Indigenous Studies

This book is a collection of papers from the first Aboriginal Writer’s Conference, held at Murdoch University in February 1983. Despite the long (unexplained) lapse between the conference and the appearance of this book, the papers raise a number of urgent and complex problems, for writers and commentators.

Keith Willey died on 6 September 1984. He had just submitted the manuscript of what was to be his last book. A study of Australian humour in adversity titled You Might As Well Laugh Mate, it summed up the man, not least in his last days. Sardonic, self-effacing, unashamedly Australian.

A common theme unites the five books reviewed here: the effects on Aboriginals of European and Asian settlement in Australia, and the position of Aboriginals in the society that has developed from that settlement. The work of historians, a political scientist and anthropologists, the writings reflect changes in Australian historiography and anthropology. Reece (1979) recently made a plea on behalf of Australian historiography for more to be done by black and white historians to eradicate the tradition that Australian history was a white history beginning with Captain Cook. A parallel plea has been made to anthropologists in Langton’s (1981) criticism of anthropologists for concentrating their research efforts on remote communities. The work of Aboriginal historians is not represented here, but two of these books are indicative of the quantum leap in the quantity and quality of writing an Aboriginal history. Although anthropology is slow to change, a glance through recent bibliographies published by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies reveals an increase in the proportion of social anthropological publications on Aboriginal society outside the more remote areas. That trend appears in the content of the volume edited by Howard.

When I was a small boy in Hobart, my mates and I would often go down to the Tasmanian Museum after school; and one of the exhibits that interested us most was what we called ‘the human skeleton’. It stood in a glass case on the stairs, and it was only when we were older that we took in the fact that these were the remains of ‘Queen’ Trucanini, last of the Tasmanian Aborigines. There was no general notion abroad then that there was anything wrong with exhibiting these bones; but I remember a vague sense of unease – of being in the presence of something shameful. Such a sense exists in all of us; but there is no god so powerful as science in persuading men to suppress it.

Scarcely a week passes without reference in the media to Aboriginal land rights. The tone of the reporting varies from the outraged indignation of those who see their rights to exploit and control land being curtailed, through eloquent pleas for simple justice, to forceful demands for the return of land which was illegally acquired. Comment is not confined to Australia: the rights of indigenous peoples are matters for comment in international forums such as the United Nations and the World Council for Indigenous Peoples. Yet despite this coverage ignorance, prejudice and paternalism abound. For this reason, a comprehensive volume on land rights Australia-wide is welcome.

How, not being an anthropologist, do you set about reviewing tales and fragments of experience from Aboriginals of the Kimberleys? You might begin by stating your difficulties.

People like me can usually establish some kind of empathetic link with the arts and traditions of many cultures. If we cannot feel our way into them, at least we can derive intellectual pleasure from contemplating them: as a rule there is some point of contact, although to us, of the western heritage, nothing can ever be as real as what belongs to the family of Hellenism. I can ‘make something’ of Hindu sculpture, Inca masks, Negro jazz; perhaps even of shamanic spells.