What the Bones Say: Tasmanian Aborigines, Science and Domination 9780773581456

Table of contents :
Cover
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
I: Anthropology and the Politics of Contemporary Research
II: The Early Colonial Period (1803-76)
III: The Science and Politics of Race (1876-1950)
IV: Old Science and New Realities (1951-90)
V: Bones and Other Objects of Contention (1951-92)
VI: Ethics in the Human Sciences
Bibliography

Citation preview

What The Bones Say

Map of Tasmania by J. Rapkin, circa 1880.

WHAT THE BONESSAY: TASMANIAN ABORIGINES, SCIENCE, AND DOMINATION

Carleton University Press

John J. Cove

© Carleton University Press, Inc. 1995 Printed and Bound in Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Cove, John J. What the bones say : Tasmanian aborigines : science and domination Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88629-247-6 1. Anthropological ethics. 2. Anthropology— Political aspects. 3. Indigenous peoples— Research—Australia—Tasmania. 4. Indigenous peoples—Research. 5. Social sciences—Research— Moral and ethical aspects. 6. Social sciences— Research—Political aspects. I. Title. DU189.T69 1994

174'.9301

Carleton University Press 160 Paterson Hall Carleton University 1125 Colonel By Drive Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6 (613) 788-3740 Toll free number for orders in the U.S. only: 1-800-320-4606

C94-900572-X Distributed in Canada by: Oxford University Press Canada 70 Wynford Drive Don Mills, Ontario M3C 1J9 (416) 441-2941 Toll free number for orders in Canada only: 1-800-387-8020

Cover Illustration: Original Art (oil painting) Still Life Study, by Ely Kish Cover Concept: Carleton University Press Execution of Cover Design: Love Printing, Stittsville, Ont. Interior: EpiSet Corporation, Nepean, Ont. Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the financial assistance of the Ontario Arts Council. The Press would also like to thank the Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada, and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, for their assistance. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To my children — James, Pia, and Dan

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments I Anthropology and the Politics of Contemporary Research

ix xiii 1

II The Early Colonial Period (1803-76)

19

III The Science and Politics of Race (1876-1950)

59

IV Old Science and New Realities (1951-90)

101

V Bones and Other Objects of Contention (1951-92)

141

VI Ethics in the Human Sciences

173

Bibliography

205

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PREFACE The central theme of this book is that science is first and foremost a human activity with associated ethical responsibilities. Nothing makes one more aware of these conclusions than doing research about, and for, indigenous peoples who are actively working to change their situation through political action. My initial experience was with the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en of British Columbia over a seven-year period (1981-87). I originally intended to study Gitksan mythology and masking. The Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en Tribal Council rejected my proposal because: (1) the topic had no practical relevancy, (2) my contract with the National Museum of Canada contained stipulations concerning ownership and control of data which were unacceptable to the Council, and (3) refusing to grant permission was a way to assert political autonomy vis-avis the federal government. My immediate response was anger. I deemed research to be a self evident good, and I could provide endless rationales for the importance of my project to ongoing academic discourse. For Native politicians to view my interests as unimportant was only tolerable because I wished to do fieldwork. The Tribal Council and I reached a compromise: I dropped the museum contract and worked for the Council on the Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en land claims. In return I was allowed to pursue some of my academic interests with the proviso that the Council had to approve any public statements (e.g., conference presentations and publications). Land claims research provided both a series of intellectual challenges which I had not anticipated and personal satisfaction in making practical contributions. However, when litigation began to dominate the Council's land claims strategy, I confronted some questions about being an applied researcher. At first those questions were limited to matters of technical expertise, but my concerns increasingly became ethical ones. The problem was not only what could I say as an anthropologist about the Gitksan that was useful to them, but what should I say and not say. My resolutions differed from those of other researchers the Council employed and debates among us were often lively.

PREFACE

x

In retrospect, the choices I made were uninformed and would not necessarily be the ones I would make today. Only some distance from the immediacy of that situation allowed me to acquire a different perspective on the ethics of research. Distance was provided by opportunities to work elsewhere. The first chance came from an old friend and colleague, Rod Crook, who invited me to spend part of a sabbatical at the University of Tasmania to look at the Aboriginal rights movement there, with the idea that it might provide a useful comparison to what was happening in Canada. I was amused by the offer, sharing the commonly held belief that Tasmanian Aborigines were extinct. I was convinced otherwise and went to Tasmania in 1986 for five months to see if there was anything to be learned. Rod Crook provided me with a possible focus—it was the importance of Aboriginal skeletal remains to current Tasmanian politics. A large part of my time in Tasmania was spent trying to make sense of why this was the case. The further back I tracked the history of those skeletal remains, the more aware I became of the interconnections between science and politics. The fact that the bulk of research done in Tasmania was by physical anthropologists and archaeologists was initially troublesome since I had no formal training in those fields. This form of distantiation, however, proved in the long run to be an advantage: that it provided me with a frame of reference outside my specialization in socio-cultural anthropology clarified some of the ethical issues I confronted in Canada. Ongoing discussions of those concerns with Rod Crook forced me to recognize that they were not peculiar to anthropology. His sociological perspective provided me with a different vantage point for considering my own, and my discipline's, experiences with indigenous peoples. Our mutual exploration of these concerns continued over a number of years, and I spent two additional periods in Tasmania. It provided a microcosm for investigating relations between science and politics. Delving into the history of those relations in Tasmania radically altered my understanding of the ethical problems now facing anthropology and other human sciences. Another opportunity to rethink those issues came from spending a sabbatical (1992-93) in New Zealand at the Centre for Maori Studies and Research, University of Waikato. There I was exposed

PREFACE to a highly self-conscious form of applied research in which Maori interests were exclusive. I was also able to discuss the politicization of research with colleagues from a number of disciplines and examine an unusual expression of it—the indigenization of science by Maori. If I have extracted whatever potential the Tasmanian case has to inform the reader about the nature of the research enterprise in the human sciences and about recent efforts in them to resolve ethical dilemmas, it is due largely to these experiences.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are a number of institutions that I wish to thank. Foremost are the University of Tasmania and Carleton University for their financial assistance toward research and the preparation of this manuscript. My gratitude to the Royal Society of Tasmania, the State Archives of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Council for allowing access to their records; also the Centre for Maori Studies and Research at the University of Waikato for their hospitality, support, and provision of a different slant on the politics of research. More important still are those individuals who shaped my thinking. Rod Crook is first and foremost among those. Others are the readers of earlier manuscripts who forced me to consider deficiencies in both data and argument. Last, I am indebted to Frances Rooney and Jennie Strickland for their editorial assistance.

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ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

The accumulation of knowledge about colonial or tribal populations is often a facet of control and exploitation—even when researchers think otherwise. To be neglected by science, therefore, might well be a blessing. Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams

CHAPTER I

m

HIS BOOK EXAMINES the changing relationship between science and politics with specific reference to indigenous peoples. This investigation leads to an emphasis on ethical issues currently facing the human sciences. My argument is threefold: (1) scientists can no longer assert a privileged position for themselves or define their interests as a self-evident good, (2) the ethical concerns presently facing the human sciences can be sociologically and historically informed, and (3) ethical research need not require subordination of scientific interests to the interests of peoples being studied. Tasmania provides an ideal place for such an exploration, and I have used my experience and investigation there as a basis for this case study. Tasmanian Aborigines have been subjects in two senses for almost two centuries. The first sense is political. Tasmanian Aborigines have experienced in an extreme form the logic of cultural genocide and are involved in political efforts to redress that history and its consequences. These Aborigines have also been subjects within science. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, Tasmanian Aborigines acquired a special status in the human sciences which lasted over eighty years, and they were the focus of considerable attention. Those political and scientific meanings of Aborigines-as-subjects were fused in the nineteenth century. The emergence of an Aboriginal rights movement in the Australian State of Tasmania during the second half of the twentieth century drew science into the political arena in a new and unusual way. One of the focal points for Tasmanian Aboriginal political mobilization was the return of skeletal remains held by a number of museums. This issue dominated interaction between the state government and Aboriginal organizations for over a decade and is still a highly visible part of ongoing political efforts which are international in scope. The political importance of skeletal remains is not unique to Tasmania. Parallel demands are currently being put by forward by indigenous peoples in other parts of Australia as well as in Canada and the United States. The significance of skeletal remains becomes apparent if they are placed with the context of other, and to an outsider seemingly more significant, matters confronting aboriginal peoples: problems of marginality and discrimination, land ownership, and self-determination, to name only a few. That context gives rise to the question: Why are native peoples in a number of

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH countries concerned about bones? Put in different terms, the question becomes: What do the bones have to say about contemporary indigenous peoples and their relations to the wider societies of which they are a part? The answer is relatively straightforward, although the demonstration is not. What bones provide is a locus for examining aspects of a more complex set of changing social, economic, and political interactions. Tasmania will be used as a focus to elucidate certain features of relationships among scientific disciplines, governments, and indigenous populations. As will be seen, the case has representative and nonrepresentative characteristics. To isolate and use them effectively will require an expansion of our frame of reference beyond the confines of what occurred in Tasmania. We will minimally need to know: (1) why science was interested in the skeletal remains of indigenous peoples, (2) how scientific research articulated with British colonial and later national policies on indigenes, (3) why indigenous rights movements came into being when they did, and (4) what effects these movements have had on science. As this list suggests, science constitutes a major dimension of our project. One of the things the bones will be asked deals with the enterprise called science and its impact on human beings who are part of its subject matter. Specific attention will be given to anthropology, the science par excellence of "others"—peoples who differ physically, socially, and culturally from Europeans. This disciplinary focus has certain advantages. Anthropological sub-disciplines intersect with the natural sciences (physical anthropology), social sciences (social/cultural anthropology), and history (archaeology); therefore, what can be learned from anthropology has broader applicability. Osteological research represents one set of inter-disciplinary interests which have touched on indigenous peoples. Those studies have articulated with political processes in distinct ways not found in other kinds of research. What those differences are, why they occurred, and what they have to say about the scientific enterprise will be central to the analysis. In general terms, this book is far from unique. Anthropologists have in recent years become more reflexive about their discipline and have begun to seriously reconsider its history, assumptions, methods, and consequences for others. If there is anything different about what will be undertaken here, it is the use of a case-study

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approach which allows us to look at: (1) almost two hundred years of scientific research on a single people, (2) the effects of that engagement on them, and (3) how they have affected anthropology. As Gould's The Mismeasure of Man has demonstrated, a historical orientation provides major advantages for understanding research as an all too human activity which is very much part of the social world. By dealing with the range of research that took place in Tasmania, rather than concentrating on a single topic like intelligence, I hope that more can be learned about the activity called science, not only in the past but in the present, for that history informs modern practice. It is almost a truism that it is easier to identify problems in the past precisely because we are somewhat removed from those situations and their prevailing assumptions, perceptions, attitudes, and interests and can therefore better identify consequences. Such a use of history, however, presents a danger.1 It is to assume that we have solved certain problems because we no longer do the same things scientists did in the past. To avoid this trap, history will be used to give us some insight into the situated nature of our activities, the origins of our current situation, and new variations of the problems associated with doing science. Exploring this intellectual terrain will require crossing a number of disciplinary boundaries. To take on a subject engaging biology, medicine, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, philosophy and religion is unlikely either to do justice to them or to satisfy their practitioners. Specialists in those fields are asked for tolerance. I have deemed it more important here to identify problems currently facing the human sciences than to adequately represent those disciplines and what has been learned from them. The most important of these problems are ethical. No solutions will be proposed. Rather, the more modest goal is to stimulate debate about some of the more prevalent views on the ethics of research. Before beginning the analysis of the Tasmanian case, two tasks remain. The first is to briefly sketch the main features of scientific interest in and Crown policies towards indigenous peoples prior to the British colonization of Tasmania in 1803. The second is to provide an overview of the general analysis and approaches which informed that interest. With little effort, other perspectives and foci can be envisioned. Consideration of those alternatives would, how-

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

ever, add another layer of complexity to an already difficult task, one which is best seen as exploratory, not definitive. EARLY COLONIAL POLICIES ON NATIVE PEOPLES (1600-1800)

The existence of indigenous populations in the Americas posed practical, legal, and moral questions for European colonization. One of the arenas where these difficulties were most evident involved territorial acquisitions by colonial nations which was intensified by competition among them. To avoid conflict, European nations reached agreements as to how territories could be claimed—agreements in which discovery was the main principle. It, however, applied to unoccupied territory (terra nullius) and thus created a problem in terms of prior occupancy by indigenous peoples. Debates which occurred within Europe as to whether there was a moral obligation to recognize that occupancy involved the more fundamental question of whether Indians were truly human, meaning by that having souls. The decision was affirmative, and was formalized in the sixteenth century under international law.2 Further debate occurred in Britain over the meaning of indigenous occupancy. Arguments were made that it constituted ownership under natural law which had to be subordinate to a higher right derived from God's law.3 This premise provided justification for colonists to use any means possible, including theft and murder, to acquire "heathen" land. As British property law evolved, a separation of imperium and dominium occurred with the consequence that sovereignty could be established without actually asserting title.4 In North America, seventeenth and eighteenth century treaties of "peace and friendship" reflected these distinctions.5 The British signed treaties of this type with Indian nations to establish political and economic alliances as a means of asserting interests against those of Holland, France, Spain, and later the American colonies themselves. One of the implications of this type of treaty was that British settlers were technically bound to abide by the "law of the place" (lex loci), that is, indigenous law. Applied to the colonial situation, that in practice meant that the Crown expected its colonists to live so as to not disrupt treaty alliances, which could only mean in ways acceptable to Indians. British settlers rejected those expectations, using heathenism and barbarism to characterize Native practices:

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"It is perfectly ridiculous and absurd.... They remain but little superior in point of Civilisation to the Beasts of the Field."6 Religiously, to live under Indian law (were the concept even warranted) would be an affirmation that the devil had physical dominion on the earth which Christian colonists had to accept for political reasons. The morally more appropriate solution from the colonists' perspective was for Indians to give way to Christian civilization. Were they unwilling to, then a moral obligation to existed to destroy them. Indian hostility to British colonists' behaviour became sufficiently great to disrupt treaty alliances. In 1763 a royal proclamation gave Crown recognition to Indian dominium in North America beyond the limits of existing colonial settlements, put Indians and their lands under the protection of British law, and made future land acquisitions the prerogative of the Crown and voluntary cession on the part of Indian owners.7 By the time colonization of Australia began in 1788, the British had over a century and a half of experience with indigenous peoples in North America. Policies and legislation established there were not, however, entirely transferred. Rather, Australia was treated as a new situation in which the same questions about the meaning of Aboriginal occupancy were again asked. The absence of any need for political and economic alliances contributed to Britain's defining Australia as terra nullius and establishing dominium and imperium over it by right of discovery.8 Aboriginal occupancy was equated with that of kangaroos and emus; Aborigines might be human, but in no sense required legal recognition of their property rights. The absence of agriculture in particular affirmed Locke's thesis, first applied to the Americas, that property only existed when people mixed their labour with nature and transformed it.9 British colonial expansion into Tasmania brought with it distinctly Australian policies toward Aborigines. As in North America, however, those policies represented the interests of the Crown, not necessarily those of British settlers. As will be seen, the actual relations between Europeans and Aborigines reflected these tensions. FROM RELIGION TO NATURAL HISTORY (1600-1802)

European efforts to understand and relate to "others" encountered from the fifteenth century on were inseparable from how Europe-

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH ans came to understand themselves in a era of major social change marked the decline of feudalism, the Protestant reformation, and political revolutions. Science was another element of that transformation, one which gradually began to incorporate humans within its scope of inquiry.10 Contrary to a popular assumption, the emergence of science did not constitute a radical break with Christianity. Rather, it provided a number of orientations conducive to the development of science well into the nineteenth century.11 A purely theological interest in nature began in the thirteenth century and involved three main assumptions: (1) humans were unique among living things by virtue of having souls and reason, and could therefore stand outside nature, (2) the universe was rationally ordered by God and manifested his plan, and (3) human reason could examine nature to reveal that plan. The natural order was deemed to constitute part of a static and hierarchical Great Chain of Being.12 Classification based on physical properties was central to understanding the world as divinely ordered, with non-humans ranked in terms of how many characteristics they shared with humans—the top link in the earthly component of the Chain. Natural history reflected an intermediate stage in the transition between a religious and scientific understanding. Like its theological counterpart, natural history equated classification with understanding; like science, it approached the understanding of nature as an end in itself. Natural history played an important part in the eighteenth century European explorations of the Pacific. A frequent objective was the systematic collection of flora and fauna, and specialists were sometimes assigned to expeditions for this purpose. Each new species discovered expanded the Chain of Being and posed the question of where it fitted. Natural history taxonomies were no different in kind from their theological counterparts. Both were biased toward their creators as reflected in very fine distinctions between humans and their most immediate neighbours in the Chain.13 European exploration and colonization also gathered information on nonwestern peoples. Not surprisingly, their classification system was Eurocentric, considering Europeans the highest form of humanity and providing the characteristics for rank ordering others. In 1763, Linnaeus developed the prototype of future racial typologies.

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In his scheme, Homo sapiens and Homo monstrous were differentiated, with subtypes of each, using a mixture of physical characteristics, manners, customs, and mental attributes.14 It was not until 1770 that the British anatomist Camper was able to establish a set of anatomical measures by which humans and higher apes could be distinguished.15 He also formalized the measurement of skulls and used these data to conclude that Negroes were closer to orangutans than were Europeans. In that context, nonwestern peoples can be seen as partially displacing the uncomfortable conclusion that Europeans were physically little different from apes. The concept of race provided a means for Europeans to distance themselves by literally thousands of links from the closest nonhuman species. Camper's research also signalled the growing importance of collecting and analyzing skeletal specimens, not only as a convenient way to make species and racial comparisons, but because of greater concern with structure over process.16 In contrast to the interest placed on physical differences among humans, relatively little attention was paid to socio-cultural variation. The Pacific explorers reported on the peoples encountered, but did not engage in systematic data collection about them; although after Cook's first voyage there was increased demand for "artificial curiosities" (material culture).17 Although they were limited, the explorer's observations suggested a different set of intellectual questions emerging in European philosophy about human progress and relations between the individual and state. Both Hobbes and Rousseau had posited what humans in a "state of nature" would be like, and the most "savage" peoples were seen as living examples of a remote European past. The Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines being variably perceived in those terms: for Dampier, the former "differed little from Brutes";18 while Cook saw virtues in their "hard" primitiveness.19 Peron, a member of the 1801 Baudin Expedition, tried measuring the physical strength of indigenous peoples in order to determine their relative superiority to Europeans. He concluded that the Tasmanian Aborigines were: "the most savage of all real children of nature of the modern philosophers, are the weakest of any. That those of New Holland, who are a little more civilised are weaker than those of Timor ... we may well infer, that physical strength is

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

not diminished by civilisation, nor is a natural consequence of savage life."20 What did not require testing was whether Europeans were the most civilized, and by extension had therefore progressed further from a state of nature. Since Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines lacked the most visible forms of civilization—agriculture, animal husbandry, fixed settlements, government, and religion—there was nothing about those people to warrant systematic examination. This assumption, supported by explorers' observations, affirmed the notion of terra nullius. The intellectual questions asked about these Aborigines at the start of the nineteenth century were: (1) were they truly human, (2) how had they arrived in such a remote part of the world, and (3) why had they not progressed from a state of nature? ABORIGINALITY AS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED

When the British colonized Tasmania, they took with them assumptions and attitudes about the indigenous peoples which influenced subsequent interactions. By the second half of the nineteenth century, conflict emerged over who were Aborigines. Constructions put forward by government and science were challenged by persons denied Aboriginal status but who thought of themselves as Aboriginal. Those challenges, and the responses to them, constituted the core of subsequent European-Aboriginal political relations. The notion of Aboriginality as socially constructed is not limited to Tasmania.21 As a category, Aborigine and its various synonyms (e.g., natives, indigenes, etc.) covered a wide variety of peoples whose definitions of collective identity were largely irrelevant to Europeans. Like any other label, Aborigine has had implications for interaction—ones felt most by those to whom the label was applied. Those consequences were sufficiently serious for peoples so labelled to later adopt it in spite of national and cultural differences. In essence, commonalities of experience with Western societies have generated a basis of identity and concerns transcending those differences. In so doing, the meanings of Aboriginality held by dominant institutions have been challenged. In particular, its negative connotations have been rejected, as has been the implicit illegitimacy of indigenous status.

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Part of this challenge has been the creation of new constructions of Aboriginality by indigenous peoples themselves. As was the case with previous labels, these new constructions are embedded in a distinct set of interests which are inseparable from the creators' perceptions of their situation, interactions with others, and the meaning of "otherness." The constructs reflect both a set of historically rooted social, economic, and political problems specific to indigenes and demands for special solutions in the present. The human sciences enter into these concerns in two ways. The first is that those sciences have historically had their own constructions of Aboriginality. Although their avowed purpose was to facilitate disinterested intellectual understanding matched by claims of objective status of scientific concepts, these constructions were not isolated from other European interests. More generally, one need only think both of the religious and philosophical contributions to "race" as a construct and of its political usages which were, at least in part, legitimized as scientifically valid. When European conceptions and applications of Aboriginality were later attacked, so too were those institutions which had contributed to that construction— including science. The second form of scientific involvement stems from changed relations to indigenous peoples. They are no longer merely research subjects, but have also become clients and participants in the research enterprise as well as critics of it. What has emerged is a paradox. Aboriginal peoples have recently tended to: (1) reject Western scientific claims about creating objective or value-neutral constructions of Aboriginality, but (2) assert control over, define, and employ scientific research to support their political objectives. Not surprisingly, there are ambiguities about these relationships for both Aboriginal peoples and scientists—both parties raising questions about the ethics of research. ABORIGINAL RIGHTS AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Before considering those ambiguities further, the notion of aboriginal identity in its most general sense needs to be explored further. Its most visible collective expression is found in indigenous rights activism, which is a form of social movement. As such it shares characteristics with other social movements, particularly those

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH involving ascribed statuses such as gender and ethnicity.22 What those social movements have in common is that their existence and effectiveness are predicated on the voluntary commitment of individuals who engage questions of self-identification. No individual is one dimensional. By virtue of being a member of society, a number of possible sources for identity exist. The include nationality, gender, age, occupation, religion, class, political parties, and ethnicity. For Aboriginal status to have become a basis for collective political action means this dimension has become significant to the identity of a number of individuals who have voluntarily mobilized themselves around that identity to define and achieve political ends. In this sense, Aboriginal identity has become a political resource, and attention will be focused on the conditions under which this transformation took place. At an individual level, for Aboriginality to be a dominant form of self-identification means that it is central to one's understanding of personal experiences and situations. Relative to the formation of a social movement, those situations and experiences must be perceived as negative, shared, specific to being an Aboriginal, and necessitating change through political action. As discussed, creating those new perceptions has meant confronting existing definitions of Aboriginality and developing alternative ones. The resultant conflict of interpretation over the meaning of Aboriginality also involves the question of who are legitimately perceived to be Aborigines. Even indigenous definitions are problematic with respect to inclusiveness and exclusiveness. If new definitions are brought forward which are restrictive, a social movement will be limited by the number of people it can attract. If the definition is too broad, social movements will have greater difficulty establishing common concerns, achieving internal consensus, and gaining external legitimacy. The legitimacy problem is critical for social movements because their value orientations are to some degree counter those of the dominant culture. To obtain external support and achieve political ends invariably means entering into another form of conflict over the reality of issues, their causes, and acceptable solutions. For a new interpretation to successfully counter those associated with an existing social order presents a number of difficulties, particularly when the issues are defined as: (1) specific to a small segment

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of the population which is stigmatized and relatively powerless, (2) caused by that social order, and (3) requiring solutions which disrupt it. For any social movement to gain both individual commitment and public support is to engage in somewhat mutually exclusive activities. A movement needs to simultaneously appeal to specific and general bases for identification and legitimization. To illustrate, Parsons characterizes modern industrial societies as having certain value orientations—universalism and achievement being two of them.23 Those orientations have been used to define issues by a number of social movements. To varying degrees the women's movement, Aboriginal rights movements, and ethnic movements have concentrated on differential treatment and rewards as inconsistent with universalism and achievement; interpreting their own situations as more accurately reflecting the pervasiveness of ascription and particularism. Since those inconsistencies stem from general value orientations, they provide a potential source of legitimacy from those whose situations are not similarly affected (e.g., males, non-Aboriginals). At the same time, each of these social movements can present those inconsistencies as having unique features related to a specific status, derive individual commitment from it, and make demands for special attention. Symbols can play a similar role in dealing with the commitment/support dilemma. For symbols to be effective in both directions they need to be specific to appropriate bases of self-identification while also speaking to individuals who are excluded from identifying. As will be seen, skeletal remains provided just such a symbol. They were able to take on meaning exclusive to being a Tasmanian Aborigine, yet at the same time refer to more universal themes with which non-Aborigines could identify. Bringing these various strands together, the analysis of contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginal politics will concentrate on the processes of self-identification and legitimization and on the role of values and symbols in those processes. Related concerns will be the sources of Aboriginal identity, the conversion of that identity into a political resource, and external responses to this conversion.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

SCIENCE, LEGITIMACY, AND ETHICS

Those human sciences which have studied indigenous peoples have been caught up in these political processes for the reasons noted above. As stated, for social movements to be effective they must be able to acquire external legitimacy. One aspect of the problem is the capacity to argue for interpretations in terms acceptable to dominant institutions, which brings those sciences into indigenous rights movements as a means of obtaining legitimacy for their positions. Here again value orientations play a key role. One characterization of modern industrial societies is their commitment to rationality, and the institution which has come to represent rationality to the highest degree is science.24 Until recently, the knowledge produced was considered a self-evident good. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake was bolstered by the success of the natural sciences in mastering nature and improving the material conditions of existence. Since World War II, however, science has increasingly received more critical attention. The anti-nuclear and environmental movements have challenged assumptions about progress and the applications of science. Likewise, assertions about scientific knowledge have become subject to scrutiny. Those critiques have centred on the validity of claims to objectivity, disinterestedness, the significance of procedural rules for how knowledge is produced, and processes of verification which ultimately insure against error, cheating, and fraud.25 In the human sciences, those kinds of critical self examinations have focused to some extent on the negative consequences of research for its subjects. The Third and Fourth Worlds provide all too many examples of scientific knowledge and expertise functioning as a means of domination, not emancipation as envisioned by disciplinary founders and modern researchers.26 The results of those reflexions has been a growing recognition that the human sciences face an ethical crisis. The solutions put forward range between two extremes. One is the development of ethical codes to safeguard subjects from potential harm. The other asserts the necessity of consciously severing previous linkages with dominant/elite interests and

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working to support the interests and efforts of "underdogs"—including indigenous peoples. What these solutions have tended to ignore is that the human sciences are also confronting a legitimacy crisis from two sources. The first is internal, that is, a growing rejection in a number of disciplines of conventional definitions of science for purely methodological reasons. The second is highly complex articulations of research with competing values and interests found in modern societies. Lack of attention to the problem of legitimacy has contributed to a confusion as to what ethics involve and how ethical issues might be resolved. The dual crises of ethics and legitimacy for the human sciences did not emerge independently or deus ex machina. They have a common history which could be examined in any number of places and with reference to any number of disciplines. If there are particular advantages to focusing on anthropology in Tasmania they stem from well-documented changes in the research enterprise, its relations to government, and overall consequences for all parties concerned—of whom Aborigines are the most affected. We have moved a long way from our first formulation of why we might be interested in what Aboriginal bones can tell us. As will be seen, they have a lot to say about science as a human activity and the ethical issues inherent to it. Those issues are crucial to the future of the human sciences and their role in human affairs, but are not limited to scientists. As in the past, scientific knowledge will almost certainly continue to affect living people who arguably have a major stake in what is learned from and about them. The use of census and polling data by the state, industry, and voluntary organizations speaks to such consequences. Changing indigenous relations to the human sciences provide a different point of entry into understanding the production, interpretation, and application of information which highlights those more universal concerns. NOTES

1. Rod Crook articulated these concerns about current conceptions of ethics early on in our discussions of the Tasmanian project. 2. Felix Cohen. 1942. "Spanish Origins of Indian Rights in the Law of the United States." Georgetown Law Journal 51:1-20.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH

3. Marc Denhez. 1983. "Folk Law, National Self-image and their Impact on the Sovereignty of Countries." Papers of,the Symposia on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism. XXII International Congress of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 523. 4. Ibid. 5. For an excellent brief overview of British treaties in Canada, see George Brown and Ron Maguire. 1979. Indian Treaties in Historic Perspective. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. 6. Marc Denhez, "Folk Law," 5237. Jack Stagg. n.d. "A Brief Outline of Anglo-Amerindian Relations in North America to 1763 and Analysis of the Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763." 8. Henry Reynolds. 1987. The Law of the Land. Ringwood: Penguin, 722. 9. Roy Harvey Pearce. 1965. The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 21. 10. For a detailed treatment of that early history, see M.T. Hodgen. 1966. Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 11. Ian G. Barbour. 1966. Issues in Science and Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 40-50. 12. Arthur O. Lovejoy. 1936. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 13. Stephen J. Gould. 1977. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. New York: Norton, 231-36. 14. M.T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology, 424-26. 15. John Baker. 1974. Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 31-32. 16. G.F. Ferris. 1955. "The Contribution of Natural History to the Human Progress." In A Century of Progress in the Natural Sciences, edited by E. Babcock, et al. San Francisco: California Academy of Science, 77-78. 17. A.L. Kaeppler. 1978. "Artificial Curiosities" Being An Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N.. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 37-48. 18. D. J. Mulvaney. 1959. "The Australian Aborigines 1606-1929: Opinion and Fieldwork." Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand8:7.

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19. J.C. Beaglehold. 1955. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyage of Discovery I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 39920. Ibid., 14. 21. For an excellent overview of the subject, see Jeremy R. Beckett. 1988. Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginally. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. 22. The analyses which most informed the following discussion were: Roberta Julian. 1989. The Dutch in Tasmania: An Exploration of Ethnicity and Immigrant Adaptation. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tasmania; Jan Pakulski. 1988. "Social Movements in Comparative Perspective." In Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, edited by Louis Kriesberg, et al. Greenwich: JAI Press; and Nancy Adamson, et al. 1988. Feminist Organizing for Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press. 23- Talcott Parsons, et al. 1951. Towards a General Theory of Action. New York: Harper & Row, 76-91. 24. William Broad and Nicholas Wade. 1982. Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science. New York: Simon and Schuster, 130. 25. See for example Paul Feyerabend. 1975. Against Method. London: NLB; Stephen J. Gould. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton; LeonJ. Kamin. 1974. The Science and Politics of I.Q.. Potomac: Lawrence Erlbaum; and Eva Etzioni-Halevy. 1985. The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy. London: George Allen and Unwin. 26. Peter Park. 1988. "Towards an Emancipatory Sociology: Abandoning Universalism for True Indigenisation." International Sociology 3(2):l6l-69.

