Aboriginal Placenames Research Articles

Interval North

Interval North Dominique Hecq (bio) Beyond simple genetics, we create our fictitious selves, and there are, at most, two possible plots. Here, the path forks in the dry. The land is subjugated to the ominous shadow of Arnhem Land's escarpment, from which tumble creeks that turn into streams, rivers, and cascades. Click for larger view View full resolution The East Alligator River snakes through high spear grass, open eucalypt woodlands, and paperbark forests to the tidal flats, where pandanus palms dig their roots in the mud. A nomination error: there were and are no alligators, only saltwater crocodiles. They cruise alongside our boat or laze around in the sun on mud flats. A car blasts across the bridge that connects Kakadu National Park to Arnhem Land. Flocks of birds wheel, swivel, and twirl into the trees. A kite swoops down for a catch. An eagle claps its wings astride a dead barramundi. Magpie geese fossick for food on the bank of the river. Strychnine and hibiscus trees swoon in the breeze. This is Gaagudju territory—also spelled "Gagadu," "Gaguju," or "Kakadu." This may be confusing, but Aboriginal place names and words have varying pronunciations between family groups and over time. They are recorded with different spellings by different peoples, too. Here, Aboriginal people are called "Bininj" in the north of the park and "Mungguy" in the south. Their clans comprise at least two family groups sharing ownership of an area of land. Our guide points out that clan boundaries are passed from one generation to the next through the father line. There are nineteen clan groups. Before white settlement, twelve languages were alive here. Today only three are spoken: Gundjeihmi, Kunwinjku, and Jawoyn. I am linguistically challenged, struggling at times to catch the sonorities of Aboriginal English. Across the river grows an isolated pocket of monsoon forest. Our guide lowers his voice: it is a women's sacred site. I explain to the child why it's off-limits to men. And to whites. [End Page 351] A cloud blows over the sky. Blows over. Passes over, or under. Like an invisible bridge. All sorts of tensions implicit in the possibility of bridging. We think of bridges as tensile architectonic matrixes. Not this one. It's built on the river's bed. It is made of solid material. There's no underside. No interplay between motion and stillness. You can only go over it. It's a self-serving bridge. A building up, gathering, hoarding bridge once constructed to facilitate the passage and hunting of water buffaloes. A great metaphor for what some people prudishly call the encounter or contact, that is, colonization. The oldest continent. The child's eyes widen as our guide offers a short history of the Kakadu National Park that I translate into broken French for her, into English for you: Pre-Cambrian sandstone and quartzite have lain here for over two thousand million years. Kakadu's youngest bedrock is over one thousand million years old. Aboriginal settlement extends back to over sixty thousand years, I tell the child in the car. For millennia, Indigenous people have harvested food from plants, trees and waterholes of the escarpment, the billabongs and swamps and rivers of the plain. They have taken care of the land by burning grasslands to improve pastures and enable new plants and trees to germinate. A spooky sight from the road confirms this: will-o'-the-wisps scaling eucalypts. So, what of the encounter? The Chinese, Malays, and Portuguese all allege to have been the first non-Aboriginal visitors of Australia's north coast. The first surviving written account comes from the Dutch, to whom the child and I are related by blood. In 1623, Jan Carstenszoon sailed west across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Groote Eylandt. Abel Tasman then explored part of the coast in 1644 and recorded European contact with Aboriginal people. Almost a century later, in 1802 and 1803, Matthew Flinders surveyed the Gulf of Carpentaria. Phillip Parker King, an English navigator, is responsible for the error of nomination. Parker King named the three Alligator Rivers after the large numbers of crocodiles he mistook for alligators. I glean all this...

Onomastic Palimpsests and Indigenous Renaming: Examples from Victoria, Australia

This paper is concerned with onomastic palimpsests in Victoria, Australia, focusing in particular on the 1870s, when the deliberate erasure of colonial names and their replacement with Indigenous names was at the forefront of government policy. In contextualizing this reinstatement of Indigenous toponyms, the paper highlights the agency of parliamentarian and government minister Hon. Robert Ramsay. The primary sources of data are newspaper articles and official government reports. The methodology used is “thick description”. The findings reveal that the government’s efforts were grounded in the collection and collation of place names and vocabulary from Aboriginal people in the previous decade by district surveyors and other local officials. Consistent with recent campaigns in Victoria, the sustained efforts by governments in the 1870s were driven by a desire to remove duplication, erase inappropriate non-Aboriginal place names, and preserve Aboriginal place names. The campaign is unparalleled in the history of Victoria’s toponymic administration.

