Aboriginal History Research Articles

Raphaël Lemkin, creator of the concept of genocide: a world history perspective

Genocide is one of those rare concepts whose author and inception can be precisely specified and dated. The term was created by the brilliant PolishJewish and later American jurist Raphael Lemkin (1900-59) in 'Genocide' in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress, published in the United States in 1944.2 Lemkin was also the prime mover in the discussions that led to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The concept was immediately recognised worldwide as of contemporary significance and future importance, for it called attention to humanity at its limits. It is a major concept in international law, for its framework of group experience and rights challenges both a stress on the individual as the subject of law and the exclusive jurisdiction of modern nation-states.3 Lemkin as an intellectual figure and the concept of genocide have been a preoccupying interest for me since 2001 when I co-edited a special series of essays for the journal Aboriginal History called 'Genocide? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective'.4 The spectre of genocide as a feature of Australian history in relation to its Indigenous peoples had, only a few years before, been raised by the Australian Human Rights Commission's 1997 Bringing Them Home report, which argued that the Aboriginal child-removal practices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fell within the definition of genocide used in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.5 In 2003, Ann Curthoys and I researched Lemkin's papers in the American Jewish Historical Society in New York and the New York Public Library, where we were especially eager to pursue the suggestions in his definition linking genocide with settler colonialism.6 I think that Australian scholars are at the forefront of world genocide studies because historical investigation of settler colonialism is so intense, sustained and interrogative in Australia.7 Inspired by Lemkin's work, the new genocide studies asks: are settler colonies inherently or constitutively genocidal?8 And, if so, what does this say of the ethical character of post-1492 European settler colonialism and empires? After such knowledge, what honour?9 My essay will be in two parts. Part one will offer a sketch of Lemkin's life, outlining his ideas about genocide in his published and unpublished writings. My approach is influenced by Hannah Arendt 's Men in Dark Times, which says we can best understand a thinker in terms of biography, sensibility, anecdote and social genealogy.10 I am also influenced by Janet Abu-Lughod's world-history approach. Abu-Lughod suggests that the writing of significant historical narrative entails a number of qualities: it should be conceived in an anti-Euro-centric spirit, it should involve a 'synthetic imagination or vision' and it should engage in what the philosopher Hans Gadamer in Truth and Method refers to as a capacity for 'reflexivity and self-conscious awareness'. Historical reflection should also include an element that is extremely personal; indeed, Abu-Lughod values a mode of personal vision that is inspired by eccentricity and idiosyncrasy - the kind of vision, she feels, that leads to the finding of a particular pattern in history.11 In part two, I offer some possible criticisms of Lemkin. In particular, a question mark hangs over his attitude to African Americans and indeed to Africa and Africans, raising disturbing questions that also haunt Arendt scholarship. I wish in turn to bring to the fore a more general problem: European or Europeanderived intellectuals, so committed to cosmopolitanism and inclusive notions of humanity, yet revealing a distressingly familiar Euro-centric failure of critical consciousness and reflexivity. 1 . Raphael Lemkin's life, contexts and the concept of 'genocide' Lemkin was born on 24 June 1900 in Bezwodne, a village near Wolkowysk (now Vaulkovisk), a small city in what is now Belarus. …

Ethnic Community in Early Tsilhqut'in Contact History

With the emergence of the Canadian policy of land claims in the 1970s and 1980s, the early contact phase of aboriginal history became a prime factor determining recognition. First Nations historiography has, as a result, become polarized and politicized in particular ways. This article is an attempt to illuminate the question of the sociopolitical standing of the Tsilhqut'in of west central British Columbia in the early contact period in what has become a frankly political environment. Key sources are identified, prevailing approaches are critically evaluated, and a new line of interpretation is developed by drawing on the ethnosymbolic approach of John Armstrong and Anthony D. Smith.

