'We are not... [Aboriginal... we are Australian': William Lane, Racism and the Construction of Aboriginality*

Labour History

Volumn , Issue 72, 1997, Pages 35-49

  Scates, Bruce ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 26444616520     PISSN: 00236942     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3828/27516464     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. The most exhaustive biography remains Lloyd Ross, William Lane and the Australian Labour Movement, Forward Press, Sydney, 1935; an excellent overview of Lane's experience and beliefs is to be found in Michael Wilding's introduction to The Working Man's Paradise (1892), (reprint) University of Sydney, Sydney, 1980; E. J. Brady, TJtopias Limited, 1951', Brady Papers, Mitchell Library, A 3176.
2. . Andrew St. Ledger, Australian Socialism: An Historical Sketch of it Origin and Development, Macmillan, London, 1909, p. 5.
3. . See (for example) Robin Gollan, Radical and Working class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1960, ch. 7; Verity Burgmann, 'In Our Time': Socialism and the Rise of Labour, 1885-1905, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985, ch. 2; Marilyn Lake, 'Socialism and manhood: The Case of William Lane', Labour History, no. 50, May 1986, pp. 54-62; Bruce Scates, ' Socialism and Feminism: The Case Of William Lane. A Reply to Marilyn Lake', Labour History, no. 59, November 1990, pp. 45-58 and subsequent exchanges.
4. . For the most recent contribution to these debates see Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, ch. 6.
5. . Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning the Social Origins of Australian Radicalism and Nationalism, Penguin, Ringwood, 1970; Verity Burgmann, 'Revolutionaries and Racists; Australian Socialism and the Problem of Racism, 1887-1917', PhD. Thesis, ANU,1980, pp. 54-67; Joy Damousi, Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism and Gender in Australia 1890-1955, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 58-60; Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788-1996, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 19%, ch. 7.
6. . Burgmann, 'Racism, Socialism and the Labour Movement, 1887-1917', Labour History, no. 47, November 1984, pp. 39-54; R. Evans, K. Saunders, K. Cronin, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation and Extermination, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1988; Neville Meaney, "The Yellow Peril", Invasion Scare Novels and Australian Political Culture', in Ken Stewart (ed.), The 1890s: Australian Literature and Australian Literary Culture, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1996, pp. 228-263; Edward Said, Orientalism, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978 see also his more recent 'Orientalism Reconsidered', Race and Class, vol. xxvii, no. 2,1985, pp. 1-15.
7. McQueen, A New Britannia, p 14.
8. . Queensland Census Report, cited in Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1788-1850, Melbourne, 1960, p.17.
9. . Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land, Penguin, Ringwood, 1987; also Dispossession, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1989.
10. Jeremy Beckett (ed.), Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginally, Aboriginal Studies, ANU, Canberra, 1988; Bain Attwood and John Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, special issue of Journal of Australian Studies, Bundoora, 1992
11. Attwood, 'Introduction', in Attwood and Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, p. iv; Terry Goldie, 'Signifier Resignified: Aborigines in Australian Literature', in Anna Rutherford (ed.), Aboriginal Culture Today, Dangaroo Press, Sydney, 1988, p. 63
12. . Smith, European Vision, p. 326. RT. Strong, 'Fathoming the Primitive: Australian Aborigines in Four Explorers' Journals 1697-1845', Ethnohistory, vol. 33, no. 2,1986, pp. 175-194; G. Williams, '"Far Happier than We Europeans: Reactions to Australian Aborigines on Cook's Voyage', Historical Studies, vol. 19, no. 77,1981, pp. 499-512.
13. . Barry Morris, 'Frontier Colonialism as a Form of Terror', in Attwood and Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, p. 76.
14. 77. in Colonial Women's Writings', Rutherford (ed.), Aboriginal Culture Today, p.
15. . H. Reynolds, Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 50.
16. N. Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier, 1861-1897, A.N.U. Press, Canberra, 1982; see also the classic paradigm identified by Reynolds in H. Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, Penguin, Ringwood, 1982.
17. 'Jimmy Coombes: A Felon', Boomerang, 19 January 1889.
18. . OJp Country Life', ibid, 5 May 1888.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. . Barry Morris, 'Frontier Colonialism', pp. 75-6.
23. . 'Attacked by the Blacks', Boomerang, 17 December 1887; A. Lattas, 'Primitivism, Nationalism and Individualism in Australian Popular Culture', in Attwood and Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, pp. 45-58