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THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

(1803-76)

The system adopted toward the aborigines of this territory is quite original. History does not furnish an instance, where a whole nation has been removed by so mild and humane a policy. G. A. Robinson, 1837

CHAPTER II

E

XPLORERS' REPORTS INDICATE that it was known before colonization began that Van Diemen's Land (as Europeans originally called Tasmania) had indigenous inhabitants. The same sources provided no evidence of any form of government, law, industry, or agriculture.1 These conclusions certainly were impressionistic and based on minimal encounters with small groups of Aborigines, not from systematic efforts to discover if they had culture and what form it took. To have acknowledged and investigated an Aboriginal culture would have gone against then current commonsense understandings of the nature of civilization. In essence, initial observations led to the assumption there was nothing to be learned which might impinge upon the legalities or morality of colonization. The people these explorers encountered were the Parlevar, who had been isolated from mainland Australia for over eight thousand years with the formation of Bass Strait.2 Estimates of their numbers at the time of European contact range from 1,500 to 7,000. The population was organized along tribal lines. Each of the nine tribes had its own language (or dialect) and territories, but lacked a centralized political structure and leadership. Tribes were comprised of varying numbers of bands which were the actual owners, in at least a usufruct sense, of territories. Bands consisted of forty to fifty members, and each band was under the authority of a chief or headman. Bands were politically autonomous and can be considered the primary form of aggregation, although smaller domestic units based around nuclear families were also present. Marriage was monogamous, and after marriage residence tended to be in the husband's band. Bands were migratory, though semi-permanent residential sites were established and periodically occupied during the seasonal rounds of hunting and gathering. The economy was oriented to subsistence, but some trade likely took place between bands and tribes because of the differences in resources found on territories distant from each other. The most important foods were kangaroo, wallaby, opossum, along with various species of birds, berries, roots, and shellfish. There was a sexual division of labour, with men having primary responsibility for hunting and women for gathering. The technology employed was simple, consisting largely of stone and bone tools; and some limited kinds of management techniques were used to ensure continued food supplies within territories. The religion of the Parlevar is virtually unknown. There appear to have

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

been no deities, though good and evil spirits were thought to exist. Burial practices suggest a fear of the dead, a concept of an individual soul, and belief in an afterlife. Shamanism also existed, and the Parlevar may have been totemic as indicated by features of their naming system and dances. They had a rich oral tradition, and their art was probably created for spiritual reasons, though the meanings of the symbols used were never recorded. Had this ethnographic information been available at time of contact, it is doubtful that the British would have treated the Parlevar any differently in the long run. At best, those Aborigines might have been seen as more human than initially thought. Events in North America suggest that British recognition of a slightly higher level of civilization among the Parlevar probably would only have given the Crown additional justification for its original policy of accommodation. As will be seen, that policy was not viable given the nature of British settlement. Before considering Aboriginal relations in Van Diemen's Land, a brief discussion of the colonial government is required.3 For all practical purposes, its policies were established by the British secretary of war and the colonies, and later by the secretary of state. Implementation was primarily the responsibility of the lieutenantgovernor, the chief civil servant in Van Diemen's Land, assisted the chief justice and the colonial secretary. Within the parameters of those policies, after 1828 the lieutenant-governor was bound to seek the "advice and consent" of a legislative council. Its constituency ensured that the lieutenant-governor was not seriously constrained by local interests. He headed the council, consisting of seven members of the colonial administration and eight colonists he appointed. The Anglican bishop was, for all practical purposes, one of above the administrators. The church was financially supported through colonial revenues, and chaplaincy and teaching licences even in church schools were issued by the lieutenant-governor. In the eyes of Bishop Nixon, who went to England in 1847 to rectify (unsuccessfully) what he saw to be an inappropriate arrangement, the clerics were de facto civil servants who had to bow to the authority of the secretary of state and the lieutenant-governor.4 The distance between England and Van Diemen's Land was critical in terms of the colonial government's ability to quickly respond to local problems—eight months to a year was normal for a

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request to reach the secretary of state and for a decision to return. Depending largely on the personality of the lieutenant-governor, this difficulty provided grounds for exceeding the formal constraints on his authority or for seemingly inexplicable delays and inappropriate government responses to issues—including relations to Aborigines. Given the focus of this chapter, its is useful to remember that the Aboriginal question typically was not a dominant one for the colonial government, although from time to time it did have prominence. More important during the period considered, however, were matters of a different sort: taxation, the structure of government and representation of colonists, land allocations, and the transportation system, to name a few. The representational issue in particular led to modifications which impinged in the authority of the lieutenantgovernor. In 1851, the legislative council was replaced by a legislative assembly consisting of eight appointed and sixteen elected members; this was followed in 1856 by a bicameral system. The elected members tended to be drawn from gentlemen farmers who, as Townsley notes, represented a distinct local class interest as against those of British officialdom. The reader may well wish to compare what British historians of that period had to say to later revisionist interpretations.5 My analysis falls somewhere between the two. The earlier sources were sensitive to competing interests between the Crown and colonists, but tended toward both a mea culpa and a fatalistic explanation of the eventual consequences for Aborigines. Modern interpretations, in contrast, have tended to view British colonial policy as purely self-interested and monolithic, with fatalism being nothing more than ex post facto rationalization. THE BRITISH POLICY OF ACCOMMODATION IN TASMANIA (1803-25)

Initial sustained contact between Europeans and the Parlevar began at the start of the nineteenth century and had two sources. The first was from whalers and sealers operating in Bass Strait who established temporary settlements on a number of islands, some of which later became permanent communities with European and Aboriginal residents (see frontispiece for all places referred to in the analysis). The importance of those communities will be considered later on; present emphasis will be on the second source of interaction,

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

which began with the founding of a penal colony on Van Diemen's Land in 1803 as an extension of New South Wales. In addition to providing a convenient place for difficult prisoners, Van Diemen's Land was also settled to assert a British presence against that of the French and Americans in the area, and the island provided important resources—timber, marine mammals, and agricultural lands. To assist in developing the colony, free settlers were sent over to set up farms and businesses, with convicts assigned to them as labourers. The Crown acknowledged the existence of an indigenous population, though without imperium or dominium. With respect to how they were to be treated by colonists, the British secretary for war and the colonies, Lord Hobart, gave the following instructions: You are to endeavour, by every means in your power, to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their good will—enjoying all persons under your government to live in amity and kindness with them; if any person shall exercise against them, or shall wantonly give them any interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, you are to cause the offender to be brought to punishment, according to the degree of offence.6

There are a number of things to note about these instructions. The first is that they were identical to those given for New South Wales and other Australian colonies, and hence reflected on a general policy of colonization. Second, the new colony was under military command, and as will be seen, this association affected future relations with Tasmania's Aborigines. Finally, the onus for maintaining peaceful relations was exclusively on the colonists, and violations were defined as criminal offenses. Natives were not formally included as subjects of the Crown, but were initially seen as outside colonial jurisdiction. Lord Hobart's concerns about the possibility of conflict proved to be prophetic. This potential was actualized, in part, because of British non-recognition of native dominium. The principle of terra nullius allowed settlers to displace the Parlevar from their territories, even if it did interrupt their "several occupations." What those activities might be were largely unknown to the colonists, who typically considered the Parlevar to be "brutes, only of a more cunning and

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dangerous order."7 Even if they had been aware of the Parlevar activities, it is doubtful that colonists would have considered them to be occupations in the European sense of agriculture and manufacturing. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur was to remark in 1835 that the absence of efforts to establish treaties with the natives and provide them with compensations was a "great oversight."8 His reasons for so commenting came from what proved to be inevitable and growing conflict between the British and Parlevar. At first is was largely accidental. Contacts between colonial exploratory parties and native bands led to occasional acts of violence which were apparently initiated by both sides. Threats of punishment to colonists who harmed natives proved unsuccessful in curbing increasingly negative attitudes among colonists about establishing peaceful contacts, probably because no such punishments were carried out and because the Parlevar were seen as semi-human at best. More critical to the escalation of hostilities was colonial expansion based on agriculture and pastoralism. These land uses were, as indicated, predicated on the displacement of native groups from their territories. Whereas a tribe might readily accommodate its own members who had been displaced, it is unlikely that this would happen across tribal divisions. In essence, over time dislocated natives would have nowhere to go which would not put them in conflict—either with Europeans or other Parlevar. In addition, there was competition between colonists and the Parlevar over resources as well as land. Food shortages in the first decade of colonial settlement and later the market value of hides led to intensive European hunting of kangaroos and other game upon which the natives subsisted. A third factor was a shortage in the colony of women and labour which led to the kidnapping of native women and children by bushrangers (escaped prisoners), stock-keepers, whalers, and sealers. Not surprisingly, these kinds of interactions led to Parlevar retaliations against colonists and the killing of their livestock. The attacks were not necessarily directed at actual culprits who had trespassed on native territories to hunt or kidnap, making native responses appear unprovoked to many Europeans. The scattering and isolation of farmers and pastoralists also made it difficult for the military to control or defend them.

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

The second Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas Davey, was seemingly more successful than his predecessor in enforcing the original instructions, because in 1818 the press in Hobart noted a decline in hostilities. When Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell retired in 1824, the situation apparently was stable. His final report made no mention of relations with the Parlevar, and none of the local historians of the period considered the native presence in more than a passing way. The trend was shorted lived. The newly appointed lieutenantgovernor, Colonel George Arthur, stated that the natives were virtually blameless for the return of hostilities, and to offset their defencelessness he placed them under the protection of the law. This was tantamount to making subjects of the Crown, paralleling similar developments in North America. He also encouraged the natives to visit Hobart, and for two years a station was maintained for them. With the arrival of some visiting missionaries in 1825, a serious attempt to was made to establish a native reserve, but it failed to materialize because of economic problems and a preoccupation with the greater threat posed by bushrangers to the colony. Reserves had been tried in other parts of Australia beginning in 1814, and were associated with efforts at civilizing and converting indigenous populations. Placing Tasmania's native population under the protection of the law quickly made them subject to it. There is no information to suggest this was Colonel Arthur's intent. In all likelihood it would have eventually occurred, but an unusual set of events triggered this result almost immediately. A mainland Aboriginal, named Mosquito, who had been transported to Van Diemen's Land as a convict, later became a stock-keeper and tracker of bushrangers for the government. In the latter capacity he got into trouble and became a bushranger himself, and soon emerged as the leader of a Parlevar group which raided the colonial hinterland. He was eventually caught, tried, and hanged along with one of his followers. This execution generated considerable debate among the colonists. Some felt the trial and hanging of the local native was a dangerous precedent for future relations. The Hobart Gazette stated: "The sable Natives of this Colony are the most peaceable creatures in the universe.... The only tribe to have done any mischief were corrupted by Musquito."9 Others argued that hanging was entirely appropriate and should be more widely used. This split was along class lines, with the "higher grade" tending more toward leniency.

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The debate even included questions about whether natives were appropriately subject to British law and if Crown sovereignty had been legally established.10 In spite of his earlier stand, Lieutenant-Governor Arthur agreed with the "lower grade" of colonists, stating that hanging would "prevent the commission of similar atrocities by the Aborigines [and] induce ... the observance of a conciliatory line of conduct."11 How the threat of hanging was supposed to generate a conciliatory attitude is unclear. But two things are notable about Arthur's statement. It is the first government assertion of natives being at least partially to blame for the conflict, and the first official use of the term Aborigine rather than native. Arguably, the implicit distinction between native and non-native was becoming increasingly problematic. Native spoke in a weak way to the legitimacy of foreigners asserting the primacy of their interests. In contrast, "Aborigine" merely meant someone who had been there longer; a factor which was less relevant given almost a generation of colonial settlement and the increasing number of Europeans born in Tasmania. Associated with the changes in terminology and legal status of Aborigines was the end of a tacit distinction between "settled districts" and Aboriginal lands—all were now under colonial jurisdiction. As will be seen next, these changes also marked a shift in British Aboriginal policy away from protectionism to aggression. THE BRITISH POLICY OF AGGRESSION IN TASMANIA (1825-30)

By 1825 the colonial population had reached 15,000, and with it had come further escalation of conflict with Aborigines as pastoral and agricultural holdings increased. Aborigines, however, were no longer seen as defenceless and somewhat justified in their retaliations against colonists. Instead they were committing "outrages," "wanton barbarity," "treacherous and sanguinary acts," and "acts of atrocity" in return for "kindnesses in numerous instances"—phrases used in a Government Notice of the following year.12 That notice also gave a different interpretation of settlers' contributions to the conflict. They were presented as minimal, and limited to a corrupting influence on certain Aboriginal leaders of bushrangers and other marginal elements of colonial society. Those headmen were identified as the primary cause of Aboriginal resistance

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

and were targeted for apprehension and punishment. Outlying settlers were advised to arm themselves, become associated with the militia, and consider even potentially belligerent Aborigines enemies or rioters. For all practical purposes it was a declaration of war. One newspaper stated there were only two solutions to the Aboriginal problem: either they should be "hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed" or efforts should be made for their "removal."13 The editorial went on to elaborate on what was meant by the second option. It was the capture of Aborigines and their relocation onto the outer islanders of Bass Strait. The idea was considered in a modified way by the lieutenant-governor who unsuccessfully tried to find someone to act as a mediator with the Aborigines to encourage their voluntary movement to a restricted and unsettled—by Europeans—part of Van Diemen's Land. Lack of success in finding a mediator led the colonial government to support a more militant solution. It was to force all Aborigines out of the settled districts, and additional troops were assigned to the task. This strategy was designed to minimize interactions between Aborigines and Europeans by physically segregating them from each other. This could only be a temporary measure because the colony was committed to further expansion into unsettled districts. Colonel Arthur recognized the need for a more permanent solution, which was to assign Aborigines fixed tracts of land for their exclusive use and then to encourage their assimilation into colonial society. The military action led to further conflict and a second royal proclamation in 1828 which established military posts on the boundaries of the settled districts. Although intended to keep Aborigines out, Colonel Arthur had apparently been advised of the seasonal migrations of certain bands along fixed routes crossing the settled districts. That movement was permitted, but only if Aborigines acquired passes to do so. Associated with the proclamation was an announcement by the lieutenant-governor of his long-term plan to set up a reserve system and to work toward the "civilization" of the Aborigines. Only the military portion of the proclamation was immediately implemented. In addition to border posts, the plan included the formation of quasi-military roving parties to capture Aborigines found in the settled districts, with bounties offered for their capture. Despite instructions emphasizing capture, not killing, the

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efforts sometimes approximated the hunting down of "wild beasts" referred to earlier. The analogy was not too far fetched. Some colonists saw Aborigines as "Ourang Outangs, a disgrace it would be to call them Man."14 If this view differed from British perceptions of North American Indians, it was in the use of secular versus religious idioms—Indians more often being perceived as associated with the devil. A third proclamation in 1828 intensified the military effort by declaring martial law against all Aborigines.15 In doing so, the government was careful to state that the declaration was not an open licence to kill, but to continue acting with "moderation and humanity." Virtually every despatch sent by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to the secretary of state during this period stressed the fact that it was the colonists who had originated hostilities, and "therefore much ought to be endured in return before the blacks are treated as an open accredited enemy by the government."16 Arthur was not alone in feeling that moderation was required. One settler on his own initiative set up a ration station for Aborigines. Since this was consistent with the lieutenant-governor's longterm plan, he had it taken over as a government mission and appointed G.A. Robinson to begin the civilization and conversion process. This effort, however, remained secondary to the military one. The latter continued to be unsuccessful in ending the conflict, and in 1830 a Committee for the Affairs of Aborigines was established to address the problem. The committee's mandate was to review the history of the colony's relationships with Aborigines and to make policy recommendations to the lieutenant-governor. In its first report, the committee gave some recognition to the improper conduct of colonists as a contributing factor. The emphases, however, were placed on recent atrocities committed by Aborigines and the necessity of continuing a strong military presence while working toward relocating and assimilating them. In creating the committee, it is unlikely that Colonel Arthur expected any new solutions. Rather, he probably saw it as a way to defuse public demands for more extreme measures. It had the opposite effect. Presentations by individual colonists to the committee, and its report, increased awareness of so-called Aboriginal atrocities and intensified demands for extermination of the indigenous population. The lieutenant-governor was caught between this growing public

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

sentiment and instructions from the British secretary of state stressing efforts toward the civilization and conversion of Aborigines as the only alternative to their extermination. It was presented as inconsistent with "feelings of humanity," and "principles of justice and sound policy," and as leaving "an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government."17 (Such a stain had already occurred in Newfoundland. The Beothuk had in fact become extinct in spite of the British government passing laws in 1810 to protect them. Settlers and Indians brought in from the mainland had systematically hunted them, and they had suffered from the indirect consequences of colonization—displacement, disease, and famine. Nancy Shawanahdit, who was considered to be the last Beothuk, died in 1829. The governors of all other British colonies were strongly advised to do everything in their power to avoid a repetition of this outcome.) In keeping with his instructions from the secretary of state, Colonel Arthur issued a notice during a lull in the hostilities asking for a more conciliatory posture. Further violence, however, led to increased public demands for even firmer measures, and martial law provisions were expanded and bounties reintroduced for the capture of Aborigines. Those demands stemmed not only from selfprotection but from a growing image abroad about the dangers of Van Diemen's Land which negatively affected immigration. Roving parties were again established as quasi-military units. They arguably were necessary given a regular army of less than 1,000 men, but they were also popular because the bounties were large—five pounds for an adult Aborigine, two pounds for a child, and on occasion land grants in the order of one to two thousand acres.18 The initial success of G.A. Robinson's mission station in attracting Aborigines to settle there indicated to Colonel Arthur that a more conciliatory strategy was indeed possible, and it was the preferred option of the British government. The dilemma was that martial law was popular among the colonists even though it perpetuated a set of conditions antithetical to implementing the alternate strategy. The colonists responded negatively to Arthur's elimination of martial law, and the executive council informed him in no uncertain terms that a state of war existed with the Aborigines. The council recommended a more vigorous military solution which would force a peaceful settlement and thereby avoid what would otherwise become a gradual war of extermination.

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In 1830 the lieutenant-governor sent a despatch to the secretary of state which said: 30

Failing every endeavour to conciliate, and the outrages of the savages being more daring, and their murders and robberies being more systematically conducted, the next measure we are bound to attempt is, I conceive, that which is now in progress, the earnest and hearty cooperation of the whole European population to capture them, with the least possible destruction of life, or to drive them into Tasman's Peninsula.19 Arthur was referring to the infamous Black Line, a military application of a hunting technique to drive the Aborigines into the southern part of the island, Tasman's Peninsula, where they could be readily contained. The military and civilian participants were expected to capture Aborigines or otherwise force them to move in the desired direction. There was considerable public discussion of the strategy, both its practicality and consequences. A few colonists saw the Black Line as leading to Aboriginal extermination, since many settlers said they would use the drive as an excuse for killing any Aborigine seen. One lawyer even put forward the idea that the Line was immoral since it violated Aboriginal land title which the Crown was obligated to recognize. These dissenting voices were a minority, and the more general reaction was favourable. The Black Line consisted of approximately 3,000 colonists who spent over a month in the drive at an estimated cost of £35,000. It was a total failure militarily, only a handful of Aborigines were captured or killed and a few more forced onto the Tasman Peninsula. There were, however, some positive outcomes. Colonel Arthur noted that the effort had united the colony and its various classes of citizens in a way not previously seen, and he hoped it would deter the Aborigines from further aggression. The Black Line also reduced previous fears about the threat posed by Aborigines. It had been assumed their population numbered over 2,000. but after the Black Line it was estimated to be no more than 700. This marked decrease led the lieutenant-governor to remark that the "race" might soon become extinct.20 This knowledge, coupled with the failure of military efforts, led to a lessening of public pressures for extreme measures and greater openness to a conciliatory approach.

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

The importance of this change can be understood when it is remembered that some colonists viewed the Black Line as a final solution to the Aboriginal problem, the goal being the extermination of the entire population. Again, this objective reflected a belief that the settlers were not dealing with true humans but with animals which at best formed "the connecting link between man and the monkey tribes."21 Given attitudes of the era, such a status was tantamount to calling Aborigines "unnatural," monsters rather than merely beasts. THE BRITISH POLICY OF CIVILIZATION AND CONVERSION (1831-76)

Arthur's furtherance of a conciliation policy was in no small part due to the efforts and experiences of G.A. Robinson. He had immigrated to Van Diemen's Land as a bricklayer, and his quasi-missionary activities were arguably more financially than spiritually motivated. At the same time, he had demonstrated a willingness to act as a conciliator. The ultimate failure of his mission station was seen as largely accidental. After some deaths there, the Aborigines had abandoned it in keeping with their religious beliefs. In the long run, it was Robinson's experiences in the mission that proved to be important. He had learned something of Parlevar languages and customs, particularly culturally appropriate ways to interact peacefully with them. Robinson also acquired a few Aboriginal followers who remained with him after the station closed. He was convinced it was possible to get the remnants of the original Aboriginal population to move voluntarily to one of the Bass Strait Islands. Colonel Arthur supported Robinson's submissions to the colonial government, the executive committee accepted Robinson's recommendations, and he was assigned the task of contacting the various Aboriginal tribes and gaining their agreement. Movement to Bass Strait in effect meant that Aborigines were voluntarily abandoning their territories, making the mainland literally terra nullius. This was seen as something Robinson could accomplish without the use of treaties. That approach was not unique to Van Diemen's Land or Australia. In Canada, land acquisition treaties were not used for Inuit, and Indian reserves were established without treaties for most of British Columbia.

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In Canada and Australia, reserves were defined as temporary measures. The protection the Crown afforded reserves and their inhabitants was expected to last only one or two generations while the processes of civilization and conversion took place. This policy had the goals of assimilating reserve populations and transforming reserve lands into ordinary lease- and freeholds. Practical and moral reasons for this approach dated back a number of years and applied to both places. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales wrote in 1814: Scarcely emerged from the remotest State of rude and Uncivilized Nature, these People appear to possess some Qualities, which, if properly Cultivated and Encouraged, Might render them not only less wretched and destitute by Reason of their Wild wandering and Unsettled Habits, but progressively Useful to their Country. According to the Capabilities either as Labourers in Agricultural Employ or among the lower Class of Mechanics.22

The primary agents of civilization and conversion were Christian missionaries. Their participation had an unusual historical component stemming from the evangelical movement in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain. Initially, missionary activity of that movement was directed at the working class of Britain, and included what might well be called attempts at civilizing them—making them more like the middle if not upper classes. Literacy was given special priority, as were more general education and encouragement of a work ethic. The evangelical attitudes toward the working class drew on metaphors derived from what was known about "savage" peoples through reports of explorers and colonists. An 1820s comment about Methodists said that they "took their rise under the able auspices of John Wesley and at that time he did a great deal of good. In the neighbourhood [Tyneside] he greatly civilized a numerous host of semi-barbarian, the pitmen and others employed in the pit-works. These seemed like Cherokees and Mohawks, but they were more wicked."23 As information about indigenous peoples in the British colonies became more available, evangelical attention began to focus on them and, in doing so, a class-based model of conversion and civilization was applied. The concept of "noble savages" came

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

under attack, as did indigenous ways of life, which were considered heathen and thus sources of eternal damnation. Interestingly, it was places like Tahiti and New Zealand which were the first targets of British missionary effort, not colonies like Van Diemen's Land. To some degree, this was probably due to Tasmanian Aborigines' not being seen as truly human and lacking a culture which could corrupt them beyond what an animal-like existence had caused. Robinson's career reflects on some of these issues. When he first arrived in Van Diemen's Land, his missionary activities were directed at seamen. Although he had seen some Aborigines and certainly knew about them as a problem for the colony, they only became of interest to him when the government began looking for someone to head the mission station at a time when he was short of funds.24 Even then, he was more concerned with working at a nearby European settlement than at the Aboriginal station, but Colonel Arthur ordered him to concentrate exclusively on the latter. The link between civilization and conversion reflected both political and religious concerns and their fusion. In the 1830s, a parliamentary select committee was established in Britain to consider problems with indigenous peoples throughout the Empire. The committee's stated policy objectives indicated an a priori commitment to a type of solution which had been partially formulated in North America a century earlier: To consider what measures ought to be adopted with regard to NATIVE INHABITANTS of the Countries where BRITISH SETTLEMENTS are made, and to the neighbouring tribes, in order to secure to them the due observance of Justice and protection of their rights; and to promote the spread of Civilization among them, and to lead them to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian Religion.25

Two of the select committee's tasks was to interview colonial administrators and missionaries from all over the Empire and to review existing documentation of colonial policies. For British North America, Sir George Murray noted: It appears to me that the course which has hitherto been taken in dealing with these people had its reference to the advantages which might be derived from their friendship in time of war, rather than any settled

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purpose of gradually reclaiming them from a state of barbarism, and of introducing amongst them the industrious and peaceful habits of civilized life ... there existed a disposition ... to regard the natives as an irreclaimable race, and as inconvenient neighbours, whom it was desirable to ultimately wholly to remove.26

As Murray's comments suggest, what had happened in Van Diemen's Land was in no way unique. Many of the same attitudes existed in British North America, where the killing of Indians was often seen as a "meritorious" if not religiously justified act by colonists. The objectives of British Aboriginal policy and legislation were often at odds with the practical problems of actual settlement, and governors like Colonel Arthur were frequently caught between competing demands. In spite of protection afforded indigenous peoples by the Crown, the pattern the select committee uncovered was of their gradual decrease in numbers and the likelihood of facing further instances of indigenous extinction like that of the Newfoundland Beothuk. A variety of explanations for such outcomes existed. For example, the impact of European diseases were sometimes seen as divine: "the Lord hathe cleared our [land] title to what we possess."27 In contrast, Archdeacon William Broughton told the committee that with respect to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land the reasons had little to do with God or the deliberate efforts on the part of colonists to exterminate Aborigines. Rather, population decline was the indirect effect of agriculture and pastoralism on game animals and Aboriginal subsistence. A solution to this last type of cause was to transform indigenous hunters and gatherers into farmers. This emphasis on agriculture was enhanced by its associations with Christianity and civilization. In turn, success in making this transformation also provided a basis for assimilating indigenous peoples into colonial societies. The committee also sought opinions as to whether all indigenes could be civilized given debates over their mental inferiority. Broughton answered affirmatively about Australian Aborigines in general, though echoing Cook's conclusions that, "you find it impossible to excite any want in them which you can gratify, and therefore they have no inducement to remain under a state of restraint."28

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

As to how "civilizing" should be done, most of the clergy who addressed the committee argued that conversion should be the first step; a conclusion consistent with North American efforts going back to the early seventeenth century. This reflected more than a priority on saving souls, it also spoke to a view of European civilization as derived from Christian values, and consequently that indigenes could not be expected to adopt civilization until they became Christian. As Broughton stated to the committee: "The general process hitherto has been, to try and fix them to a spot, and to abandon their original habits. I am inclined to reverse the process, and endeavour to give them knowledge of religion, and make that the groundwork of better habits of life."29 Broughton's opinion concerning priority did not mean that reserves were unnecessary. He, along with other clerics, saw these institutions as serving a number of practical purposes beyond reducing conflict. To facilitate conversion, isolation of indigenous populations minimized such negative influences of contact with Europeans as diseases and alcohol. Further, it kept Aborigines from being morally corrupted by the "lower orders" of European society. In some ways, many missionaries saw "savages" in a more positive light than they did the lower class of colonist. As one clergyman put it: "I had ten times rather meet them in their savage state than after they had intercourse with Europeans."30 The efforts of Colonel Arthur and G.A. Robinson to seek the voluntary removal of Aborigines to an isolated reserve on one of the Bass Strait islands was consistent with British thinking of the period. A new humanism had emerged in Britain due to the influence of the evangelical movement, and it drew on heavily on moral considerations. The issue of slavery is the best known example, but others also existed. The British had won the fourth of the Kaffir Wars in South Africa and had annexed Bantu lands through conquest. The colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, in 1835 renounced the annexation because the underlying justice of the situation lay with the Bantu.31 Similarly, the British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society, created in the 1830s, was highly vocal about recognition of indigenous land rights. The society viewed the treatment of Australia's Aborigines as virtually identical to the slavery of indigenous Africans. The slave trade was the most blatant example of morality being subordinated to amoral economic interests—one which used

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virtually every possible distinction between Europeans and Blacks in order to define the latter as nonhuman. It is in this context that skin colour took on significance which it had previously lacked, albeit drawing on Christian metaphors between darkness with evil.32 Crown policy and decision making suggested a less opportunistic stance toward British relations with indigenous populations even if, as Colonel Arthur was advised, the rationale was related to national prestige. There was a growing demand from a number of outside sources that the Crown acquire indigenous lands in the colonies through voluntary sale, again following the North American model. Colonel Arthur's retrospective comment about treaties, noted earlier, suggests he was not personally adverse to such an approach. Attitudes of the colonists were, however, against implementing this solution. In addition, Robinson had advised the lieutenant-governor that the authority of tribal chiefs was insufficient to insure that Aborigines would live up to treaty provisions.33 Even a conciliatory posture to Aborigines was viewed with some suspicion. For many colonists there was no moral reason to make any conciliations, let alone sign formal agreements. In this climate, the general British colonial policy toward Aborigines was liberal if not radical. Its assertion of the Crown's moral obligations minimally involved ascribing human status to Aborigines in the colony, an assumption not shared among all settlers. With the lieutenant-governor's and executive council's support and funding, G.A. Robinson first travelled through the settled districts accompanied by his Aboriginal assistants. He was able to convince some bands to accept his proposal, and as a sign of his sincerity he rescued a number of Aboriginal women who had been kidnapped by Europeans.34 He took his "captives" as they were called to a temporary relocation centre in Bass Strait. While setting it up, Robinson began what would be a series of attacks on the European sealer and whaler communities in the strait. Not only did he attempt to remove Aboriginal women from them, but demanded that Europeans vacate the islands unless written permission was obtained from the government to reside there. Robinson seemingly was worried that those communities were too close to the reserve. Aborigines living with sealers and whalers had a greater degree of freedom than he planned for his captives, and he saw proximity to an alternative life style and to Europeans other than himself as potentially disruptive. These island communities sent a representative

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

to Colonel Arthur, who could see little wrong with incorporating Aborigines into European islander settlements and countermanded Robinson. Soon after Robinson went to see Colonel Arthur about establishing a permanent reserve on a different island. The Aboriginal Committee was reconstituted to consider his suggestion, and granted approval, but the new location failed because an epidemic killed half the Aborigines sent there. The reserve was again shifted. The island chosen was thought ideal for a variety of reasons—a good harbour, fresh water, sufficient resources for subsistence, and enough distance from the mainland to prevent Aborigines from returning. The single problem, from Robinson's point of view, was proximity to the sealers and whalers. He was able to convince the Aboriginal Committee to support his demands both to disband those communities and to prevent their encroachment on the reserve and to regulate the sealing and whaling industries. In addition, the committee considered other ways to assist Robinson in his mission. Occasional acts of violence by Aborigines still took place, and recommendations were made to the lieutenant-governor to replace roving parties with strategically located soldiers to protect outlying stock keepers and stock. Only one strong voice was against the idea of a Bass Strait reserve. Chief Justice Sir John Pedder considered enforced deportation of Aborigines inappropriate, and argued for negotiations which would allow some groups to remain on Van Diemen's Land proper under European supervision. Pedder felt that Aborigines could not adapt to the constraints of an island reserve given their nomadic way of life and territorial associations. Robinson rejected this proposal on the grounds that nomadism was difficult to control, and band chiefs did not have sufficient authority to enforce agreements on their own people. The committee was uncertain, and in the end Colonel Arthur supported Robinson even though he had originally been in favour of a reserve on the main island: Even if they should pine away in the manner the Chief Justice apprehends, it is better that they should meet with their death in that way, whilst every act of kindness is manifested towards them, than they should fall sacrifice to the inevitable consequences of their continued acts of outrage upon white inhabitants.35

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Given the estimated size of the Aboriginal population, the lieutenant-governor likely did not fear that it was a serious menace to the colony. His primary worries were settlers' attitudes and continued demands to exterminate the Aborigines by the more militant sector of the colony—an argument which would become more difficult to ignore if Aborigines continued their attacks. Protests about the lifting of martial law in 1833 indicated certain public sentiments, and Colonel Arthur felt obligated to reinstate it. He saw the establishment of an Aboriginal reserve in Bass Strait, along with the relocation of all Aborigines there, as the only way to ensure their survival. Unfortunately, the island selected also proved to be unsuccessful. Lack of shelter and an inadequate supply of game contributed to a further reduction of the reserve population and necessitated another move. After relocating the remaining Aborigines on Flinders Island, Robinson returned to the mainland and continued his efforts. By 1835 he thought he had completed his capture of all Aborigines, though a few more were later discovered. He actually convinced only 203 to relocate over the five years of his mission— a shockingly low figure even when compared to the estimates of 700 in 1830. A historian of the period attributed this overall decline in population solely to the slaughter of Aboriginals by colonists.36 More likely were the aforementioned effects of food shortages and European diseases. These population figures provided ammunition for the Aboriginal Protection Society and for Lord Glenelg, the colonial secretary, to criticize existing policy in Australia.37 To avoid a repetition of what had occurred in Van Diemen's Land, Glenelg sent recommendations made by Colonel Arthur to a commission dealing with the colonization of South Australia. He also presented some requirements for that colony which included the appointment of an Aboriginal protector and the use of North American land acquisition practices. The second of these requirements was not met, South Australia was defined as terra nullius much to the dismay of the colonial office and the parliamentary select committee. Again, practical considerations of settlement and desire to attract immigrants prevailed over moral ones. With his mission of "capture" completed, Robinson took over as commandant of the Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island. There, his mandate was to civilize and convert the Aborigines so

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

they could eventually be brought into colonial society. The means used were encouragement of European dress, diet, and agriculture, punishment of continuing Aboriginal customs, and the teaching of Scripture. Robinson also created an Aboriginal police force, a weekly market, and a newspaper. Colonel Arthur fully supported these efforts, to the point where it was commented that the Aborigines enjoyed a life better than "the lot of the English cottager."38 Robinson's interests, however, quickly changed. In the same year he became commandant, he made a proposal to Colonel Arthur that he take the entire reserve population of eighty-two to Port Phillip, where they would assist him in pacifying and civilizing the Aborigines of New South Wales. This plan was obviously intended to benefit Robinson's career, but he put forward a different set of advantages—the move would eliminate the costs of maintaining the Establishment, and New South Wales was a better environment in that it would allow the Aborigines to more readily hunt and gather. He was also worried about the steady decline in the Establishment's population, which he discussed in his 1839 report to the lieutenantgovernor: I have much satisfaction in stating that the wants of the aborigines are amply and abundantly supplied ... and though notwithstanding, the fatality to which I have heretofore alluded is painful in character, still it must be conceded that the same is quite providential, and might have occurred in their own native districts; for I do no consider the depopulation wholly attributable to their removal, for in my opinion the same causes did exist in their primeval districts ... and if in the sister colony the attempts hitherto brought into operation for the amelioration of the aborigines has failed, it can only be attributed to the system, and not to the people themselves.39

Robinson's relocation proposal was debated for three years by various levels of government. Although Colonel Arthur approved of it, his successor Sir John Franklin did not. The New South Wales colonial administration was also reluctant since it would have the financial burden of maintaining alien Aborigines who might resume hostile relations with colonists. In 1838 Robinson's plan was modified and approved. He was made Chief Protector of Aborigines in New South Wales, following Lord Glenelg's demands for the position, and

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was accompanied by about twenty Aboriginal volunteers from the Flinders Island Establishment. During these debates, the situation on the reserve had deteriorated. The Aborigines rejected many of Robinson's efforts at civilizing and converting. Although news of this reaction filtered to Hobart, Robinson was able to convince the government that it was due to the continued presence of sealers and whalers who visited the Establishment and caused dissension. In 1836 an act was passed to prevent their encroachment on Flinders Island.40 It expanded the powers of the commandant to include those of justice of the peace so Robinson could enforce the laws of trespass and stipulated that all Bass Strait islands were off limits to European settlement except with permission of either the lieutenantgovernor or the commandant. This component proved to be unenforceable given the distance from Hobart and because certain of those islands were outside colonial jurisdiction and could be used as places of refuge. Robinson took on his new posting as Protector of Aborigines before the government began to seriously investigate problems with the Establishment, the main one being the continued decline in the reserve population. A number of boards of enquiry were held under Lieutenant-Governor Franklin. The first of these defined a pattern for the next few years. The difficulties were seen as stemming from the competence and personalities of the European staff, though the Aboriginal Committee did return to Chief Justice Pedder's comments concerning the unsuitability of an island reserve for a nomadic people. In 1843 Lieutenant-Governor Franklin made his second visit to the Establishment and found things in reasonable order, but with a further reduction in population to fifty-four Aborigines. The next year the finance committee of the legislative council took a serious look at two issues. The first was the difficulty of controlling what went on in the reserve due to the distances involved. The second was high cost of running the Establishment, averaging over three thousand pounds a year. The committee recommended moving the Establishment back to the mainland. Public response was largely negative because of fears of Aborigines escaping into the bush and raiding settlements, and the plan was not carried out.

