In mid-1941, Private Clarrie Combo from New South Wales sent a letter from Syria, where he was stationed, to Mrs Brown of Loxton in South Australia. Combo, an Aboriginal soldier serving abroad with the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF), wrote 'it is very nice of you to write to someone you do not know. Thank you for offering to knit a pair of socks for me. I wear size seven in boots'.1 These unlikely correspondents formed an affective relationship during the Second World War under the auspices of a scheme designed specifically to cater for the needs of Australian Aboriginal men serving abroad. Following the outbreak of the war, in August 1940 the Victorian-based Aborigines Uplift Society launched a national comfort auxiliary. This was Australia's first fund with the express intent of providing comforts for Aboriginal soldiers, and its founding, modus operandi and outcomes are the subject of this article.
{"title":"The families were ... too poor to send them parcels': The provision of comforts to Aboriginal soldiers in the AIF in the Second World War","authors":"K. Harman","doi":"10.22459/AH.39.2015.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.39.2015.11","url":null,"abstract":"In mid-1941, Private Clarrie Combo from New South Wales sent a letter from Syria, where he was stationed, to Mrs Brown of Loxton in South Australia. Combo, an Aboriginal soldier serving abroad with the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF), wrote 'it is very nice of you to write to someone you do not know. Thank you for offering to knit a pair of socks for me. I wear size seven in boots'.1 These unlikely correspondents formed an affective relationship during the Second World War under the auspices of a scheme designed specifically to cater for the needs of Australian Aboriginal men serving abroad. Following the outbreak of the war, in August 1940 the Victorian-based Aborigines Uplift Society launched a national comfort auxiliary. This was Australia's first fund with the express intent of providing comforts for Aboriginal soldiers, and its founding, modus operandi and outcomes are the subject of this article.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"11 1","pages":"223-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83370715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When Major Thomas O'Halloran articulated the government's position to the Milmenrura in front of a makeshift gallows at the Coorong in August 1840, he may as well have repeated it at every one of South Australia's 23 Indigenous executions. The gibbetting of the bodies was unique on this occasion but the idea that Indigenous hangings were to serve both a punitive and an elevated didactic function in the colony was not. Unlike public executions for European offenders which always took place in or around the Adelaide Gaol, public Indigenous hangings occurred at the scene of the crime with settlers and fellow tribesmen encouraged, sometimes forced, to watch. Recognising that race was a determining factor in the treatment of a capital offender, this paper shows how pioneering South Australians placed great value on the violent theatre of the gallows, as it was thought to pacify a troublesome Indigenous population who did not share British culture or language. It was a belief that culminated in the successful passage of an 1861 amendment through the South Australian Parliament that made provisions for the reintroduction of public executions for Indigenous offenders. This was after public executions for all capital offenders, regardless of race, had been abolished three years prior in 1858.
1840年8月，当托马斯·奥哈洛伦少校(Major Thomas O'Halloran)在库朗(Coorong)的临时绞刑架前向米尔门鲁拉(Milmenrura)阐明政府的立场时，他可能也在南澳大利亚23名土著人的每一次处决中重复了这一立场。在这种情况下，把尸体挂在绞刑架上是独一无二的，但土著人的绞刑既要起到惩罚作用，又要起到提高教育作用的想法在殖民地却不是这样。对欧洲罪犯的公开处决总是在阿德莱德监狱内或附近进行，而对土著人的公开绞刑是在犯罪现场进行的，定居者和部落同胞受到鼓励，有时是被迫观看。认识到种族是处理死刑犯的一个决定性因素，这篇论文展示了南澳大利亚先驱如何重视绞刑架的暴力戏剧，因为它被认为是为了安抚那些不分享英国文化或语言的麻烦的土著居民。这种信念在1861年南澳大利亚议会成功通过一项修正案时达到顶峰，该修正案规定重新对土著罪犯实行公开处决。这是在三年前的1858年废除了对所有死刑犯不分种族的公开处决之后。
{"title":"Punishment as pacification: The role of indigenous executions on the South Australian frontier, 1836-1862","authors":"S. Anderson","doi":"10.22459/AH.39.2015.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.39.2015.01","url":null,"abstract":"When Major Thomas O'Halloran articulated the government's position to the Milmenrura in front of a makeshift gallows at the Coorong in August 1840, he may as well have repeated it at every one of South Australia's 23 Indigenous executions. The gibbetting of the bodies was unique on this occasion but the idea that Indigenous hangings were to serve both a punitive and an elevated didactic function in the colony was not. Unlike public executions for European offenders which always took place in or around the Adelaide Gaol, public Indigenous hangings occurred at the scene of the crime with settlers and fellow tribesmen encouraged, sometimes forced, to watch. Recognising that race was a determining factor in the treatment of a capital offender, this paper shows how pioneering South Australians placed great value on the violent theatre of the gallows, as it was thought to pacify a troublesome Indigenous population who did not share British culture or language. It was a belief that culminated in the successful passage of an 1861 amendment through the South Australian Parliament that made provisions for the reintroduction of public executions for Indigenous offenders. This was after public executions for all capital offenders, regardless of race, had been abolished three years prior in 1858.