Mrs Bates and Mr Brown: An examination of Rodney Needham's allegations

Abstract

In his paper 'Surmise, discovery and rhetoric' (1974), Rodney Needham made three allegations about his predecessor, Radcliffe-Brown: that he had, first, claimed to have 'discovered' the Kariera system, when it had already been known and recorded by a number of previous writers, second, 'mutilated beyond recovery' Mrs Daisy Bates' manuscript on the Aborigines of Western Australia which had been entrusted to him for comment and revision, and, third, included in his own publications the research and writings of Mrs Bates without her permission and without due acknowledgement. For those unfamiliar with the known facts concerning RadcliffeBrown's sojourn in Australia in the years 1910-1911, and his transactions with Mrs Bates, here follows a brief account. Since 1904 Mrs Bates had been employed by the Western Australian Government to study and report on the languages and customs of the fast vanishing Aborigines of the state. Even before 1904 she had already accumulated a considerable store of knowledge about some of them, particularly those living in the areas near the coast, north-east from Roebourne and Port Hedland to Broome and Beagle Bay, so that she had a ten-year store of knowledge when Radcliffe-Brown arrived. From 1907 to 1910 she was writing a book for the Government about her findings, and sending the completed chapters to Andrew Lang in England for comment. Lang, in turn, showed some of this manuscript to Radcliffe-Brown, who arrived in Perth in late September, 1910. Mrs Bates was seconded by the government to join his expedition, with the arrangement that her writings would be included in the reports of the expedition and probably published by Cambridge University Press, so saving the government the cost of publication. Mrs Bates and Mr Brown (as he then was) were in the field together for six months, first on the mainland and then on Bernier and Dorre Islands, until their mounting incompatibility made co-operation no longer possible. Radcliffe-Brown returned to the mainland and worked for a further six months on the cattle and sheep stations of the area around Carnarvon and Port Hedland, and returned to England early in 1912. Mrs Bates did some months fieldwork around Peak Hill and then returned to Perth; the government took this opportunity to terminate her employment, and later handed back to her her manuscript to publish herself. In 1912 and 1913 Radcliffe-Brown published three papers as a result of his research in Western Australia, and in 1930-31 his important long paper on the social organization of Australian tribes appeared in