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

In 1846 the Aborigines sent two petitions, one to Queen Victoria and the other to the lieutenant-governor, complaining about the treatment received from the existing commandant—the eleventh such protest in a ten-year period. These letters provoked yet another enquiry, and more important a response from the Colonial Office to the new lieutenant-governor, Sir William Denison: Why should we persevere in a policy at once so costly to the author, and so fatal to the objects of it, I cannot imagine, particularly as the establishment had been created not so much to any benefit to [the Aborigines] as from a regard to the interests of the Colonists.41

The Colonial Office's demand for a solution was intensified by another factor. The press had begun to complain about increased intermarriage among European sealers/whalers and Aborigines. Sir William Denison took particular note of this, fearing that a "halfcaste" population would become a "future charge upon the colonial government."42 This comment was set against the further decline of the Aboriginal reserve population to forty-five people. As numerous commandants and boards of enquiry had suggested, the best solution to all these problems was to return the Aborigines to the mainland. In 1847, the Flinders Island Establishment was closed and the remaining Aborigines sent to Oyster Cove. As before, this was met by some public opposition, and concerned citizens sent a formal petition to the secretary of state. As one newspaper said: His Excellency still persists in their removal, and thus the scenes enacted in the colony in former years may form a dreadful feature in our future history. Their love of country which they imagine is usurped by intruders, their consequent hatred of the white population, their habits and dispositions will only add to the terror and uncertainty which their presence will create ... while bloodshed may follow.43

The idea that the forty-four Aborigines being transferred to Oyster Cove could instill this much terror is only intelligible because of their perceived status as "brutes," "monsters," and "beasts" of the most vicious kind. In addition, more practical interests were probably involved, such as the site's value as farmland and the inability to find

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employment for the remaining Aborigines and thereby cut the costs of the new reserve at a time when moneys were needed to promote the chances of Van Diemen's Land gaining self-government. The new location and the timing of the move were far from ideal. The Oyster Cove settlement had been a penal station which had been abandoned because of health problems. Expenditures on the reserve decreased after the achievement of colonial self-government in 1855, an event which was commemorated by renaming the colony Tasmania to remove the stigma of the convict system—if not of its treatment of Aborigines. The decline in expenditure over the next twenty years, however, should be seen in-relative terms. It was still greater on an annual per capita basis than the amounts spent on European paupers and destitute children: forty-five pounds on Aborigines, eleven on paupers, and fifteen on children in 1870.44 In other words, Aborigines were financially better treated than their closest European counterparts. Relocation to the Tasmanian mainland did not involve any rethinking of Aboriginal administration in spite of the finance committee's concerns and external criticisms. This was due in part to a pessimism that anything could be done beyond letting the inevitable extinction of the Aborigines happen. Two newspapers made the following comments about Tasmanian policy, and how civilization and conversion had been handled: Look at the means they had recourse to in the case of the remnant of the aboriginal of Tasmania! They were beguiled to the number of some hundreds from their native haunts to an Island in the Bass's Straits, where a system of restraint and plodding methodized daily pursuits was imposed on them, which would be perfectly unbearable to our own people, and has terminated in those savages pining away, and dying en masse. They were in the most literal sense, "civilised off the face of the earth" by that process of "vegetative existence." ... It would be tedious to detail the features of the "civilising" system pursued there. It is sufficient to mention that every habit and amusement peculiar to the Aborigines has been discouraged; the cumbrous and uncongenial forms and incidents of advanced civilization have been enforced on their everyday life; the native language has been suppressed; native names have been made to yield to those of the

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

Caesars, the Hannibals, and the Scipios; a disposition to indulge in the pleasures of the chase have been recorded as delinquency; and the verbal repetition of the Commandments and Catechism is alleged as evidence of religious progress, and a confutation of all disbelief as to the capacity of uncivilised races to appreciate the doctrines of Christianity.45

The second quotation and its reference to "pleasures of the chase" requires a context. One of the curious variants of the noble savage was the hunter with whom Europeans, particularly the upper classes, could identify.46 That identification spoke more generally to an early nineteenth century European model of liberal democracy in which individuals were free of external and artificial constraints and benefitted directly from the application of their own skills. The equation of sport with subsistence was also one representation of ambiguities about a general set of metaphors—[upper class.-lower class] :: [Europeans:non-Europeans] :: [present:past] :: [malesrfemales]. As the first of the above newspaper quotes indicates, there was a more serious worry among at least some colonists and colonial administrators over the declining Aboriginal population. The 1869 death of the "last male Tasmanian," William Lanny, made Aboriginal extinction in Tasmania inevitable. The event led to considerable soul-searching about the history of European interaction with Aborigines, specifically among British colonists and their descendants, which had fatalistic overtones: The historian of the next half-century will probably have to record more than one event such as to what we now allude ... [the extinction of] a one numerous division of the human family.... It is strange that wherever the white man has set his foot, in whatever quarter of the globe civilization has been implanted, there savage races have begun to rapidly degenerate and die out under the shadow of the "pale faces."47

After his death, there was a virtual romanticization of Lanny. He had been known as "King Billy" and had been presented to the Duke of Edinburgh as such during his royal visit to Hobart. Bonwick's reflections on their meeting included the comment that Lanny and the Duke were "conscious that they alone were in possession of royal blood."48 The royalty attributed to Lanny is interesting in a number of respects. The attribution derived from Robinson's

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practice, alluded to in a previous quote, of giving names to Aborigines which referred to famous Europeans and titles.49 Those titles were totally inconsistent with Parlevar social organization, and their use may better reflect the political desirability for the Crown to interact with heads of governments. Even more likely, Lanny's title may be akin to one given to a pet—a partially domesticated animal who could imitate European behaviour and was harmless and amusing. Lady Franklin had gone so far as to adopt an Aboriginal girl and introduce her to Hobart society; but then abandoned the child upon her own return to England.50 As mentioned, Lanny's death generated a quest for explanations concerning Tasmanian Aboriginal extinction. In addition to those critical of colonial policies, others were put forward of a different kind. These included religious interpretations, such as the "Laws of Providence" and Aboriginal indifference to divine "Obligations to Labour." An earlier form of that argument had been made by Reverend Atkins in 1836: Indeed from a large induction of facts, it seems to me to be a universal law in the Divine Government ... the savage tribes disappear before the progress of civilized races.... Indeed they have not complied with the conditions on which the "Lord of the earth" granted to the first progenitors of our race this habitable world. "For God blessed them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it."51

Scientific explanations were also proposed which differed little from the religious argument: "Such will sadly demonstrate Mr. Darwin's philosophy that 'The varieties of man seem to act upon each other in the same way as different species of animal; the stronger always extirpates the weaker'."52 When one considers that Darwin's The Origin of Species was only a decade old, and that Huxley had first applied his evolutionary theory to humans in 1863, to find it used to explain the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines is interesting. At the same time, the use made of Darwin's theory was no different in kind from previously held religious explanations. What these two explanations had in common was a kind of fatalism which allowed for an uncritical stance toward European colonization and government policy. If any human agency had to be blamed for negative

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

consequences, it was the Aborigines themselves who either rejected God's commands or were innately inferior and therefore unable to compete with successfully with Europeans. In those terms, the death of "the last Tasmanian Aborigine" in 1876 was tragic but unavoidable. From the vantage point of most Europeans at that time, Truganini was important only because she was viewed as the last of her race. If there was anything positive for Europeans about her death and the belief that the entire population was extinct, it was the ending of an Aboriginal problem in Tasmania—or so it seemed. In fact, the Aboriginal issue neither disappeared in Tasmania with the death of Truganini nor did she vanish as a persona from future political considerations. Considerably later, a series of developments would bring science directly into the Tasmanian political arena and reflect back on the scientific treatment of Lanny and Truganini. OSTEOLOGICAL RESEARCH, THE LANNY SCANDAL, AND TRUGANINI'S DEATH

Even before Darwin, Western science of the nineteenth century had undergone a number of transformations. The natural order was no longer seen as static, assumptions about the age of the earth had changed dramatically, and evidence had been found in Europe of very early forms of humans. All of these would have a bearing for future research on Tasmanian Aborigines. More immediately, they had already acquired the status of being among the most primitive humans in existence and hence important to philosophical and scientific discourse. Malthus, for example, viewed the Tasmanian Aborigines as an extreme example of a peoples "low in genius and resources" and second only to Tierra del Fuegoans who constituted "by general consent ... the bottom of the scale of human beings."53 This position also had moral connotations. One first-hand observer characterized Tasmanian Aborigines as at "the lowest stage of degradation."54 Malthus's reference to "low in genius" has special import. The capacity for reason had been seen for centuries by European intellectuals as a distinctly human attribute. The superiority of European civilization reflected on that race's superior innate intelligence and morality, both of which were seen as mental attributes. If the brain was the physical locus of mind, then exploring the mental was scientifically possible. The jumps from mind to brain and from brains

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to skulls were quickly made. As we have already seen, skulls were a means of classifying species and races, and it was assumed that crania could also be used to determine differences in size of brains as a measure of intellect. Anatomical museums began to play an important role in these endeavours. Museums brought together skeletal materials from around the world, including human specimens, which facilitated comparative analysis. This research also generated a growing demand for examples from all human populations. Given the status assigned to Tasmanian Aborigines, specimens from them were defined as central to any serious collection. By 1850 there were nineteen anatomical museums in Britain alone.55 Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains were found in most of them. Precise information on their acquisitions is unknown, though nine Tasmanian skulls were deposited at the Musee de PHomme in Paris from French expeditions which visited Van Diemen's Land from 1826 to 1829, 1830 to 1832, and in 1843. Tasmanian specimens were also listed in the 1831 catalogue of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, with one donation dated 1809-56 It was during this phase of comparison and collection that the theoretical importance of skulls began to emerge. The newly established "science" of phrenology dealt with the question of mental variation and used skull size and shape as indicators of differential intelligence, personality, and morality. One of its main proponents, Coombe, described phrenology as the merging of anatomy with philosophy to better understand human institutions and their development.57 A number of phrenological societies in Europe, North America and Australia were instrumental in collecting skull specimens. Physicians and surgeons were prominent in these organizations, as they were later in anthropological associations of the 1840s and after, which contributed to physical anthropology's adoption of phrenological assumptions and methods. Tangentially, the emergence of linguistics—more accurately philology—in the early nineteenth century illustrated the more general interest in mental properties and differential human progress.58 Milligan's work on Tasmanian Aboriginal language in 1859 was not atypical. He used his findings to draw conclusions about the mental capacity of Tasmanian Aborigines:

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

It has already been argued that the Aborigines had acquired very limited power of abstraction and generalisation. They possessed no words representing abstract ideas, for every variety of gum tree and wattle tree ... they had a name, but no equivalent for the expression "a tree"; neither could they express abstract qualities such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round, etc.; for "hard" they would say "like a stone."59

To arrive at the same results from the analysis of skulls and language was not accidental. Putting aside the issue of valid inferences about intelligence, both types of data involved comparisons between indigenes and Europeans with the latter being self-evidentially superior. This assumption was so powerful that findings inconsistent with it were sometimes thrown out or falsely reported.60 The importance of Tasmanian skeletal remains, especially skulls, to Western sciences prior to Darwin is reflected in a major scandal that occurred around the death of William Lanny. Immediately after his death in 1869, Lanny's body and grave were desecrated a number of times. Before being sent to the undertaker, his remains had been placed in the deadhouse of the government hospital in Hobart. While the corpse was there, two applications were made to the colonial secretary for permission to take the body for scientific research. One was from a representative of the Royal College of Surgeons in England, the other from the Royal Society of Tasmania. A review of the correspondence indicates that the government recognized the scientific value of the remains and was committed to donating them to the Royal Society. The spokesperson for the Royal College of Physicians accused the secretary of favouritism and threatened to act without permission. The government's plan appeared to be that Lanny would be buried, given his high visibility and status as the last male Tasmanian Aborigine, with all due regard to Christian conventions. It was also understood that his remains would be exhumed after a reasonable interval and handed over to the Royal Society. A local newspaper later became aware of this arrangement, and supported it in principle: Although needless to say that so valuable a skeleton would not be permitted to remain in the grave, and possibly no opposition would have been made to its removal, had it been taken by those entitled to hold it in the interests of the public and of science, without any violation of decency.61

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Two sets of violations did occur, however. While stored in the deadhouse, Lanny's head was skinned and the skull removed. It was replaced by one from a second cadaver of an indigent European. A second party later came and removed the hands and feet. When the funeral took place, some of the mourners demanded the coffin be opened for inspection because of rumours about mutilation. Lanny's remains passed cursory examination by the priest and the burial took place. The rumours persisted, and some citizens demanded the body be exhumed. The colonial secretary ordered the constabulary to protect the grave site until an exhumation could be done, but before they arrived the body had been dug up and parts of it scattered. No attempt was made to hide the actions, and the affair became public knowledge. The resultant fervour led to demands for a government inquiry which was supported by the press: We readily recognise the interest that future ages might have attached to the preservation of the bones of the last of a race who were the sole possessors of the Colony, and had our men of science applied their skill in embalming the body instead of resorting to an act so atrocious, public opinion would have gone with them; nay had they allowed the body to be placed decently in the grave, and in the course of time raised the bones for preservation, no fault would have been found, as the feelings of no survivor could have been outraged.... We hesitate not to say that the true discipline of pure science would have joined in, and not frustrated the effort of the Royal Society to secure the skeleton for preservation in the Tasmanian Museum. Such an anatomical figure would we believe a handsome figure, if offered to some English societies with its identity respectably guaranteed ... the common people have a better appreciation of decency and propriety than such of the so called upper classes of men of education.62

The inquiries held by the government were restricted to what had occurred at the hospital since it was a public institution. Those restrictions led the board members to resign after three days of meetings. When the colonial secretary was asked to reopen and expand the investigation, he refused. His rationale was that a court case against one of the culprits should satisfy public demands. The government revoked the hospital privileges of one of the perpetrators, though the

THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD

doctor in question later challenged the punishment. He argued that the colonial secretary had no grounds for putting Lanny in the deadhouse since he was a freeman and not a pauper. The physician's dismissal caused more public outcry than the desecration of Lanny, and numerous petitions were sent to the government for reinstatement. The press remained virtually silent in this matter. Not long after, the doctor was reinstated, later received a medal of honour and a fellowship from the Royal Society of Surgeons in Britain, and was elected to public office in Tasmania. The details of what happened to Lanny's remains are unknown; his skull is generally assumed to have ended up at the University of Edinburgh. A few years after the Lanny incident, the first publication dealing exclusively with Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains occurred. J.B. Davis's article made only brief reference to Darwin and Huxley, with considerably more attention going to Topinard, who was a member of the Gobineau school. Virtually no mention was made of evolutionary issues per se, Davis's main objective was to discover whether the Tasmanian Aborigines were a distinct race, particularly from the Australian Aborigines. He began the study with some general comments concerning European attitudes to the Tasmanian Aborigines and the objectives of science: Nothing was thought of the indigenous inhabitants, save as annoyances which stood in the way of the occupation of the land.... Until at length in the cause of humanity it became imperatively necessary for the public authorities to stop the long series of barbarous reprisals, and at the same time, if possible, to preserve the remnants of this people from speedy destruction.... The history of this indigenous people exceeds all others in its curious details, but we must not pursue it here. Our business is rather to gather up the scattered remnants of the race, to point out the discriminative value in the history of man, and to place it on permanent record.... The osteological remains of the Tasmanians are the most permanent record of their personal relics, and consequently almost the only relics of this kind that they have left behind.63

Like Huxley, Davis pointed out the intellectual and practical importance of bones to science. They were not the sole source of data for racial differentiation—Davis also cited type of hair and cultural traits such as the Tasmanian Aborigines' wearing the bones

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of their dead. The main thrust of Davis's research was with cranial capacities and their implications: "We can thus attain in this element of our comparison the surest and most indisputable evidence of the essential difference of these two races, and of the cerebral, hence most probably in the intellectual and moral superiority of the Tasmanian."64 Davis's qualification concerning the superiority of the Tasmanian over the Australian Aborigine stemmed from inconsistencies between differences in cranial capacity and cultural data. If the Tasmanians were intellectually superior, then they should have been more inventive; yet their material culture was deemed inferior to that of the Australians since it lacked certain items found among the latter, notably the boomerang. Davis attempted to account for this by referring to environmental variation as providing different stimuli for innovation, and he drew on cross-cultural data in which similar anomalies occurred. At the same time, he made little of the actual differences in cranial capacities. He found a mean difference of 1.7 cubic inches (107 c.c.) between Tasmanian and Australian skulls— roughly 2 percent. In addition, he noted that virtually nothing was known about the physical diversity of Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes, and he recognized considerable variation in body size within his sample but did not qualify his inferences on these grounds. Returning to his main objective, Davis concluded that the Tasmanian and Australian Aborigines were distinct races. He asserted there was no physical or cultural evidence for considering them to be the same or to argue for Tasmanian affinities with other nearby races such as the Papuan or Polynesian. In emphasizing the uniqueness of the Tasmanian Aborigine, Davis ended by saying: It has been fitting therefore, that we should have described the relics of the Tasmanian man, and endeavoured to give him that permanence of record, which he will owe to the Transactions of one of the most celebrated of the learned societies in Europe, which is always ready to embrace in its proceedings any valid contribution appertaining to the chiefest of human sciences—anthropology.65

Not surprisingly, the death of Truganini, "the last Tasmanian Aborigine," evoked even more interest. When announced in The Mercury of May 9, 1876, reference was made to the Lanny

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incident with the pious hope that it would not be repeated. Rumours abounded to the effect that even prior to her death an agreement had been reached between the Royal Society and the government over what would happen to her remains. Whether Truganini herself had heard of the rumour or simply feared being treated like Lanny is unknown. She did ask her minister and physician to promise that her body would not be mutilated. Apparently she asked for a burial which would spare her this humiliation—either in the mountains or in D'Entrecasteaux Channel. On the day of Truganini's death, the Royal Society applied to the colonial secretary for her remains. He acknowledged that if the body were to be "made available to science," the society's claim would have priority to such a "unique specimen" of the now extinct race. The request, however, was soon after refused because of strong community sentiments, and preventative measures were taken by the government to avoid a repetition of the 1869 events. Truganini's remains were removed from the hospital in secret and transported to a secure place of burial. Before the graveside service, witnesses checked to see that her body was in the coffin and unharmed. News coverage, though critical of the secrecy, was favourable to the care taken by the government. Again, the papers made mention that the Royal Society of Tasmania would eventually receive her remains. In 1878 the Royal Society formally applied for permission to disinter Truganini's skeleton: The Museum has not a good skeleton of the female aborigine, and, to quote from a former letter (July 12, 1876) on the subject, "it must be borne in mind that from the fact of the entire history of the deceased being well known this specimen must beyond all others be regarded as truly genuine; and as the last of her race must always be unique. It must therefore be difficult to conceive that any portion of an enlightened and rational community could object to have the skeleton preserved in our National Collection". In fact in the eyes of the civilised world it would be a scandal to Tasmania were such a type of the now extinct Aborigine of our Island not be secured to the colony for all future time.66

Unlike the first the request, this one made minimal reference to research interests. The value of Truganini's remains were defined relative to their symbolic value. Considerable attention was also

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paid to potential detractors, labelling them by inference as unenlightened, irrational, and uncivilized. The colonial secretary replied favourably, and permission to exhume Truganini's skeleton was granted, with the proviso that her remains would not go on public display though scientists should be granted access to them. Whether public demand to see the remains led to a formal cancellation of this restriction is unknown, but a few years later the skeleton was put on display in the museum where it remained until 1947. These events are first of all informative about more general scientific attitudes. The treatment of Lanny's and Truganini's remains cannot be taken as representing a totally distinct attitude towards Aborigines. It was only in 1832 that specific legislation was passed in Britain prohibiting grave robbing by anatomists and surgeons.67 Similarly Broca, the noted physical anthropologist, had done historical research using skulls taken from cemeteries in Paris to test his ideas about increased cranial capacity over a 600-year period.68 Scientists saw their search for knowledge as transcending the limitations of "ordinary" morality; put in another way, scientific amorality was the highest form of morality. In the same vein, many British scientists of the period held that science should be totally separated from politics. Statistics, for example, was initially denied formal recognition as a science because that historical association was deemed to be inconsistent with objectivity.69 More important, the Tasmanian incidents point to the relationship of science to politics and religion. An examination of the origins and membership of the Royal Society of Tasmania is informative. It had been founded by Lieutenant-Governor Wilmot in 1843 following the earlier efforts of Franklin. The society was allocated an annual grant of 5,000 pounds from colonial revenues. In 1869 the governor of Tasmania was an honourary member, the colonial secretary a life member, and nine of the fourteen officials in the legislative council were also life members. In essence, the political elite of Tasmania were part of the intellectual elite and thus shared a common set of assumptions and interests about science. This class bias was not just an accident of colonial settlement: science was a "gentlemanly" pursuit. (British geology was the notable exception by its inclusion of those working in the mining industry.)70 Given the desecration of Lanny's grave and Truganini's deathbed request to a clergyman, the silence of the Anglican Church is

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striking. One letter to the Mercury of March 12, 1869 went as far as to ask if the minister conducting Lanny's funeral had deliberately attempted to cover up the mutilation. Again, the membership data on the Royal Society is informative. The Lord Bishop of Tasmania was a life member, and the archdeacon a vice-president. Add the facts that those officials were also senior members of government and the church itself an agent of the state in implementing Aboriginal policy since the 1830s, and the silence is not surprising. Virtually the only negative voice from within the elites came from the owner and editor of the Mercury. He too was a Royal Society member. His editorials during the Lanny scandal, however, were only critical of the propriety of those who had desecrated the remains. He did not attack the rights of science to the skeleton, nor was any protest made later about either the disinterment of Truganini's remains or their public display. Overall, the political, economic, and religious elite of Tasmania considered scientific claims to those remains totally appropriate, and nonelite detractors were perceived as uninformed and concerned with petty moral issues. Tasmanian Aboriginal bones represented a crucial source of information about humanness and its origins. To deny access to such evidence was to restrict the growth of scientific knowledge which was a self-evident good. NOTES

1. J.C. Beaglehole. 1955. The Journal of Captain James Cook on his Voyage of Discovery I. London: Cambridge University Press; J. Bonnemains, et al. 1988. Baudin in Australian Waters. Melbourne: Oxford University Press; DJ. Mulvaney. 1989. Encounters in Place, Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 16061985. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. 2. For more detailed descriptions see: Lyndall Ryan. 1981. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 7-46; and Rhys Jones. 1974. "Appendix: Tasmanian Tribes." In Tribes of Australia, edited by Norman B. Tindale. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 3. This discussion is derived largely from W.A. Townsley. 1951. The Strugglefor Self-Government in Tasmania 1842-56. Hobart: L.G. Shea. 4. Ibid., 17-18.

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5. James Bischoff. 1832. Sketch of the History of Van Diemen's Land. London: John Richardson, Royal Exchange; Henry Melville. 1836. The History of Van Diemen 's Land from the Year 1824 to 1835, Inclusive During the Administration of 'Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, edited by George Mackaness. Sydney: Horwitz and Grahame; John West. 1852. The History of Tasmania. Launceston: Henry Dowling; James Bonwick. 1870. The Last of the Tasmanians: Or, The Black War of Van Diemen's Land. London: Sampson, Low, Son and Marston; Clive Turnbull. 1948. Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Melbourne: ChesireLandsdowne; Lyndall Ryan. 1981. Aboriginal Tasmanians. 6. Cited in A.T. Yarwood and M.J. Knowling.1982. Race Relations in Australia. Melbourne: Methuen Australia, 35. 7. West, History of Tasmania, 269. 8. Bonwick, Last Tasmanians, 29. 9. Cited in Melville, Van Diemen's Land, 3310. Cited in Ibid., 56-57. 11. Britain. 1831. British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon: Irish University Press, 20. 12. Ibid., 25. 13. The Colonial Times, December 1, 1826. 14. Anne McKay. 1962. Journals of the Land Commissioners for Van Diemen's Land 1826-1828. Hobart: O.B.M. Publishing, 74. 15. Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 200-01. 16. Cited in Bischoff, Sketch, 188-89. 17. Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 56-57. 18. Turnbull, Black War, 97-98. 19- Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 59. 20. Cited in Bischoff, Sketch, 23321. Turnbull, Black War, 123. 22. C. Mcllvanie. 1985. People in Social Environments (II). Armidale: Armidale College of Advanced Education, 6. 23. Anthony Armstrong. 1973. The Church of England: The Methodists and Society (1700-1850). London: University of London Press, 92. 24. Vivienne Rae-Ellis. 1988. Black Robinson: Protector of Aborigines. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 19. 25. Britain. 1836. British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon: Irish University Press, ii. 26. Ibid., 9.

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27. Roy H. Pearce. 1965. The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 19. 28. Britain. 1836, Parliamentary Papers, 929. Ibid., 14. 30. Ibid., 663. 31. Henry Reynolds. 1987. The Law of the Land. Harmondsmith: Penguin Books, 97-98. 32. Michael Banton and Jonathan Harwood. 1975. The Race Concept. New York: Praeger, 23-26. 33. Cited in Bischoff, Sketch, 259. 34. For more detailed discussions of Robinson's efforts see: Vivienne Rae-Ellis, Black Robinson, 37-104; and N.J. Plomley. 1966. Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Printed Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834. Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association. 35. Britain. 1836, Parliamentary Papers, 7936. Melville, Van Diemeris Land, 78. 37. Reynolds, Law of the Land, 99-102. 38. West, History of Tasmania, 311. 39. Sharmon N. Stone. 1974. Aborigines in White Australia: A Documentary History of the Attitudes Affecting Official Policy and the Australian Aborigine, 1697-1973- London: Heinemann Educational Books, 40-43. 40. Tasmania. 1957. "Gulielmi IV, Regis, 15, 1836." The Public General Acts of Tasmania 1826-1936. Sydney: Butterworths. 41. Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 202. 42. Ibid., 202. 43. Turnbull, Black War, 226. 44. Tasmania. 1854-1870. Tasmanian Statistics. Hobart Town: Government Printer. 45. Bonwick, Last Tasmanians, 351. 46. James Urry. 1985. "'Savage Sportsmen.'" In Seeing the First Australians, edited by Ian Donaldson and Tasmin Donaldson. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 51-67. 47. The Mercury, March 5, 1869. 48. Bonwick, Last Tasmanians, 395. 49. "King Billy" is also a common Australian nickname used for Aboriginal males. Whether it derived from Lanny's title is unclear. See Sydney J. Baker. 1966. The Australian Language. Melbourne: Sun Books, 318. 50. Bonwick, Last Tasmanians, 382-83; Turnbull, Black War, 231. 51. Turnbull, Black War, 229-

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52. Bonwick, Last Tasmanians, 377. 53. John R. Baker. 1974. Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 21. 54. Thomas Dove. 1842. "Moral and Social Characteristics of the Aborigines of Tasmania, as Gathered from Intercourse with the Surviving Remnant of them now Located on Flinders Island." Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science 1:249. 55. F.J. Cole. 1944. A History of Comparative Anatomy. London: McMillan and Company, 454. 56. N.J.B. Plomley. 1962. "A List of Tasmanian Aboriginal Material in Collections in Europe." Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Launceston) 15:1-17. 57. A. Erickson. 1977. "Phrenology and Physical Anthropology: The George Coombe Collection." Current Anthropology 18(l):92-93. 58. Robert E. Bieder. 1986. Science Encounters the Indian 1820-1880. Norman: University of Nebraska Press, 24. 59. Joseph Milligan. 1876. "On Dialects and Language of the Aboriginal Tribes of Tasmania, and on their Manners and Customs." In The Aborigines of Victoria with Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of other Pans of Australia and Tasmania, edited by R. B. Smith. Melbourne: John Currey, O'Neil, 41360. Stephen J. Gould. 1959. "Morton's Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity." Science 200:503-9. 61. The Mercury, March 8, 1868. 62. The Mercury, March 9, 1869. 63. Joseph B. Davis. 1874. "On the Osteology and Peculiarities of the Tasmanians, A Race of Man Recently Become Extinct." Natururkundige Vehandelingen der Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wtenschappen 2(4):4. 64. Ibid., 15. 65. Ibid, 19. 66. Letter from the Royal Society of Tasmania to the Colonial Secretary, December 4, 1878. Hobart: State Archives of Tasmania. 67. Jane Hubert. 1989. "A Proper Place for the Dead: A Critical Review of the 'Reburial' Issue." Journal of Indigenous Studies 1(1):31. 68. Stephen J. Gould. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Penguin, 82-107. 69. Mary Poovey. 1993. "Figures of Arithmetic, Figures of Speech: The Discourse of Statistics in the 1830s." Critical Inquiry 19(2):26l-64. 70. Martin J.S. Rudwick. 1985. The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge Among Gentlemanly Specialists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 17-41.

