Mapping the past: an atlas of Victorian clans 1835–1904

Abstract

This abbreviated account of a long-term study of the Victorian ethnographic record is necessarily a preliminary description, published during Victoria's 'sesquicentenary year' in the hope that my findings may assist other researchers struggling to reconcile the amateur ethnography of nineteenth-century pastoralists, parsons and public servants with modern anthropological accounts of territorial and linguistic boundaries else where in Australia. A listing of the names, location and leaders of land-owning groups at the time of the colony's foundation may, perhaps, encourage public sympathy for the justice of Aboriginal claims for 'land rights' and compensation, recently recognised in Parliamentary reports and draft legislation published by the Victorian government. The best-known map of Victorian 'tribes' is the continental 'tribal map' published in 1940 by South Australian Museum biologist and ethnologist Norman B. Tindale, which was explicitly 'based principally on recent fieldwork with additions from the literature'. 1 Dr Tindale's unparalleled record of ethnographic publications dates back to 1925, but it appears that the Victorian fieldwork which shaped this map was under taken when he and Dr Joseph Birdsellwere co-leaders of the 1938/39 Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition. Tindale's 1940 tribal labels were admittedly the basis for more recent maps of lang uage distribution in Victoria-with some amendments resulting from linguistic research during the 1960s and/or consultation of the original notes compiled by amateur ethno graphers A.W. Howitt, R.H. Mathews and John Mathew, which were not accessible for scholarly study until the 1970s.1 2 Tindale's 1974 revision of his 1940 map incorporated Diane Barwick o f the Australian Institute o f Aboriginal Studies is known for her research and deep knowledge o f the anthropology and history o f Aboriginal societies in southeastern Australia. Her forthcoming book 'Rebellion at Coranderrk' is an account o f how the Kulin have fought for their land.

Skin, Kin and Clan: The dynamics of social categories in Indigenous Australia

“…In a rare departure from the norm in south-eastern Australia, these moieties are patrilineal, with the names being inherited from one's father rather than the mother. This claim of Howitt's has been confirmed by later research by Barwick (1984).…”

Mapping Aboriginal nations: the ‘nation’ concept of late nineteenth century anthropologists in Australia

“…68 However, some of the liberties that Mathews took with the meagre amount of data available 64. Barwick 1984: 100-104. 65.…”

‘The Falling Sky’: Symbolic and Cosmological Associations of the Mt William Greenstone Axe Quarry, Central Victoria, Australia

“…Howitt's (1904) interviews with Barak took place in the 1880s by which time he and his people had been displaced from their traditional homelands and were living on the Coranderrk mission (Barwick 1984, 113). However, his recollections provide crucial insight into the social organization of Mt William quarry (Barwick 1984;Clark 1990).…”