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"325 1","pages":"3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79716165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Within a few days of settlers' arrival in Eora country in 1788, disruptions to the ecological balance between population and food supply were set in train. The first conflicts were over fish and the officers soon observed that the local people were 'very hungry'. Over the next century and a half as settlement spread across the continent, so too did these disruptions. Their rate and extent was not everywhere the same. Different economic modes and different demographics varied their impacts, and bush food continued to be important. Indeed, recent research shows that in some contexts settlers embraced and depended on Indigenous foodways. But while such insights are important in variegating the larger story, disruption to food supplies was one of colonialism's irrefutable consequences. This knowledge has informed the writing of Indigenous historiography since the 1970s. Henry Reynolds' influential 'The Other Side of the Frontier' (1981) saw the European invasion resulting in 'chronic insecurity' in relation to food, and much of his analysis of resistance proceeds from conflict over resources. A decade earlier, C. D. Rowley wrote that there was 'a kind of inevitability' in the progression from the 'destruction of native food supply, or of the incentives to hunt and gather it' to rationing.
1788年，在移民抵达埃奥拉国家的几天内，人口和食物供应之间的生态平衡就开始受到破坏。最初的冲突是关于鱼的，警察很快发现当地人“非常饥饿”。在接下来的一个半世纪里，随着定居点遍布整个大陆，这些破坏也在蔓延。它们的速度和范围在各地并不相同。不同的经济模式和不同的人口结构对其影响各不相同，而丛林食物仍然很重要。事实上，最近的研究表明，在某些情况下，定居者接受并依赖于土著的食物方式。然而，尽管这些洞见在丰富更大的故事方面很重要，但对粮食供应的破坏是殖民主义无可辩驳的后果之一。自20世纪70年代以来，这些知识已经为土著历史编纂提供了信息。亨利·雷诺兹(Henry Reynolds)在其颇具影响力的《边境的另一边》(The Other Side of The Frontier, 1981)中看到，欧洲人的入侵导致了与食物有关的“长期不安全”，他对抵抗的大部分分析都来自于资源冲突。早在十年前，c·d·罗利(C. D. Rowley)就曾写道，在从“破坏本地食物供应，或破坏狩猎和采集食物的动机”到定量配给的过程中，存在“某种必然性”。
{"title":"Hunger and the humanitarian frontier","authors":"A. O’Brien","doi":"10.22459/AH.39.2015.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.39.2015.05","url":null,"abstract":"Within a few days of settlers' arrival in Eora country in 1788, disruptions to the ecological balance between population and food supply were set in train. The first conflicts were over fish and the officers soon observed that the local people were 'very hungry'. Over the next century and a half as settlement spread across the continent, so too did these disruptions. Their rate and extent was not everywhere the same. Different economic modes and different demographics varied their impacts, and bush food continued to be important. Indeed, recent research shows that in some contexts settlers embraced and depended on Indigenous foodways. But while such insights are important in variegating the larger story, disruption to food supplies was one of colonialism's irrefutable consequences. This knowledge has informed the writing of Indigenous historiography since the 1970s. Henry Reynolds' influential 'The Other Side of the Frontier' (1981) saw the European invasion resulting in 'chronic insecurity' in relation to food, and much of his analysis of resistance proceeds from conflict over resources. A decade earlier, C. D. Rowley wrote that there was 'a kind of inevitability' in the progression from the 'destruction of native food supply, or of the incentives to hunt and gather it' to rationing.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"40 1","pages":"109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85063873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent years there have been a number of important historical works which recognise the important contribution of Aboriginal guides in the exploration of Australia. This article contributes to this field by providing a narrative history of a young Aboriginal man from Newcastle called Harry Brown who accompanied the well-known Prussian explorer, Dr Ludwig Leichhardt, on two expeditions into the interior of Australia in the 1840s. Brown was a highly intelligent, resilient and skilful man who made an enormous contribution to Australian exploration, yet has been overlooked in Australian historiography. His contribution to Australian exploration is an exemplar of Aboriginal influence during the nineteenth century which extends well beyond simplistic portrayals of Aboriginal people as useful, submissive and subservient guides. It will be demonstrated in this article that without the courageous and resolute Brown along with his perspicacity and judgement, the widespread celebration of Leichhardt's discoveries may not have been forthcoming.