24. Ibid. by the Blacks', Boomerang, 17 December 1887.
25. . For a further work along these lines see Andrew Lattas, 'Savagery and Civilisation: Towards a Genealogy of Racism', Social Analysis, no. 21, August 1987, pp. 39-58.
26. Ann McGrath, 'Modern Stone-Age Slavery': Images of Aboriginal Labour and Sexuality', in Labour History, no. 69, November 1995, p. 46.
27. . See, for instance, 'My First Wife', Boomerang, 28 January 1888; Editorial, ibid, 2 October 1890 and the illustration, 'Me Catchern Mar/, ibid, 13 July 1889.
28. . Editorial, Boomerang, 2 October 1890.
29. . McGrath, 'Modern Stone-Age Slaver/, pp. 32-8; this argument builds on her earlier work, 'The White Man's Looking Glass, Aboriginal Colonial Relations at Port Jackson', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 95, October 1990, passim.; Editorial, Boomerang, 2 October 1890; See also Scates, 'Feminism and Socialism', pp. 51-6.
30. 'My First Wife', Boomerang, 28 January 1888. In what pases for comic satire, the narrator's servant insists on treating 'Neinya' as a pet monkey. Neinya, for her part, will not be civilised. There is a furore when she devours a garden snail at breakfast.
31. . McGrath, 'Modern Stone-Age Slaver/, pp. 32-8; The March of Civilisation II: or, The Dusky Beauties of Natal Downs', Boomerang, 13 December 1890.
32. Munda', Boomerang, 19 January 1889.
33. Ibid.
34. . The Last of Munda', Boomerang, 19 January 1889; for Lane's own testimony on the 'inevitable' passing of Aboriginal people see Ibid, 28 February 1891.
35. . The story might well be likened to Margaret Maynard's study of fine art in a similar vein. Both represent a race believed to be 'on the verge of extinction'; Ian Donaldson and Tasmin Donaldson (eds), Seeing the First Australians, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985, pp. 92-109.
36. . And it should be noted that the interpretation of visual texts is liable to be highly subjective. For what semioticians call the 'grammar' of such image see G?nther Kress and Theo van Leeuwan, Reading Images, Deakin University, Geelong, 1990, ch. 3.
37. . See, for instance, 'Attacked by the Blacks', Boomerang, 17 December 1887; Tracked by Myalls', ibid, 19 January 1888.
38. . 'Christmas 1888', ibid, November 1888; Jeremy Beckett, The Past in the Present: Constructing a National Aboriginality', in Jeremy Beckett (ed.), Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1988, p. 205.
39. For the search for images of the new and the youthful in Australian literary imagery of the nineties, see K. Stewart, 'Introduction', in Stewart (ed.) The 1890s, p. 4, Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990, p. 8.
40. . See (respectively) The Federation of Labour', Boomerang, 18 January 1890; Cover Illustration, ibid, Christmas Issue 1889; 'A Free Trade Surprise', ibid, 2 November 1889; The Yellow Rogue', ibid, 30 June 1888; 'Knifed' ibid, 30 November 1890.
41. 'A Fair Start on a Good Road', ibid, January 1890; 'Pretty Near a Row", ibid, 22 September 1888. Other of the Boomerang's images are examined in Helena Studdert, 'In Black and White: Representation of Women, Race and Class in Cartoon Imagery in Australia during the Nationalist/Federation Period 1880-1910, BA (Hons) thesis, UNSW, 1992. For an engaging inquiry into the Bulletin's projection of nationhood see Josie Castle and Helen Pringle, 'Sovereignty and National Identity in Political Cartoons', in Susan Magarey, Sue Rowley, Susan Sheridan (eds), Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. 136-149.
42. . Goldie, 'Signifier Resignified: Aborigines in Australian Literature', in Rutherford, (ed.), Aboriginal Culture Today, p. 63
43. Philip Jones, The Boomerang's Erratic Flight: The Mutability of Ethnographic Objects' in
44. Ibid. Attwood and Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, p. 59.
45. Julie Marcus, The Journey Out to Centre: The Cultural Appropriation of Ayer's Rock', in Rutherford (ed.), Aboriginal Culture Today, p. 268.
46. . Bain Attwood, Introduction', in Attwood and Arnold (eds), Power, Knowledge and Aborigines, p. iv; see also Annette Hamilton, 'Fear and Desire: Aborigines, Asians and the National Imagery', Australian Cultural History, no. 3,1990, pp. 14-35; for a pioneering study of this process of 'indigenisation' from a historical perspective see Marian Aveling's vibrant reconstruction of the Australian Natives Association, like Lane, the 'Natives' freely incorpated Aboriginal themes and imagery into their publications (and ceromonies), Marian Aveling, 'A History of the Australian Natives Association, 1871 1900', PhD thesis, History Department, Monash University, 1970.
47. . Boomerang, 6 December 1890; see also my examination of Mary Gilmore's advancement of Aboriginal rights, Rae Frances, Bruce Scates and Ann McGrath, 'Broken Silences? Labour History and Aboriginal Workers' inT. Irving (ed.), Challenges to Labour History, UNSW Press, Kensington, 1995, p. 205.
48. . Donaldson, 'First Sight', Seeing the First Australians, p. 15.