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Aboriginal Law Bulletin |
by Henry Reynolds
History Department, James Cook University of North Queensland, 1981 ($7.50).
Reviewed by John Terry
Henry Reynolds' book provides powerful evidence that Aboriginal Australians did not just give up the ghost at the coming of the whites; they were murdered, dispossessed of their land by force of arms, slain in the ensuing battles, confined in prisons and have ever since suffered poverty, deprivation and disease at the hands of the subjects of mad King George and his line.
Reynolds' book presents important concepts in Australian history. It is an appreciation that the convicts, squatters, explorers, diggers, ticket-of-leave men and the like did not step onto a continent that was barren and uninhabited, but into a rich and complex world of another people who resisted the invasion, fought for their land, struggled to survive - and who continue to struggle for due recognition. These ideas have been familiar for some time of course, and attempts have been made to document them, but this is the first serious production by a competent historian.
Without an analytical framework, however, save a compelling conviction that the colonists were uncompromising conquerers over an equally determined foe, the book lacks continuity. Covering the whole of Australia in one volume is an ambitious exercise; the result is rather irritating fragmentation. More seriously, that lack of analysis has led Reynolds into some dangerous ground in having to rely on the written records left by the invaders. They thought themselves not simply blameless, but totally correct in their view of the world.
The Other Side of the Frontier is an attempt to present the reader of history, rather than the researcher, with a survey of the European invasion. In doing so the author has drawn widely on the available written historical material. He appears to have looked at every Parliamentary proceeding, official paper and report, every obscure nineteenth century diarist, research thesis and learned article published by anyone, anywhere, ever, on the subject of Australian Aborigines.
Reynolds has acknowledged his use of the Oral History Collection at James Cook University and has undoubtedly formed his overall views accordingly, but his text does not reflect an insight justifying his express purpose: to present 'an interpretation of the Aboriginal response to the invasion and settlement of Australia' during the first one hundred years or so of settlement (p.1 ). His is essentially an unhistorical exercise incorporating supposition and apochyrpha alongside reliable data. Reynolds does not confine himself to a reconstruction of the action which took place; he seeks to present an Aboriginal interpretation; he seeks to discover the confusion, the despair and that assortment of internal reactions which 'the other side' experienced during the invasion.
The people about whom Reynolds writes left no records of their own – remember theirs is an oral tradition. What emerges is an eclectic reconstruction of what must have happened within the tribes by reference to the observations of those who, although contemporary, were necessarily outsiders. Take for example, Reynolds' conclusion that the Aborigines believed the invaders to be the returned spirits of departed ancestors. I do not venture to suggest whether this view is correct or not. When I look at the evidence presented by Reynolds for its truth, I remain unsure.
The author leads off with some linguistics - the use of terms, widespread across the continent, which describe the white invaders as 'spirits' or 'ghosts'. In fact, the precise meanings conveyed by those terms to Aborigines may not be clear to us. What may be rendered in one language as 'rotting corpse' may in another be more properly rendered as 'walking dead'. I am told by the Gaamilraay people of north-west NSW that their word for white man is 'waanda', which means 'evil spirit'. The possible shades of meaning in an area such as this are as innumerable as the religions of the world. An inquisitor in the situation will more often than not be presented with a neutral or complimentary term as translation rather than an offensive one. In any event, the eventual rendition is circumscribed by the understanding of the translator.
To rely on this material alone would be, of course, unsound. In support, Reynolds reproduces the accounts of contemporary diarists from Port Phillip to Cape York, from Moreton Bay to Perth. It is the quality of the accounts which is of concern. More caution is required in the assessment of the 1841 account of the explorer Grey as to his being recognised as the son of an elderly Aboriginal mother who, on seeing him, cried: 'Yes, yes, in truth it is him'. Those words are more likely to have been uttered by Sir Walter Scott. That a Ms Smith in 1880 'was actually given the name of a deceased member of the local clan' is not necessarily to say that the people actually thought her to be reincarnated - perhaps it was a rational attempt to place her in a relationship to the rest of the tribe.
While anthropological evidence strongly suggests that immortality was accepted as a fundamental in the Aboriginal religions, there is nothing to indicate a belief in the resurrection of the dead body - that, I'd have thought, is more consistent with the creed of the Church of England. And yet this is the contemporary record. Certainly, the whites did not behave as departed relatives – they wore clothes, used fire-arms, couldn't dance, knew no tribal secrets and couldn't speak the language. In order to understand all this, and to avoid the almost inevitable conclusion that the blacks must have been all a bit silly on it, Reynolds invokes the Aboriginal belief in 'magic' to explain that anything is possible. Yet elsewhere the author readily accepts that '(there are numerous examples of the expansion of traditional words to encompass new meanings. In Kalkathunga (a language of North Queensland) sugar was given the traditional name for honey, coins were called pebbles and writing called patterns'.
Is it the function of a mind which adapts vocabulary to a new context with ample facility to fall into an elementary trap suggesting gullibility? I don't know, and Reynolds' discussion, based on what he admits to be 'evidence so meagre that we must speculate', leaves me wondering.
Reynolds cites the 1873 account of a journalist who observed the Aborigines ‘curiosity as to why the white-men were rooting up the sand and soil. Incredibly he accepts the conclusion that their first belief 'was that the object was something to eat...’ This is unforgiveable; it presupposes that the blacks were so ignorant of the resources of the country, so primitive and childlike in their understanding, that only the most basic of concepts could appeal to their feeble minds. The only reason the contemporary account offers for the truth of the assertion is that on the departure of the whites, the blacks went to have a look in the holes that were left. That the idea of food occurred to them at all is as tenable as to suggest that they were looking for uranium. I do not suggest that Henry Reynolds himself harbours any notions of black inferiority, but that the word of a newspaper writer requires corroboration before it can be accepted. What is reported is silly stuff based on nineteenth century misapprehensions and bias.
In attempting to interpret the Aboriginal response Reynolds has not unearthed the essence; where is his material from Aborigines? There is no Aboriginal response in this book. It is a white history about Aborigines. Seen as such it contains a wealth of fascinating data. It explodes the fragile theory that Aboriginal society needed only the arrival of Europeans to provide its fatal impact. Perhaps its publication will now free our minds to hear an account of recent history from Black Australians themselves.