Reading the Entangled Life of Goggey, an Aboriginal Man on the Fringes of Early Colonial Sydney

Abstract

Abstract. When so many lives of Aboriginal people slipped through the cracks of the colonial archives in the early decades of Sydney, the fact that one Dharawal man, Goggey, can be traced in fragments offers exciting opportunities. In the process of reading Goggey’s life from 1802 to 1826 in letters, newspapers, accounts, and journals—enigmatic and often thorny sources that touch on matters of violence and cannibalism—one can see the difficulties and the possibilities of anthropologically infused ethnohistory and socio-biography emerge. During a period of enormous change in the colony, close attention to this Dharawal man’s life also demonstrates the need for caution in applying “models” for cross-cultural relations in colonial contexts. However stimulating “middle ground” or “native ground” ideas may be, cross-cultural interaction in early colonial New South Wales was a negotiated, dynamic affair in which trial and error were as constant as the rapidly evolving, entangled historical context.

All We Need Is One Mic: A Call for Anti-racist Solidarity to Deconstruct Anti-Black Racism in Educational Leadership

“…An uncareful insistence on communion can mask the differential risks of cross-racial alliance and political action for people of color as opposed to Whites (De Lissovoy & Brown, 2008). Conversely, racial realism that opposes the chance to unite risks supporting the cultivation of racial division, which is the first principle of coloniality and can possibly ignore the historical language in which racial identities are communally assembled (McLaren, 2018; West, 2009).…”