Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 38

Description

Volume 38 features a special section on Western Australian Aboriginal history. Clint Bracknell translates and contextualises nineteenth-century Noongar songs. Amanda Nettelbeck considers the role of magistrates and justices of the peace in the ‘frontier legal networks’ of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. Anne Scrimgeour traces the changing approach to the administration of Aboriginal people in the twentieth-century north-west through the biography of Laurie O’Neill, a former mounted policeman and travelling inspector. Craig Muller studies the history of the Wongatha of the north-east part of the Goldfields. Muller finds that Elkin’s account of his brief 1930 visit to the region was used as evidence in the recent Wongatha native title case without sufficient historical contextualisation. Together, the papers draw on rich archival sources, complicate our understandings of the way in which Aboriginal lives were controlled in the past, and highlight Aboriginal voices and perspectives.

The other four articles exploring Aboriginal histories from other parts of Australia. Nicholas Brodie reconstructs the life of Dalrymple Briggs, a Vandemonian woman of mixed-descent. Noah Riseman examines the lives of three Aboriginal servicemen who all had media profiles as successful examples of assimilation. The other two articles examine different non-Indigenous accounts of Aboriginal people and culture. Marguerita Stephens critically examines discourses on Aboriginal infanticide in colonial Victoria. The history of tourist visits to Palm Island, an Aboriginal reserve in Queensland is the focus of Toby Martin’s article.

Aboriginal History Inc. is a publishing organisation based in the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra.

For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.