{"title":"Harry Brown (c. 1819-1854): Contribution of an Aboriginal guide in Australian exploration","authors":"Greg Blyton","doi":"10.22459/AH.39.2015.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.39.2015.03","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years there have been a number of important historical works which recognise the important contribution of Aboriginal guides in the exploration of Australia. This article contributes to this field by providing a narrative history of a young Aboriginal man from Newcastle called Harry Brown who accompanied the well-known Prussian explorer, Dr Ludwig Leichhardt, on two expeditions into the interior of Australia in the 1840s. Brown was a highly intelligent, resilient and skilful man who made an enormous contribution to Australian exploration, yet has been overlooked in Australian historiography. His contribution to Australian exploration is an exemplar of Aboriginal influence during the nineteenth century which extends well beyond simplistic portrayals of Aboriginal people as useful, submissive and subservient guides. It will be demonstrated in this article that without the courageous and resolute Brown along with his perspicacity and judgement, the widespread celebration of Leichhardt's discoveries may not have been forthcoming.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"3 1","pages":"63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84163049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the early summer of 1930, Peter Elkin, a prominent figure in early Australian anthropology, travelled to the Mount Margaret Mission, near Laverton in the northern Goldfields region of Western Australia. He did so to follow up research begun on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain, with Aboriginal groups who comprised what was later dubbed the Western Desert Cultural Bloc, a common cultural region covering the vast arid zone of central Australia. Elkin conducted fieldwork at Mount Margaret for three weeks, met only some of the Aboriginal people there and never returned, but in an article published subsequently he made a significant extrapolation. The Aboriginal people at Mount Margaret did not belong there. They had come in from the Warburton Range and the border country and replaced the local groups which had, as Elkin phrased it, 'almost ceased to exist'.
1930年初夏，澳大利亚早期人类学的杰出人物彼得·埃尔金(Peter Elkin)前往西澳大利亚北部金矿区拉弗顿(Laverton)附近的玛格丽特山传教会。他这样做是为了跟进在纳拉伯平原东部边缘开始的研究，那里的土著群体组成了后来被称为西部沙漠文化集团(Western Desert Cultural Bloc)的地区，这是一个覆盖澳大利亚中部广阔干旱地区的共同文化区域。埃尔金在玛格丽特山进行了三个星期的实地考察，只见过那里的一些土著人，就再也没有回来过，但在随后发表的一篇文章中，他做出了一个重要的推断。玛格丽特山的土著人不属于那里。他们来自沃伯顿山脉和边境地区，取代了当地的部落，用埃尔金的话说，当地的部落"几乎不复存在"。
{"title":"The 'allurements of the European presence': Examining explanations of Wongatha behaviour in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia","authors":"Craig Muller","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.04","url":null,"abstract":"In the early summer of 1930, Peter Elkin, a prominent figure in early Australian anthropology, travelled to the Mount Margaret Mission, near Laverton in the northern Goldfields region of Western Australia. He did so to follow up research begun on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain, with Aboriginal groups who comprised what was later dubbed the Western Desert Cultural Bloc, a common cultural region covering the vast arid zone of central Australia. Elkin conducted fieldwork at Mount Margaret for three weeks, met only some of the Aboriginal people there and never returned, but in an article published subsequently he made a significant extrapolation. The Aboriginal people at Mount Margaret did not belong there. They had come in from the Warburton Range and the border country and replaced the local groups which had, as Elkin phrased it, 'almost ceased to exist'.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"37 1","pages":"59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90100825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
She was, German readers learned in 1823, 'Namen Miss Dalrymple'. French-speakers were informed that she had 'une figure tres-agreable'. Her claim to international fame was, at this time, based purely on her physiology. When this description was first penned she was reportedly the oldest surviving of the children 'produced by an intercourse between the natives and the Europeans' in Van Diemen's Land. Moreover, she was 'the first child born by a native woman to a white man in Van Diemen's Land'. She was 'remarkably handsome', had skin that was 'light copper', 'rosy cheeks, large black eyes' with a touch of blue, good eye lashes, 'uncommonly white' teeth, and limbs which were 'admirably formed', 'wunderschon' even.
