Abstract
ABSTRACT In 1938, John S. Beharell led the first colonial government patrol into the then ‘uncontrolled’ land of Kubo people east of the Strickland River. That patrol is not referred to in reports of subsequent patrols a decade and more later. Nor does it appear in published histories of the area. That is unfortunate, for Beharell encountered a social landscape that differed from the landscape documented by later patrols. Analysis of Beharell’s report points to more general issues around use of patrol reports in documenting purportedly pre-colonial realities. These concern the nature of knowledge construction by patrol officers, the potential to render static what were complex social dynamics in pre-colonial contexts, and untangling change resulting from contact with outsiders from endogenous processes of change when these will necessarily have been entangled.
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