The Social Memory of a Colonial Frontier

Australian Feminist Studies

Volumn 16, Issue 34, 2001, Pages 91-99

  Haggis, Jane ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0347769399     PISSN: 08164649     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/08164640120038944     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism. Histoty as Social Memory (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge and Melbourne, 1997, p. 5.
2. See Jane Haggis, 'Gendering Colonialism or Colonising Gender?', Women's Studies International Quarterly, 1990; Jane Haggis, 'White Women and Colonialism: Towards a Non-recuperative History' in Clare Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism (Manchester University Press) Manchester, 1998, pp. 45-75.
3. See Jane Haggis, 'Gendering Colonialism or Colonising Gender?', Women's Studies International Quarterly, 1990; Jane Haggis, 'White Women and Colonialism: Towards a Non-recuperative History' in Clare Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism (Manchester University Press) Manchester, 1998, pp. 45-75.
4. I have adopted the spelling used in the Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia, except where a diflcrcnl spelling is used in quotations from historical texts.
5. This region of Australia has a fascinating geological and environmental past. The limestone caves in the region include the Naracoorte Caves, now on the World Heritage List. The legacy of a geologically recent volcanic past arc the lakes in the craters around which Mount Gambier is built, including the Blue Lake which turns a vivid cobalt blue during part of each year. In terms of European legends, the whole coastline south of Adelaide is now often termed 'the ship wreck coast' in reference to the many wrecks and lives lost during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The poet who figured most in my recollections was Adam Lindsay Gordon who lived a wild life in the Mount Gambier district and whose dwelling at Port MacDonnell, 'Dingly Dell', is now a National Trust museum.
6. Malcolm Turner and Derek Carter, Down the Drain: the Story of Events and Personalities Associated with 125 Tears of Drainage in the South-east of South Australia (South-Eastern Drainage Board) Adelaide, 1989; Pam O'Connor, Second to None: the Story of the Pioneers of Rural Mount Gambier (P. O'Connor) Mount Gambier, SA, 1988; Friends of the Library, Millicent and District: Men of the Past Millicent (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, 1999.
7. Malcolm Turner and Derek Carter, Down the Drain: the Story of Events and Personalities Associated with 125 Tears of Drainage in the South-east of South Australia (South-Eastern Drainage Board) Adelaide, 1989; Pam O'Connor, Second to None: the Story of the Pioneers of Rural Mount Gambier (P. O'Connor) Mount Gambier, SA, 1988; Friends of the Library, Millicent and District: Men of the Past Millicent (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, 1999.
8. Malcolm Turner and Derek Carter, Down the Drain: the Story of Events and Personalities Associated with 125 Tears of Drainage in the South-east of South Australia (South-Eastern Drainage Board) Adelaide, 1989; Pam O'Connor, Second to None: the Story of the Pioneers of Rural Mount Gambier (P. O'Connor) Mount Gambier, SA, 1988; Friends of the Library, Millicent and District: Men of the Past Millicent (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, 1999.
9. Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (University of Queensland Press) St Lucia, 1988, p. 2.
10. See especially R. Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters. The Social Construction of Whiteness (University of Minnesota Press) Minneapolis, 1993.
11. The claim that the Buandig have 'died out' appears to refer to that settler marker of authenticity, 'the full-blood'. It is clear from the historical record that there were a number of Buandig children fostered by white settlers, some of the girls growing up to marry white men. This suggests there would likely be descendants who could claim Buandig ancestry. My understanding is that at least one Aboriginal person, resident in Adelaide, claims to be Buandig. Nevertheless, it is certainly the case that the Buandig pre-conquest society and culture were destroyed and its people decimated. See especially Robert Foster, 'The Bunganditj - European Invasion and the Economic Basis of Social Collapse', Unpublished MA thesis, Department of History, University of Adelaide, 1983.
12. This potted 'history' of Christina Smith is distilled from the following secondary sources: Heather Carthew, Rivoli Bay: a Story of Early Settlement at Rivoli Bay in the South East of South Australia, 1845 (H.J. Carthew) Rendelsham, SA, 1974; Heather Carthew (ed.), Sunlight Across the Swamplands: Women's Role in 150 Years of Settlement in the Millicent District in the Lower South East of South Australia (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, c. 1994; O'Connor, Second to None.
13. This potted 'history' of Christina Smith is distilled from the following secondary sources: Heather Carthew, Rivoli Bay: a Story of Early Settlement at Rivoli Bay in the South East of South Australia, 1845 (H.J. Carthew) Rendelsham, SA, 1974; Heather Carthew (ed.), Sunlight Across the Swamplands: Women's Role in 150 Years of Settlement in the Millicent District in the Lower South East of South Australia (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, c. 1994; O'Connor, Second to None.
14. This potted 'history' of Christina Smith is distilled from the following secondary sources: Heather Carthew, Rivoli Bay: a Story of Early Settlement at Rivoli Bay in the South East of South Australia, 1845 (H.J. Carthew) Rendelsham, SA, 1974; Heather Carthew (ed.), Sunlight Across the Swamplands: Women's Role in 150 Years of Settlement in the Millicent District in the Lower South East of South Australia (Friends of the Millicent Public Library) Millicent, SA, c. 1994; O'Connor, Second to None.
15. Mrs James Smith, The Booandik Tribe, of South Australian Aborigines: a Sketch of their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language, first published 1880. Facsimile edition State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, 1963.
16. Heather Carthew, Twisted Reeds (H. Carthew) Millicent, SA, 1986; Heather Carthew, Reeds in the Wind (H. Carthew) Millicent, SA, 1993.
