• Specific Year
    Any

Land, Clare --- "Representations of Gender in E M Curr's Recollections of Squatting in Victoria: Implications for Land Justice through the Native Title Process" [2002] IndigLawB 49; (2002) 5(19) Indigenous Law Bulletin 6

Representations of Gender in E M Curr’s Recollections of Squatting in Victoria:

Implications for Land Justice through the Native Title Process

by Clare Land

This article analyses representations of gender in Victorian squatter Edward M Curr’s 1883 memoirs, Recollections of squatting in Victoria, then called the Port Phillip District (from 1841 to 1851)[1](‘Recollections’). The book has been brought into currency in contemporary land justice by the Federal Court’s Justice Olney, who relied almost exclusively on Curr’s Recollections to determine traditional laws and customs, in his finding against the existence of native title in the Yorta Yorta native title case.[2] The book was also republished recently as part of the Centenary of Federation celebrations in Echuca, a regional centre near the heartland of the Yorta Yorta claim area.

As part of the ongoing appeal process,[3] Justice Olney has been challenged for measuring present day cultural practices against those in existence at the time of contact – the nature of which he understood by reference to Curr’s book. This was one of the factors in his finding that native title had ‘disappeared and was not capable of revival’. Justice Olney’s privileging of Curr’s Recollections over Indigenous written records and oral testimony has resulted in Curr’s book severely limiting the Yorta Yorta’s access to land justice through the Anglo legal system.

This article responds to a call by Indigenous legal scholar Dr Wayne Atkinson, a principle claimant in the Yorta Yorta case, to challenge the authority of Curr’s Recollections.[4] Focussing on Curr’s representations of gender as a basis for analysis, I seek to undermine the reliability of his book as legal evidence. I employ critical tools developed by feminist and Indigenous scholars to demonstrate that Curr brought an Anglo-centric, gendered perspective to his observations of Yorta Yorta / Bangerang people. Thus I argue that the book is inappropriate as an authoritative source in the determination of native title. Furthermore, I contend that judicial reliance on Anglo-centric and patriarchal understandings of Indigenous women’s relationships to land, such as Curr’s, diminishes the possibility of attainment of land justice through the native title system.

Edward M Curr in the settler colonial context

Curr’s recollections are certainly of value for what they tell us about Curr and his attitudes. He described his recollections as ‘mere personal matters... possibly not of a very representative sort’.[5] They also provide a general picture of the changing physical environment of northern Victoria under pastoralism, and the life, evidently somewhat embellished, of a young colonist, all expressed in the jovial, verbose narrative style of the day. However, the contemporary misuse of the narrative as a reliable source in a native title case necessitates a contemporary critique.

Curr was twenty years of age in 1841 when he embarked on his ten-year squatting career in the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now the state of Victoria. This was an early stage in the colonisation of Kulin nation lands, and as such a very busy time for pastoral expansion. Stories of fatal clashes with ‘the Blacks’ over land and resources abounded in Curr’s ‘frontier days’.[6] Despite his fears of native ambush, Curr described his ‘pleasure’ in ‘traversing unknown country, and being the first white man to see streams, lakes and pasture lands’.[7] Curr’s delight in the exploration of new lands, in viewing ‘the virgin sward unprofaned by flock or herd’,[8] codes the landscape as female, and settler-colonisation an ‘inherently gendered project’.[9]

Curr’s sketch of bush life was aimed at newcomers to the colony. It also fell within a genre sold to ‘a British readership avid for exotic news of their far flung empire’.[10] Written from memory almost forty years after the events described and focussing on his own youthful exploits, one could assume a certain amount of creative embellishment in Curr’s writing.[11]

