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The dreaming paths of Aboriginal nations across
Australia formed major ceremonial routes along which goods and knowledge
flowed. These became the trade routes that criss-crossed Australia
and transported religion and cultural values. This book highlights
the valuable contribution Aboriginal people made in assisting European
explorers, surveyors and stockmen to open the country for colonisation,
and explores the interface between Aboriginal possession of the
Australian continent and European colonisation and appropriation.
Instead of positing a radical disjunction between cultural competencies,
Dale Kerwin considers how European colonisation of Australia appropriated
Aboriginal competence in terms of the landscape: by tapping into
culinary and medicinal knowledge, water and resource knowledge,
hunting, food collecting and path-finding. As a consequence of this
assistance, Aboriginal dreaming paths and trading routes also became
the routes and roads of colonisers. Indeed, the European colonisation
of Australia owes much of its success to the deliberate process
of Aboriginal land management practices.
… Dale Kerwin provides a social science context for the broader
study of Aboriginal trading routes by providing an historic interpretation
of the Aboriginal/European contact period. His book scrutinises
arguments about nomadic and primitive societies, as well as Romantic
views of culture and affluence. These circumstances and outcomes
are juxtaposed with evidence that indicates that Aboriginal societies
are substantially sedentary and highly developed, capable of functional
differentiation and foresight – attributes previously only
granted to the European settlers. The hunter-gatherer image of Aboriginal
society is rejected by providing evidence of crop cultivation and
land management, as well as social arrangements that made best use
of a hostile environment. This book is essential reading for all
those who seek to have a better knowledge of Australia and its first
people: it inscribes Aboriginal people firmly in the body of Australian
history.
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List of Illustrations and Maps
Series Editor’s Preface, by David Cahill
Author’s Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter One Common Sense and Common Nonsense
The continent of Australia
The European imagination: the land and people of Australia
An affluent society or just hunter-gathers?
Aboriginal people as beings
An Aboriginal perspective
Chapter 2 Coming of the Aliens
Eora People and the first convict settlers
Galgalla or smallpox
A wilderness
Chapter 3 Only the Learned Can Read
Introduction
Re-authoring
The social game
Bula (friend)
Antiquity in Australia
Population density
To whom the land belongs to
Chapter 4 Maps, Travel and Trade as a Cultural Process
Maps
Astronomy and Astrology
Myths
Art
Way-finding devices
Toa
Message sticks
Shell middens
Bora grounds
Travel technology
Travel
Roads and trading routes
The Pituri Road
White fella knowledge of pituri
Associated Dreaming tracks related to the trade of pituri
Trade goods
Shells
Fur cloaks
Ochre
Market places/ trade centres
Stone
Trading paths
Storylines
Song/story
Chapter 5 To Travel Is To Learn
South-east Queensland
South-west Queensland corner: Mooraberrie (the Channel Country)
The nomads and their penetration of the Aboriginal landscape
Ludwig Leichhardt
Thomas Mitchell highway to Carpentaria
Edmund Kennedy
The Gregory brothers
The Jardine brothers
W.O. Hodgkinson
Stockmen and introduced beasts
Chapter 6 Misrepresentation of the Grand Narrative
– ‘Walk Softly on the Landscape’
Bibliography
Index
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| “The greatest challenge
in writing the history of First Nations peoples is that of
discerning the views and meanings that indigenous people attached
to their colonial experiences, to distinguish the insider
viewpoint from the interpretations of those outside the indigenous
culture – the ‘emic’ from the ‘etic’,
in the formulation of linguist Frederick Pike. In this regard,
the best intentions of scholars to delineate the indigenous
meanings and interpretations have often resulted in indigenous
cultures being portrayed as the ‘Other’ (coined
by Edward Said), often with the subtext that indigenous peoples
are merely victims of colonialism or the post-colonial state.
The range of responses of First Nations peoples included,
then as now, many creative options as they came to perceive
European cultures and colonialisms as fountainheads of opportunities
to enhance the welfare of their nations and communities. Dale
Kerwin’s path-breaking, ‘emic’ study explicitly
eschews this ‘othering’ of Australian Aboriginal
societies. His book identifies a pan-Aboriginal culture while
acknowledging the sheer variety of its cultures and languages,
and provides a welcome focus on their relationship to the
Australian environment. The dreaming paths of the nations
were not only ceremonial pathways but trade routes that criss-crossed
the continent and along which goods and knowledge flowed.
This study, rejecting as it does the hunter-gatherer image
of Aboriginal Australia, represents a fresh appreciation not
only of their nations but also inscribes them, to a greater
extent than hitherto, into the very body of Australian history.”
From the Preface by First Nations
Series Editor, David Cahill, University of New South Wales
“Kerwin (education, Griffith
Univ., Australia) provides a valuable insider’s account of
Aboriginal history and engagement with Australian colonialism,
with a core focus on historic land use patterns and cultural
mapping and travel practices. The author sets out an effective
(if somewhat polemical and occasionally overstated) argument
emphasizing the need to rethink Aboriginal history in more
nuanced terms than those (stereo)typically associated with
classic anthropological and historical accounts of nomadic
peoples and their “primitive level” of cultural, economic,
and political development. The evidence compiled includes
archival, ethnographic, and testimonial sources, as well as
interviews with Aboriginal interlocutors. Part of Kerwin’s
argument involves recasting Aboriginal society as sedentary
and “developed,” thus correspondingly worthy of the sorts
of rights accruing to nations. This is an important argument,
though for specialists and readers who wish to compare this
case with other contexts of indigenous activism globally,
a key tension between local difference and the hegemony of
Western models of politics is unaddressed. Ronald Niezen’s
The Origins of Indigenism (CH, Jun’03, 40-5869) could profitably
be read together with this piece to offer critical insight
into the complicated relationship between global rights regimes
and indigenous peoples. Highly recommended.”
Choice
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Publication Details
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Hardback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-338-6 |
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Paperback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-529-8 |
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Page Extent / Format: |
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220 pp. / 246 x 171 mm |
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Release Date: |
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Hardback, November 2010; paperback,
February 2012 |
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Illustrated: |
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Maps and photographs |
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Hardback Price: |
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£65.00 / $89.95 |
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Paperback Price: |
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£25.00 / $37.95 |
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| This book can be ordered online or by telephone. |
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For the UK and Rest of the World:
Gazelle Book Services
tel. 44 (0)1524-68765 |
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For the United States:
International Specialized Book Services
tel. (1) 503 287-3093 or (800) 944-6190 |
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For Canada:
University of Toronto Distribution
tel. (1) 800-565-9523 |
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