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THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF RACE (1876-1950)

Happy Tasmania to have possessed the most apelike form of man. Unhappy Tasmania, to have been so ignorant as to not appreciate your privilege to have exterminated in your wanton ignorance this priceless survival Harry Johnston, 1894

CHAPTER III

H

LTHOUGH THE CONCEPT OF RACE was not an exclusively scientific category, its significance within science provided an increasingly important source of legitimacy for its political use. Social Darwinism was one such extension, providing explanations which fed into government policy making. As will be seen, that concept and theory would have major implications within Tasmania for Aboriginal peoples after the death of Truganini. Before considering those developments, an overview will be given on scientific research on Tasmanian Aborigines, with particular attention to osteology. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY (1876-1928)

In the year of Truganini's death, R. Brough Smyth published the first study of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture.1 He used reports from explorers, government officials, missionaries, and historians to reconstruct the pre-European Parlevar way of life. After a brief discussion of Tasmanian physical and mental characteristics, he gave some attention to the issue of extinction and did so by distinguishing between "race" and "traditions of the race." In describing those traditions, Smyth looked at kinship, religion, population size, environment, settlement patterns, subsistence, medicine, and material culture. Special attention was paid to stone tools, though without drawing any conclusions as to the relative inferiority or superiority of the Tasmanian assemblage. His analysis of it was limited to variation in forms, uses, and materials. Last, Smyth was somewhat critical of existing opinions about Tasmanian Aborigines: "Low as they were, they were human in all that they did and did not do, and nearer to ourselves—and not to the worst among us—than the so-called civilised peoples of cities would be willing to admit. "2 This comment reflected on the greater humanism of cultural studies by comparison with physical anthropology. At the same time, Smyth exemplified a general bias which cross-cut these distinctions. It was with "pure" forms, whether they be the physical characteristics of races or what Smyth called their "traditions." As noted above, there were individuals of mixed Aboriginal and European descent in Tasmania. Smyth dismissed them as carriers of Aboriginal culture, which was assumed to be static and corrupted by European influence. By inference, peoples of mixed ancestry

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did not have a "true" culture. What we would now call acculturation was deemed then to be an artificial kind of change which placed individuals between cultures (Aboriginal and European), and thus of no interest to anthropology. In so far as cultural anthropology was concerned with processes, evolution was dominant in the late nineteenth century because it was seen as natural and addressed fundamental questions of human variation and differential development. In 1871 E.B. Tylor argued for the study of culture as distinct subject matter, one that could be examined independent of race although its evolution was governed by similar processes.3 He viewed culture as the distinguishing species trait—all peoples had culture, even though some lacked civilization. Tylor's comparative method allowed ethnography to inform prehistory. In his preface to Roth's reconstruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, Tylor restated Huxley's earlier assumption that it was equivalent to those of prehistoric peoples in Europe.4 The Tasmanian Aborigines therefore had a value far beyond providing one instance of cultural variation. In commenting on Tasmanian Aboriginal research, Tylor said: It has no small importance in the light it throws upon the problem of civilisation. A people isolated from interference from without, and in harmony with their "milieu environment", to use the term of Lamarck, so that circumstances to no great extent compel improvement or bring on decay, may, it seems, remain comparatively unchanged in their level of culture, even from remote prehistoric ages, just as mollusca of species first appearing far back in the earlier formations may continue to live and thrive in modern seas.5

Tylor's conception of culture included material elements, of which tools were the most important. Bone and stone tools were not only the most likely remains of early cultures to be found, they were, again following Huxley, an indicator of evolutionary development and capacity for innovation (intellect). As a recently extinct people, all that could be learned about Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, besides from archival records, was through archaeological research. For both culturally specific and general theoretical interests, Tasmanian Aboriginal artifacts were in demand by the end of

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the nineteenth century. The single largest collection, in the PittRivers Museum, contained over 12,000 stone implements donated by Westlake, who remarkably had acquired them in a two year period (1908-10).6 The second major collection was a private one owned by the Crowther family of Tasmania. Although it had been started in the 1860s, the bulk of it was obtained in the first third of the twentieth century and consisted of twenty crania and thousands of artifacts.7 Over roughly the same period, Tasmania took on increased scientific prominence. One dimension of that prominence concerned a set of questions specific to Australia. The first of these was about the antiquity of the land and the species found there, including humans, which glacial evidence could answer in Tasmania, if not the rest of the country.8 The second had to do with the relationship of Tasmanian and Australian Aborigines. In 1898 Howitt posited that the Tasmanians were a remnant of the original Aboriginal population of Australia, who had become isolated by the formation of Bass Strait separating the island from the mainland.9 In effect, to study Australian prehistory in the more comprehensive sense meant concentrating on Tasmania. Further, the Tasmanian Aboriginals were crucial to any examination of where the first humans to arrive on the continent had come from. As Horton notes, the dominance of Tasmanian research on these archaeological questions lasted until 1928, afterwards shifting to the mainland.10 In summary, what is important to note is that ethnography would be non-existent in Tasmania, archaeology providing all relevant cultural information until the 1970s. Political claims to Aboriginal status would be judged against shared European assumptions of Aboriginality in which supposedly scientifically objective and politically disinterested definitions and research would carry weight. OSTEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN TASMANIA (1907-40)

Although T.H. Huxley first drew attention to the importance of Tasmanian and Australian Aboriginal skulls within the Darwinian theory of evolution in the 1860s,11 only in the early twentieth century did any systematic cranial investigation begin. This lag probably had less to do with the distance separating Tasmania from Europe than it did from the willingness of scientists to put humans fully within

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nature and thus look at them as just another species (Darwin himself included). Oddly, Darwin seemed to be more willing to take a Lamarckian approach to species as an analytic category, while emphasizing the "naturalness" of it when applied to humans and by extension to races. As will be seen, that view of race along with other scientific inputs would come to have serious political implications in Tasmania. The reminiscences of one Tasmanian researcher and collector about his days as a medical student in Melbourne during the first quarter of the twentieth century provide insight into the increased theoretical importance of Tasmanian Aboriginal crania: I was in the class of Professor R.TA. Berry, a renowned Anatomist.... To assist his research and obtain additional skeletal material, he made an appeal to his country students to bring him any skulls.... I told him of the possibility of exhuming bodies at Oyster Cove.... We exhumed I would say about 12 bodies and the parts usable for tracing were brought to Hobart and thence to Melbourne for the full examination of the remains. The remainder were reverently reinterred.... Professor Berry's team made exhaustive studies of the remains, the results of which were published.... At the time of this exploitation of Aboriginal remains, we were quite unconcerned as to the morality of the undertaking.12

The research done by Berry and his associates on Tasmanian Aboriginal crania will be considered in some detail because it is representative of pre-1940s osteological assumptions, questions, and methods. Although Berry's first publication on Tasmanian Aborigines did not deal with crania per se, his comments are informative about the scientific study of race. He emphasized the importance of racial typologies and the kinds of data used in them—hair type, skin colour, and skeletal characteristics.13 With the possible exception of inferences from hair, Berry argued that the Tasmanian Aborigines were an ancient race whose closest relatives were the Papuans of New Guinea, not neighbouring Australian Aborigines. Implicit in these comparisons was the importance of determining human migrations from a central point of origin, a question established well before the advent of evolutionary arguments. Berry also made mention of his first-hand experience with a "half-caste" Tasmanian (one European and one Aboriginal parent)

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and her "quarter-caste" children. In describing the woman, he commented that her hair was different from that of people of full Aboriginal ancestry because of the addition of "white blood," and stated: 64 In conversing with her, the two facts which impressed me most strongly were her remarkable intelligence and the absolute purity of her English speech, and had I not actually heard her, I could not have believed that such intelligence could have been derived in one generation from a race, often, but perhaps quite erroneously, believed to have been one of the most degraded and brutal in the world's races.14

Berry's surprise indicates common assumptions about the intelligence gap between indigenous peoples and Europeans. The supposedly remarkable increase in intelligence from hybridization obviously contradicted Berry's expectations which may have come from the Darwinian theory of gradual progress, or from Gobineau's degeneration theory, which still had credibility in the Darwinian era. The few researchers interested in hybridization as a process tended to define individuals of mixed racial descent as "unnatural" following Blumenbach's characterization. This view followed from the belief that races are natural categories, each of which has a long and separate history that has resulted in a specific combination of physical, intellectual, and moral traits. This stigmatization can be seen as a particular expression of a more general problem found in all classification schemes. As Edmund Leach later argued, efforts to create discrete categories which exhaust variability of any phenomenon typically confront anomalies—things that lie "betwixt and between" categories—that challenge the validity of schema and their underlying principles of organization.15 Biological hybrids represented such an anomaly, combining characteristics of what should be distinct species or races. Labelling hybrids as unnatural is one expression of that tension, as was the association of them in the human sciences with mental and social degeneration. This retrospective on the European intellectual context might well portray Berry's openness about the level of Tasmanian Aboriginal intelligence as liberal, but his second publication took a more conservative stance consistent with Darwinian evolutionary theory:

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When we reflect that the Tasmanian aboriginal carried with him into the nineteenth century, even into our own times, the primitive culture of palaeolithic man, and into his bodily organism many of the structural peculiarities of Homo Neanderthalensis, we shall perhaps commence to realize the importance of the study of Tasmanian remains.... One of the earliest purposes to which it proposed to utilize the present material is the determination of the relationship between the Tasmanian to anthropoids and primitive man on the one hand, and the Australian aboriginal on the other.16

The material referred to were fifty-three crania. In the survey of museum holdings, Berry and Robertson identified forty-two previously unknown skulls in private collections, adding them to the total world inventory of seventy-nine. Commenting on this inventory, they were critical of other researchers who had rejected specimens having too large cranial capacities—an a priori judgment about the range of variation. Those rejected had typically been labelled "half-caste," in spite of having over 90 percent of the characteristics considered to be definitive of the "pure blood" race. Berry and Robertson also noted that there were a number of anthropological and anatomical measurement schemes for such characteristics. Two professional associations (The British Association for the Advancement of Science and a European international commission) had in 1905-6 established a uniform system of cranial measurements. In effect, this meant that virtually every skull in existence had to be remeasured to ensure comparability of results. As will be seen next, evolutionary theory had placed greater emphasis on the measurement problem than had earlier classificatory research. Berry and Robertson's next publication focused on cranial comparisons from a number of different species and races, using twenty-six measurements.17 The goal was to construct a hierarchy of cerebral capacity which was assumed to mirror evolutionary development. The results of the study provided a rank ordering from least to most highly evolved: (1) nearest anthropoid, (2) pithecanthropus erectus, (3) Homo neanderthalensis, (4) Mongolian, (5) Homo fosilis, (6) Tasmanian Aborigine, (7) Cro-Magnon, (8) Ethiopian, (9) Caucasian, and (10) Negroid. In interpreting the results, particular attention was paid to discrepancies. Given Eurocentric assumptions, the ranking of Caucasians below Negroids

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was first; the second was the low rank assigned to Mongolians. Both anomalies were explained away by the nonrepresentativeness of the skulls used. The notion of representativeness was not a statistical one. The samples ranged from one skull of a gorilla to fortyfour Tasmanian Aboriginal crania, and no attempt was made to differentiate specimens by age or sex. These comparisons were done primarily to locate the Tasmanian Aborigine in an evolutionary sequence—a focus coming from their status as the most primitive of human races. In their discussion of the results, Berry and Robertson concluded: It is clear that the cranium of the Cro-Magnon man has attained a slightly higher level of morphological evolution than has the Tasmanian, but very little.... Our placing of the neolithic Cro-Magnon on the morphologically plus side of the eolithic Tasmanian, so far as from giving any cause for surprise, is seen ... as nothing more than confirmatory proof of the position hypothetically allotted to him by the ethnologist.... Of the Tasmanian himself, it is clear our final results place his position in Nature very accurately. Of recent man, the Tasmanian stands nearest to homo fossilis, but morphologically has progressed a long way from homo primigenius and the anthropoid apes—very much further than most writers would seem to believe ... we are led to conclude that the morphological evolution of the Tasmanian has progressed, at the time of his extinction, on is own independent lines, and to a higher plane than is generally admitted or supposed. That his mental culture was on such a primitive plane is fully explained by his complete and total isolation for many countless years, and not to the fact that his physical organisation was incapable of attaining a more improved degree of culture.... That the "lately extinct Tasmanians recall the mental level of eolithic man in Britain" we can quite believe, but that ... the Tasmanian, "carries us back nearly to the Neanderthal physical type", we must, as the result of the present investigation, deny.18

Berry and Robertson assigned to the recently extinct Tasmanian Aborigines an evolutionary status which was barely human and many thousands of years behind that of their closest European counterparts. As we have seen, this was far from novel. Once again, these researchers used isolation to explain inconsistencies between the level of mental development ascribed to the

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Tasmanian Aborigines by cranial capacity and their culture. Although not specified, this likely meant either the lack of diffusion of cultural elements from interaction with others or the absence of interracial competition and its selective pressures. The next study dealt with the long-standing debate over the racial purity of Australian Aborigines which had implications for tracking their origins.19 Cranial comparisons from three populations— Australian Aboriginal, Tasmanian Aboriginal, and Papuan—were used to resolve the issue. The Tasmanian specimens were assumed to represent a pure race and the Papuan skulls a racial mixture. The Tasmanian sample was more uniform than the Papuan, and the final results placed the Australian Aborigines mid-way between the other two and suggested that the Australian Aboriginal population was the result of a mixture of two distinct and unknown races. In contrast to previous cranial research by the Berry team, this study employed a range of statistical techniques (correlation coefficients, standard deviations), referred to representativeness of sample sizes, and differentiated measurements on the basis of sex. This application of biometrics stemmed from developments in the field at the turn of the century. What those new techniques were seen as providing were improved means of quantifying racial differences. Individual cranial measures had previously been treated independently, and led to different rank orderings of species and races depending on the dimensions used and the weights given to them. Likewise, averaging scores masked variations across specimens within species and racial categories, which (given small sample sizes) made those scores sensitive to extreme cases. The emergence of more sophisticated measurement techniques was not accidental. Rather, it was a consequence of Darwinian evolutionary theory and its demands. The emphasis on variability of traits within populations on which the environment operated selectively made variation the key problem. Karl Pearson, one of the pioneers of statistical methods in the human sciences stated in 1901: The first step in an inquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate of the frequency with which individuals, exhibiting any degree of abnormality with respect to that character, occur. The unit, with which such an inquiry must deal, is not an individual but a race; and the result must take the form of a

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numerical statement, showing the relative frequency with which the various kinds of individuals composing the race must occur.20

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Pearson and his followers saw variation as a technical matter. What they did not address is whether the cranial measures used had any validity for determining differential intelligence, even though anomalies were increasingly being noted between cranial capacities and material culture. The growing interest in methodological issues concerning measurement deflected attention from these anomalies. The twenty-six dimensions measured to form an evolutionary hierarchy had no specific rationale other than the existence of differences; their use for ranking purposes was based on the assumptions that European crania represented the most highly evolved race of humans. The degree of similarity to European cranial characteristics determined other races' position on the evolutionary hierarchy. When data on a particular cranial characteristic contradicted this assumption to the point where they could not be ignored, the dimension itself became suspect. As Berry and Robertson concluded in one instance, "It cannot be a point of very great evolutionary importance."21 There were, however, scientists critical of such convenient interpretations. Turner, for example, concluded that Europeans were closer in certain respects to anthropoids than were Tasmanian Aborigines and did not seek to explain the matter away.22 The final study in the Berry series expanded on the Australian and Tasmanian Aborigine relationship.23 Thirty-six cranial measurements were made on samples from each population, and a variety of inferences were drawn from them. The first concerned the Aboriginals' relative evolutionary status. The data supported ranking Tasmanian slightly higher than Australian Aborigines, though the greater degree of variation among the latter meant that some individuals were more highly evolved than any Tasmanian. The second major conclusion was that Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines shared a common racial origin, while Australian Aborigines were a hybrid. The Tasmanian Aborigines Europeans met were descended from this original race, called Homo Tasmanianus, which was assumed to be widely distributed throughout the Pacific Islands. This race constituted the initial migrants to the Australian continent. Whereas the Tasmanian population had remained isolated from further contact and thus retained characteristics of the original race

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into the present, the existing Australian Aborigines had intermarried with later migrants from different races. The use of hybridization to account for these differences had more general implications for research. Whereas conclusions concerning the racial mixture of contemporary Australian Aborigines logically demanded archaeological research to uncover the characteristics of earlier races and the sequence of their arrival, no such requirement existed for Tasmanian Aborigines. In part, the relative importance of pre-historic data was legitimized by differences in degree of variability in modern populations; but no formal criteria were stated which determined how much variability was needed before it was assumed that present populations differed from those of the remote past. The late 1940s marked, for all practical purposes, the end of cranial research on Tasmanian Aborigines—although it did continue in a more limited way which will be considered in chapter 5. A comprehensive 1965 survey of the literature concerning Tasmanian cranial research listed six citations between 1930 and 1939, one between 1940 and 1949, and none in the 1950s.24 The reasons given for this sharp decline were the paucity of available specimens, problems with the provenance of certain skulls, and their scattering among museums and private collections around the world.25 A better explanation for the decline in cranial research lies in changes in scientific and political thinking. Looking first at science, the assumption that skeletal characteristics were relatively stable over generations had been under attack since the early 1900s. Evidence for plasticity continued to mount, to the point where it was difficult to maintain that modern specimens could be used to make inferences about prehistoric populations without first determining whether any changes had in fact occurred. The notion that the brain was the most important factor in human evolution had also been increasingly challenged. Hammond notes that in the 1930s, there was a "cerebral lobby" in physical anthropology resistant to the growing emphasis on other characteristics. One spokesperson for this lobby stated: "Man is what he is because of his brain. The problem is a brain problem. The story of the human brain has to be read from casts taken from the interior of fossil skulls."26 The assumption that mental differences could be conveniently measured by skull capacity or characteristics had an

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increasing number of detractors. The reasons for it had less to do with the results of research than with social and political factors. Skulls were first and foremost a means of hierarchically differentiating races by intelligence and morality, distinctions which had also been both applied to ethnic groups within Europe and used to legitimize discrimination. As Marvin Harris comments, that World War II intensified an anti-racism movement in the United States was not accidental; it can attributed to the waves of immigration that had begun in the last part of the nineteenth century and the importance of those immigrants to the emergence of "welfare capitalism."27 Social Darwinism came under attack for its connections to elitist conceptions of liberal democracy by intellectuals from non-British and non-elite backgrounds. The human sciences were no longer the exclusive domain of "gentlemen," and claims about previously accepted scientific knowledge as disinterested and objective began to be queried. Those critics tended to have a more pluralistic view of the state and to identify with the less "privileged" segments of society. THE POLITICIZATION OF RACE (1876-1950)

By the early twentieth century, the existence of racially mixed individuals had become problematic for a number of colonial nations. Racially mixed populations were increasing and they were not only scientifically "betwixt and between," but socially and politically anomalous. The term mulatto (mule) applied to inter-racial offspring captures the spirit of European assumptions: it identified something "unnatural" and incapable of further reproduction. The latter assumption was false, the former a source of tension. These racially mixed persons, were not, as was often assumed, entirely the result of random matings. In the United States, initial European exploration and settlement west of the Mississippi was almost exclusively male, and their survival in Indian territory virtually required intermarriage. Similarly, the Canadian fur trade generated a "mixed-breed" population, the Metis, as did pastoralism in Australia. In limited numbers, such persons were initially seen as advantageous to governments and companies. Individuals of mixed descent were ideal middlemen for purposes of trade and alliance formation. The 1830s British parliamentary select committee discussions of civilization and conversion made

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occasional reference to those individuals as convenient agents for policy implementation. Anthropologists also utilized people who by virtue of birth bridged European and indigenous cultures. The virtual partnership of Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau with William Beynon (who was of mixed Indian and European descent) in the early part of the twentieth century lasted for four decades, and Franz Boas employed also Beynon to collect data.28 More generally, racial mixing was viewed negatively. If indigenous peoples were pereceived to be morally inferior to Europeans, then individuals of mixed descent were doubly stigmatized. They were commonly depicted in nineteenth and early twentieth century literature as an embodiment of evil which combined the worst moral characteristics of both races.29 Political efforts to resolve the anomalous status of persons of mixed descent involved both biological and cultural criteria. The use of the latter was highly limited for reasons which will become clear. In nineteenth century Canada and the United States, a white man residing with Indians (particularly when married to an Indian) and living like them was often incorporated under treaty provisions.30 This socio-cultural definition created problems in terms of expenditures and protection of Indian land holdings. Pure Indian descent became a prerequisite for special political status when administration of that status became difficult and costly. This technical solution to the question of who could legitimately claim Aboriginal status had major human implications. For example, in Canada legislation was passed in 1869 to permit the involuntary enfranchisement of Indian women marrying white men, which also applied to their offspring.31 This meant more than a label. Individuals defined as white could not live on reserves and therefore were physically separated from their families and friends in many instances. For governments, the notion of racial purity can be seen as administratively and financially convenient. It reduced the number of individuals recognized as indigenes and the perpetuation of problems which this status involved. Tasmania exemplifies this pattern. As noted in the previous chapter, Lieutenant-Governor Denison feared that the half-caste population would become "a future charge." His concerns proved to be real, as we shall see next, and were intensified by the belief that a final solution to the Aboriginal problem had occurred with the death of Truganini and the extinction of her race.

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Tasmania's half-castes originated from European incursions into Bass Strait, not from the Crown sponsored colonization of Van Diemen's Land. Sealing and whaling involved a constant search for resources and brought Europeans into the South Pacific beginning in the eighteenth century. Bass Strait provided a major hunting ground, particularly for seals. The industry flourished from about 1800 to 1810 and was dominated by companies from Sydney.32 The actual hunting and processing was done by "gangs" dropped off on the islands by a mother ship, creating a transient European population in the strait. Decline of seal stocks led to a shift of corporately organized hunting to other areas, and smaller scale sealing took over with more permanent forms of European settlement on the islands. These settlements combined subsistence activities with sealing. In addition, those communities became a haven for escaped convicts, which gave the sealers a reputation as "a banditti of bush rangers."33 More important, these exclusively male settlements raided Aboriginal bands for women and children, who provided the basis for a racially mixed population. With the decline in sealing, there emerged a subsistence economy combining European and Aboriginal elements—gardening, pastoralism, foraging, and small game hunting. Socially and politically, the island communities consisted of loosely organized bands under the leadership of headmen. Although sometimes characterized as criminals, these sealers, as they were known, were left alone by the colonial government until the 1830s when efforts to establish an Aboriginal reserve on the Bass Strait islands began. As mentioned, the lieutenant-governor rejected Robinson's demands to remove the sealers. In addition to the difficulty of enforcement with the absence of a permanent military establishment in Bass Strait, the sealers were politically useful—a British presence on the islands inhibited encroachment by the Americans and French.34 By the 1840s sealing played a minor role in the Bass Strait economy, with mutton-birding becoming a critical component of subsistence and trade.35 With it came a change in nomenclature. The non-reserve population in the Strait generally became known as "Straitsmen," though later "Islanders" became the preferred usage. The colonial government's stance of turning a blind eye to their existence gradually began to change as other economic interests started to penetrate the region. In 1846 an island was leased for pastoralism to a mainland settler; and in the next year a Hobart businessman obtained a lease to another island to mine guano.

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This economic expansion faced a difficulty. The Islanders had defined their occupancy and use of the strait in exclusive terms. To solve the problem, the colonial government explored the possibility of formally delimiting their tenancies. In 1849 Surveyor-General Robert Power visited Bass Strait and granted tickets of occupation to some Islander families. In his report to the lieutenant-governor, Power commented favourably on the character of the Straitsmen and their society, defining them as potentially useful to the colony as ships pilots and rescuers. His report also indicated that more was involved in the ticketing scheme than protecting Islander holdings: "By their acceptance of Tickets of Occupation on the payment of a nominal rent, the right of the Crown has been fully established to lands ... which they considered to be their own."36 It is unlikely that Islanders knew the legal implications of accepting tickets. Those families who refused to apply for them were vulnerable because they had no occupancy rights which the Crown had to recognize when granting leases and freeholds to others. More important, those tickets did not cover mutton-birding sites which were central to the Islanders' economy. Negative economic consequences came quickly; an agricultural lease granted to a mainland settler on Flinders Island after closure of the Aboriginal Establishment represented the start of a new wave of immigration into the strait. In the same year, 1850, the first Islander claim to Aboriginal status was put forward to the colonial government. The claim was not for land rights but education.37 The Islanders petitioned Lieutenant-Governor Denison for a school missionary to be sent, and reference was made to their Aboriginal ancestry and to the presence of a few "pure" Aborigines as reasons for government funding of the mission. The focus of this petition is informative. The desire for a school suggests the Islanders had a strong European identification, a view supported by Power's report. Although there is no direct evidence of church involvement, it is likely that the Islanders' petition had been urged, if not framed, by Anglican clergy. The Archdeacon of Launceston had written about the educational needs of the Islanders which were known from visits to the Aboriginal Establishment. From the church's point of view, a school missionary could civilize the Islanders and ensure their continued commitment to Christianity. The Islander claim to Aboriginal status was a means of getting the government to bear the expense.

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The lieutenant-governor rejected the Islander petition. Although no reasons were given, a number can be postulated. The Aboriginal Establishment in Bass Strait had been a costly failure which eventually had to be relocated. Recognition of Islanders as Aborigines even if only for educational purposes would increase those expenditures. Further, a precedent would be set which could lead to claims beyond the sphere of education. In context, a new Aboriginal population would be created at a time when it was assumed that the original Aborigines would soon become extinct. Islanders were not Aborigines in a strict biological sense. For the government to recognize their claim would therefore be illogical and impractical, unnecessarily perpetuating a special status which the government was attempting to eliminate. Finally, given Power's earlier report, it is unlikely that the lieutenant-governor saw the Islanders as needing civilizing and conversion. This first and seemingly innocuous Aboriginal claim marked a major transformation in the relationship between the Islanders and the colonial government. Previous to it, government documents referred to the claimants as sealers, Straitsmen, and Islanders—in other words occupationally and locationally distinct from ordinary colonists. There was nothing explicitly pejorative about these labels beyond a lower class status and some residue of a historical association of Islanders with bushrangers. The Islander claim to Aboriginal status demanded a response from the government in terms of the mutually exclusive categories of Aborigine and European. This shift in frame of reference brought out the inconsistencies between political and social definitions. Government rejection of the Islander claim meant they were ordinary citizens, that is Europeans, under the law. The claim itself, however, was a rejection of European identity while simultaneously asserting an interest in being European. Given perceptions of the era, many of the Islanders were biologically neither Aborigine nor European. They were "half-castes," as the lieutenant-governor called them and with increased interactions between Islanders and colonists moving into Bass Strait, the anomalous status of Islanders would become a central problem. As will be seen, those interactions led Islanders to increasingly self-identify as Aborigines. Before continuing with these developments, it is worthwhile to stand back from the Tasmanian context to

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consider one other possible form of identity for individuals who were externally defined as half-castes. As already mentioned, a type of "half-breed" known as Metis had emerged in Canada around the fur trade. These people became sufficiently dominant in the prairies as to assert an identity distinct from either Europeans or Indians.38 This identity provided a basis for the formation of a provisional government under Kiel in 1867 which later bargained with the Crown over land rights. That allotted lands, however, were not forthcoming contributed to the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. These assertions of distinct Metis identity and interest were denied legitimacy by the government and the prime minister himself, who stated: "If they are Indians, they go with the tribe; if they are half-breeds they are Whites."39 The Canadian example reinforces the importance of racial categories which were perceived to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive. In terms of those categories, individuals could only be either European or Aborigine. At another level, they were "betwixt and between" without the option of defining themselves as distinct from either category. From the vantage point of the state, recognizing yet a third category would only intensify an already existing problems posed by indigenous peoples as a special class of citizen. The Tasmanian government's refusal to accept the Islanders as Aborigines was neither atypical nor totally motivated by financial and administrative issues. To grant such recognition was morally inconsistent with nineteenth century principles of liberal democracy. Equality under the law was one such expression, as was its corollary that there should be no special laws or legal advantages for different classes of citizens. These ideals trapped the Islanders. Islander identity was useless to them politically, and the economic basis of their existence could not be preserved by defining themselves as ordinary citizens. Aboriginal status provided the only grounds for government recognition of special interests. The fact that the church, as a quasi-official agent of the state with respect to Aboriginal matters, encouraged Islanders to claim Aboriginal status cannot be dismissed. The church was one of the Islanders' major contacts with the colony, and clergy provided an important means of access to government officials. The fit between church and Islander interests was, however, limited in scope to education. Islander interests went beyond it and thereby gradually

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confronted a more pervasive alliance of interests between the Church and colonial government. The emergent political discourse centred on questions about Islander land rights. In 1854 Power conducted another survey of Bass Strait; this time he was accompanied by Bishop Francis Nixon.40 The Islanders complained to them that new settlers from the mainland were harming mutton-birding sites. This complaint was passed on to the government and received some acknowledgment in the form of mutton-birding leases being made available. Like the previous tickets of occupancy, these leases were also intended to establish government control over land use in a remote part of the colony. If number of applications is an indicator, the program failed: few mutton-birding leases were issued. There appear to have been three reasons for Islander rejection of this form of protection: (1) Islanders perceived of themselves as owning the outer islands and therefore not requiring leases, (2) the cost of leases was too high for people who operated primarily on a subsistence basis, and (3) leasing did not address the main problem of alien intrusion into the area. The Anglican Church continued its commitment to the Islanders in spite of a lack of government support, and church investigators were sent to examine the situation.41 After Archdeacon Thomas Reibey's visits there in 1862 and 1863, he recommended that the government set up a boarding school on one of the islands and recognize Islander claims to special rights over mutton-bird rookeries. Another minister, Davies, petitioned the government to send the six remaining Aborigines at Oyster Cove to live with their Islander relatives. Neither request was acted upon, although the colonial secretary did promise protection of half-caste interests as they applied to homesteads and mutton-birding. Those promises were only partially kept. In 1865 five leases were granted to Islanders to mutton-bird rookeries; a year later some renewals were turned down. Apparently the government was more concerned with attracting additional settlers to the region and viewed Islander leaseholds as obstacles. Governor Du Cane was petitioned by the Islanders in 1868 for two islands to be reserved for them— one as a location for a central community, the other as a major rookery. They were informed that reserves were not necessary since the government was planning to cease selling and leasing lands in Bass Strait. Three years later, however, the Hobart Town Gazette

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listed a number of available properties, though with the proviso that the existing Islander occupancies would not be included in such leaseholds and that Islander's rights to reside on the islands had to be recognized by leaseholders. Another visiting Anglican missionary in 1871 heard a number of Islander complaints about government policy. All but one island had been sold or leased to settlers, and mutton-birding was seriously endangered. The Islanders emphasized the importance of the rookeries to their economic survival, and the missionary assisted them in writing a petition to the governor requesting mutton-birding rights and reservation of one island for an Islander community. Aboriginal status was again used to legitimize these requests. The Islanders had virtually no other choice: as de facto Europeans their occupancy and use of the islands was not protected. The governor met with Islander representatives, and as a result some rookeries were put under the protection of the Game Preservation Act and some Islander homesteads defined under the Waste Lands Act. The use of these acts was clearly an attempt on the part of the government to live up to its promises—without having to recognize Aboriginal status or rights. This strategy also allowed for interests other than those of the Islanders to be considered. There were no cutbacks on the advertising of leaseholds, over 100,000 acres were made available on Cape Barren Island alone in 1872; this was the same island on which homestead lands had been allocated to Islanders under provisions of the Waste Lands Act a year previously. The use of the Waste Lands Act led to Cape Barren Island's becoming the main Islander stronghold. That island was not exclusive to Islanders, since mainland settlers also held leases, and already existing antagonisms between the two groups intensified. One expression of this conflict was that European settlers adopted the Islander claim to Aboriginal status as a pejorative, with the effect of further diminishing the likelihood that Islanders would self-identify as Europeans. One writer of the period commented that he looked forward to a decline in the Islander population because of the general "stigma of disastrous conflict between blacks and whites."42 This comment has to be understood against the background of the Oyster Cove reserve in 1875, where only a few Aborigines remained. The inevitability of their extinction after Lanny's death made Islanders-as-Aborigines an uncomfortable reminder of a history that was

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seen by some parties as better ended and forgotten. Unlike the Aboriginal reserve population, the Islanders were increasing in numbers— approximately eighty-five of them were recorded in the early 1870s.43 A minor incident after the death of Truganini is informative about the complexity of the half-caste problem. Fanny Cochrane petitioned the colonial government for assistance on the basis of her being a Tasmanian Aborigine. Contrary to what one might expect, the government took the request seriously and later honoured it by a land grant and an annuity. The Royal Society of Tasmania also examined her claim to Aboriginal status and rejected it on biological grounds of mixed ancestry, stating that the government's more liberal interpretation was unsupported by scientific evidence.44 At stake may also have been the unique value of Truganini's remains to the Royal Society which would have been undermined if it formally recognized a living Tasmanian Aborigine. Growing Islander militancy in the 1880s led the Anglican Church to re-think its support. Bishop Charles Bromby saw the Aboriginal component of the Islanders' ancestry and culture as a source of corruption. This was in marked contrast to Archdeacon Reibey's feelings thirteen years earlier which were reminiscent of Cook's: "I found the Islanders an intelligent and interesting people— simple and primitive in their habits, free from the vices of a more civilised life."45 This change in attitude involved a dilemma. The church now held that the Islanders were in need of civilization if not conversion. Following previously established conventions, this would best be accomplished by isolating them from outside influences. The obvious way to achieve this isolation was a reserve, and this assumption fostered the church's support of Islander claims to Aboriginal status and to at least limited special land rights. Partial European ancestry was seen as irrelevant, except that it would facilitate civilizing the Islanders more easily accomplished because the church deemed them to be intellectually and morally superior to racially pure Tasmanian Aborigines. In addition, that Islanders already had elements of European culture simplified the task. As Islanders increasingly self-identified as Aborigines, they became further removed from the church's view of what should be occurring. From the church's vantage point, supporting claims to Aboriginal status was a means to an end. For Islanders to actually consider themselves Aborigines was inappropriate.

THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF RACE

The result was a more uncomfortable alliance between the Islanders and the Anglican Church, though their combined efforts seemed to generate a more favourable government policy in the early 1880s. A special proclamation was issued, using the Waste Lands Act, to withdraw 4,000 acres on Cape Barren Island for the exclusive use of Islanders. They viewed the proclamation with suspicion since it did not specify title to those lands. Further requests for mutton-birding rights and homesteads brought partial government response, again using the Game Protection Act. All Crown lands on three islands were defined as protected rookeries, but without specifying exclusive Islander rights to their use. From the government's perspective, it could met its moral obligations to the Islanders without having to recognize them in law. Bishop Henry Montgomery did not agree with the proclamation and subsequent application of legislation. He saw mutton-birding as a core element of Aboriginal culture and a barrier to civilization through the adoption of pastoralism and agriculture. A split followed between the Islanders and the church, which ceased being an advocate of Aboriginal status and land rights claims. In 1897 the Islanders formed their own association. This apparently further displeased the bishop and he began to actively attack their efforts to change government policy. He demanded a police investigation of the Cape Barren Island community. When he visited there two years later, he was met by considerable animosity and accusations of being instrumental in the imposition of unfair laws and of "being a paid officer of the Government."46 At the bishop's urging, the Hedberg-Maclaine Commission was established in 1900 to investigate the Islander problem. One of its agenda items was the bishop's proposal that mutton-birding be prohibited. The Islanders met this attempt to eliminate the main basis of their economy with considerable resistance. As a compromise, the commission recommended that mutton-birding be a licensed activity under the Game Protection Act. This recommendation was adopted probably because it increased government control, again without having to in any way recognize Islander rights. The act was soon after modified to allow sheep to be grazed on one of the major rookery islands. The Islanders petitioned against this change, but to no effect. Immediately after, Cape Barren Island was incorporated as part of the Flinders Municipality. One of the reasons for this move

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almost certainly was to put the Islanders fully under government jurisdiction and deny them special status. Further hostility between Islanders and settlers led to demands for another government investigation. Police Commissioner J.E.G. Lord was sent to report on conditions in Bass Strait. He recommended: (1) the creation of an Islander reserve to be supervised by the police, (2) criteria for acquiring land on the reserve, (3) greater protection of mutton-birding because of its importance to both Islanders and settlers, (4) removal of restrictions on hunting to encourage pastoralism, and (5) more emphasis on education as a means of assimilating the Islanders. Lord's report gave considerable attention to the half-caste problem, and he cited Bishop Montgomery's earlier opinion as a basis for a proposed solution: It is very hard to remember that these people are not English in character. The more you know them the less English and the more native they are in habits of work; they can never be judged as we judge ourselves in respect to work and thrift. This means they must be strictly governed as an inferior race, and that reforms must be made gradually.47

Lord was aware of the Islanders' belief that the islands were theirs by virtue of a time immemorial Aboriginal occupancy and use. He was careful to point out to them that establishing a reserve did not mean recognition of any such right, Islanders could only gain title through meeting formal provisions of land improvement identical to any other homesteaders. Lord gathered some information on Islander genealogies, and discovered instances of both Tasmanian and non-Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry. He saw no purpose in either differentiating between them or considering proportions of Aboriginal ancestry to determine who could acquire land or live on the reserve. For him, half-caste meant anyone with any degree of "colour." At the same time, he emphasized the fact that there were no Islanders who were actually half-castes, a distinction which should be noted was also used by Berry in reference to "quarter-castes." Lord arguably used this strict differentiation to further undermine the legitimacy of Islander claims to Aboriginal status. Lord perceived the Islanders as neither Europeans nor Aborigines, but a population best treated like Aborigines because of

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their inherent inferiority. The government put forward a bill based on his recommendations, but it met with considerable Islander protest about land regulations and police supervision. Counterproposals were submitted, and the bill was modified slightly and passed in 1912. The Cape Barren Island Reserve Act was the single most important piece of legislation applied to the Islanders. Its intent was stated in the preamble: And whereas the land hereinbefore described ... has been held as a Reserve for the half-castes and their descendants, has been in part occupied by certain half-castes, and their descendants, but without legal title thereto or defined rights therein.48

The wording is significant. The act was intended to resolve once and for all the outstanding issues of Islander title and rights. It was not accidental that no mention was made of Aboriginal status or interests. The term Aborigine occurs nowhere in the document, instead reference is made to "half-castes and their descendants." Although other key terms are carefully defined (e.g., reserve), half-caste is not. Inclusion of "and their descendants" implies a strict technical definition of the half-castes as individuals with one pure European and one pure Aboriginal parent. The use of "descendants" as a qualifier speaks to a view of biological distinctiveness (inferiority) of anyone with any degree of Aboriginal ancestry and to the illegitimacy of claims to Aboriginal status by anyone of mixed descent. The lands to be reserved were those designated in the 1881 proclamation, minus certain scheduled free-holds acquired in the interim. Three categories of persons were stipulated as having rights to obtain land on the reserve, and sixty-four individuals were scheduled by name: (1) "half-castes and descendants" already living on the reserved land, (2) "half-castes and descendants" living off the reserved lands, and (3) white men already married to "half-caste and descendant" women currently living on reserved lands. The last is interesting when compared to the Canadian legislation concerning the involuntary enfranchisement of Indian women who married white men. The Tasmanian act followed the same principle with the exception of existing marriages, it eliminated any further inclusion of whites who married Islanders, specifying that half-caste/descendant

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women who in future married Europeans could not inherit reserved land. By extension, neither could the children of further mixed marriages have land reserved to them. Those persons scheduled had to apply for a licence to homesteads and agricultural blocks. The act stipulated that existing occupancy and use had no legal recognition but would be considered when allocations were made. A licence could later be converted into a ninety-nine-year lease if certain conditions of land and residence improvement were met. Alternately, a licence could be cancelled if those improvements were not made. Neither a lease nor a licence could be transferred except through a will, and then only to a wife or to descendants deemed eligible by the state minister in charge. The second major set of provisions focused on regulatory powers over the reserve and its inhabitants. Virtually total control was given to the secretary of lands. The third component of the act defined an assimilation goal. Upon application, the minister could grant a certificate to Crown land on the mainland in exchange for a licence or lease. The applicant, however, surrendered all rights under the act for himself, his wife, and their descendants. In 1913-14, a government survey of the reserve showed that only ten licenses had been issued for agricultural blocks and eleven for homesteads—less than 20 percent of expected applications. Records for subsequent years indicated a gradual increase; fortythree licenses were registered in 1929. This change has to be understood against a parallel population increase from 227 in 1915 to 314 in 1930. Only three licenses had been converted into leases by that year, and reports stated that few improvements had been made to either homesteads or agricultural blocks. Reports on reserve conditions suggested that poor living conditions prevailed and that better schooling was needed if the next generation of Islanders were expected to move to the mainland. The overall data on leasing indicate Islanders were dissatisfied with those provisions of the act. In 1922 they petitioned the authorities for replacement of the leasing system with outright title to reserve lands. The Islanders put forward a view of title which was collective, in opposition to the individualistic concept of title under the act. The secretary of lands advised against such a change, arguing the reserve was no different from Aboriginal institutions in other parts of Australia.

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A select committee was set up in 1924 to again examine the reserve problem.49 It concluded there was no need to alter the act, but instead proposed: (1) its stronger enforcement to encourage Islanders to become more responsible, (2) filling the then vacant position of bailiff to provide better supervision, (3) establishing an Islander committee to consult with the bailiff, (4) granting exclusive mutton-birding licenses to Islanders, (5) ending the practice of subleasing, (6) changing regulations on sealing and whaling seasons, and (7) introducing more practical courses into the school curriculum. None of these suggestions was acted upon in any significant way, and another board of inquiry under A. W. Burbury went to the reserve in 1929. He argued the act had failed, and that both the government and Islanders were at fault: The Act too, has given them the belief that they have a claim on the State and that it was passed in recognition of their claim that their country has been taken away from them by whites.... The Act was bound to fail because, firstly, success could only have been achieved under its provisions by a thrifty and hard working tenantry who would develop and improve the land.... These people, indolent by nature, improvident, taking no thought of the morrow, buoyed by the implication that they were to be cared for, and their interests watched over by a responsible office of the State, were apparently left to their own devices after having been provided with assistance which they regarded as an earnest of more to follow.50

Although Burbury did not define those negative Islander traits as due to their Aboriginal ancestry, they were probably understood in those terms. His solution involved shifting responsibility for the reserve to the Commonwealth of Australia and the Anglican Church. Second, in order to encourage their absorption into the wider society, he gave priority to education and the removal of children from the reserve after having completed their schooling. The Australian Board of Missions was contacted by the Tasmanian government requesting a mission school. The chair of board visited the reserve, and was told that Islanders had a claim to all of Tasmania by virtue of being Aborigines and therefore the original owners—an argument he completely rejected. In a report, the Board of Missions urged major changes, one of which was the appointment of a protector to oversee the reserve, much as Robinson had done in New

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South Wales almost a century earlier. The second recommendation involved stronger measures to encourage Islander assimilation:

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There is very little reason for treating these people differently from full whites. There are no half-castes left.... The proportion of white blood is so great that we feel the time has come for a gradual but determined effort to absorb them into the white community.... It seems rather inconsistent to give full citizenship to those who expect and are getting exceptional treatment ... defects in character will not be remedied without firm but kindly discipline and constant instruction.... The segregation of a small community, with consequent intermarriage, is probably fundamentally unsound.... New blood is required.51 The report went on to state that the term half-caste had legal, social, and biological dimensions which the government of Tasmania had not seriously addressed. Legally, other states in Australia had handled the problem by defining them as either white or Aborigine in contrast to the anomalous status of the Islanders. The Australian Board of Missions argued for a strict application of biological criteria which would define the Islanders as whites. The reserve was presented as perpetuating negative traits and dependency and thus was best eliminated, albeit gradually. The notion of absorption as a solution was both biological and social, and the tone of the report left little doubt that the process had to be forced rather than left up to individual choice. As will be seen later, an absorption policy had considerable scientific support. These recommendations generated debate within government and among the public, since absorption was viewed with some fear. Commissioner Lord commented that its implementation would almost certainly meet with white resistance as indicated in a letter to the editor of the Mercury which included the phrase: "But to disseminate the weaknesses and lack of intellect of the half-caste by a process of absorption seems to me to be a retrograde step."52 In the end, the Board of Missions declined to take over responsibility for the reserve. In part, the board did so because its mandate was restricted to "full-blooded" Aborigines; an ironic reversal of earlier church support of Islander claims to Aboriginal status. The Tasmanian government had also approached the commonwealth and received a similar response, though on different grounds. The 1901

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Constitution Act had defined the states as having exclusive authority and responsibility for Aborigines and thereby restricting the commonwealth to those living in the Northern Territory. The commonwealth government was therefore restricted in what it could do about the Islander situation, and ended up only providing unemployment payments to compensate for the lack of jobs. In 1932 the Australian Women's National League appealed for assistance to Islander children. One Tasmanian member of the league proposed that the reserve be eliminated and the Islanders moved to the mainland. In response, another member said, "It would be a dreadful thing if they were brought to Tasmania."53 If there was dread about the proposal, it was that Islanders were seen as polluting—a result consistent with being anomalous within the framework of exclusive racial categories. How widespread these attitudes were among Euro-Tasmanians, however, is unknown. Five years later the Islanders sent another petition complaining about their treatment and pointing to wage discrimination— they were paid half what a European would receive for the same work. They drew an analogy to the German treatment of Jews, the first effort of what can best be described as "politics of embarrassment." Officials side-stepped allegations alluding to the absence of taxes and rents plus the costs of health services as more than justifying lower wages to Islanders. Dissatisfaction with the Reserve Act, marginal living conditions, and discrimination all contributed to Islanders' continuing to claim Aboriginal status. It in essence made sense of their negative situation and provided the only form of identification which had any political advantages. Legally they were not ordinary citizens. Socially they were not considered to be either white or Aborigine, and bio-social absorption as a solution was met by fears of whites being contaminated by such interactions. One need not be surprised that the Islanders were increasingly "obsessed with the idea that they had a legitimate right to the land of their ancestors."54 The obsession was with establishing their worth as human beings who had some control over their future, and who saw Europeans as historically having withheld those possibilities. The first Commonwealth and State Conference on Aboriginal Affairs also occurred in 1937. The half-caste problem was not unique to Tasmania and was part of the conference's agenda.

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The Tasmanian government, however, did not participate. The reason for not doing so can be inferred. Whereas other states and the commonwealth were attempting to deal with the existence of both Aborigines and half-castes and arrive at comprehensive policies, Tasmania confronted a simpler issue given European perceptions that there were no Tasmanian half-castes in a technical sense, let alone Aborigines. To think of defining half-castes as Aborigines, as occurred in some states, would be seen by the Tasmanian government as a retrograde step. Whereas other states might wish to do so in order to deal with a generic problem, it was asserted that no such problem existed in Tasmania. Further, participation at the meetings might be construed as a tacit recognition of Islander Aboriginal status. In contrast to other parts of Australia, the Tasmanian situation appeared to be improving—or so announced the minister responsible for the reserve in 1939. Three years later, however, a report submitted to him emphasized the difficulties of administering the Reserve Act. Again, absorption was put forward as the only realistic solution. There were indications that absorption was already occurring since some Islanders had moved to the Tasmanian mainland. The reserve population had levelled off in the 1930s and begun a gradual decline largely due to out migration. By 1948 the Tasmanian government felt that another inquiry into the Flinders Municipality was necessary, and a joint parliamentary committee was formed. It submitted a number of findings, some of which dealt with the reserve. After reviewing its history, the report concluded that: "The Reserve, in the interests of the inhabitants and the State, ultimately must be closed, and its population gradually absorbed into the rest of the Tasmanian community."55 The report did not mention what Islanders saw as their interests, but did refer to those of the state government and other parties. Marginal conditions on the reserve and the costs of maintaining it constituted one concern; in addition, the government was considering a veteran's settlement scheme and economic development plans for the region. No doubt the reserve was seen as an obstacle to achieving these goals. These considerations led the Tasmanian parliament to accept the recommendation to close the reserve. The act was allowed to expire in 1951, and policy was directed toward assisting Islanders in moving to the mainland. In effect, the government attempted to legislatively solve the Islander problem by denying the Islanders' existence as a distinct category of persons.

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The legal extinction of Islanders as a special status group was as unsuccessful as the death of Truganini had been to putting an end to the Aboriginal problem in Tasmania. The Islanders did not disappear with expiration of the act. They neither became fully absorbed into Tasmanian society nor gave up their claims to being Aborigines. As will be seen in the next chapter, claims to Aboriginal status would re-emerge in a much stronger way within three decades. Before discussing these developments, it will be useful to briefly consider what was happening at a national level. As the 1937 Commonwealth and State Conference indicated, there were moves to establish more uniform and liberal policies toward Aborigines and half-castes. Those efforts would have consequences for Tasmania in the post-1950s period. What is particularly significant about what was occurring elsewhere in Australia was the increased involvement of anthropologists in policy making and implementation, and their role in challenging "the old ideas concerning Aborigines" and in redefining the "adjustment of both communities to one another."56 APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY AND AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL POLICY

In 1926 the University of Sydney established an applied research program within the Department of Anthropology. A.P. Elkin, who became the chair of the department, commented about the programme's objectives: Field research has usually a scientific end in view.... But needless to say, the understanding of both unchanged and changing native organizations is of practical importance, and therefore social anthropology can render an invaluable service by ascertaining the principles of social cohesion and social change. The knowledge thus gained is then available for the guidance of the conscientious administrator in controlling and effecting modifications of native life. It should be stated quite clearly that anthropologists ... have no desire to preserve any of the aboriginal tribes of Australia or of the islands in their pristine condition as "museum specimens" for the purpose of investigation; this charge is too often made against anthropologists ... [who] like all good members of a "higher" and trustee race, are concerned with the tasks of raising primitive races in the cultural scale.57

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The above speaks to a number of disciplinary concerns. One was a tension between applied and pure research. As seen in the previous chapter, there was a tendency for pure researchers to want to preserve traditional cultures for future investigation, and to be somewhat critical of governments for destroying those cultures. In contrast, the applied research program at the University of Sydney trained missionaries and colonial adminstrators whose objectives were to assimilate indigenous peoples. In contrast to pure research, Elkin thought of applied anthropology as more socially responsible and humanistic in orientation. At the same time, he viewed the capacity of the discipline to be emancipatory as predicated by a body of established knowledge. Evolutionary theory informed Elkin's commitment to furthering government efforts at assimilation. Not all of his Australian colleagues shared his position. Donald Thomson, for example, recommended to the commonwealth government in 1937 that "tribes in the Federal Territory not yet disorganized or detribalized by prolonged contact with alien culture be absolutely segregated, and that it be the policy of the Government to preserve intact their social organization and political institutions, and their culture in its entirety."58 Thomson's reasoning was based on the overwhelming evidence that contact with Europeans had been largely destructive for Aboriginal peoples. In contrast, Williams, a government anthropologist working in New Guinea, argued that this kind of protectionism often involved putting scientific interests above those of indigenes. Further, Williams expanded on the dangers of protectionism inherent in pure research guided by theories which were becoming prevalent in the 1930s.59 He focused on functionalism and its view of nonwestern cultures as highly integrated and fragile systems. This, he argued, often led to the belief that those cultures would immediately collapse upon any attempt to make even minimal changes. In effect, functionalism defined assimilation policies as resulting in chaos for targeted populations. Williams felt that many functionalists were unable to distinguish between cultures and human beings. Commitment to preserving culture made it difficult to ask moral questions about human betterment or to recognize that the interests of Europeans had to be considered as well as those of indigenous peoples. If evolutionary theories escaped Williams's critical attention, this was not accidental. Those theories focused on improvement of the species and took European perceptions of development as self-evident.

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Returning to Elkin, in so far as his fieldwork influenced his thinking it was to advocate a policy of gradual assimilation. He also recognized that many of the problems Australian Aborigines faced were the result of public opinion and attitudes held by government officials, biases requiring changes in the dominant society. One of his goals was to eliminate Euro-Australian prejudices about Aborigines, specifically beliefs in their inferior intelligence and inherent laziness. To do this he was not only active politically but engaged in popular writing and speaking tours. That Aborigines actually had cultures which were complex was one of his major themes, and apparently he did much to change public perceptions of Aborigines as fully human rather than subhuman or animal. The other prong of Elkin's attack focused on existing government policies, and he was an active participant in the 1937 Commonwealth and State Conference on Aboriginal Affairs. He identified two factors as contributing to the timing of efforts to rethink Aboriginal issues during the 1930s.60 The first was the League of Nations Covenant which demanded of Australia that its government take a more developmental approach towards Aboriginal welfare as a logical extension of its trusteeship commitments in New Guinea. The conditions of natives there were superior to those of Aborigines in Australia, a point which was receiving criticism internationally, as was Australia's status as a civilized nation. The second and related factor for Elkin was the increased body of knowledge about Aborigines provided by anthropology. This information made it abundantly clear that protectionist aspects of earlier assimilation policies had created marginal forms of existence inferior even to traditional ones. Elkin did not see a return to those traditions as a solution. Rather, he assumed that Aborigines had to adapt to the Euro-Australian society and ultimately to become part of it. Unlike many of his missionary counterparts, Elkin did not think of Aboriginal institutions as absolute barriers to assimilation and therefore necessary to destroy. He gave the example of using tribal leadership to make changes in order to insure Aboriginal understanding and control of the process.61 In the long run he felt that such institutions would gradually become like those of the wider society. In the interim, the goal was to assist individuals rather than entire populations to assimilate.

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Elkin was also critical of the government's use of missionaries as agents of change, in spite of being a cleric himself. He accused missionaries of being overly ethnocentric, and depicted applied anthropologists as better equipped to make significant changes which minimized damage at the individual level because of anthropology's objectivity and cultural knowledge. In turn, he was rebutted by missionaries as personally being overly protective of traditional culture and ignoring moral issues by virtue of adopting an amoral scientific stance. Elkin's posture toward Aboriginal assimilation policy involved more than the affirmation of a discipline's usefulness against the historical role of missionaries as agents of the state. In 1937 his recommendations concerning policy in New South Wales were attacked by an Aboriginal activist who was cynical about applied anthropology as personified by Elkin. The Aborigine thought of Elkin as using the status of science to bolster the position of anthropology and rationalize anthropologists' speaking for Aborigines in the political arena. Elkin's response was to counter that Aborigines had insufficient knowledge to speak for themselves, and he fought against their inclusion on the state's policy review board.62 The 1937 Commonwealth and State Conference, as already noted, included discussion of half-castes. By and large, anthropologists had little factual to say about them because of the discipline's indifference to an "impure" peoples and cultures. The lack of empirical research, however, was no obstacle to anthropologists' making recommendations informed and legitimized by theory. At the same time it was recognized that information about the numbers and conditions of half-castes would be useful for government policies. One outcome was the Harvard-Adelaide Anthropological Expedition of 1938-39 which incorporated research on halfcastes as well as pure Aborigines. That the first systematic anthropological examination of peoples with mixed Aboriginal and European descent ever conducted anywhere in the world took place in Australia, reflects the seriousness of the half-caste problem there. One measure of its extent was apparent in South Australia during the late 1930s, where it was estimated the half-caste population not only equalled that of the "full-blooded" Aborigines, but was increasing in numbers while the latter was declining.63

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The anthropologist responsible for Tasmania in the HarvardAdelaide project was Norman Tindale. He located his research on Tasmanian half-castes in the context of scientific interests in hybridization: "Not often is it possible to obtain information about a whole new human population, brought into being by hybridisation, with the details of their history sufficiently complete to enable appreciation of the whole pattern of development."64 Significantly more important to Tindale were the practical implications of such research. Tasmania represented what would eventually happen in the rest of Australia—the extinction of "fullblooded" Aborigines and increasing numbers of "mixed-bloods." This meant that only the mixed-bloods needed to be seriously considered by governments. The solution to problems generated by mixed-bloods could be solved by absorbing them into the general population, just as the Board of Missions had recommended for the Islanders, which was indicative of the continued fusion of religious and scientific thought. Like Elkin, Tindale saw public opinion as a major consideration. To promote social and biological absorption, he addressed the issue of European resistance in the following way: Complete mergence of half-castes in the general community is possible without detriment to the White race. Their aboriginal blood is remotely the same as that of the majority of the white inhabitants of Australia, for the Australian aboriginal is recognized as being a forerunner of the Caucasian race. In addition, half-castes are increasingly of our own blood.... There are no biological reasons for rejection of people with a dilute strain of Australian aboriginal blood ... [it] will not introduce any aberrant characteristics and there need be no fear of reversions to the dark aboriginal type.65

In attacking what he deemed to be dominant public attitudes, Tindale was addressing the popular usage of Gobineau's degeneration theory. At the same time, his rejection of negative consequences for Euro-Australians from further intermarriages with Aborigines was consistent with ideas dating back at least to the 1830s that white blood would "cleanse" the "degraded" blood of inferior races in a few generations.66 Tindale also cast absorption into a Darwinian evolutionary mode as a type of natural selection for certain

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individuals. The wider society was seen to be an environment and thus a given, with the exception of public attitudes about mixed marriages that needed to be changed. Since mixed-bloods more closely approximated the characteristics of whites, they were more likely to be selected [married] than full-blooded Aborigines. Interracial marriage was perceived to be a way to socially integrate anyone of Aboriginal descent and biologically improve offspring through the addition of more white blood. Tindale regarded full-blooded Aborigines as virtually a lost cause because they were socially less absorbable. Although unstated, he considered the only solution to their plight to be marriage to mixed-bloods. Their children would, however, be less absorbable than the mixed-blood parent because of the additional Aboriginal blood and physical characteristics. For this reason Tindale recommended removal of mixed-bloods from full-blooded Aboriginal communities, which would then gradually disappear of their own accord as indicated by declining full-blooded Aboriginal populations. For Tindale, their extinction was inevitable. As we have seen with regard to the colonial period, Tindale's conclusion was unacceptable to the Crown for reasons of prestige if not morality; nor had post-colonial governments changed in this regard. Elkin's distinction between what he called "pure-Aborigines" and "part-Aborigines" was in keeping with government thinking of the period. Elkin's recommendations with regard to these categories were in part derived from his 1932 study of official attitudes toward part-Aborigines in New South Wales, later supplemented by parallel research in Hawaii.67 Elkin viewed part-Aborigines as a category which was more cultural than biological but did not entirely exclude biological inheritance or racial traits. Following his evolutionary assumptions, Elkin saw populations as having to adapt to changes in cultural environments.68 Part-Aborigines, as cultural hybrids, had a greater adaptive capacity to the conditions found in Euro-Australian society than full-Aborigines. Part-Aborigines (having more likely inherited superior European characteristics) were similarly less suited to the conditions of pure-Aboriginal existence. Like Tindale, Elkin argued that part-Aborigines should be separated from full-Aborigines, the locus being Aboriginal reserves. In Elkin's view, part-Aborigines were responsible for their own marginality given government initiatives on integration. He saw

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granting Aboriginal status to part-Aborigines, as had happened in New South Wales, as mistaken. Forcing part-Aborigines to integrate was not only to their personal benefit, it also removed the danger of their undermining traditional Aboriginal culture. Those traditions were sole basis of full-Aboriginal identity and pride during the gradual process of assimilation. A more general comparison of Elkin and Tindale is informative. Both took an evolutionary stance to the Aboriginal problem which led to many of the same conclusions despite different emphases on race and culture. Euro-Australian society was taken as a given—to be adapted to by Aborigines in the same way as they had to the physical environment—and their traditional culture was maladaptive in the long run. Beyond changing certain irrational European attitudes about Aborigines which made their assimilation more difficult, dominant institutions need not make any accomodations to the existence of an Aboriginal population. Although couched in different terms, Elkin and Tindale defined half-caste claims to Aboriginal status as scientifically illegitimate and politically inappropriate. The only significant difference between Tindale and Elkin was with respect to the possibility of assimilating "real" Aborigines. A 1938 editorial in Melbourne Argus suggests that Tindale's view may have been the more prevalent: "Aborigines [are] a backward a low race ... and cannot be treated as a modern, civilised race. They are properly regarded as a dying relic of a dead past, and as such should be treated with the broadest tolerance and humanity."69 In general, the conclusions of applied anthropology in the rest of Australia looked remarkably like Tasmanian Aboriginal policy of the period. Since this policy was formed without any government consultation with anthropologists, the isomorphism is all the more striking. If scientific and political thought led to the same definitions of problem and solution, it is because of shared assumptions and interests of elites from the "higher race," to use Elkin's phrase. The above editorial went on to elaborate that "tolerance and humanity" meant to let the few remaining mainland Australian Aborigines peacefully die as, it was commonly believed, they had in Tasmania. The article further went on to reject the biological absorption of Aborigines—intermarriage with them was considered only by "the dregs of the white race" and resulted in offspring who were "worse" than either parent. From this vantage point, Elkin can

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be seen as something of an idealist for positing that an anthropologically informed assimilation policy could work. Debates about what should be done about the Aboriginal problem were set aside during World War II. The war effort, however, led to a number of changes.70 These included government permission to mine on Aboriginal reserves and military employment of Aborigines who, much to Elkin's surprise, readily adapted. He rethought his assumptions about the necessity of a gradual assimilation policy and began to advocate a more vigorous approach. His modified views met with criticism from protectionists in anthropology, but as we will see in the next chapter, post-war Aboriginal policy in Australia entered a new phase. Elkin initially provided support for these initiatives but more importantly, he no longer provided a voice for the gradual assimilation of "pure" Aborigines, let alone "part-Aborigines." NOTES 1. R. Brough Smyth. 1876. The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania. Melbourne: John Currey, O'Neil. 2. Ibid., 409. 3. Edward B. Tylor. 1871. The Origins of Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 69. 4. Edward B. Tylor. 1890. Preface to Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania. Halifax: F. King and Sons, 6l. 5. Edward B. Tylor. 1894. "On the Tasmanians as Representatives of Palaeolithic Man." Journal of the Anthropological Institute 23:150-52. 6. N.J.B. Plomley. 1962. "A List of Tasmanian Aboriginal Material in Collections in Europe." Records of the Queen Victoria Museum 15:14. 7. W.E.L. Crowther. 1949. "On the Formation and Disposal of a Collection." Papers and Publications of the Royal Society of Tasmania: 83-92. 8. David Horton. 1991. Recovering the Tracks: The Story of Australian Archaeology. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 55-57, 94-95. 9. Ibid., 106. 10. Ibid., 153. 11. DJ. Mulvaney. 1958. "Australian Aborigines 1606-1929: Opinion and Fieldwork." Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand 8:33.