As ‘one of the first white people to misappropriate Yorta Yorta lands’,[12] Curr’s representation of his own impact on Yorta Yorta / Bangerang peoples is of interest. In two passages he described with nostalgia[13] the disappearance of his ‘sooty friends’ and their ‘merry ways’, before the inexorable onward roll of ‘civilization’.[14] The part Curr played in the ‘passing away’[15] of the Indigenous population, that is, alienating Koori land and disrupting their economy, is not mentioned. Curr infantilised Kooris by referring to their practices as ‘rascalities’.[16] He consigned them to a primitive stage of what has been termed ‘cultural evolution’,[17] with his assessment of their religious beliefs as a ‘not very interesting... crop’ of ‘superstitions’.[18] As Atkinson states, Justice Olney’s reliance on this squatter to elicit traditional Yorta Yorta customs in the Yorta Yorta native title case is ‘monstrously ironic’.[19]

Representations of gender

Indigenous women scholars Larissa Behrendt, Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Marcia Langton argue that male colonial observers degraded Indigenous women’s culture, and that Indigenous women’s relationship to land has more importance to contemporary land justice claims than anthropology has so far given it.[20] Linda Tuhiwai Smith has found that observations of Indigenous peoples by white colonial men were generally ‘constructed around their own cultural views of gender and sexuality’.[21] Smith argues that ‘[o]bservation of Indigenous women resonated with views about the role of women in European societies based on Western notions of culture, religion, class and race’.[22] This view is shared by many other critics of colonialist writing and anthropology, and is a criticism that has since been grappled with in anthropological methodology. There is an extensive literature on this topic. However, past challenges to anthropology need to be revisited given the lack of awareness of such bias in cross-cultural discourses displayed by Justice Olney.[23] The integral role anthropologists have come to play in the native title process means the reliability of their knowledge is vital to contemporary land justice mechanisms under current Anglo law in Australia.

It is worth quoting directly from offending passages in Curr’s Recollections to demonstrate the inappropriateness of relying on his reminiscences as authoritative evidence in a contemporary legal setting. Curr’s views about gender and sexuality in his own culture are seen in his descriptions of the marriage and domestic arrangements of local Kooris, which he compares and contrasts with European practices. In this description of a Bangerang marriage exchange, Curr recalled that the ‘aboriginal young ladies’ had

absolutely relinquished their ordinary attentions to personal appearances, and sat in the camp in that discontented, pouting mood which they, as well as their civilized sisters, can occasionally assume... if the civilized man is undecided as to the advantages of matrimony, the Australian savage is unmistakably an advocate for that state; so that not only do the influential men get as many wives as they can, but no lubra is allowed to remain single after the age [of about twelve or fourteen years].[24]

Curr described the ‘hearty young bachelors’ of the camp as displaying appropriate masculine enthusiasm for the arrival of their future wives from the neighbouring clan, by showing their interest in the preparations of their older women relatives, Curr’s ‘ancient dames’, for the upcoming ceremony. The young men appeared as ‘roystering [sic] blades, who, in greasy grandeur, slyly watched [the older women’s] doings with much zest’.[25] Once married, according to Curr,

the man was despotic in his own mia-mia or hut... as regards his wife he might ill-treat her, give her away, do as he liked with her, and no one in the tribe interfered; though, had he proceeded to the last extremity, her death would have been avenged by her brothers or kindred.[26]

Somewhat contradicting this qualification, Curr later claimed that ‘[w]ith the death of women and young children the Blacks did not generally much concern themselves’[27] and that ‘[w]omen were interred with less ceremony’ than men.[28] Perhaps Curr did not witness many women’s burials, or simply did not recollect them. To Curr, Koori women at times seemed little more than unfeeling animals, able to withstand beatings from their husbands, who wielded a ‘nulla-nulla, in a style which would probably have killed most white women’.[29]

Curr’s reading of the power relations between Koori men and women, one which characterised the men as brutal patriarchs and the women as victims, is a not uncommon one.[30] Descriptions of the ‘debasement of women’ in Indigenous societies were a feature of much male colonial writing.[31] Historians Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May concur for the Australian context, adding that:

Where indigenous women could be portrayed as oppressed by men of their group, the destruction of traditional culture through western appropriation of indigenous resources and political systems could be made to appear moral.[32]