Pieces of a thousand stories: repatriation of the history of Aboriginal Sydney

The on-line project A History of Aboriginal Sydney, based at the University of Sydney, takes existing educational and Australian Indigenous digital initiatives in a new direction. By dividing Sydney into six geographical areas, we are creating a knowledge base of post-invasion Aboriginal history, incorporating different forms of tagging, timeline and digital mapping to provide multiple paths to information in text, videos, still images and, in the future, three dimensional reconstructions of former living areas.
 After eighteen months research we are maintaining a balance between unearthing new and forgotten material, incorporating it into our developing database, and exploring the potential of digital mapping, animation and 3D historical reconstruction for educational and research purposes. With close Indigenous consultation, especially the Aboriginal Educational Consultative Groups, we hope to digitally construct the Aboriginal history of Sydney and return it to the people who have been deprived of so much of their history for so long.

The Early Northwest (review)

Reviewed by: The Early Northwest Ted Binnema (bio) Gregory P. Marchildon , editor. The Early Northwest. University of Regina and Canadian Plains Research Center. viii, 504. $29.95 This volume is the first of a planned History of the Prairie West Series to be published by the Canadian Plains Research Center (CPRC). Each volume will consist of articles previously published in Prairie Forum (a journal also published by the CPRC), chosen and arranged by Gregory Marchildon, a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Economic History at the University of Regina. This first volume features an introduction, followed by seventeen articles dealing with the history of the Canadian plains (few articles are focused on the subarctic) to 1885. Given the number of articles published, and that all of the articles have been previously published, no analysis of individual articles (apart from the introduction) will be attempted here, but the volume will be assessed as a collection. In that regard, the collection, though useful, is little more than the sum of its parts. The articles are arranged into four sections centred on early Aboriginal history, the fur trade, the Hudson's Bay Company and Red River Colony as imperial/colonizing forces, and the 1870 and 1885 uprisings. The collection reflects the ebbs and flows in the historiography of the Canadian plains. Of the seventeen articles in the collection, eight were originally published before 1987, and only four after 2000. The field has languished for two decades. (Still, some of the older articles have been superseded by more recent scholarship.) The introduction offers slight added value because it does little more than briefly summarize the contents of the volume. The editor missed an excellent opportunity to stimulate the field by assessing the scholarship overall and identifying possible avenues of future research. The value of the collection is, however, somewhat enhanced by the inclusion of some illustrations that were not included in the original articles, and of an index to the entire collection. The goal of the publisher as explained in the preface - of showcasing the 'very best of Prairie Forum' - does not fit perfectly with what I would assume would be the desires of most potential readers and university instructors: a collection of the best articles on western Canadian history, regardless of where they were originally published. The very aim of the collection means that it is inevitably uneven in quality and coverage. Although the fact is particularly noticeable in the section on the Red River Resistance (1870) and the North-West Rebellion (1885), some of the most influential articles on any number of topics are published elsewhere. The collection is very reasonably priced, but the selectivity of the collection means that it is unlikely that many university instructors will choose it as a textbook. Any number of specialists will also question whether the articles featured in this collection were in fact the 'very best' published in Prairie Forum over the years. If I had been asked to pick the best articles, I [End Page 493] would have chosen ones different from those that Marchildon did, but likely so would every editor. Rather than engage in a useless second-guessing of Marchildon's selection, I prefer to suggest to the publisher that it is entirely consistent with the aims of the series to include in future volumes a list of all relevant articles (perhaps including abstracts) that were not selected for inclusion in that collection. That (short of changing the goal of the series), together with the inclusion of long and incisive introductions, holds the best potential for ensuring that future volumes in the series make more than a minor contribution to the field of western Canadian history. Ted Binnema Ted Binnema, Department of History, University of Northern British Columbia Copyright © 2010 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Aboriginal history and prehistory of Rottnest Island