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12. W.E.L Crowther. 1974. "The Final Phase of the Extinct Tasmanian Race." Records of the Queen Victoria Museum 49:28-29. 13. Richard Berry. 1907. "A Living Descendant of an Extinct (Tasmanian) Race." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 20:1-20. 14. Ibid., 7-8. 15. Edmund Leach. 1964. "Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse." In New Directions in the Study of Language, edited by E.H. Lenneberg. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 25-63. 16. Richard Berry and A.W.D. Robertson. 1909. "Preliminary Communication on Fifty-three Tasmanian Crania." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 22:47,54. 17. Richard Berry and A.W.D. Robertson. 1910-11. "The Place in Nature of the Tasmanian Aboriginal as Deduced from a Study of his Calvaria (I)." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 31:145-89. 18. Ibid., 65,67-68. 19. Richard Berry, A.W.D. Robertson, and K.S. Cross. 1910-11. "A Biometrical Study of the Relative Degree of Purity of Race of the Tasmanian, Australian, and Papuan." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 31:2-40. 20. George A. Ferguson. 1959- Statistical Analysis in Psychology and Education. New York: McGraw-Hill, 7. 21. Richard Berry and A.W.D. Robertson, "Preliminary Communication," 61. 22. W. Turner. 1910. "The Aborigines of Tasmania (II)." Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 47(3):452. 23. Richard Berry and A.W.D. Robertson. 1914. "The Place of Nature of the Tasmanian Aboriginal as Deduced from a Study of His Calvarium (II)." Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 34:41-69. 24. N.W.G. Macintosh and B.C.W. Barker. 1965. "The Osteology of Aboriginal Man in Tasmania." The Oceania Monographs 12:69-72. 25. N.J.B. Plomley. 1966. "A Summary of Published Work on the Physical Anthropology of the Tasmanian Aborigine." Records of the Queen Victoria Museum 24:1,5. 26. Michael Hammond. 1988. "The Shadow Man Paradigm in Paleoanthropology 1911-1945." In Bones, Bodies, Behaviour: Essays on Biological Anthropology, edited by G.W. Stocking. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 125.

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27. Marvin Harris. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 297. 28. Marjorie Halpin. 1978. "William Beynon, Ethnographer." In American Indian Intellectuals, edited by Margot Liberty. New York: West Publishing Company. 29. William J. Scheick. 1979. The Half-Blood: A Cultural Symbol in the Nineteenth Century, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. 30. William E. Unrau. 1989. Mixed Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity. Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1-4; Harry Daniels. 1979. We Are a Nation. Ottawa: Native Council of Canada, 14. 31. Canada. 1978. The Historical Development of the Indian Act. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 26-29. 32. Stephen Murray-Smith. 1973- "Beyond the Pale: The Islander Community of Bass Strait in the Nineteenth Century." Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania 20(4): 167-200. 33. Ibid., 169-70. 34. Ibid., 176. 35. Muttonbirds [Puffinus tenuirostris] are a migratory species which spend approximately eight months a year at their rookeries. They are hunted for their meat, oil, and feathers. 36. Stephen Murray-Smith, "Beyond the Pale," 181. 37. Tasmanian Church Chronicle, March 6, 1852. 38. Jennifer J.S. Brown. 1988. "The Metis: Genesis and Rebirth." In Native People, Native Lands, edited by Bruce Cox. Ottawa: Carleton University Press: 140-4339. Ibid., 142-43. 40. Lyndall Ryan. 1981. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 225. 41. Tasmania. 1862-63- Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 7(17) and 9(48). 42. J.E. Calder. 1875. Some Accounts of the Wars, Expiration, Habits, etc. of the Native Tribes of Tasmania. Hobart: Henn and Company, 131. 43. Norman B. Tindale. 1953. "Growth of a People: Formation and Development of a Hybrid Aboriginal and White Stock in the Islands of Bass Strait, Tasmania, 1815-1949.'' Records of the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston 2:19. 44. James Bernard. 1889. "Notes on the Last Living Aboriginal of Tasmania." Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania-. 60-64.

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45. Tasmania, Journals and Printed Papers 7(17): 7. 46. Stephen Murray-Smith, "Beyond the Pale," 189. 47. J.E.C. Lord. 1908. "Furneaux Islands: Report upon the State of the Islands." Journals and Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 57.T-12. 48. Tasmania. 1957. "Georgi V, Regis, 16, 1912." In The Public General Acts of Tasmania 1826-1936. Sydney: Butterworths. 49- Tasmania. 1924. "Report of the Select Committee Appointed 29 October, 1929 to Inquire into and Report on the Furneaux Group of Islands." Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 91(48): 1-12. 50. A.W. Burbury. 1930. "Report on the Condition of Half-Castes at Cape Barren Island Reservation." Hobart: State Archives of Tasmania. 51. The Mercury, February 23, 1931. 52. The Mercury, February 26, 1931. 53. The Mercury, November 29, 1932. 54. Tasmania, n.d. Land Survey Files. Hobart: State Archives of Tasmania. 55. Tasmania. 1948. "Report of the Joint Committee of the House of Assembly and Legislative Council to Enquire in to the Matters Connected with Flinders Island Municipality." Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 139(22). 56. F.S. Stevens. 1972. "Parliamentary Attitudes to Aboriginal Affairs." In Racism: The Australian Experience, edited by F.S. Stevens. Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Company, 111. 57. A.P. Elkin. 1934. "Anthropology and the Future of the Australian Aborigines." Oceania 5(l):2-3. 58. Sharman Stone. 1974. Aborigines in White Australia: A Documentary History of the Attitudes Affecting Official Policy and the Australian Aborigine 1697-1973- South Yarra: Heinemann Educational Books, 175-76. 59. F.E. Williams. 1939. "Creed of a Government Anthropologist." Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science 24:145-49. 60. J.H. Bell. 1959. "Official Policies Towards Aborigines of New South Wales." Mankind 5(8):345-55. 61. A.P. Elkin. 1934. "The Aborigines, Our National Responsibility." Australian Quarterly 23(6):56. 62. TiggerWise. 1985. The Self-Made Anthropologist: A Life of A.P. Elkin. Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 186-87.

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63. Norman B. Tindale. 1940-41. "Survey of the Half-Caste Problem in South Australia." Proceedings of the Royal Geographic Society [South Australia Branch] 42:69-170. 64. Norman B. Tindale. 1953. "Growth of a Population: Formation and Development of a Hybrid Aboriginal Stock in the Islands of Bass Strait, Tasmania 1815-1949." Records of the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston 2:1-64. 65. Ibid., 67. 66. Mary Poovey. 1993. "Figures in Arithmetic, Figures of Speech: The Discourse of Statistics in the 1830s." Critical Inquiry 19(2)-.266-67. 67. Tigger Wise, A.P. Elkin, 178-80. 68. Elkin was influenced by the evolutionary theory of A.L. Pitt-Rivers. 1906. The Evolution of Culture and Other Essays, edited byJ.L. Myers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 69. Cited in F.S. Stevens,"Parliamentary Attitudes," 111. 70. Tigger Wise, A.P. Elkin, 162-68.

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OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES (1951-90)

The children of the Oyster Cove people survived the oppressive and deliberate—often successful—attempts to forcibly assimilate Aboriginal people into the white society.... The Aboriginal community now seeks Aboriginal sovereignty, justice and land rights. Cheryl Fulton [Tasmanian Aborigine]

CHAPTER IV

m

HE TASMANIAN GOVERNMENT'S EXPIRATION of the Cape Barren Island Reserve Act in 1951 meant to end once and for all any recognition of Islanders as having special status or rights derived from Aboriginal descent; they were expected to become absorbed into the wider society. When the government was asked in the same year to send a delegate to the meetings of the Australian Council of Native Welfare, the premier refused on the grounds that there were no Aborigines in Tasmania—Islanders had become full citizens with the expiry of the Reserve Act. His assertions went unchallenged during the 1950s, except by the passive resistance of Islanders who refused to leave Cape Barren Island and relocate on the mainland. As one report noted, many of them felt they were in a limbo, not recognized by the wider society as either Aborigines or whites.1 Those feelings were probably accurate. Islanders were perceived and treated by some Euro-Tasmanians as part of what is occasionally called Australia's "third race," an unusual one in that it had no acknowledged existence yet faced at least as much prejudice and discrimination as did the Aborigines. The Tasmanian government's declaration that Islanders were ordinary citizens did not address these realities. External factors would force the government to do so and once again confront claims to Aboriginal status. This confrontation would bring anthropology more directly into the state's political arena. ABORIGINAL ASSIMILATION POLICIES IN AUSTRALIA

2

After World War II, Australia experienced a repeat of events of the 1930s. As a member of the United Nations, Australian policy for New Guinea received international scrutiny and there was a spillover into Aboriginal affairs which was nationally embarrassing, at least for federal politicians. In 1950, Paul Hasluck, the Commonwealth Minister for Territories, raised the matter: The Commonwealth Parliament is the custodian of the national reputation in the world at large. Our record of native administration will not stand scrutiny ... publicly made in the forum of the world, of a high concern for human welfare ... our very words are mocked by the thousands of degraded and depressed people who crouch on rubbish heaps throughout the whole of this continent.3

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Hasluck proposed a revised form of assimilation consistent with immediate pre-war objectives. As noted, World War II had deflected attention from these goals and Australia had returned to a 1920s mentality of indifference. In a speech to the 1951 Native Weifare Conference, Hasluck elaborated on what assimilation meant.4 The policy was identified as consistent with the cornerstones of Australian society—equality of opportunity ("the fair go") and the absence of discrimination. Following Elkin's assumptions, Hasluck saw Aboriginal culture gradually giving way to Anglo-Australian culture, and he stressed that detribalization was an ongoing process independent of government efforts. What this meant was an increasing number of Aborigines who were anomalies, in but not of either urban-industrial or tribal society. Numerous discussions of Aboriginal policy occurred at the national level. During the 1963 Native Welfare Conference, assimilation was viewed as the only means of solving Aboriginal social and economic problems: The policy of assimilation means that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines are expected to attain the same manner of living as other Australians ... enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, and observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, as other Australians.5

The phrasing of the above statement is a secularized form of early nineteenth century civilization and conversion policy. It was assumed that political and economic equality required Aborigines to abandon their cultural identity, the same expectations applied to European immigrants from outside of Britain. As in Tasmania, during the 1950s there was no significant Aboriginal resistance elsewhere in Australia to an involuntary form of assimilation. W.E.H. Stanner has argued this was not accidental; Aboriginal indifference was due to their "general anomie" stemming from "homelessness, powerlessness, poverty and continued disparity between plans and styles of life."6 There were, however, other processes at work which mitigated against continued Aboriginal apathy. Australian policy objectives, actualized in Tasmania, were fundamentally inconsistent with international events. Under the Charter of United Nations, Australia

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was a trustee nation and expected to assist New Guinea in becoming self-governing and ultimately independent. At the same time, Australia was denying its own Aborigines any form of self-identification and determination. During the same period, an unusual interest group entered the Australian scene. Abschol,7 an Australian pan-university student organization, had been founded in 1958 to assist Aborigines in the fields of education and politics. It became active as a research and lobbying agency, and a chapter of it was established in the early 1960s at the University of Tasmania. Abschol supported "half-caste" efforts to remain on Cape Barren Island by encouraging local development initiatives. In addition, it took claims to Aboriginal status seriously and began genealogical studies to determine which individuals could legitimately claim Aboriginal descent. This was intended as a way to expand the Aboriginal political base beyond Cape Barren Island and to more effectively pressure the state to resolve general problems of discrimination and marginality. That research probably promoted awareness of Aboriginality as a basis of a positive identity, the existence of socio-economic disparities, and external causes for them. These activities and their consequences have to be understood in the light of further state and commonwealth initiatives. The first of them was an increased effort by the Tasmanian government to promote Islander absorption in the face of their demands for selfdetermination. A portfolio was created to oversee their relocation. It was assigned to the newly created, and oddly named, State Secretary and Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. Little was done by this agency until the Flinders Municipality submitted a development scheme for Cape Barren Island. A parliamentary committee investigated the proposal in 1968 and concurred with it. As before, the presence of Islanders was defined as an obstacle to development, and money was requested to assist in their immediate relocation. As these changes were taking place in Tasmania, the commonwealth and other state governments were once again re-examining their Aboriginal policies. During the 1965 Commonwealth and State Conference on Aboriginal Affairs, the tension between an international climate stressing greater self-determination for colonial nations and existing Australian definitions of assimilation came to the fore. As a result, the concept of assimilation was changed to

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read: "All persons of Aboriginal descent will choose to attain a similar manner and standard of living to that of other Australians and live as members of a single Australian community."8 This phrasing is important when compared to the 1963 statement. First, no distinction was made between Aborigines and partAborigines. Second, Aborigines were allowed to choose whether to be assimilated. Finally, assimilation was restricted to social and economic dimensions, with shared customs and beliefs no longer a goal. These changes in emphasis can also be understood against the background of increased post-war immigration into Australia of peoples from diverse ethnic backgrounds. As mentioned, like their Aboriginal counterparts, those immigrants were expected to assimilate, but were politically more vocal about both retaining their cultural identity and challenging the ideology of "the fair go." By the end of the 1960s an incipient form of multi-culturalism began to emerge in Australia, legitimating immigrant retention of their cultures.9 The same legitimacy was in principle extended to Aborigines and Aboriginal cultures. Consistent with these transformations, the commonwealth government focused more attention on Aboriginal marginality and discrimination. The major difficulty was that constitutionally the commonwealth did not have the authority to deal with Aboriginal matters except in the Northern Territory. The 1967 referendum made the necessary constitutional modifications—certain discriminatory clauses were deleted and the commonwealth was empowered to make special laws for Aborigines. An associated, and seemingly unimportant, factor was the inclusion of Aboriginals in the national census. But this meant defining the criteria for who were Aborigines, not only for census purposes, but for the exercise of commonwealth authority over individuals thus defined. The resultant definition made no distinction between persons of full or mixed Aboriginal descent, in effect substituting socio-psychological criteria for biological ones, and making Aboriginality a matter of individual self-identification: "An aboriginal is a person of aboriginal descent who identifies himself as such and who is recognized by the aboriginal community as being aboriginal."10 Voting in the 1967 referendum was interesting given the issues involved. In Tasmania, the percentage of No votes was 19-5, with rural divisions having a higher proportion of negative responses than urban (22.5 vs 17.4 percent).

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This was against a national average of 9.2 percent No votes, with 13.2 percent rural and 7.5 percent urban.11 State government assertions that there were no Aborigines in Tasmania appeared not to be accepted by voters, nor did the relatively small proportion of Tasmanian Aborigines compared to other states seem to be a factor. Equally unusual was the high level of the Tasmanian urban No responses compared to the rest of Australia. It may have reflected the concentration of Tasmanian Aborigines in urban areas; nationally there was a correlation between No voting and such concentrations. However, this does not make sense of the even higher Tasmanian rural vote. It has also been suggested that special rights for Aborigines was not a an issue in Tasmanian voting behaviour.12 Scott Bennett, for example, has argued that the Tasmanian No vote may better have reflected being against constitutional amendments and changing federal-state relations.13 The post-referendum commonwealth definition of Aboriginal can best be seen as an attempt to eliminate a range of categories previously and inconsistently used. As one Aboriginal put it, she had been classified by some government agencies as European, by others as Aboriginal, and by yet others as "Mixed."14 The resultant construction of Aboriginally provided a major source of legitimacy for individuals to define who they were and to politically mobilize around that identity. Even without the benefits of hindsight, problems with the commonwealth definition of Aboriginality are readily discernible. That construction was a denial of constitutionally explicit states' rights over Aborigines. Related to it was a rejection of biological criteria used by some states, like Tasmania, to define Aboriginality. So too were the commonwealth's criteria inconsistent with "common sense" conceptions of who were really Aborigines. In Tasmania, those who selfidentified as such faced a technical problem of legitimacy found in the clause "recognized by the Aboriginal community." That source of validation implied that there were "real" socio-cultural Aborigines. Legitimacy for self-identified Aboriginal status thus shifted from biological to socio-cultural differentiation. Whereas other states and the Northern Territories had by European standards distinct "Aboriginal communities," Tasmania did not. Self-identified Aborigines were scattered across the state, and none of them constituted anything that might fit a European conception of an "Aboriginal community."

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES

As will be discussed, conflicts of interpretation over the meaning of Aboriginality occurred in throughout Australia but with greatest intensity in Tasmania. Those conflicts emerged in the context of further commonwealth initiatives. One of them was to establish the Council on Aboriginal Affairs, with the requirement that one member be an anthropologist, in keeping with the discipline's involvement with Aborigines and earlier Aboriginal policies. The second was a federal commitment to financing development schemes addressing Aboriginal social and economic problems. The Tasmanian government was one of the first to take advantage of this commitment. The state delegate to the 1968 Commonwealth and State Conference on Aboriginal Affairs was careful to qualify what his attendance meant: Although Tasmania has no indigenous aboriginals he felt it should take part in attempts to deal with a matter of national importance, and because the interests of the Bass Strait Islanders must be preserved.... If there was a national allocation of funds to improve the living standards of aboriginals, Tasmania would press its claim for inclusion, although the Bass Strait Islanders were by no means regarded as aboriginals in the true sense of the word.15

This delightful play with words demands brief examination. Relocation was asserted to be in the Islanders' best interests, despite evidence suggesting that those still living on Cape Barren Island wanted to remain there and that with improved economic conditions others might wish to return. The commonwealth's socio-psychological definition of Aboriginality was simultaneously ignored and used by the state government. It continued to employ a biological conception of Aborigines, but appeared to be more than willing to take advantage of the commonwealth's financial commitment to its construction of Aboriginality. In 1968 Abschol obtained commonwealth funding for a development project on Cape Barren Island. This meant that the federal government was simultaneously financing two opposing sides (the State of Tasmania and Aborigines) with mutually exclusive objectives. By 1970 Abschol had listed over one thousand people in Tasmania who couId self-identify as Aborigines. In the 1971 census, 671 persons so did. Given a population of less than a hundred on Cape Barren Island, it was evident that Aboriginal identification was not geographically restricted. Abschol was instrumental in

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sponsoring the first Tasmanian Aboriginal Conference in 1971 where people who self-identified as Aborigines throughout the state met to discuss their concerns. The conference received funding from the commonwealth but not from the state. One year later, the Aboriginal Information Centre (AIC) was created with help from Abschol to act in a variety of areas—legal aid, education, and economic development being the highest priorities. Abschol also continued its genealogical research and by 1973 had listed three thousand people who could claim Aboriginal status in the state. This 300 percent increase in only two years obviously spoke to causes other than differences between birth and mortality rates. What was occurring was increased self-identification by those with Aboriginal ancestry, arguably because that identity made increasing sense of individual experiences, powerlessness, and the need for collective action. Soon after, Abschol turned over management of the AIC to an Aboriginal board of directors, and the local Abschol branch was disbanded. The AIC was able to get state as well as commonwealth funding for its operations, although the state's assistance did not signal a willingness to recognize Aboriginal status. State officials used Truganini's death in 1876 as grounds for denying contemporary status claims. The AIC repeatedly attacked the commonly held assumption of Truganini's being "the last Tasmanian Aborigine." Truganini's significance will be addressed in the next chapter, for now it is sufficient to recognize her centrality to the bids for legitimacy of competing definitions of Aboriginality in Tasmania. AIC activities raised the existence of Tasmanian Aborigines into public consciousness—against the commonly held belief, and state government assertions, about their extinction. Contributing to these efforts, Tasmanian Aborigines had taken on a presence within the wider Aboriginal rights movement in Australia. Although this participation meant they were accepted as Aborigines by other Aborigines, it left them vulnerable. The commonwealth-sponsored National Aboriginal Consultative Committee founded in 1973 was dominated by individuals of mixed European-Aboriginal ancestry, in other words people previously called half-castes. What the commonwealth definition could not eliminate in many people's minds was, again, that there were "authentic" Aborigines who were culturally if not biologically distinct. In those terms, Tasmanian Aborigines were the example par excellence of suspect claimants.

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES

CULTURE, LAND CLAIMS AND CUSTOMARY LAW

The AIC was soon replaced by a new organization—the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAG). It consisted of an elected executive and a number of standing committees. A formal land claim was added to the AIC's agenda after the first Aboriginal Conference in 1971. One year later the TAC claimed from the state: (1) all areas containing Aboriginal rock art, (2) all mutton-birding islands around Tasmania, (3) Cape Barren Island and parts of Flinders Island, and (4) compensation for all unalienated Crown lands and/or their return in trust.16 This claim encountered particular problems by virtue of ambiguities with Aboriginal status which are best understood with reference to what had occurred elsewhere in Australia and abroad. As we have seen, land ownership had been central to the history of European-Aboriginal relations. The result was the creation of indigenous peoples as territorial minorities in a number of formally colonial nations. This territorial dimension began to re-emerge in the late 1960s as a political focus of indigenous rights movements. Technically, land claims addressed the validity of European dominium. In Australia the first of those legal challenges happened in 1969 through Milirrpum v. Nabalco. Stanner provides the context for this action— the 1960s constituted a "development explosion" with even greater potential for negative impacts on Aborigines than had pastoralism a century earlier.17 He was referring specifically to the discovery of mineral deposits in remote areas occupied by Aborigines. The Yirrkala in the Northern Territory were the first to experience what this meant; part of their reserve had been excised by the federal government without consultation to facilitate mining development. In addition to a petition, The Yirrkala put forward an injunction against the government and the mining corporation's continued intrusion on those lands, thereby raising the legal question of whether their Aboriginal title had been extinguished by the Crown. The absence of treaties in Australia and their use in North America and New Zealand were part of the plaintiffs' argument. So too were Aboriginal land tenure and conception of title—matters in which anthropologists acted as expert witnesses for the Yirrkala. The judge ruled against the Yirrkala, and by extension denied recognition to Aboriginal title in Australia. In his decision, the judge used anthropological testimony to rule that Aborigines had an interest in land

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which was neither a proprietary right nor negatively affected by mining development. He did, however, acknowledge that the commonwealth had the authority to give statutory recognition of Aboriginal interests if it so desired. The government's first response was to reject this recommendation as inconsistent with the maintenance of "one Australia." It meant that recognizing Aboriginal status did not involve the creation of a category of citizens with special rights to anything, let alone land. The government's stand led to a major Aboriginal protest, its most visible expression being a camp-in at the parliament buildings. The main result was to attract considerable public attention to the Aboriginal rights movement. When the Whitlam government was elected shortly after, it partially fulfilled its campaign promises of dealing with the land question by appointing A.E. Woodward, the Yirrkala attorney in Milinpum, to head a commission on land claims in the Northern Territory. The report of the Woodward Commission reflected on his experiences with the Yirrkala and the importance of Aboriginal concepts of title. In determining what it meant, and thus how claims could be evaluated, Woodward again drew heavily upon anthropologists, whose constructions were deemed to be valid representations of Aboriginal culture. The commission's report defined relations to land as intrinsic to Aboriginal identity, hence inseparable from any consideration of Aboriginal status.18 The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1975 followed the Woodward Commission's recommendations. It established a mechanism whereby Aborigines in the Northern Territory could acquire freehold title to their traditional lands. Demonstrating such a claim involved cultural criteria, with an emphasis on spiritual connections to land: "Traditional Aboriginal owners" in relation to land, means a local descent group of Aborigines who—(a) have common spiritual affiliations to a site on the land, being affiliations that place the group under a primary spiritual responsibility for that site and for the land; and (b) are entitled by Aboriginal tradition to forage as of right over that land.19

Before considering the implications of this legislation, it is worthwhile to take a brief look at what was occurring in Canada

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES

during the same period. The 1960s had brought about some major changes in federal relations to Native peoples. The civil rights movement in the United States and legislative attempts to improve the social and economic conditions of blacks had a major impact in Canada, bringing problems of indigenes to greater public attention. In addition, francophone demands for cultural recognition and special rights in Quebec created a climate wherein Natives could make similar protests and not be readily ignored. For the federal government, a perfect opportunity was provided to argue that existing legislation and special status were discriminatory and contributing to marginality. In 1969 a White Paper recommended the abolition of the Indian Act and Indian status. Pan-national Native organizations emerged in reaction to these proposals. Those organizations rejected what was yet another form of involuntary assimilation and they received considerable support from a public which was increasingly ethnic in composition. What both francophone Quebec and Native demands reflected were more than attempts at cultural recognition. At issue was a history of interaction with the British and a legacy of unresolved questions, one of which was land ownership. With respect to Native peoples, the Canadian government refused to consider claims to land beyond what existed through treaties. The situation did not admit to such a restriction. There were treaties without reserves, treaties with reserves, reserves without treaties, and Crown land acquisitions involving neither treaties nor reserves. The last two categories raised the possibility that Native title had not validly been extinguished within Canadian law; the area in question covered over half of Canada. This question was addressed in the case of Calder v. the Attorney General of British Columbia™ Anthropological testimony was again used to support an Indian conception of land tenure, but to no effect. The decision was appealed and went to the Supreme Court of Canada, which in 1973 ruled against the plaintiff. The decision, however, was split, and the Indian claimants lost on procedural grounds. This split meant that other claims by different nontreaty Indians might succeed. Another, equally important, court action took place in Canada at roughly the same time.21 The James Bay Cree brought an injunction based on Native right against a proposed hydro-electric project in Quebec. Although the injunction was overturned on appeal, the

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action signified that Native peoples could slow, if not prevent, economic development in much of Canada's hinterland. The immediate result of this court action was the Canadian federal government's creation of an alternative to litigation. Negotiation of land claims was put forward as the preferred means of reaching settlements; the James Bay Cree and Inuit were the first to utilize this option. As with the litigation, anthropologists participated in those negotiations on the Native side. Culture was central to all land claims settlement mechanisms established in Canada and Australia during the 1970s. Indigenous claimants had to provide constructions of themselves consistent with European frames of reference, emphasizing continuity with "traditions." Such constructions were in essence anthropological; they will be considered in more detail later. In Australia, land claims added to the complexity of defining Aboriginality. As mentioned, commonwealth recognition of Aboriginal status based on socio-psychological criteria did not extend to special rights. When land claims were brought forward, the commonwealth countered by adding cultural criteria. Not surprisingly, many self-identified Aborigines rejected this move as an effort to undermine the validity of their self-identification. This use of culture by the commonwealth was not restricted to land claims. Another thrust of Aboriginal rights movements was the matter of "customary law." It had been recognized in a number of post-colonial societies, notably in Africa and Indonesia, as well as in the United States. Legitimacy also came from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which interpreted indigenous law as one of the rights to "enjoy culture."22 In Canada customary law was addressed at various first ministers conferences beginning in 1983. Those meetings unsuccessfully attempted to define what was meant by Native rights under the 1982 Constitution Act. Representatives from the major national Native organizations participated and were unanimous in asserting that customary law was one of those rights. In Australia the Law Reform Commission took on the task of examining the matter in collaboration with the National Aboriginal Conference. Once more, anthropologists were asked to explicate the nature and content of Aboriginal "customary" law. The Law Reform Commission report of 1980 presented arguments for and against recognition.23 How Aboriginality

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should be defined constituted one of the key points. The more inclusive socio-psychological definition was seen as problematic; greater legitimacy was given to "traditional" Aborigines: "The Commission is aware that the application of these criteria could lead to invidious distinctions but it may be that, in the final analysis, distinctions, invidious or otherwise, will have to be made and, to that extent, to discriminate between groups of Aborigines."24 In effect, the commonwealth was saying that for certain purposes all self-identified Aborigines were to be treated as Aborigines, but for other purposes there were relatively more and less authentic Aborigines. Problems with designations such as half-caste which the commonwealth's definition had eliminated were recreated with respect to Aboriginal rights. Cultural distinctiveness, specifically in the form of continuity with pre-contact traditions, provided grounds for denying special rights to all but a few Aborigines. Some public opinion polls suggested the existence of similar attitudes outside government; support for land claims by tribal Aborigines, for example, was greater than for those of urban ones.25 In rebuttal, one Aboriginal politician argued that urban Aborigines were the truly dispossessed and thus in need of greater recognition than their more traditional counterparts.26 Anthropologists had a key role in defining the cultural dimension of Aboriginality, just as they had for its biological aspect. As discussed earlier, the discipline was interested primarily in pre-contact cultures and in the least assimilated Aborigines. Such a bias gave scientific legitimacy to traditional culture and ignored that it denied authenticity to the bulk of self-identified Aborigines. The anthropological usage of culture was therefore little different in its consequences than race previously had been for persons of mixed descent. At the same time, this long-standing conception of culture, and exclusive expertise in it, gave anthropologists a chance to work for tribal Aboriginals. Put crudely, Aboriginal land claims had created a new and expanding market for applied anthropology. The importance of this kind of research led to Aboriginal attention to continued disciplinary emphases on pure research. As early as 1974, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) had been queried about the relevancy to Aborigines of ethnographic studies, the AIAS's lack of commitment to land claims, and the absence of Aboriginal

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control over anthropological research.27 Growing anthropological participation in land claims under the Land Rights Act gradually led to tensions in the AIAS over applied research. As an organization created by federal statute, its mandate was the promotion of Aboriginal studies in the apolitical sense of the term. Land claims research was, if nothing else, political, and in an early 1980s review of the question, Professor Walsh recommended against AIAS involvement.28 This position more generally led to heated debates within the discipline, with ethical questions being raised which will be considered in the concluding chapter. Tasmania illustrates an extreme form of the importance of competing constructions of Aboriginality. The TAC's land claim was on behalf of individuals who were Aborigines under the commonwealth's definition and who had received federal recognition as Aborigines. At the same time, Tasmanian Aborigines were perceived to lack both biological and cultural bases of legitimacy. As we have seen, the Tasmanian government had continued to assert biology as the only valid criterion for Aboriginal status. The cultural legitimacy of Tasmanian Aboriginal claims was not even considered initially, but would be as it became more important nationally. The TAG partially addressed the cultural dimension by asserting that its claim on behalf of all Tasmanian Aborigines need not consider pre-contact conceptions of territoriality or tribal divisions. The TAG specified certain areas as culturally significant. Rock art, for example, drew on "spiritual" legitimacy, while mutton-birding islands represented a "distinct" economic activity. Likewise, Cape Barren and Flinders Islands were defined as historically and culturally important to Tasmanian Aborigines. The commonwealth government was willing to consider purchasing such lands under the Aboriginal Land Fund, but could only do so if the state approved. The TAG made a number of requests in this regard which the premier rejected. The only positive response from the Tasmanian government was to set up a study group with participants from the TAG and various state ministries. The group identified three major areas of Aboriginal concern: (1) the feasibility of a land trust, (2) the muttonbirding industry, and (3) social-economic development. A special committee was struck to further investigate and make recommendations on these matters. In its 1978 report, the Aboriginal Study Group stressed the problem of defining Aboriginality:

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES

(1) The claim that "there are no aborigines in Tasmania" is false, and that the prevalence of such claims in Tasmania are regrettable. (2) The Commonwealth definition provides three criteria which are necessary and sufficient for identification purposes in Tasmania. (3) The commonly held opinion that "because the last full blooded Aborigine, Truganini, died in 1876 there are therefore no aboriginals in Tasmania" is equally false and regrettable. (4) There are, according to the 1975 census, 1,564 males and 1,378 females who, by reason of mixed descent, justifiably have the right to be proud to defend their aboriginality.29

The report also provided the first use in any published document of the term Parlevar to refer to the original Tasmanian Aboriginal population. This was done to avoid confusion. Aborigine was identified as a European category, but one which had significance it spite of its origins, and thus should replace a variety of terms employed previously in an invidious way: Straitsmen, Islanders, half-castes, part-Aboriginals, and Aboriginal descendants. The study group proposed establishing a land trust under the direction of an Aboriginal committee authorized to acquire, hold, lease, and develop lands, as well as alienate them with the consent of the Tasmanian Parliament. A less radical position was taken with regard to sacred sites. The group felt that existing legislation could provide sufficient protection of those sites, though Aboriginal representation in appropriate agencies was needed. The land trust was also seen as usable for protection and development of mutton-birding if certain legislative changes were made. Finally, an Aboriginal liaison officer was requested who could deal with various state and commonwealth departments. This officer would be responsible for consultations in areas such as employment, job training, and special welfare and development programs. The report's reliance on anthropology is interesting. It drew on published and unpublished data and interpretation concerning Parlevar culture and the history of European relations with them and their descendants. One of those relations was with science and its role in creating and perpetuating the "myth of Aboriginal extinction."30 This support from anthropology is indicative of a change in orientation. The discipline was beginning to see itself as

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a cause of contemporary Aboriginal problems, ones that could only be rectified by changing its constructions of Aboriginality. The Tasmanian government was neither swayed by these new anthropological arguments nor did it respond to the study group's recommendations in any serious way. What might have been a protracted debate on the principle of legitimacy of Aboriginal status claims was transferred to a concrete issue. The state had proposed a major hydro-electric project on the Gordon and Franklin rivers which the government had been considering since the 1940s as a basis for industrial growth. Parallels to development schemes in the Australia's Northern Territory and Canada's hinterland should not be ignored, the intrusion of Aboriginal identity and rights into the economy had been a critical factor elsewhere and would also be in Tasmania. IDEOLOGY, INTERESTS, AND ABORIGINAL IDENTITY