Behrendt argues that ‘early anthropologists assumed patriarchy within the aboriginal community. They therefore ignored all the sacred sites and stories of women’.[33] Indeed, Curr appears blind to Koori women’s cultural and political power, consistently focussing on men’s culture, work, skills and authority while denigrating those of women. He devotes a long passage to the male initiation, education and naming practices of the Bangerang, claiming ‘as regards women, these customs did not obtain’.[34] Women’s work was rarely mentioned, except to devalue it: ‘the making of nets and baskets was left to the women’.[35]

Despite his claims about the debasement of Koori women, Curr left clues to a more balanced picture. He noted the women’s use of ‘native ovens’ and food gathering activities,[36] which points to the significant contribution women made to the economies of the communities.[37] Curr claimed that

[c]oncerning marriage... there was no ceremony attached with it; that the bride had no choice in the matter, but was simply required to go to the hut of the man to whom her father, brother, or uncle, as the case may be, had given her. [38]

However, as a quote above indicates, senior women played a special role in the marriage ceremonies Curr described.

Although he asserts a working knowledge of the ways of ‘the Blacks’, Curr has a poor understanding of Koori women’s cultural and political agency. Naturally enough, he views Koori society from the limitations of his own perspective, but unlike other colonial writers of the time,[39] he is unable to achieve any great measure of relativism or reflection. In addition, as a white man, he probably had less access to Koori women’s knowledge, given the ‘gender-differentiated rules relating to Aboriginal ritual knowledge’.[40]

Implications of Curr’s biases for contemporary land justice

As explored above, Curr’s view through the lens of European patriarchy diminished his reading of Koori culture. The gender bias he brought to his account of Bangerang culture highlights the fallibility of the text as an authoritative source in the Yorta Yorta native title case.

Furthermore, Curr’s gender bias has significant political implications for the survival of Indigenous women’s cultural heritage, and for the attainment of land justice today. The scholarship of Behrendt and Langton has provided some clear examples of this.

According to Behrendt, early anthropologists’ neglect has meant ‘the sites of women were not protected as they were never recorded. Aboriginal women’s sites are destroyed at a faster rate than those of aboriginal men’.[41] As Langton notes,

the androcentric stance of Western observation of the Other still distorts, if not the scholarship, then certainly the social institutions in which claims and other aspects of the contemporary Australian recognition of Aboriginal customary land tenure are carried out.[42]

Langton’s view concurs with that of Atkinson, who argues Justice Olney ‘displayed ignorance of accepted standards of analysis’ in his uncritical approach to Curr’s text.[43] Langton suggests that there has been a growing understanding in land rights literature over the past two decades that ‘places and country are gendered’.[44] She argues that for contemporary Indigenous claimants, tracing descent through women’s kinship and religious ties and relationships to land is becoming increasingly important in the ‘determination of membership land rights’.[45] Curr’s blindness to Indigenous women’s relationships to land severely limits the extent to which ‘matrifiliation’ can be traced using his Recollections as a source.

Conclusion

Representation of gender is not the only lens through which Curr’s text could be critiqued and its appropriateness as evidence thrown into question. However, by focussing on gender this study has highlighted the specific implications such colonial accounts have in current land justice mechanisms and in the protection of Indigenous women’s cultural heritage.

Clare Land is a first-class history honours graduate from the University of Melbourne. She is currently working part-time for the Australian Women’s Archives Project. This article is an edited version of the work available at <www.kooriweb.org/cland/>.


[1] Edward M Curr, Recollections of squatting in Victoria, then called the Port Phillip District (from 1841 to 1851) (1883).

[2] Wayne R Atkinson, '19 seconds of Dungudja Wala: Reflections paper on the Yorta Yorta native title judgement' (2001) available from http://webraft.its.unimelb.edu.au/166010/pub/article, 1. For the case see Members of the Yorta Yorta Community v the State of Victoria [1998] FCA 1606.