Aboriginal history and prehistory of Rottnest Island

The Australian Aborigines and the Human Past

Indifference to events which may actually have taken place between the Dreamtime and European contact is commonly held to be a salient feature of traditional Aboriginal thought. This contention contains a significant element of truth but it may have been exaggerated by some anthropologists. Structural-functionalist emphases on myth as charter led not only to the rejection of historical interpretations of Aboriginal myths which were ill-considered and naïve, but also to an excessive neglect of potentially fruitful attempts to extract from myths clues about post-Dreamtime experiences. This neglect has unduly strengthened the view that Aboriginal thought is entirely sui generis and that its supposed indifference to human history is an inescapable cultural attribute of Aboriginality. A sketch is offered for a reappraisal of the significance of Aboriginal myths for Aboriginal history.

Book Reviews

MankindVolume 13, Issue 1 p. 83-101 Book Reviews First published: June 1981 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1981.tb01219.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: Australian Dreaming. 40.000 years of Aboriginal History. Edited by Jennifer Isaacs Radio Power. A History of 3ZZ Access Radio. By Joan Dugdale Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia Introduction to Australian Society: A Sociological Perspective. By Donald Edgar The New South Wales Wheat Frontier. 1851 to 1911. By M. E. Robinson Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney. Heroin in Australia. By David Hirst Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland. The Quest for Gaia. A Book of Changes. By Kit Pedler Drinking Careers. Occupations, Drinking Habits, and Drinking Problems. By Martin A. Plant Northern Territory Department of Health, Darwin. Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality. By Jean-Louis Flandrin. Translated by Richard Southern Changing Images of the Family. Edited by Virginia Tufte and Barbara Myerhoff Department of Anthropology, Western Australian Museum. Give and Take. Exchange in Wola Society. By Paul Sillitoe Department of Prehistory and Anthropoloy, S.G.S. Caste: The Emergence of the South Asian Social System. By Morton Klass David Mearns Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide. Anthropological Structures of Madness in Black Africa. By I. Sow. Translated by Joyce Diamenti Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry. By George Devereux Department of Anthropology, University of Otago. Who Should Know What? Social Science, Privacy and Ethics. By J. A. Barnes Department of Sociology, University of N.S.W. Arnold Van Gennep. The Creator of French Ethnography. By Nicole Belmont Department of Prehistory anrf Anthropology, Australian National University. Man, Mind, and Science. A History of Anthropology. By Murray J. Leaf Department of Sociology, University of N.S.W. The Conceptualisation and Explanation of Processes of Social Change. Edited by David Riches School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University. Day of Shining Red. An Essay on Understanding Ritual. By Gilbert Lewis Department of Prehistory and Anthropology, Australian National University. Living Archaeology. By R. A. Gould. New Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England Experimental Determinatiou of Stone Tool Uses: A Microwear Analysis. By Lawrence H. Keeley Division of Prehistory, La Trobe University. Archaeological Constructs. An Aspect of Theoretical Archaeology. By Jean-Claude Gardin Division of Prehistory, La Trobe University. The Performing Arts. Music and Dance. Edited by John Blacking and Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Department of Sociology, University of New England. Volume13, Issue1June 1981Pages 83-101 RelatedInformation

'Ethical Positioning' A Strategy in Overcoming Student Resistance and Fostering Engagement in Teaching Aboriginal History as a Compulsory Subject to Pre-Service Primary Education Students