Did Your Mother Go To Bimbo School?: Naming Schools, Power, and Politics in Canada’s Prairie West

Naming converts space to place. Place names are often the manifestation of military and political power. The victors write history and embed their culture and power in the landscape by naming and renaming places. In Canada’s Prairie West, after 1870, Aboriginal place names were submerged beneath a tide of British imperial nomenclature bestowed by major corporations. Agricultural immigrants from Europe found it difficult to mark their presence in the landscape by naming settlements, but school names were generally assigned locally. By naming schools, otherwise powerless groups from Eastern Europe marked their presence in the rural landscape. Naming or renaming them reflected the strength of community power, the community’s weltanschaaung , and fluctuations in the influence of the Anglophone elite. L’acte de nommer convertit l’espace en un lieu. Le nom des lieux (toponyme) sont souvent la manifestation du pouvoir politique et militaire. Les vainqueurs écrivent l’histoire et intègrent leur culture et pouvoir dans le paysage en nommant et en renommant des lieux. Après 1870, dans la région des Prairies de l’Ouest du Canada, les toponymes autochtones ont été submergés sous une marée de nomenclature impériale Britannique conférée par les grandes entreprises commerciales. Les immigrants agricoles en provenance d’Europe ont trouvé difficile de marquer leur présence dans le paysage en nommant des villages. Toutefois, cela n’était pas le cas pour le nom des écoles qui était généralement attribué localement. L’acte de nommer leurs écoles a permis à des groupes d’Europe de l’Est de marquer leur présence dans le paysage rural. Ainsi, nommer ou renommer les écoles reflète le pouvoir de la communauté, l’weltanschauung de la communauté, et les fluctuations de l’influence de l’élite anglophone.

Canadian Geography as National Identity: Hudson’s Bay Company Place Names and their Aboriginal Counterparts

The fur trade has a distinctive place in the collective memory of Canadian society, influencing national identity in many ways. Specifically, the fur trade has helped to shape the geography of Canada, which is filled with locales that retain the labels “fort,” “post,” “house,” and “factory.” This paper will discuss the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1928 call for the collection of Aboriginal place names for “all the posts of the country” and will examine the resilience of these places names and their role in creating a Canadian national identity based on the idea of three founding nations—Aboriginal, French, and English.

The surveys of F.P. MacCabe and his records of Aboriginal placenames at the Junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers

Surveyor Francis Peter MacCabe mapped sections of the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Darling Rivers between 1848 and 1850. In the process he recorded and mapped hundreds of Aboriginal placenames. His surveys traversed the country of three distinct language families, making his careful recordings of particular linguistic value. This paper provides an overview of his life and work and provides an analysis of some of his records from the Murray-Darling Junction area.

Reviews

References Bright, William. 1993. Colorado Place Names. Boulder, CO.: Johnson. (Rev. 2004). Bright, William. 2004. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Bright, William. 2005. “Contextualizing a Grammar.” Studies in Language 30:2. 245–52. Coates, Richard. 2006. “Properhood.” Language 82:2. 356–82. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). 2002. The current database is available from the US Geological Survey at http://geonames.usgs.gov/index.html, last updated 24 July 2006. Accessed November 19, 2006. Gudde, Erwin G. 1998. California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names. 4th ed. Revised and enlarged by William Bright. Berkeley: University of California Press. Beauchamp, William M. 1907. Aboriginal Place Names of New York. Bulletin 108, Archeology 12, New York State Museum. Bright, William. 2004. Native American Placenames of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman. Cassidy, Frederic G. 1947. The Place-Names of Dane CountyiWisconsin. American Dialect Society: Greensboro,North Carolina. French, J. H. 1860. 1977. 1860 Gazetteer of the State of New York. Reprinted 1977. The BookMark: Knightstown,Indiana. McArthur, Lewis A., and Lewis L. McArthur. 1992. Oregon Geographic Names. Oregon Historical Society Press: Portland,Oregon. McGoff, Michael F. 1980. Computer-oriented Onomastic Surveys: The Toponyms of New York State. Dissertation: Binghamton University. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. 1975. “Place-Names in Bilingual Communities,” Names 23:167–174. Stewart, George R. 1975. Names on the Globe. Oxford University Press: New York. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1967. “Classical Town Names in the United States: The Historical Geography of an American Idea.” The Geographical Review 57:463–495.

SOME ABORIGINAL PLACE‐NAMES IN THE RICHMOND TWEED AREA*

OceaniaVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 38-55 SOME ABORIGINAL PLACE-NAMES IN THE RICHMOND TWEED AREA* First published: September 1963 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1963.tb00247.x † This text is based on a paper given on May 27th, 1963, to the Annual General Meeting of the Richmond River Historical Society. The author is on the staff of the Department of English, University of New England, N.S.W. AboutPDF 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 Volume34, Issue1September 1963Pages 38-55 RelatedInformation

The question of aboriginal place names

In this article, the author advances a case for the preservation and use of these names and in developing the case illustrates that their recording and reduction to writing is not as difficult as generally supposed.