17. Heather Carthew, Twisted Reeds (H. Carthew) Millicent, SA, 1986; Heather Carthew, Reeds in the Wind (H. Carthew) Millicent, SA, 1993.
18. A version of this section has been published as Jane Haggis, 'The Lady Nelson Discovery Centre', Australian Historical Studies, 2001, in press.
19. This utilises CD ROM technology to provide a visual and aural show.
20. Duncan's diary and the Smith-Stewart family papers arc held in the Mortlock Library, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide.
21. Carthew, Twisted Reeds, p. 246.
22. Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 33.
23. The charge of infanticide was a common one in settler accounts of Indigenous cultural practices and served to reinforce the settler discourses of white racial superiority. The charge still has a potent currency in Australian popular and political culture, as witnessed in One Nation and Pauline Hanson's iteration of the charge to justify their assimilatory views regarding Indigenous peoples in contemporary Australia. It is, therefore, a cause for concern that this quotation from Christina Smith's book is included in the Lady Nelson narration of the Buandig story of first contact.
24. Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. 33.
25. This mimics almost exactly, save for the white husbands, the domesticating intent of the 'white women's burden' in other sites of Empire. See, for example, Jane Haggis, '"Good Wives and Mothers" or "Dedicated Workers"? Contradictions of Domesticity in the "Mission of Sisterhood", Travancore, south India' in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities. Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1998; Antoinette M. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press) Chapel Hill, 1994; Margaret Jolly, '"To Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives": Presbyterian Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu, 1848-1870', Journal of Pacific History, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 27-48; Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century Hawaii (Hawaii University Press) Honolulu, 1989.
26. This mimics almost exactly, save for the white husbands, the domesticating intent of the 'white women's burden' in other sites of Empire. See, for example, Jane Haggis, '"Good Wives and Mothers" or "Dedicated Workers"? Contradictions of Domesticity in the "Mission of Sisterhood", Travancore, south India' in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities. Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1998; Antoinette M. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press) Chapel Hill, 1994; Margaret Jolly, '"To Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives": Presbyterian Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu, 1848-1870', Journal of Pacific History, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 27-48; Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century Hawaii (Hawaii University Press) Honolulu, 1989.
27. This mimics almost exactly, save for the white husbands, the domesticating intent of the 'white women's burden' in other sites of Empire. See, for example, Jane Haggis, '"Good Wives and Mothers" or "Dedicated Workers"? Contradictions of Domesticity in the "Mission of Sisterhood", Travancore, south India' in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities. Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1998; Antoinette M. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press) Chapel Hill, 1994; Margaret Jolly, '"To Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives": Presbyterian Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu, 1848-1870', Journal of Pacific History, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 27-48; Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century Hawaii (Hawaii University Press) Honolulu, 1989.
28. This mimics almost exactly, save for the white husbands, the domesticating intent of the 'white women's burden' in other sites of Empire. See, for example, Jane Haggis, '"Good Wives and Mothers" or "Dedicated Workers"? Contradictions of Domesticity in the "Mission of Sisterhood", Travancore, south India' in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities. Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1998; Antoinette M. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press) Chapel Hill, 1994; Margaret Jolly, '"To Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives": Presbyterian Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu, 1848-1870', Journal of Pacific History, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 27-48; Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century Hawaii (Hawaii University Press) Honolulu, 1989.
29. Smith, The Booandik Tribe, p. iii.
30. Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in our Hearts (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, NSW, 1998.
31. For a discussion of the 'good woman' in the past and present, see Jane Haggis and Susanne Schech, 'Meaning Well and Global Good Manners: Reflections on White Western Feminist Cross-cultural Praxis', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 15, no. 33, 2001, pp. 387-399.
32. The term is borrowed from E. Barkley Brown, '"What has Happened Here?": the Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics Symposium: Intersections and Collision Courses: Women, Blacks, and Workers Confront Gender, Race, and Class', Feminist Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 1992, p. 297. Barkley Brown explains that it is an African-American term to describe the ways they converse and recount their stories to each other simultaneously. See also Haggis in Midgley, Gender and Imperialism, for a fuller discussion of 'gumbo ya ya' as a strategy for writing feminist histories of gender and colonialism.
33. The term is borrowed from E. Barkley Brown, '"What has Happened Here?": the Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics Symposium: Intersections and Collision Courses: Women, Blacks, and Workers Confront Gender, Race, and Class', Feminist Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 1992, p. 297. Barkley Brown explains that it is an African-American term to describe the ways they converse and recount their stories to each other simultaneously. See also Haggis in Midgley, Gender and Imperialism, for a fuller discussion of 'gumbo ya ya' as a strategy for writing feminist histories of gender and colonialism.