‘Narratives of Survival in the Post‐Colonial North’

Abstract

Scholars have recently paid more attention to narratives of colonial contact in Australia, as elsewhere (cf. Hill 1988). Western elements and characters (such as Captain Cook) have been widely documented in Australian Aboriginal narratives which nevertheless are clearly not close accounts of past events. This has promoted reconsideration of the distinction between 'myth' and 'history'. If we follow Turner's (1988) suggestion that myth is the formulation of 'essential' properties of social experience in terms of 'generic events', while 'history' is concerned with the level of 'particular relations among particular events', we need not restrict ourselves to seeing myth as charter for a social order distinct from western influence. In the paper I examine two stories of cultural and physical survival from the Katherine area, Northern Territory, and seek to identify in them fundamental themes and enduring narrative precipitates of social experience lived in intense awareness of colonial and post-colonial relationships between Aborigines and whites.

Resistance and remembering through rock art: Contact‐period rock art in Wardaman country, Northern Australia

“…Reports of such attacks abound in newspapers and personal journals. Some accounts suggest that the deep ravines and rugged sandstone hills afforded a natural refuge to Wardaman and other Victoria River groups (“Another outrage by the blacks”, 1886: 2; “Country notes: Victoria River”, 1886: 3; Giles, 1928: 162, 176−9 cited in Merlan, 1994a: 157; “Notes of the week”, 1895: 2; Roney interview cited in Merlan, 1994b: 157; “The Willeroo Tragedy”, 1892: 3; Willshire, 1896: 50; see also Lewis, 2018: 163−168). Lewis (2005: 43) estimates that approximately 15 colonial settlers and travellers died at the hands of Aboriginal people in the Victoria River district between 1880 and 1900.…”

“…Several first and second‐hand accounts detail this violence despite a general rule of silence among Victoria River pastoralists (Broughton, 1965: 53; Frazer et al ., 1895: 180; “The Sketcher. Graves of the Outer Edge”, 1911: 25, cited in Lewis, 2012: 208; Willshire, 1896: 19, 42−43, 50, 66, 74−75; see also Merlan, 1994b: 157; Rose, 1991: 20−24).…”

“…The “hidden histories” of violence nevertheless became important intergenerational memories among Wardaman and neighbouring Victoria River Aboriginal Elders. The late Wardaman Elder Elsey Raymond recalls that, as a child, her aunts would take her into the bush away from the pastoral station and show her where massacres of Wardaman people had taken place (Merlan, 1994b; 1994a: 378−418). One particular example directly concerned Elsey's paternal grandfather, Yiwarlidagarl, who came across a pile of Aboriginal people who had been murdered at Yerrerdbay (also known as Double Rockhole) on Delamere station (Merlan, 1994b: 168−169).…”

“…Recent Wardaman history has been well documented in academic literature and oral histories, as has their rock art (e.g. Arndt, 1962; David, 2002; David et al ., 1994; Davidson, 2011; Flood, 1997; Harney and Wositzky, 1996; Lewis, 2012; Merlan, 1989a; 1994b; 2018; Reser, 2009; Rose, 1991; 1992). However, relatively little has been published on how the creation, maintenance and discussion of rock art has contributed to Wardaman efforts to resist, subvert and remember Western colonialism and invasion (but see David & Wilson, 2002).…”

The Social Effects of Native Title : Recognition, Translation, Coexistence

“…on the public record). As an ethnographer who has generally tip-toed around the deeply ambivalent and politically sensitive worker-boss relationships in the region for years (mainly for the self-serving purpose of retaining access to these settlements), I was sometimes startled by the frankness of the claimants' narratives (see also Merlan 1994, which challenged some earlier assumptions about the 'nostalgia' of Aboriginal workers for the pastoral era).…”