In 1979 the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission (HEC) submitted a report recommending the second stage of power development on the Gordon-Franklin which would involve flooding a large proportion of the southwest of the state. The HEC correctly anticipated an environmentalist reaction. Since the mid-1950s, the area in question had been defined as a major wilderness area that should be protected for future generations. Considerable controversy about the flooding of Lake Pedder between 1969 and 1972 had contributed to the creation of the Environmental Protection Act, which required impact studies before the state government considered any major development project.31 The HEC report on the Gordon-Franklin dam proposal argued for minimal impacts from flooding given the remoteness and inaccessibility of the affected region. Special attention was also paid to one conclusion: "There were no known archaeological sites or other evidence of Aboriginal occupancy."32 This point was important because the 1975 Aboriginal Relics Act provided protection of such sites against damage. The act recognized the existence of a Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage, which, not co-incidentally, was defined as existing prior to Truganini's death. As expected, the initial outcry about the HEC proposal came from environmentalists. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society (TWS) protested the government's decision to go ahead with the project,

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claiming that the region to be flooded was a unique wilderness area. To counter government assertions about the economic benefits of the dam, the TWS argued for a tourism potential which would be lost with flooding. Opposition to the project took on a new dimension with the discovery in the targeted area of some artifacts and skeletal remains indicating Aboriginal occupancy dating back 15,000 to 20,000 years—including one site archaeologists heralded as world class. The Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) stated scientific reasons why the dam project should not be undertaken. These went beyond merely demanding protection under the Aboriginal Relics Act. It was asserted that the sites were of special importance given their age and location. Similarly, the TAG used these artifacts and remains, archaeologically interpreted, to put forward an Aboriginal claim to the area. The TWC, AAA, and TAG found themselves allied, albeit uncomfortably, against the government of Tasmania. This alliance had interesting characteristics. Environmental movements like the one in Tasmania can be seen as one mode of expressing dissatisfaction with centralist tendencies of liberal democratic states and their commitment to elite interests masked in terms of progress.33 In turn, environmentalism is consistent with post 1960s changes in political ideology: "The post-modernist values of humanism, naturalism, idealism and social emancipation were superimposed upon the old values of industrialism, economics, social liberal democracy and pragmatism."34 The ideological shift in frame of reference from society to nature and equation of economic progress with danger had a number of metaphorical expressions in the environmental movement, including "nature as cathedral."35 Aborigines, with their asserted spiritual connections to the land, provided an idealized form of traditional priesthood which captured newly emergent European environmentalist understandings. These affinities involved a construction of Aboriginality which both emphasized a long-standing unity with nature and denied exclusiveness to those beliefs; in essence, an updated noble savage became a model of appropriate humanness.36 In contrast, environmentalists are at best ambivalent about science given its historical associations with an ideology involving technological mastery of the world and material progress. From an environmentalist perspective, individual scientists and

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their research findings are legitimate only if they support environmentalist positions. In Tasmania the AAA served precisely those interests. There were, however, growing tensions between the TWS and the TAG. The TWS refused to recognize Tasmanian Aboriginal ownership and control of the caves and associated lands, which was seen by the TAG as a denial of "the rights of Aborigines to preserve their own culture."37 Later, the caves would become a locus for an Aboriginal confrontation with archaeology over another form of ownership—intellectual. Media coverage contributed to the Gordon-Franklin dam's becoming a national controversy. One newspaper described it as the "largest environmental issue in Australian history," with 15,000 people marching in Melbourne alone.38 Those demonstrations were partially directed at the commonwealth government and the prime minister's statement that the project was entirely the state's business. The federal government itself was split on the subject. A senate select committee recommended the Gordon-Franklin dam not be constructed because of its destruction of the Aboriginal sites. The commonwealth's decision not to intrude led to a more aggressive stance by the TAG and TWS. They sponsored sit-ins and blockades of the Franklin area. The state government retaliated by making mass arrests totally approximately 1,000 over a three-month period in 1983. The acting prime minister openly supported the state and offered additional police to maintain order. A growing public outcry about the state's tactics generated various attempts at compromise. Discussions were held about ways to protect the Aboriginal sites from flood damage, none of which proved to be realistic in the AAA's evaluation. The Tasmanian government took placatory measures toward the Aborigines, and the HEC gave them permission to cross its lands and to visit the cave sites, thereby exempting them from arrest. Those visits became the equivalent of religious pilgrimages, and the Aborigines asserted their spiritual affinities to the caves, in effect defining them as sacred sites. Finally, the Tasmanian Nomenclature Board renamed the sites using Aboriginal words instead of politicians' surnames. For the Tasmanian Aboriginal rights movement, the caves were symbolically significant. The government's indifference to the caves provided obvious parallels to historical treatment of Aborigines, with the development project representing a commitment to destroy what

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little cultural heritage remained. The caves provided a focus for Aboriginal self-identification and political mobilization. Michael Mansell, President of the TAG, referred to the antiquity of the caves in this way: "The fact that Aborigines could survive physically and culturally in adverse conditions and over such a long period of time ... helps me counteract a feeling of racial inferiority and enables me to demonstrate within the wider community that I and my people are equal members of that community."39 What should be noted here is the importance of archaeological interpretation. In contrast to Tasmanian archaeology at the turn of the century, which was oriented more toward artifact collection, post-World War II studies were analytic. The modern archaeological perspective was ecological, with emphases on human adaptation. Skeletal remains were used to address this process by providing evidence about diet and diseases.40 An ecological perspective existed in a less developed sense well before evolutionary theory emerged and the two became fused. The contemporary ecological approach had, however, divested itself of racial and hierarchical stigmas and provided more positive images of prehistoric cultures and peoples. Haraway discusses that change as a remodelling of humanness which began in the early 1950s, involving a nostalgia for earlier forms of existence as against modernity, and providing a prototype for UNESCO efforts to establish "universal man."41 This construct reversed previous conceptions of early humans as inferior, and by extension contemporary peoples who had maintained simpler modes of existence. The new model also spoke to shared experiences of real human beings struggling and surviving, often under adverse conditions. These depictions had more universal appeal, while speaking more strongly to persons who thought of themselves as Aborigines. What archaeologists said about the GordonFranklin caves went far beyond the limits of academic discourse and disciplinary interest in knowledge for its own sake. In the political arena, the TWS threatened court action against the state. The strategy was to employ the Tasmanian Relics Act to limit the extent of flooding below the levels of the Aboriginal sites. The opposition parties in both the state and commonwealth came out against the dam; and in one Tasmanian municipal election, the issue became a key factor. The media began to attack the state's arguments about the economic benefits of the project, pointing out

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that few new jobs would be created and that additional hydro-electric power was not needed. The media also warned the Fraser government of the coming commonwealth election and the public's reaction to government indifference to date. There were two thousand environmentalist organizations in Australia with a combined membership of about half a million. The commonwealth government found itself in an awkward situation for reasons other than growing public dissatisfaction; the Tasmanian Aboriginal caves were regarded as a significant archaeological find, and the region had been accepted as a World Heritage Site. Under the terms of United Nations conventions, the federal government's noninterventionist stance on the Franklin dam was tantamount to a violation of international law. This legal obligation gave the Fraser government a rationale for reversing its position, and parliament passed a bill against the project in 1983. The state then took the commonwealth to the Australian High Court on the grounds that the bill was an illegal interference with state's rights. During the trial, the TAG filed an affidavit to appear before the court, and was supported by the commonwealth's attorneys. A lawyer for the state argued that the Tasmanian Aborigines were extinct. The federal minister for Aboriginal affairs used the incident to reaffirm the commonwealth's recognition of Tasmanian Aborigines as "a valid and integral component of the Aboriginal race."42 In the end, the High Court ruled against the state and the Gordon-Franklin project was cancelled. This decision involved a number of concerns. Part of the commonwealth's rationale for the bill was the presence of Aboriginal artifacts, which gave the commonwealth grounds for asserting its authority to make special laws to protect Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural heritage. Two judges concurred: The cultural heritage of a people is so much a characteristic or property of people to whom it belongs as to be inseparably connected to them ... such a law may not only strengthen common understandings that make Aboriginal people conscious of their identity but may promote tolerance of their position among the general community. A law aimed at the preservation or uncovering of evidence about the history of the Aboriginal people was therefore a special law.43

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES The role of archaeological interpretation was critical to both the commonwealth's position and the High Court's decision. It heard and considered the expert testimony of archaeologists as to the nature and age of the findings on the Gordon-Franklin. Those experts unanimously recommended that the cave sites be preserved because of their antiquity, and the fact that they represented the southern-most known human occupation during the last ice age. The decision of the High Court was informative about the importance of anthropology in another respect. Race was a central concept which the judges felt obligated to address because of its legal usage, and some of them referred to the anthropological literature to assist in defining what "race" might mean in a modern context. One judge stated: Physical similarities, and a common history, a common religion or spiritual beliefs, and a common culture are factors that tend to create a sense of identity among members of a race and to which others have regard in identifying peoples as members of a race.... The kinds of benefits that laws might properly confer upon peoples as members of a race are benefits which tend to protect or foster their common intangible heritage or their common sense of identity.44

It is in this general context that further developments in the Tasmanian Aboriginal land claim can be understood. The key questions remained: (1) what is Aboriginality, (2) who determines its criteria, and (3) who meets those standards? As purely a status consideration, the commonwealth had answered those questions to its satisfaction and to that of those who thought of themselves as Tasmanian Aborigines. The problems were with the state government, which held that it was the only legitimate body to make those judgments under the constitution. The Tasmanian government reasserted its use of "objective" biological criteria to define Aboriginality, with the commonwealth's definition by inference being "subjective." In part, the state's refusal to recognize the existence of Aborigines was intended to avoid precisely what had happened elsewhere in Australia, the use of Aboriginal status to assert Aboriginal rights. More importantly, Aboriginal land claims in Tasmania had existed for almost a century before they were raised in Milirrpum v. Nabalco. At stake was more than a matter of Aboriginal status.

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Commonwealth Aboriginal Affairs Minister Holding warned the Tasmanian government in 1984 that the federal government was in the process of developing legislation on Aboriginal land claims based on human rights which would override the rights of the state.45 He listed the following areas of proposed legislation: (1) unalienable freehold title, (2) protection of sacred sites, (3) mining royalties, and (4) negotiated compensations for lands lost. The Tasmanian government continued to maintain its 1982 policy statement of "all Tasmanians equal" which made special status and rights unacceptable, let alone for persons who had only some Aboriginal ancestry. The Attorney General of Tasmania commented that although the commonwealth's proposed land claims legislation might be appropriate elsewhere in Australia, it was not for Tasmania. He argued that existing Tasmanian Aborigines did not have a tribal structure, and therefore did not belong to a recognizably distinct socio-political entity. This was the first overt political use of a cultural conception of Aboriginality to discredit Tasmanian Aboriginal claims. The attorney general's comments drew on both the decision in Milirrpum v. Nabalco and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territories) Act, where the concepts of tribe and local descent groups had been used to define bases of claims. The application of federal criteria led to the same conclusion. The Tasmanian Aboriginal land claim had no validity. By extension, the commonwealth's threat to intrude into state matters was improper if not illegal. The position the Tasmanian government put forward was that claimants to Aboriginal status in the state were doubly illegitimate. On a biological continuum those persons had only remote Aboriginal ancestry, on a cultural continuum they had virtually no continuity with pre-contact traditions. At the same time the attorney general begrudgingly acknowledged the reality of an Aboriginal question in Tasmania. This consideration did not include status and rights, but dealt with social and economic inequalities faced by those with Aboriginal ancestry in areas such as education, health, and employment. For the TAG, those socio-economic problems demanded solutions inseparable from Aboriginal rights. Public support was crucial to both the state government and the TAG. The Tasmanian government had the advantage that Aboriginal land claims had been made (under the more open commonwealth definition) by less than 1.5 percent of the population who

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were at best marginally accepted by some people as Aborigines. The TAG was branded as leading: a non-existent race called aboriginal ... most of whom are 90 percent white blood.... It's time our gullible politicians woke up and wound down the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. It's a joke and a burden on the taxpayers, who owe these people precisely nothing. Truganini was the last of her race, her features in no way resemble the modern age of "white" aboriginal.46

The lack of any noticeable ground swell of public sympathy to any Aboriginal land claims other than those to the Gordon-Franklin Caves led to other TAC efforts. It argued the realities of racial discrimination. Research on Aboriginal unemployment, incarceration, deaths in prison, and infant mortality rates were put forward in conjunction with issues of land rights.47 The commonwealth government indirectly supported these efforts by publishing one survey of these factors within a historical treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines and their struggle for identity.48 Although social and economic marginality provided a way to validate the reality of Tasmanian Aboriginal problems, there was a built-in risk. Comparisons could only be based on differences from white Tasmanians—comparisons which could readily be seen as an Aboriginal aspiration to become like whites, and which would feed into assimilationist and multi-cultural assumptions. This was critical in a particular way. If Tasmanian Aborigines were merely a component of a multi-cultural society then they were neither different from non-British immigrants nor could they legitimately demand structural changes based on cultural distinctiveness. In addition, Aboriginal cultural differentiation was problematic in so far as it invited comparisons with the pre-contact past which simultaneously provided a basis for defining contemporary Aborigines as powerless in determining their future. The public arguably generally favoured equal rights and opportunities for Tasmanian Aborigines, but there was little external support for "special" rights. The TAC was careful to concentrate its public statements about ownership claims to particular sites. During the Gordon-Franklin controversy a claim was made to Oyster Cove, the location of the last Aboriginal reserve. The TAC argued it had a special historical

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significance equivalent to that of a sacred site. In contrast to the 1975 Aboriginal Affairs Study Group recommendations concerning the adequacy of existing legislation for protecting such sites, the TAG demanded Aboriginal title to Oyster Cove. The site had been donated to the state by its previous owner in 1981, and the commonwealth was willing to purchase it under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. As part of an effort to gain ownership of Oyster Cove, the TAC in 1984 led a move for members of the Aboriginal community to occupy it. In addition to making a visible protest about the Tasmanian government's refusal to consider land claims, particularly to a site of special significance to Tasmanian Aborigines, the occupation provided a basis for discussion of national events. The commonwealth Aboriginal affairs minister visited Oyster Cove to show solidarity with the Tasmanian Aborigines and federal support of their claims. The TAC executive told him that the proposed commonwealth legislation was a compromise solution which Tasmanian Aborigines rejected, particularly restriction of Aboriginal title to freehold and the Crown's retention of all subsurface mineral rights. Shortly after the occupation of Oyster Cove, the TAC confronted the three largest forestry companies in Tasmania. This unilateral move was deemed necessary because of the state government's continued intransigence. The TAC asked those corporations for: (1) a percentage of royalties paid to the state, (2) increased Aboriginal employment in the industry, and (3) formation of a joint committee to discuss problems and solutions. The TAC utilized a cultural factor—the protection of sacred sites from logging operations. The companies were put on notice that damage to the sites would result in legal actions and public demonstrations. The firms sent the demands to the state government, which did not bother to respond. Meanwhile, the TAC continued to press its case for Oyster Cove. The state's response to its occupancy by Aborigines had been neutral, merely demanding that a hut built there be removed. In August of 1984 the Tasmanian minister of education asked the TAC to submit a proposal for the use of Oyster Cove as an educational centre following from TAC usage of the site during the occupation. Before anything could be submitted, Tasmania's ministry of parks and recreation brought forward its own plan for Oyster Cove. Included in it was an advisory committee with equal representation by Aborigines and non-Aborigines. The TAC rejected the plan on

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the bases of an existing Aboriginal claim and commitment to selfdetermination. The TAG struck a special committee to develop its own proposals, which were then sent directly to the premier to avoid differing ministries' considerations. Returning to the question of public support of these claims, a newspaper poll taken during the discussions of Oyster Cove showed that 56.3 percent of the population were in favour of Tasmanian Aboriginal rights as they pertained to sacred sites and their equivalent, 11.2 percent were undecided, and 32.5 against.49 The greatest support, 74.4 percent of those in favour, came from unskilled workers. This was in sharp contrast to the colonial period when the socalled "lower orders" of settlers were the most hostile to Aborigines. The sympathy of the modern Tasmanian working class to Aboriginal aspirations was also at odds with surveys in other parts of Australia. Nationwide, acceptance was greater among persons with higher levels of education and occupation. Also contrary to expectations, the Tasmanian results cannot be understood in terms of ethnicity— the state had the lowest proportion of immigrants in its population (12 percent in the 1976 census), only one quarter of whom were non-British in origin. The site-specific nature of these Tasmanian Aboriginal claims probably had a lot to do with external support, as did government resistance to solving the seemingly simple matter of recognizing the symbolic importance of Oyster Cove to Aborigines. While the future of Oyster Cove was being discussed, the election of a Tasmanian to the National Aboriginal Conference brought out some differences of opinion within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. The candidates took varying positions on whether land claims should have priority over more immediate forms of social and economic development, how extensive those claims should be, and how they might best be settled. When the losers challenged the election results on the grounds that non-Aboriginals had voted, an injunction was issued to prevent announcing the results, but before a federal judge could rule upon it the candidates agreed to an Aboriginal committee resolving the dispute. Although not stated, this was most likely done to visibly demonstrate Aboriginal self-determination. An Aboriginal informant pointed out a more general problem of possible participation of non-Aborigines. The TAC asserted that it represented all Aborigines in the state, and was therefore

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vulnerable if it could be shown that non-Aborigines were benefitting from government-funded special programs like legal aide. In effect, the TAG had to police, that is, support by genealogical evidence, individual Aboriginal self-identification in terms acceptable to the state government. Ancestry in the strict sense, however, was not always relevant to members of the Aboriginal community. Someone of non-Aboriginal ancestry (e.g., a spouse of an Aborigine) might well be "adopted" into the community. The last half of the 1980s continued much the same pattern of interaction between the TAG and the government of Tasmania; nothing was resolved. The single biggest breakthrough was the coalition Labour-Green government's 1989 willingness to formally address Aboriginal land rights. The independent Greens who were elected had in common a view of economic development and minority rights which Aboriginal land claims did not threaten, particularly claims to specific sites of cultural importance to Tasmanian Aborigines. Given previous arguments, environmentalists also could to some degree use Aborigines for their own purposes. This move by the government generated considerable media and public discussion. Those against land claims brought out all the expected biological and cultural arguments. Feeding into this response was rejection of the TAG land claim by a group of seventeen Aborigines on Cape Barren Island.50 While favouring Aboriginal ownership to places like Oyster Cove, this group preferred to have the island managed by the Tasmanian government, not by an Aboriginal land council. The status of Cape Barren Island as a homeland central to Tasmanian Aboriginal identity made this minority statement more important than it would otherwise have been.51 As an Aboriginal informant put it, those Islanders were airing dirty laundry best restricted to the Aboriginal community. The TAC in particular was obligated to attack this group as nonrepresentative and influenced by paternalistic whites living on the island. The incident spoke to a legitimacy problem within the Aboriginal community. Not all self-identified Tasmanian Aborigines accepted the TAC as representing their interests or acting appropriately in achieving even common ones. An example of this conflict was the participation of Michael Mansell, the TAC president, in two Aboriginal delegations sent to Libya. These delegations were attempting to attract international attention to the Aboriginal

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movement in Australia. Libya was a convenient place to do so since its government had stated a willingness to impose trade sanctions on liberal-democratic nations which refused to recognize indigenous peoples' rights, paralleling international responses to apartheid in South Africa. During the second visit, much was made by the media of the delegates' using Aboriginal passports rather than Australian ones. Libya accepted the former, but upon the delegates' return the Australian government did not. This high-profile action was hotly debated both within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and among Aborigines elsewhere in Australia. Although ManselPs use of an Aboriginal passport could not be seen as representative, it was indicative of a growing feeling of Aboriginal nationalism which had other symbolic expressions such as an Aboriginal flag and the tent "embassy" during protests surrounding the denial of Aboriginal land rights.52 HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND ABORIGINALITY

These modern symbols of Aboriginality were matched by efforts to draw upon elements from the past. Cultural awareness camps in mainland Australia during the mid 1980s were an example of attempts by some Aborigines to become more Aboriginal through combining traditional and contemporary sources of positive identity.53 A tension between them occurred in the use of Aboriginal art. As with culture generally, who should determine what Aboriginal art was involved competing constructions by Aborigines and non-Aborigines, including gallery owners, museum curators, and art historians. EuroAustralian use of Aboriginal art to articulate an Australian national identity compounded the question.54 Like the earlier remodelling of humanness by archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, Euro-Australian intellectuals more generally began in the late 1980s to develop their own notions of Aboriginality. Although affirming a more positive image of Aborigines, this increased interest involved an appropriation of their past. This was not a uniquely Australian issue, but one which had somewhat earlier relevancy there than elsewhere as captured by the theme of an Australian symposium of the early 1980s— Who Owns the Past?55 A number of the participants were anthropologists, including one Canadian, and they addressed Aboriginal ownership claims to their past and exclusive prerogatives to its interpretation.

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Tasmania provided a leading edge in these matters. The Gordon-Franklin caves controversy, as discussed, had involved a level of mutual interests between the TAG and the AAA. In 1983 R.F. Langford, a Tasmanian Aboriginal spokesperson, met with archaeologists to consider their future relations.56 She began by complaining that archaeologists had not recognized Aboriginal rights to those caves, but had instead defined scientific interests to these sites as overriding. She did not present the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as hostile to archaeology, but did assert Aboriginal control over land and culture as a precondition for future archaeological fieldwork. The AAA agreed, which meant that TAG approval and Aboriginal research participation would become elements for all further archaeological studies. This commitment was not limited to the constraints of existing Tasmanian legislation, and thus suggested a fusion between political and ethical considerations generated by the Aboriginal rights movement. Similarly, archaeologists were expected to recognize the validity of Tasmanian Aboriginal status claims. This expectation reflected on the participation of a prominent archaeologist in the making of a documentary film The Last Tasmanian in which the death of Truganini had once again been used to define Aboriginal extinction—this time of their culture.57 A lack of cultural continuity with the past was argued, supported by statements from individuals who could have self-identified as Aborigines by virtue of ancestry but had not so chosen. In addition, an anthropological definition of culture was used to show that contemporary Tasmanian Aboriginality did not have a cultural base. In the 1983 discussions with the AAA, the point was made that the Aboriginal community had been consulted in the making of the film, but Aboriginal interpretations of history had been edited out, leaving them with the inescapable conclusion that they had "helped portray the story which denied our existence."58 Both the film maker and the archaeologist were seen as having betrayed a trust implicit in the consultancy. The archaeologist was also criticized for his academic portrayal of prehistoric Tasmanian Aborigines as having reached a developmental plateau, followed by a decline evidenced in changes in tool assemblages. The positive depiction of tens of thousands of years of Tasmanian Aboriginal survival was partially erased by their later "inferiority" in an anthropological construction of history.

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The head of the TAG, Michael Mansell, later made a more extreme public statement which was not necessarily representative of Tasmanian Aboriginal views: 129 Australian archaeologists, as a result of us pressuring and refusing them entry onto burial grounds, have found that they can get the same data by looking at the remains of animals.... Social anthropologists have found that if they want to know about Aborigines they should ask them.59

Mansell's assertions at face value seem questionable. Given pre-contact cremation practices, there were no prehistoric burial grounds. If there where, archaeologists would likely be more interested in artifacts than in skeletons. Last, the notion that contemporary Aborigines could seriously interpret data from more than 20,000 years ago is close to improbable even if pre-contact culture had been static. What can at best be seen as a piece of Aboriginal political rhetoric might, however, be viewed in a slightly different way. Aborigines' control of their past was inseparable their identity in the present. Controlling Western scientific access to data and what Western researchers might say was only part of the problem. One Aboriginal academic stated that Aborigines lacked knowledge and access to data collected on them which was of personal interest.60 Repositories of such information, like museums, are controlled by Euro-Australians. Further, as Mulvaney noted in 1979, academics had at the time a monopoly on interpreting the Aboriginal past and they were non-Aborigines.61 Picking up on Mansell's comments, European ethnographers had relied on informants' interpretations and used them to develop disciplinary understandings of living cultures legitimized as emic, that is, representing how Aborigines understand themselves and their world. For Aborigines to put forward such emic understandings independently is less problematic when it concerns the present than for the more remote past. "Dreamtime" has provided a distinctly Aboriginal conception transcending European notions of past and present, speaking to an Aboriginal spiritual interpretation. Such claims go beyond cultural relativism. What is being asserted is an epistemological relativism in which an Aboriginal perspective has more validity than scientific ones.

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In general terms, an Aboriginal identity which is empowering in the present virtually requires putting forward ways of knowing that are accepted as legitimate by non-Aboriginal "others." Glenn Shaw, a member of the TAG, put it this way: The biggest problem that the Aboriginal community faces from the white community is criticism of Aboriginal ideals and beliefs. The white community needs to understand that the Aboriginal people have little or nothing without their ideals and beliefs [and without them] they lose their identity as Aborigines.62 The legitimacy of those "ideals and beliefs" is a particular problem for Aborigines who do not fit conventional European notions. Concepts such as Dreamtime have been accepted and appropriated by Euro-Australians because they are deemed to be traditional/authentic. Assertions that non-traditional Aboriginals have equivalently valid world views is of a different order, especially when those views extend to an understanding of Europeans and the wider society. Langton, an Aboriginal critic of the social sciences, has vocalized objections to disciplinary constructions of Aboriginality because they deny authenticity to modern-urban Aboriginal experiences, behaviour, and interpretations.63 TAG spokespersons, especially when dealing with university audiences, have typically make the same argument. Central to it is a rejection of Euro-scientific perspectives, biased toward pre-contact history and culture, as definitive of Aboriginality. What cannot be ignored is that anthropology is a European cultural product which has spoken not only about Aborigines but for them. The discipline's interest in traditions, despite more than a century of acculturative change, have contributed to the perpetuation of Western perceptions of authentic Aboriginality. The relative absence of research on non-tribal Aborigines is one indicator of that bias. Tasmania provides an extreme instance, Aborigines there have never been studied ethnographically. If Tasmanian Aborigines have queried the legitimacy of anthropology, its practitioners need not be surprised. Their interests have been the same for over a century—prehistoric culture and biological differences. The single exception is a relatively recent focus on historical relations between Aborigines and Europeans but as this book illustrates, such research

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES can be purely academic. How anthropologists have come to terms with these challenges will be the focus of the remaining chapters. Where the interpretation of Aboriginal prehistory is concerned, a hint about issues and disciplinary responses to them is reflected in the comments of one Australian archaeologist, Steve Brown: The brief outline of the background to Aboriginal people in Greater Australia ... is of course based on the "religion" of western scientific evidence. Some Aboriginal people firmly believe that they have always been here: they are part of the land. Their origins are explained in the belief system commonly termed the "dream time." ... Stones, bones, shell and paintings provide tantalizing clues as to changing lifestyles of past generations of Australian Aboriginal people. The extraordinary creativity of the spirit demonstrated in surviving dreamtime beliefs is evidence of aspects of the past which scientific research can never reconstruct.64

Before considering those matters, one further context requires consideration. Ownership of the land and the past, like customary law and cultural representations, are aspects of contemporary Aboriginal political demands for greater self-determination, the most extreme manifestation of which is Aboriginal sovereignty claims involving anthropology to some extent. ABORIGINAL SOVEREIGNTY AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The commonwealth and Tasmanian state governments did agree on two things in the late 1980s. Aborigines were socially and economically disadvantaged, and they could not held entirely to blame. Their contemporary marginality was a historical product of interactions with Europeans and policies of assimilation. As we have seen, this history became more and more important, as did Aboriginal understandings of it. This point of view created an opportunity for European historians and anthropologists to revise their interpretations of the past for a number of reasons, some academic in the sense of careers, others reflecting moral commitments to the achievement of Aboriginal political goals. One of the merging Euro-academic and Aboriginal foci was the denial of Aboriginal existence as exemplified by the concept of terra nullius. This concept took on special significance for

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Australian Aborigines as they began to participate internationally and exchange ideas with other indigenous peoples. As noted above, the use of treaties in British North America and New Zealand, and their absence in Australia, intensified Australian Aboriginal feelings about a history of denial by Europeans. Although the decision in Milirrpum v. Nabalco had dismissed the lack of treaties as relevant to Aboriginal experiences with Europeans in terms of land claims, an additional issue was left unresolved. As discussed in chapter 2, British colonization had involved a technical distinction between imperium and dominium. If Milirrpum v. Nabalco had affirmed Crown dominium, the matter of imperium remained open in Australia. The Aboriginal plaintiffs in Coe v. Commonwealth of Australia unsuccessfully argued that they were still a sovereign people, again using the absence of treaties as support.65 In spite of these court decisions, the commonwealth government recognized that the historical usage of terra nullius was morally problematic. The senate passed a resolution in 1975 calling for a symbolic recognition of Aborigines as the prior owners of the country, with a treaty being the appropriate instrument for defining future relations with them. An unofficial group, the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, with European and Aboriginal membership, had been formed in 1978. It proposed a negotiated settlement of Aboriginal status and rights which would be formalized in a treaty. The National Aboriginal Council was also considering a similar approach. The matters identified as central to such negotiations were: (1) protection of Aboriginal identity and culture, (2) land rights, (3) future economic development, (4) compensation for previous loss of lands and damages to Aboriginal ways of life, and (5) the right of Aboriginal self-determination. A number of Aboriginal organizations used the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to assert the need for a treaty in Australia, one which would recognize Aborigines as the original sovereigns. The National Aboriginal Conference also used the United Nations as a vehicle to draw world attention to the Australian situation, and a presentation to the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights received considerable media coverage. Self-determination was one of those rights, and in its strongest sense was a sovereignty claim. As TAC spokesperson, Cheryl Fulton, stated: "Sovereignty means a

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recognition of us—the original and present owners of this land—as a nation of people today. This recognition would form the basis from which we would negotiate a treaty with the white government, nation to nation."66 In a 1987 draft treaty submitted to the Aboriginal National Coalition, the matter of whether individual Aboriginal societies in the historic sense would have regional self-determination within a modern Aboriginal nation was considered. The closest historic parallel was the Treaty of Waitangi in which the Maori chiefs as signatories could be seen as a single nation, while representing their individual tribes. One proposal put forward by a number of Aboriginal organizations in Australia, including the TAG, was for the creation of actual modern Aboriginal state within which specific cultural divisions would have a high degree of political autonomy analogous to commonwealth and state jurisdictions. In contrast, if one examines similar assertions of sovereignty in Canada there has been no move to define a single Native nation. This difference may be due to a number of factors. As discussed, treaties in Canada varied and were specific to individual indigenous peoples. Variation in treaty relations, coupled with diversity among Canadian Native peoples, led to a more culturally specific view of title and sovereignty. It has been primarily at the level of constitutional talks that Canadian pan-national Native organizations have acted in accord, though the common denominator was the right of every indigenous people to regain their title to territories and be sovereign over them. Even more striking is a comparison with Maori political efforts in New Zealand. In the 1970s self-determination was the major thrust of Maori political activism with occasional references to their forming a separate nation. By the mid-1980s, however, there was more concern with tribal (iwi) identity and socialeconomic-political development at this level.67 Returning to the Australian context, in 1988 the prime minister announced the commonwealth's commitment to negotiating a treaty settlement with all Aborigines in line with 1983 statements of the minister of Aboriginal affairs. That announcement was something of a surprise given what had happened in the interim. As Judith Wright has noted, that period had involved an erosion of the treaty principle as an agreement between, at least historically, two sovereign nations.68 This definition meant that any such treaty would be

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subject to international law, and would therefore create an Aboriginal capacity to appeal to a higher legal authority outside Australia. The commonwealth had avoided this legal implication by using other terms such as "compact." The 1988 prime minister's statement proved to be anything but a reversal of the government's position. His use of the term "treaty" was symbolic, not legalistic, and the concept quickly vanished from the commonwealth side of discourse. It was replaced by a greater emphasis on Aboriginal control over their own affairs as reflected in the 1989 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Bill. Part of the reason for this change in orientation lay with problematic aspects of a treaty other than its legal status. From an Aboriginal perspective, to gain commonwealth recognition of even precontact sovereignty was inseparable from dominium over land, in other words sovereignty was a way to reopen the whole matter of Aboriginal title. A non-Aboriginal historian, Henry Reynolds, put forward a dilemma in 1987: asserting Aboriginal sovereignty claims would undermine gaining recognition of land rights.69 The TAG president (and a lawyer), Michael Mansell, rejected this interpretation. He, along with a mainland Aboriginal politician, saw sovereignty as a "moral and legal principle" which should not be subject to technical implications. A treaty was to the only way to ultimately express this principle, even though it might mean creating a modern Aboriginal state. However unrepresentative Mansell's interpretation was of Aboriginal political goals and means of achieving them, he was a highly visible spokesperson. Although a treaty did not emerge, this instrument suggested the importance of Aboriginal culture—and through it, Aborigines' relations to anthropology. As one draft treaty designed by Aborigines stated: All artifacts, artworks, and items located by archaeological diggings [and now in] museums and other art centres ... be returned.... The study and diggings of all lands by Anthropologists and Archaeologists cease, and that any further studies by said groups to be conducted with the approval of those Aboriginal people whose Territorial Jurisdiction prevails.70

OLD SCIENCE AND NEW REALITIES

What this quotation does not indicate is why anthropological research had become so politically important. The reasons should be evident by now. The discipline was inseparable from both the history of Aboriginal contact with Europeans and current Aboriginal political objectives. Anthropology had: (1) contributed to definitions of Aborigines as biologically and culturally inferior, (2) been instrumental in efforts to assimilate Aborigines, (3) spoken for Aborigines politically and (4) continued to construct Aboriginality to fit its own interests irrespective of the sometimes negative political implications of those constructions. If some Aboriginal organizations have rejected the discipline's assertions of autonomy and wanted to establish control over it, their feelings and desires are understandable. Although anthropology has been instrumental in preserving elements of Aboriginal culture that might otherwise have been lost and has provided assistance to Aborigines in their land claims, the very existence of anthropology is problematic from certain Aboriginal vantage points. In an earlier context specific to land claims, an Aboriginal spokesperson defined what a new relationship to anthropology might be— one that appears very much like an environmentalist position as to science: "We'll hire our own anthropologist and one on whom we can rely to prepare a report favourable to ourselves ... we'll tell you only as much as we think might be necessary to support our claims."71 Tasmania provides some interesting differences from mainland Australia where applied research had been central to anthropology since the 1930s. As I have repeatedly stated, Tasmanian anthropological research has been geared toward knowledge for its own sake and concentrated on the physical and prehistoric aspects of Aboriginality. Those foci, however, cannot be construed as a purely disinterested and apolitical set of universal intellectual interests. They were European, and regardless of intent, anthropological investigation in Tasmania was politicized from the moment it began. Modern specialists must now consciously confront not only the historical effects of research on Tasmanian Aborigines but their increased voice in determining who they are and were. Physical anthropologists have had to face extreme forms of these problems, and they provide the next locus of our attention.