[3] For a discussion of the cases see: Alexander Reilly, ‘History always repeats: Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v the State of Victoria[2001] Indigenous Law Bulletin 5(6) (2001); Wayne Atkinson, ‘‘Not one iota’ of land justice: Reflections on the Yorta Yorta native title claim 1994-2001’ (2001) 5(6) Indigenous Law Bulletin. The appeal is currently being considered by the High Court.

[4] Personal communication, Cultural Camp, Barmah (29 June 2001).

[5] Curr, above n 1, v.

[6] Ibid 52.

[7] Ibid 424.

[8] Ibid.

[9] P Wolfe, ‘Nation and miscegenation: discursive continuity in the post-Mabo era’ (1994) 36 Social Analysis 93.

[10] Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May, 'Inducements to the strong to be cruel to the weak: Authoritative white colonial male voices and the construction of gender in Koori society’ in Ailsa Burns and Norma Grieve (eds) Australian women: Contemporary feminist thought (1994) 95.

[11] Atkinson, above n 2, 22.

[12] Ibid 21.

[13] Renato Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist nostalgia’ (1989) 26 Representations.

[14] Curr, above n 1, 179-80, 435-36.

[15] Ibid 435-436.

[16] Ibid.

[17] LR Hiatt and Rhys Jones, ‘Aboriginal conceptions of the workings of nature’ in RW Home and Australian Academy of Science (eds) Australian science in the making (1988) 11-12.

[18] Curr, above n 1, 274-75.

[19] Atkinson, above n 2, 14. Curr went on to publish a four volume ethnological text based on his consultations with like-minded men: Edward M Curr, The Australian race: Its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia, and the routes by which it spread itself over that continent (1886).

[20] Larissa Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal urban identity: Preserving the spirit, protecting the traditional in non-traditional settings’ (1994) The Australian Feminist Law Journal 4; Larissa Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal women and the white lies of the feminist movement: Implications for Aboriginal women in rights discourse’ (1993) The Australian Feminist Law Journal 1; Marcia Langton, ‘Grandmother’s law, company business and succession in Aboriginal land tenure systems’ in WH Edwards (ed) Traditional Aboriginal Society (1998); Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’ up to the white woman: Aboriginal women and feminism (2000).

[21] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (1999) 8.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Atkinson, above n 2, 21.

[24] Curr, above n 1, 129.

[25] Ibid 128.

[26] Ibid 228.

[27] Ibid 310.

[28] Ibid 286.

[29] Ibid 146.

[30] Margaret Jolly, ‘‘Ill-natured comparisons’: Racism and relativism in European representations of Ni-Vanuata from Cook’s second voyage’ (1992) 3-4 History and Anthropology 5. See also Patricia Grimshaw and Julie Evans, ‘Colonial women on intercultural frontiers: Rosa Campbell Praed, Mary Bundock and Katie Langloh Parker’ (1996) 27(106) Australian Historical Studies 80.

[31] Jolly, above n 30, 3.

[32] Grimshaw and May, above n 10, 94.

[33] Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal urban identity: Preserving the spirit, protecting the traditional in non-traditional settings’, above n 20, 58.

[34] Curr, above n 1, 253-55, 70.

[35] Ibid 297.

[36] Ibid 233, 255.

[37] Behrendt provides some examples of the roles of women in pre-contact communities: Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal women and the white lies of the feminist movement’, above n 20, 28.

[38] Curr, above n 1, 248-49.

[39] See Jolly’s comparison of the racist and relativist outlooks of two colonial male writers in Jolly, above n 30.

[40] Langton, above n 20, 110.

[41] Behrendt, ‘Aboriginal urban identity: Preserving the spirit, protecting the traditional in non-traditional settings’, above n 20, 58.

[42] Langton, above n 20, 109.

[43] Atkinson, above n 3, 21; Atkinson, above n 2, 12.

[44] Langton, above n 20, 111.

[45] Ibid 123-24.

Download

No downloadable files available