The paper describes and analyses the issues that impacted on pre service Primary Education students‘ engagement with the subject 'Aboriginal culture and history‘ at a rural university. The paper identifies how issues including pioneer identity and local 'conversations‘ about race related strongly to this particular rural context. It names and demonstrates 'ethical positioning‘ as an effective pedagogy in shifting often unrecognised racist values and attitudes, thus enabling students to move beyond ethnocentricity. The paper highlights the openness of the students to becoming transformative educators when issues of identity, racism and its ethical implications are reflected on overtly.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:The Meaning of Whitemen: race and modernity in the Orokaiva cultural world By Ira Bashkow.Pathways to Heaven. Contesting Mainline and Fundamentalist Christianity in Papua New Guinea. By Holger JebensCulture in Translation: The anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews Aboriginal History Monograph 15 By R. H. Mathews. Edited by Martin ThomasGender, Christianity and Change in Vanuatu: An Analysis of Social Movements in North Ambrym By Annelin EriksenMortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia Edited by Katie Glaskin, Myrna Tonkinson, Yasmine Musharbash and Victoria BurbankProto Mirndi: a discontinuous language family in northern Australia By Mark Harvey.Dancing from the Heart. Movement, Gender and Cook Islands Globalisation By Kalissa AlexeyeffPerfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali. By J. Stephen Lansing.Inventing Easter Island By Beverley HaunEmbodying Modernity and Post‐Modernity: Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia By Sandra Bamford (ed.)

Experiencing Waterholes in an Arid Environment, with Particular Reference to the Lake Eyre Basin, Australia: a Review

AbstractThe distribution and permanence of waterholes have dictated human activity and settlement patterns in the arid zone for millennia. At a fundamental level, waterholes are vital to survival in a harsh climate. The recreational value and use of waterholes are widely recognised; however, the less tangible aspects of ‘waterhole experience’ have received scant attention. This review, written whilst compiling an inventory of permanent waterbodies across the Lake Eyre Basin of Queensland and South Australia, aimed to provide a deeper understanding of the interaction of humans with water in an arid land, primarily from a settler perspective.A large body of literature pertaining to waterholes was reviewed, including Aboriginal histories, explorer journals, accounts of early settlers, and numerous fictional and factual accounts of life in inland Australia. It becomes apparent that human appreciation of arid‐zone waterholes runs deeper than the survival imperative, and can be enriched by considering landscape aesthetics and psychology. This attraction has spawned a rich mythology centred on waterholes – permanent features in an otherwise harsh and variable environment.

‘Are we in Danger of a Hostile Visit from the Aborigines?’ Dispossession and the Rise of Self-Government in New South Wales

This article considers the place of Indigenous imagery and policy in debates about self-government for New South Wales during the 1840s and 50s. In doing so, it aims to bridge the frequent disciplinary gap between histories of Aboriginal dispossession and histories of colonial political development. What emerges is a process of exclusion, where Indigenous people were written out of the political world, while at the same time images of supposed Indigenous primitivism or savagery were used as rhetorical tools in wider political debates, to dismiss certain forms of colonial governance as outmoded or ridiculous.1 1This research was conducted as part of an honorary creative fellowship at the State Library of Victoria.

‘An edifying spectacle’: A history of ‘tourist corroborees’ in Victoria, Australia, 1835–1870

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.

Mapping Australia’s Past In Picture Books

This paper examines four influential Australian picture books that provide narratives from different perspectives, representing the white men’s (and especially military) history, white women’s (settler) history, Aboriginal history (from traditional life to colonial and then post-colonial), and finally everybody’s history, especially giving voice to children.

Action learning through Indigenous literature

The action learning project described tells about one primary school’s journey in addressing issues of social justice and equity in relation to Aboriginal education in Australia. The setting was a new regional primary school in New South Wales, Australia. The school needed to get Aboriginal Education on the agenda, in line with the mandatory Aboriginal Education Policy. At the same time, the Prime Minister of Australia had just apologised on behalf of the government to the nation’s Indigenous people for injustices of the past. This was the micro and macro context that set the scene for the action learning project, ‘Action learning through Indigenous literature’, that took place during term two in 2008. Social injustices of the past were addressed and young students were made aware of Aboriginal history through Indigenous children’s picture books, using authentic voice as a tool. The books were written by Aboriginal people about their unique history and culture. Indigenous people in Australia have had a long battle to maintain their cultural identity while seeking to achieve equity. By understanding the strong spiritual connection Aboriginal people have with the land, and valuing the richness of their culture, the author believes that all Australians benefit.

