal Native Police in maintaining law and order in Ballarat and other goldfields in the early 1850s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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:
Description:
One of the difficulties in writing a regional history such as this thesis was the sensitivity surrounding the appropriate choice of terminology and spelling conventions. Conflicts have arisen between conforming to the standardisations of the History Discipline and a desire to accommodate the wishes of the indigenous communities in the geographical area of this study. The absence of trained linguists in the white community during the initial colonisation period has resulted in a considerable divergence of opinion over the nomenclature and spelling derivatives surrounding the indigenous people living in what is no w known as the Geelong-Ballarat region. The first white chroniclers referred to the Wathawurrung by a myriad of different names (over 100 different names were recorded by Clark for the people in this study area) including: Watowrong, Wartowrong, Wot o wrong, Watourong, Wodowrow . Throughout the text ofthis work 1 have applied the term Wathawurrung' to all indigenous groups in primary documents that involve the known language area of the Wathawurrung. Where there is some doubt as to which tribe is being referred to 1 have included other language groups that the writer ma y have also been referring to. " From Preface"
Description:
One of the difficulties in writing a regional history such as this thesis was the sensitivity surrounding the appropriate choice of terminology and spelling conventions. Conflicts have arisen between conforming to the standardisations of the History Discipline and a desire to accommodate the wishes of the indigenous communities in the geographical area of this study. The absence of trained linguists in the white community during the initial colonisation period has resulted in a considerable divergence of opinion over the nomenclature and spelling derivatives surrounding the indigenous people living in what is no w known as the Geelong-Ballarat region. The first white chroniclers referred to the Wathawurrung by a myriad of different names (over 100 different names were recorded by Clark for the people in this study area) including: Watowrong, Wartowrong, Wot o wrong, Watourong, Wodowrow . Throughout the text ofthis work 1 have applied the term Wathawurrung' to all indigenous groups in primary documents that involve the known language area of the Wathawurrung. Where there is some doubt as to which tribe is being referred to 1 have included other language groups that the writer ma y have also been referring to. " From Preface"