Abstract
This chapter explores the possibilities of relationality through collaboration between an Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholar. It describes an attempt to move beyond the problematic ways in which Indigenous history has largely been written by non-Indigenous historians who utilise archival sources without engaging with the Indigenous communities or people about whom they write. We describe the methodology of a project that focuses on the work of the Finke River Mission and its head missionary Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht who, during the 1950 and 1960s, initiated an education scheme that targeted ‘half-caste’ Indigenous girls living on pastoral stations across Central Australia.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be noted the debate about the place of Indigenous peoples in Australian history is a matter of great importance to Indigenous people who exist outside scholarly debates. Briggs’ collaboration with Dan Sultan in the song 26 January is a good example, with the lyrics directly questioning the construction of Australia’s national history and its apparent inability to include Indigenous peoples: ‘How you wanna raise a flag with a rifle, To make us want to celebrate anything but survival? Nah, you watching tele for The Bachelor, but wouldn’t read a book about a fuckload of massacres? (what?), I remember all the blood and what carried us (I remember) They remember twenty recipes for lamingtons (yum), yeah, their ancestors got a boat ride, both mine saw them coming until they both died, fuck celebrating days made of misery (fuck that), white Aus’ still got the black history (that's true), and that shirt will get you banned from the Parliament, If you ain't having a conversation, well then we starting it’ https://genius.com/Ab-original-january-26-lyrics.
- 2.
In Australia, the term half-caste was widely used in British colonial laws to refer to the offspring of white colonists and Aboriginal natives of the continent. The Aborigines Protection Act of 1886 proclaimed by the British colony of Victoria (now the Australian state of the same name) mentioned half-castes habitually associating with or living with an Aborigine. Later academic literature, also applied the term and became a central feature in the works Australian ethnographers and anthropologists including Baldwin Spencer and Norman Tindale.
- 3.
Gordon (2006).
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Ellinghaus, K., Judd, B. (2020). Writing as Kin: Producing Ethical Histories Through Collaboration in Unexpected Places. Researching F.W. Albrecht, Assimilation Policy and Lutheran Experiments in Aboriginal Education. In: Maddison, S., Nakata, S. (eds) Questioning Indigenous-Settler Relations. Indigenous-Settler Relations in Australia and the World, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9205-4_4
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