The Traumatic Truth

Trauma in Aboriginal performance art practice implicitly reveals the precariousness of any established Aboriginal history. In the reenactment of trauma - individual pain confronting collective pain - performance art does not make meaning or create closure. Marcia Crosby

Carne Neemerranner — Telling Places and History on the Ground

Abstract In the language of the Tebrikunna (Cape Portland) clan, Carne Neemerranneris “telling ground”. It is also what we call the research methodology designed for Meeting at Bark Hut, a recent community-engaged Aboriginal history project conducted in northeast Tasmania. The project examined, retraced and explored one brief, but poignant, episode in Tasmania's colonial contact history – a meeting between the parties of George Augustus Robinson, colonial agent charged with the “conciliation” and removal of Trouwunnan (Tasmanian) clanspeople from the Tasmanian mainland, and that most likely included Mannalargenna, one of the last Trouwunnan leaders still living in his own clancountry at the time (1830). While this episode and encounter has profound connotations for presentday Tasmanian Aborigines, its significance has largely been overlooked by academic historians. Meeting at Bark Hutwas conceived as an opportunity to redress this deficit, to allow the story of this event to be told and to come alive in a dynamic and culturally relevant way. This article offers some insight into the meaning and method of the project from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

<i>Jindabyne</i>’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland

Creating Authentic Links between Museums and Educational Institutions: Researching Innovative Partnerships

Melbourne k Living Museum ofthe West is a community museum thot is located in the Western region ofMelbourne in Uctoria, Australia. The Living Museum ofthe West has an obrrndance ofresorirces, both secondary andprimary, that infornr visitors of environmental issries, Aboriginal history and cultrrral trends in the local a m . In 2007 a collaborative team ofpractitioners involving The Living Museum ofthe West and the School ofEducation at Cictoria University, Australia, came together to design a RIPE (Researching Innovative Partnerships in Education) project. This paper presentsfindings ofthe RIPE pmject. In particrrlar it highlights the role of cmting strategic partnerships behveen a museum, a local school and a local university. i%e rrse of an 'interactive website ' as a tool for strengthening partnerships, creating innovative links to teaching and learning resources and improving overall learning outcomesfor school students is also examined

Shark, Remora and Aboriginal History

This paper has two clearly divided sections – the first will explore the concept of colonial history as a metaphor- likened to a cruising shark. The domain of this powerful shark is the oceans of history – its practice, understanding, delivery and ownership. The second part of the paper will examine two aspects of Keith Windschuttle’s book The Fabrication of Aboriginal history with which I take issue namely the massacre at Risdon Cove in 1804 and secondly, Windschuttle’s denigrating and uninformed appraisal of the relationship between Aboriginal men and women. I will state upfront that it is Windschuttle's blinding faith in the objectivity of the empirical record that is his Achilles heel. He does not recognise or consider that the archival record can be biased or recorded by those with a vested interest. This sort of naïve historical understanding is seriously flawed.

From Terror to Genocide: Britain's Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia's History Wars

In 1997 a government inquiry found that Australia's forcible removals of Aboriginal children in previous decades could properly be labeled 'geno cidal.'1 Nevertheless Prime Minister John Howard steadfastly refused to apologize or offer reparations on behalf of his government. As a result, at least 150,000 people marched across Sydney Harbor Bridge on 28 May 2000.2 Later that year, Australian writer Keith Windschuttle's essay Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian refocused the debate on the colonial period, during which Australia's Aboriginal population declined from 750,000 or more to fewer than 50,000.3 The British colonial era, 1788-1901, thus became the focus of Australia's History Wars.4 In 2002, Windschuttle self-published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Van Diemen's Land, 1803-1847. His attempt to refute the idea that genocide took place on the island now known as Tasmania made the question of genocide there a central and strategic Australian History