{"title":"From 'Miss Dalrymple' to 'Daring Dolly': A life of two historiographical episodes","authors":"N. Brodie","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.05","url":null,"abstract":"She was, German readers learned in 1823, 'Namen Miss Dalrymple'. French-speakers were informed that she had 'une figure tres-agreable'. Her claim to international fame was, at this time, based purely on her physiology. When this description was first penned she was reportedly the oldest surviving of the children 'produced by an intercourse between the natives and the Europeans' in Van Diemen's Land. Moreover, she was 'the first child born by a native woman to a white man in Van Diemen's Land'. She was 'remarkably handsome', had skin that was 'light copper', 'rosy cheeks, large black eyes' with a touch of blue, good eye lashes, 'uncommonly white' teeth, and limbs which were 'admirably formed', 'wunderschon' even.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"29 1","pages":"89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81708293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1957, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio ran a 30-minute feature entitled 'The Story of Douglas Grant: The Black Scotsman'. The broadcast narrated the life of Douglas Grant, an Aboriginal man raised in a white Sydney family who served in the First World War. Brian Hungerford reported: 'It [Grant's story] means that if you take a newborn baby straight from its mother, you can bring it up to fit into any society at any level. There is no inherent mental or emotional difference between the primitive man and the civilised one'. How Douglas Grant's life sits as an assimilation narrative and the role of military service in that account is complex. Whereas the ABC and other media reports promoted Grant as a 'poster-child' for assimilation, by his death in 1951 the unfulfilled promises of equality left Grant questioning whether Australian society would ever allow Aboriginal people to assimilate.
{"title":"Aboriginal military service and assimilation","authors":"N. Riseman","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.08","url":null,"abstract":"In 1957, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio ran a 30-minute feature entitled 'The Story of Douglas Grant: The Black Scotsman'. The broadcast narrated the life of Douglas Grant, an Aboriginal man raised in a white Sydney family who served in the First World War. Brian Hungerford reported: 'It [Grant's story] means that if you take a newborn baby straight from its mother, you can bring it up to fit into any society at any level. There is no inherent mental or emotional difference between the primitive man and the civilised one'. How Douglas Grant's life sits as an assimilation narrative and the role of military service in that account is complex. Whereas the ABC and other media reports promoted Grant as a 'poster-child' for assimilation, by his death in 1951 the unfulfilled promises of equality left Grant questioning whether Australian society would ever allow Aboriginal people to assimilate.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"100 1","pages":"155"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81614459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Turn the pages of any omnibus ethnology, anthropology or history of Aboriginal Australia published from the late eighteenth century through to the early twenty-first century and there is a good chance that you will find an entry on infanticide. Along with cannibalism, infanticide has stood as a leitmotif for the perceived savagery and, at times, the sub-humanity, of the Australians just as it has done for other inhabitants of the non-metropolitan world. And yet these paired tropes of savagery - the one circulating predominantly within a terrain of contested masculinity, the other predominantly of contested femininity - always circulated in fluid discourse wherein the very uncertainty that surrounded claims about their performance invited surveillance and the interrogative operations of the colonial state.
{"title":"Infanticide at Port Phillip: Protector William Thomas and the witnessing of things unseen","authors":"M. Stephens","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.06","url":null,"abstract":"Turn the pages of any omnibus ethnology, anthropology or history of Aboriginal Australia published from the late eighteenth century through to the early twenty-first century and there is a good chance that you will find an entry on infanticide. Along with cannibalism, infanticide has stood as a leitmotif for the perceived savagery and, at times, the sub-humanity, of the Australians just as it has done for other inhabitants of the non-metropolitan world. And yet these paired tropes of savagery - the one circulating predominantly within a terrain of contested masculinity, the other predominantly of contested femininity - always circulated in fluid discourse wherein the very uncertainty that surrounded claims about their performance invited surveillance and the interrogative operations of the colonial state.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"24 1","pages":"109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83229447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At the end of August 1951, the local officer for the Western Australian Department of Native Affairs, Laurence (Laurie) O'Neill, drove to the Kalgoorlie cemetery and took his own life. What drove him to do so is not known. What is known is that his brother Jim had been buried there two months earlier after a sudden illness. Certainly O'Neill had had his share of personal tragedy, both his children having died at birth in Halls Creek in the state's north in the mid 1930s. But it may have been the case, too, that he had struggled to adjust to the shifting culture of 'native administration' in Western Australia. When he joined the department in 1941 the skills and experience he brought with him from 12 years as a mounted policeman in the Kimberley made him eminently suited to a role in 'native administration', a Perth newspaper asserting that 'Native Affairs Branch is lucky to have so competent and experienced a representative'. By the end of the decade, however, O'Neill's approach in dealing with Aboriginal people was no longer viewed as appropriate for a Native Affairs officer, and his views were described as being 'diametrically opposed to those of the department'.
{"title":"This man's tracks: Laurie O'Neill and post-war changes in Aboriginal Administration in Western Australia","authors":"A. Scrimgeour","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.03","url":null,"abstract":"At the end of August 1951, the local officer for the Western Australian Department of Native Affairs, Laurence (Laurie) O'Neill, drove to the Kalgoorlie cemetery and took his own life. What drove him to do so is not known. What is known is that his brother Jim had been buried there two months earlier after a sudden illness. Certainly O'Neill had had his share of personal tragedy, both his children having died at birth in Halls Creek in the state's north in the mid 1930s. But it may have been the case, too, that he had struggled to adjust to the shifting culture of 'native administration' in Western Australia. When he joined the department in 1941 the skills and experience he brought with him from 12 years as a mounted policeman in the Kimberley made him eminently suited to a role in 'native administration', a Perth newspaper asserting that 'Native Affairs Branch is lucky to have so competent and experienced a representative'. By the end of the decade, however, O'Neill's approach in dealing with Aboriginal people was no longer viewed as appropriate for a Native Affairs officer, and his views were described as being 'diametrically opposed to those of the department'.","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"38 1","pages":"39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87593987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between July and September of 1887, a disagreement unfolded between Western Australia’s Attorney General Charles Warton and one of the magistrates who represented the face of the law in the colony’s north. As an assurance of the law’s even-handed operations at the colony’s peripheries, the Attorney General regularly reviewed the case reports of Aboriginal people summarily tried and convicted by regional magistrates. In the latest reports forwarded by Roebourne’s Resident Magistrate Colonel Edward Angelo, Warton noticed that an Aboriginal man had been sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour without evidence that an offence in any legal sense had actually been committed. When Warton called Angelo’s attention to his ‘slipshod’ approach to the matter of evidence, the magistrate was dismissive, and set out to enlighten Warton about the law’s value in his district. As a magistrate, he argued, he was bound to protect not only Aborigines but also settlers. Although the ‘“legal assumptions” no doubt are that the native has been punished’, his imprisonment was ‘nominal’ compared to ‘the real punishment’ suffered by the settler whose rights and property were threatened. In short, when Aboriginal people behaved to the ‘obvious detriment’ of settlers, ‘they must be taught they cannot do so’. On receiving this reply the Attorney General complained to the Colonial Secretary that ‘I do what I can to keep Magistrates straight though I could easily save myself much time and trouble by making no remarks’, but ultimately he decided ‘it is utterly hopeless to attempt to instil into the mind of Col. Angelo the simple idea of the laws of evidence’.1
{"title":"'Keep the magistrates straight': Magistrates and Aboriginal 'management' on Australia's north-west frontiers, 1883-1905","authors":"A. Nettelbeck","doi":"10.22459/AH.38.2015.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AH.38.2015.02","url":null,"abstract":"Between July and September of 1887, a disagreement unfolded between Western Australia’s Attorney General Charles Warton and one of the magistrates who represented the face of the law in the colony’s north. As an assurance of the law’s even-handed operations at the colony’s peripheries, the Attorney General regularly reviewed the case reports of Aboriginal people summarily tried and convicted by regional magistrates. In the latest reports forwarded by Roebourne’s Resident Magistrate Colonel Edward Angelo, Warton noticed that an Aboriginal man had been sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour without evidence that an offence in any legal sense had actually been committed. When Warton called Angelo’s attention to his ‘slipshod’ approach to the matter of evidence, the magistrate was dismissive, and set out to enlighten Warton about the law’s value in his district. As a magistrate, he argued, he was bound to protect not only Aborigines but also settlers. Although the ‘“legal assumptions” no doubt are that the native has been punished’, his imprisonment was ‘nominal’ compared to ‘the real punishment’ suffered by the settler whose rights and property were threatened. In short, when Aboriginal people behaved to the ‘obvious detriment’ of settlers, ‘they must be taught they cannot do so’. On receiving this reply the Attorney General complained to the Colonial Secretary that ‘I do what I can to keep Magistrates straight though I could easily save myself much time and trouble by making no remarks’, but ultimately he decided ‘it is utterly hopeless to attempt to instil into the mind of Col. Angelo the simple idea of the laws of evidence’.1","PeriodicalId":42397,"journal":{"name":"Aboriginal History","volume":"18 1","pages":"19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2015-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77180034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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