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1. Lyndall Ryan. 1981. The Tasmanian Aborigines. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 248-49. 2. A number of organizations [Abschol, Aboriginal Information Centre, etc.] and individuals [Michael Mansell, Cheryl Fulton, etc.] will be discussed in the following sections. Unfortunately, information about them was in some cases impossible to obtain particularly after the fieldwork portion of the research was completed and I had returned to Canada. Ironically, the available data for the pre-1951 period was more readily accessible. The records of Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, for example, were closed to me and almost certainly would have fleshed out the Aboriginal side of ongoing political debates. 3. Paul Hasluck. 1953- Welfare in Australia; Speeches and Addresses by the Hon. Paul Hasluck. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 11-12. 4. Ibid., 13-19. 5. Charles Rowley. 1970. Outcasts in White Australia. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 403. 6. W.E.H. Stanner. 1979- White Man Got No Dreaming. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 235. 7. I assume Abschol is an acronym but I was unable to find out what it meant. 8. Charles Rowley, Outcasts, 407. 9. Andrew Jakubowicz. 1984. "State and Ethnicity: Multi-culturalism as Ideology." In Ethnic Politics in Australia, edited by James Jupp. Sydney: George Allen £ Unwin, 14-37. 10. Tasmania. 1978. "Report of the Aboriginal Affairs Study Group of Tasmania." Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 199(94): 16. 11. Scott Bennett. 1985. "The 1967 Referendum." Australian Aboriginal Studies 2:28-29. 12. Murray Goot and Tim Rowse. "The 'Backlash' Hypothesis and the Land Rights Option." Australian Aboriginal Studies 1:4. 13- Scott Bennett, "1967 Referendum," 28. 14. Cited in Diedre F. Jordan. 1985. "Census Categories-Enumeration of Aboriginal People, or Construction of Identity?" Australian Aboriginal Studies 1:28. 15. The Mercury, June 12, 1968, 7. 16. Direct Action June 28, 1982, 13.

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17. W.E.H. Stanner, White Man, 275-94. 18. Judith Wright. 1985. We Callfor a Treaty. Sydney: Collins-Fontana, 20. 19. Marc Gumbert. 1984. Neither Justice Nor Reason. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 95. 20. Douglas Sanders. 1973. "The Nishga Case." B.C. Studies 19:3-20. 21. R.F. Salisbury. 1986. A Homeland for the Cree: Regional Development in James Bay 1971-1981. Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 22. James W. Zion. 1988. "Searching for Indian Common Law." In Indigenous Law and the State, edited by B.W. Morse and G.R. Woodman. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 122. 23. Australia. 1980. "Aboriginal Customary Law-Recognition?" The Law Reform Commission Discussion Paper 17 (November). 24. Ibid., 76. 25. Murray Goot and Tim Rowse, "Backlash," 9. 26. Ibid., 9. 27. Nicholas Peterson. 1990. "'Studying Man and Man's Nature': the History of the Institutionalisation of Aboriginal Anthropology." Australian Aboriginal Studies 2:16. 28. L.R. Hiatt. 1983- "Reply to Dr. Cowlishaw." Australian Aboriginal Studies 1:53. 29. Tasmania, "Report," 16. 30. Lyndall Ryan. 1972. "The Extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines: Myth and Reality." Papers and Proceedings, Tasmanian Historical Research Association 19(2):6l-77. 31. Doug Lowe. 1984. The Price of Power. Melbourne: Macmillan, 47. 32. Tasmania. 1979. "Report on the Gordon River Power Development Stage II." Journals and Printed Papers of the Parliament of Tasmania 211(4):57. 33. Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky. 1983- Risk and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. 34. Stephen Padgett. 1986. Political Parties and Elections in West Germany. London: C. Hurst and Company, 172-73. 35. W. Fox. 1984. "Towards a Deeper Ecology." Habitat 34:27'. 36. Lee Sackett. 1991. "Promoting Primitivism: Conservationist Depictions of Aboriginal Australians." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 2(2):233-45. 37. R.F. Langford. 1983. "Our Heritage—Your Playground." Australian Archaeology 16:6.

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38. The Tribune, December 15, 1982. 39. Melbourne Age, June 8, 1983, 17. 40. See N.G.W. Macintosh and B.C.W. Barker. 1965. "The Osteology of Aboriginal Man in Tasmania." The Oceania Monographs 12:56-68. 41. Donna J. Haraway. 1988. "Remodelling the Human Way of Life." In Bones, Bodies and Behaviour: Essays in Biological Anthropology, edited by G.W. Stocking. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 206-08. 42. The Advocate, June 8, 1983, 15. 43. Judith Wright, We Call, 221-22. 44. Australia. 1983- Australian Law Reports 46:792-93. 45. The Mercury, January 31, 1984. 46. The Mercury June 14, 1984, 31. 47. See, for example, Special Issue 5 of Edgeways, 1988. 48. Australia. 1982. "Tasmanian Aborigines and their Struggle for Recognition (1877-1982)." Tasmanian Year Book. Canberra: Australian Census Bureau. 49. The Mercury, April 9, 1984. 50. The Mercury, November 18, 1990, 17. 51. In terms of interfaces between the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and the state, one of the less visible aspects was educational. The primary and secondary school system had promoted the view of Aboriginal extinction with the death of Truganini, and the Aboriginal community challenged it—sometimes individually. An informant of mine said that the key reason for his committing to the Aboriginal rights movement was that his daughter had come home in tears because her history teacher laughed at her saying, "I'm an Aborigine." My informant said he got angry, went to the school and lifted up the teacher by his neck: "By the time I left he believed in Tasmanian Aborigines more than I did." In response to these confrontations, the Tasmanian Education Department began to include "contemporary" Tasmanian Aborigines in its curriculum. For example, see Tasmania. 1984. Return to the Islands: The Story of Aborigines and the Tradition of Mutton-birding. Hobart: The Department of Education. 52. Kevin Keefe. 1988. "Aboriginally: Resistance and Persistence." Australian Aboriginal Studies 1:71. 53. Ibid, 68. 54. Andrew Lattas. 1991. "Nationalism, Aesthetic Redemption and Aboriginality." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 2(3):307-24.

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55. Isabel McBryde. 1985. Who Owns the Past?: Papers from the Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of Humanities. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 56. R.F. Langford, "Our Heritage," 1-6. 57. Harry Allen. 1988. "History Matters—A Commentary on Divergent Interpretations of Australian History." Australian Aboriginal Studies 2:82. 58. R.F. Langford, "Our Heritage," 5. 59- The Sunday Tasmanian, March 11, 1990, 7. 60. Henrietta Fourmile. 1989- "Who Owns the Past?—Aborigines as Captives of the Archives." Aboriginal History 13(1): 1-8. 61. Cited in Harry Allen, "History Matters," 87. 62. Glenn Shaw. 1988. "What Do Tasmanian Aborigines Want?" Edgeways 5:13. 63- Marcia Langton. 1981. "Urbanizing Aborigines: The Social Scientists' Great Deception." Social Alternatives 2(2):l6-22. 64. Steve Brown. 1988. "Windows on Dreamtime." Edgeways 5:14. 65. A similar legal argument was made in Canada by the GitksanWet'suwet'en in Delgamuuk v. the Province of British Columbia. The judge ruled against them and made the point that the courts could not address this issue (British Columbia 1991). 66. Cheryl Fulton. 1988. "Aboriginal Tasmanians: Our Past Struggle and Hope for the Future." Edgeways 5:10. 67. James Ritchie. 1990. "Tribal Development in a Fourth World Context: The Maori Case." EWCA Paper Series, Working Paper #21. 68. Judith Wright. 1988. "What Became of that Treaty?" Australian Aboriginal Studies 1:40-44. 69. Cited in Murray Goots and Tim Rowse, "Backlash," 10. 70. Judith Wright, We Call, 325, 327. 71. Peter B. English. 1975. Land Rights, Birth Rights: The Great Australian Hoax. Bullsbrook: Veritas Publishing Company, 258.

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BONES AND OTHER OBJECTS OF CONTENTION (1951-92)

The Aboriginal struggle is not just for things. It is also a struggle for symbols. W.E.H. Stanner, White Man Got No Dreaming

CHAPTER V

H

S WE HAVE SEEN, the Gordon-Franklin caves were important to Tasmanian Aboriginal identity. They also became a rallying point for political mobilization and a basis for deriving external legitimacy. Those developments, and ones to be considered in this chapter, need minor elaboration. One element of the aforementioned ideological changes within liberal democracies was the belief that ordinary citizens could affect the political decision making of elites (what Macpherson has called participatory democracy1). Whether that belief was valid or not, there was an increased sensitivity to, and use of, opinion polls by state and commonwealth governments to inform their policies. The Tasmanian Aboriginal rights movement attempted to gain public support for its general political objectives with reference to a particular symbol: Truganini's skeletal remains. As discussed, state governments had repeatedly used her death to assert Tasmanian Aboriginal extinction and thereby reject Aboriginal status and rights claims. Consistent with this assertion was the continued employment of biology as the only objective determinant of Aboriginality. From this perspective, self-identification might honestly reflect personal feelings and experiences, but it provided insufficient grounds for the state to recognize a category of citizens demanding special rights and political-economic transformations of Tasmania. The decades-old European assumption that Truganini was "the last Tasmanian Aborigine" was deemed by the State to be factual, and her remains were a visible proof. Two unusual circumstances made the remains central to political discourse over Aboriginal status. The first, already considered, was that Truganini's skeleton had been disinterred and placed on public exhibit in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The second unique circumstance was the accidental discovery of documentation almost seven decades later referring to her wishes for an undisturbed treatment of her remains, in other words, a deliberate attempt to avoid for herself what had happened to William Lanny. These factors combined to contribute to close to twenty years of debate among prominent government officials, senior Anglican clergy, major scientists, and Aboriginal spokespersons as to who properly owned the remains and what should be done with them. These confrontations were played out in the political

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arena, and public opinion in favour of Aboriginal claims finally resolved the issue. The matter, however, did not end there: subsequent worldwide demands to all Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains would increasingly focus attention on scientific interests. RELIGION, SCIENCE, POLITICS AND TRUGANINI'S REMAINS (1947-69)

Anglican Archdeacon Atkinson had uncovered Truganini's deathbed request in some of his late father's correspondence and gave a sermon on the topic which received some positive media attention. Encouraged by it, he approached the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1947 to ask for the return of the remains for reburial by the church. The museum director replied that the board was powerless to grant this petition. When the Archbishop of Tasmania reopened the matter in 1951 upon Atkinson's urging, the museum took the issue more seriously. A meeting was held with the archbishop in which the board used the scientific value of Truganini's skeleton to again reject the church's proposal. The museum apparently felt that its stance required support from the larger scientific community. The museum's correspondence files do not indicate how many scientists were contacted, but nine prominent anatomists and anthropologists from other parts of Australia, New Zealand, and Britain replied in 1953-54. These specialists were unanimous in affirming the need to retain Truganini's remains for research purposes. The following extracts are representative of those opinions: It seems to me that public sentiment would be very much to blame if it made any real demand that the skeleton be thrown away.... It is practically impossible to make casts of all the constituent bones of a skeleton.... But if this stupid piece of sentimentality is going to destroy so valuable an object; there is no doubt that a full record, photographic, anthropometric and morphological should be made of it by a trained physical anthropologist.... I am afraid that anthropologists elsewhere would look rather sideways at the authorities in Hobart, if the folly is persisted in. You can't hide your shame in the treatment of a race by throwing away (as a means of forgetting) its last representative. ...To my mind, any disposal of this unique material as suggested would be a scientific crime of the worst order and would receive world

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condemnation as such. The commission of a crime of this nature could not in any way atone for the original crimes committed against living Tasmanians. ...It is bad enough for us, the white race, to have destroyed the Tasmanians, but it is still worse for us to commit such an act of ignorant vandalism.... Modern scientific investigation may well add a vital link to our knowledge of hereditary problems by the study of Truganini's skeleton. I might mention that public opinion is steadily becoming more enlightened on these matters and we have letters from several hundred people leaving their bodies to my Department for scientific investigation. .. .My knowledge of the Aborigines of Australia is that once the final ceremonies have been carried out after death they do not worry about the fate of the bones. They quite readily tell us to take them if they are of any interest to us because they are of no more use to the spirit.... Of course we cannot say what the extinct Tasmanians thought of the matter, but I would be surprised to learn that their attitude was any different. ...If she were alive today ... she would not only be content, but somewhat gratified, to know that her physical remains would be useful and appreciated.... If it is decided to destroy it, I think it should be cremated, as this procedure would be with the customs of the Tasmanians.... Truganini's wish, expressed to a clergyman of the Church of England, however, should not go unheeded.2 These statements are informative in a number of respects. All the replies referred to the Tasmanian Aborigines as extinct, and thereby implicitly denied what then would have been seen as Islander claims to Aboriginal status. Albeit not specific to the Parlevar, traditional Aboriginal beliefs were used to legitimize the museum's retaining her skeleton for science. Although repeated assertions were made as to its scientific value, only two of the letters indicated that the remains had actually been studied. Neither said what had been learned. The church's request, with one exception, was treated as irrational, parochial, criminal, and immoral; and by inference scientific interests were not. The result was acceptance by the archbishop of scientific interests as overriding Truganini's wishes and the church's willingness to grant them. He did, however, petition the premier to give

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Truganini's remains special treatment. The premier concurred, and the skeleton was placed in a vault and was only to be accessible to scientific researchers, a provision which the colonial government had made when her remains were originally disinterred and given over to the Royal Society of Tasmania. The only query the archbishop raised was whether the loss of one skeleton would truly hamper scientific research. One anthropologist had mentioned that Truganini's was the only complete specimen in existence. The museum director wrote to at least one other museum to verify that fact,3 and the archbishop was satisfied with the response. A.P. Elkin commented on the result: "Let us now see that scientific use is made of the remains."4 Prophetically, their usevalue would soon become critical. Atkinson apparently remained disturbed by the denial of Truganini's wishes, and upon his retirement he raised his concerns with the Archdeacon of Hobart, who in turn approached the museum in 1959 for reconsideration of the matter.5 After being informed of the previous agreement with the archbishop, the request was dropped. Even Atkinson eventually bowed to the argument made by one of the scientists contacted in 1953 that disposing of Truganini's remains "would be a grave loss to physical anthropology."6 In 1969 the disposal of Truganini's remains was picked up for a fourth time by a private citizen residing outside of Tasmania.7 She contacted a member of her state legislative assembly, and the letter was forwarded to the Premier of Tasmania. Once more the agreement with the archbishop, with emphasis on the scientific importance of the remains, was brought forward in rebuttal. Like the clergy a decade earlier, this petitioner was satisfied with the answers. The parallels between the treatment of Lanny and Truganini in the nineteenth century with what occurred in the late 1940s to early 1960s are striking. In both times a few Europeans indirectly raised moral concerns which involved some doubts about the selfevident legitimacy of osteological research interests. Although a century apart, responses to these concerns were even more consistent. Arguments derived from Christian values about Truganini as a person were dismissed as inappropriate to a rational-secular society and the advancement of science.

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ABORIGINES, SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND TRUGANINI'S REMAINS (1970-76)

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In 1970 a different type of demand was made to the museum concerning Truganini. It came from a Tasmanian Aboriginal university student, H. Penrith, who wrote on behalf of all Aborigines in Australia. The museum sent back the then standard reply, but this time claims about the scientific importance of her remains were not accepted at face value: I would like to assure you that my attitude in the matter does not rest on any anti-scientific frame of mind. I am well aware of the great benefits scientific research has bestowed on at least some parts of the human race. However, I would claim that given the great length of time the remains have been in the hands of the museum and available for scientific inspection, it must surely be a fact that all scientific data possible has been gathered.... If this is not the case then I think it can only point to negligence and lack of interest on the part of the researchers concerned. I am sure you are aware of the fact that my people have a great respect both for our traditions and our ancestors. The fact that these remains have in the past been on display to the generally curious, and are at this point in time available to the scientifically curious, flies in the face of both these racial traits.... I am well aware of the fact that many skeletons are held in various parts of the world for reasons superficially similar.... However, I would claim that there is a quantitative difference in the instance under discussion. European skeletons are not held as European skeletons. This is not the case here. I would submit that it is in fact nearer to the way in which bones of a rare species of monkey might be treasured, and as such is a continuing insult to the dignity of my race.... Might I submit for your consideration a hypothetical question? Let us suppose that the present Queen of England were to die and some keen scientific researchers were to discover that there was a good reason to believe that the Windsor family had a unique skeletal structure. Can we suppose that her remains would, in the wildest flights of imagination, be allowed to lie in a room of the British Museum marked "For the genuinely scientifically curious only"? Yet—I must repeat—these remains in question are the remains of the last Tasmanian Aboriginal Queen.8

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Penrith's statement is fascinating. He queried the universality of benefits derived from scientific research, leaving the impression that it had been harmful to Aborigines—a point which has already been considered and will be again. He used the royal title assigned to Truganini to highlight her symbolic importance to contemporary Aborigines. Whether or not she was a queen in either the European or Aboriginal sense was irrelevant. What he was clearly saying is that she was as important, historically and culturally, to Aborigines as any English monarchs were to their people. Scientific claims to a monarch's remains would never be made or, if made, accepted as legitimate. In essence, Penrith stripped scientific assertions about the value of Truganini's remains to their core. Those assertions, he maintained, had done nothing more than perpetuate the nonhuman status ascribed to Aborigines since the beginnings of European contact. In querying whether anything had actually been learned, or if more could be learned from further study of the remains, Penrith also challenged science in its own terms. A review of the literature prior to 1950 shows no evidence that Truganini's skeleton had been used in any published research. Referring back to Elkin's earlier comment, possibly more damning was that nothing new had been done with them in the interim. The government became concerned about Penrith's demands. They were couched as an Aboriginal rights issue, and the museum was a state institution. In a letter to the chief secretary, the museum dealt with Penrith's points.9 A distinction was made between the "curio" interests of the public and "real scientific study." The question of the use of Truganini's remains received particular attention, and emphasis was placed on the development of new techniques in the future which meant that her skeleton might yet become an important source of data. The museum again felt it necessary to contact anthropologists and anatomists outside Tasmania for support. Here again, the museum's correspondence files only contain the replies, this time ten, some of which had been sent directly to the premier and the chief secretary of the Tasmanian parliament, others to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. The scientific opinions received were slightly more diverse in orientation than those given in 1953-54, as the following extracts indicate:

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What better lesson could there be for youth, black or white, in the future than practical evidence of the activities of exterminators some of whom are applying their art in various parts of the world today? I trust that a sentimental, but well-intentioned and foolish mistake will not be expected to serve a momentary reminder of a race, a woman, and a genocidal tragedy. ...So many examinations of her skeleton have already been made that I doubt if any useful data, in addition to those already contained in the technical records, could be derived from further examination. There are always men of poor knowledge but an insatiable appetite for publicity who like to "explore" ... these are the people who would like to claim they had actually examined and measured the skeleton of the last survivor of the Tasmanian race. Truganini's skeleton should be well protected from such people.... I cannot offer a better suggestion in the interests of the deceased Tasmanians or their living descendants than that the final disposal of Truganini's skeleton should be accorded the same respect and concern that are displayed towards our own celebrities. ... 1. Study of the extinct Tasmanians is a very lively and vital scientific issue overseas, if not in Tasmania itself, as part of an overall understanding of the evolution of all mankind. 2. The skeleton of Truganini is a priceless and unique relic, and the only authentic female Tasmanian skeleton in the world. 3. The race relationship and origin of the Tasmanians is unresolved.... 4. Bones are the only relics left in the world, on which study may ultimately resolve this problem. 5. The scientific world mourns the loss of the Tasmanian relics in the College of Surgeons [World War II bombing].... It is not too much to hope that Australian archaeology will shed light on the disease introduction to this continent. ... This is just one reason why skeletal collections should be zealously preserved ... new techniques for analysis and interpretation are constantly being developed. ...I feel that should a decision be made to bury Truganini's bones then all other skeletal remains of the Tasmanians in the Tasmanian museum and university collections would have to be buried, and this would be a scientific tragedy of such dimensions that it would rouse the scorn of the scientific world.

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...Questions concerning Truganini's own wishes as to her eventual disposal to my mind appear wholly open in the absence of any proper documentation of these wishes.... I am sure it will be generally realised by all thinking people in Tasmania, on the mainland and indeed overseas that the claims and prejudices of modern men and women intended to be the true representations of the attitudes and traditions of no longer extant peoples cannot be logically entertained.... Burial of Truganini's remains cannot surely be entertained either on moral or anthropological grounds. ...As an index of world scientific interest in this problem, three Americans have visited Australian and Tasmanian museums in the last five years, to apply to those remains new series of observations not used by our predecessors.... It is not negligence that although Truganini died in 1876, her skeleton has not yet been studied ... It is not an extravagant statement to say that in 50 years time, undoubtedly, there will be tests we have not dreamed of.10

Comparing the responses of the scientific community in 195354 with ones in 1970 points out some important similarities and differences. The commonalities are most evident in the assertions of scientific interest in Truganini's remains and their value for future research. Nonscientific objections were again presented as irrational, immoral, and criminal. The 1970 letters, however, were somewhat more defensive. The absence of research on Truganini's remains is acknowledged but minimized with reference to the possible emergence of new technologies and questions. Finally and prophetically, there was a fear that giving over Truganini's remains to Aborigines for disposal might constitute a precedent for claims to other specimens. The first two extracts cited above are especially noteworthy because they were written by the same anthropologist less than one month apart. He had apparently done considerable soul searching about the interests of science and their relative importance. The second letter indicated a willingness to acknowledge that the symbolic significance of Truganini's remains to Aborigines had precedence over scientific interests. The author recognized scientific claims were supported neither by past or ongoing research nor by any reasonable expectations about what might be learned.

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His conclusions, however, were the single exception. Other scientists defined their interests in Truganini's remains as a self-evident good located within a unified and global pursuit of knowledge beneficial to all humankind. Nonscientific institutions, beliefs, and interests were labelled immoral and ethnocentric. Science, in contrast, was depicted as transcending politics, ideology, and particularistic concerns. If grander evolutionary questions could no longer be addressed by analyzing recent skeletal remains such as Truganini's, they could answer demographic and epidemiological ones. The next stage in the Truganini controversy involved entry of Aboriginal political organizations. One of the first was the Aborigines Advancement League. It made no reference to an Aboriginal claim to those remains per se, only that Truganini's wishes be respected.11 It was the AIC which demanded Truganini's remains for her descendants—all living Tasmanian Aborigines. Since the state has used her death to define Aboriginal extinction, it followed that there were no such descendants. By claiming Truganini's remains the AIC denied this conclusion and asserted the continued existence of Tasmanian Aborigines. It is argued that this Aboriginal claim was more important for the Tasmanian Aboriginal rights movement than efforts to assert title to lands. Truganini provided a basis for self-identification as stipulated in the commonwealth's definition of Aboriginality. Individuals of Aboriginal descent had probably experienced discrimination which could be readily linked to the dehumanized treatment of Truganini's remains and continued denial of her deathbed request for dignity. Not only was the Tasmanian Aboriginal rights movement based on individual self-identification, there was a need for concrete issues around which mobilization could occur and acquire external validity. The issue of Truganini's remains spoke to all these dimensions. One commentator put it this way: The treatment of Truganini in life and after death, epitomized the negative attitudes of European-Australians in past generations towards Aborigines. Significant attitudinal changes are now taking place but many negative aspects remain. Mainland Aborigines and Aboriginal groups, together with sympathetic European-Australians, view the question of the

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final disposition of Truganini's bones against the historic background of disrespect, cruelty and dispossession.12

As this quotation suggests, the Truganini question had attracted public attention outside Tasmania. Aborigines and the media put her forward as a symbol of how all indigenous peoples had been treated, thus providing legitimacy for Tasmanian Aboriginal status claims which the wider Aboriginal community of Australia generally accepted. The Tasmanian Aborigines became, in turn, a symbol of the worst outcomes of European attempts at what was perceived as physical and cultural genocide. Tasmanian Aborigines could be seen as the least and most authentic indigenes in Australia. Biologically and culturally, Aborigines in Tasmania could be, and were, perceived as not truly Aboriginal. At the same time, the relevancy of those dimensions were challenged experientially. The treatment of Truganini's remains provided such a locus, one that did not require self-identification as an Aborigine. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service offered to assist the AIC. The former threatened the museum and the state with court actions under the Anatomy Acts of 1869 and 1964.13 The first was used to query the legality of the museum's acquisition of Truganini's remains, the second of its continued possession. The commonwealth government also became involved. Prime Minister E.G. Whitlam, who had been instrumental in creating the Woodward Commission to review Aboriginal land rights, wrote the premier to express his sympathy for the Aboriginal demands; the premier replied that the state was co-operating with the AIC in discussing the matter.14 The prime minster's letter appears to have been a result of concerns of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (ALAS) about the affair, and a reversal of its previous position concerning the appropriateness of recognizing both Truganini's wishes and the legitimacy of Tasmanian Aboriginal claims to dispose of her remains. As P.J. Ucko notes, the AIAS made an important qualification specific to Truganini: "a known historical person, is an exceptional one and ... the moral issue involved overrides any other consideration."15 The AIAS acknowledged the legitimacy of an exception being made only in this one instance. The political sensitivity of the issue, growing public support of the AIC's position, and pressures from the commonwealth

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government and the AIAS led to an amendment of the Tasmanian Museum Act in 1974. This was four years after Penrith had first raised the disposal of Truganini's remains as an Aboriginal concern. The act vested ownership of them in the Crown so that the state could formally deal with the problem. The government presented a proposal to the AIC to place the remains in a mausoleum, which "would express on behalf of the people of Tasmania the deep conscience we must all have for the extinction by European settlers of a unique race."16 For the state to frame its offer in this way might not be seen as surprising. It was consistent with arguments about non-recognition of Aboriginal status, and was probably sensitive to the broader political implications of accepting an Aboriginal claim to her remains. What seems less intelligible was the AIC's response, which was to poll the Aboriginal community about the government's offer. Possibly the AIC was uncertain as to the actual feelings in the Aboriginal community and defined Truganini's wishes for disposal of her remains as the sole issue. Some concerns were raised about the burial site's being on Aboriginal property and the extent of control Aborigines would have over the ceremony. While the matter was being considered, the government made another overture to the AIC on a related subject. The state asked for Aboriginal participation in developing the 1975 Aboriginal Relics Act. As mentioned, it was intended to provide protection of Aboriginal bones and artifacts. Part of the act dealt with forming an advisory committee consisting of two museum directors and three appointed members. The latter included a representative from the University of Tasmania and two people nominated by the minister responsible for protecting Aboriginal relics under the act. He proposed that one of them be a person of Aboriginal descent. The AIC did not accept this provision. Rather, the Museum Act was targeted because it gave full control over Truganini's skeleton to the state. The AIC's position was that her descendants, who favoured the traditional means of disposal, cremation, should make the decision. According to the media, there was increased public sympathy for the Aboriginal community's solution. The fact that the centennial of Truganini's death was immanent provided an ideal time for compromise. The Tasmanian government put forward a new proposal

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in which it would be responsible for the cremation. The AIC agreed, with two qualifications: (1) the ashes would be given over to an Aboriginal elder for final disposal by scattering them over D'Entrecasteaux Channel in keeping with Truganini's wishes, and (2) the ceremony was to be for Aborigines only. The government accepted these modifications, requesting only that three of its representatives be allowed to attend. The ceremony took place in 1976, a century after Truganini's death, nineteen years after Atkinson had raised the matter, and six years after the first Aboriginal claim to those remains had been made.17 The AIC's activities had a number of more general consequences. Tasmanian Aborigines had become a community in the sense of common origins, identity, and interests—and were increasingly recognized as such by the public. Truganini's remains had provided an important basis for the formation of this community, one with which non-Aborigines had empathy. Further, the AIC had shown that the "politics of embarrassment" could force the state to change its position. Finally, Tasmanian Aborigines had taken on a presence within the wider Aboriginal rights movement in Australia. MORE BONES OF CONTENTION (1976-88)

The disposal of Truganini's remains did not end the political confrontation. While the TAC and the Tasmanian government were resolving ownership of Oyster Cove, the TAC discovered that the two state museums held other Aboriginal bones; contrary to a later comment by the Commonwealth Minister for Aboriginal Affairs it was not an issue that should have been settled over "morning tea." Coincidental with the Gordon-Franklin dam protests in 1982, the TAC formally demanded the return of all ancestral bones from these museums, particularly those in the Crowther Collection.18 It had been built up during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a large part of it donated to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 1962. Upon learning about the collection, the TAC criticized the museum for not having informed the Aboriginal community about those holdings. The Aboriginal perception was that the museum as a scientific institution had deliberately concealed their existence during the Truganini confrontations.19

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In the first meetings with the TAG, the museum emphasized the scientific importance of the collection and offered a compromise solution: leave the Crowther Collection where it was, but under the joint supervision of the TAG and the museum board. The TAG rejected the proposal as paternalistic and inconsistent with Aboriginal self-determination. Reference was made to the 1974 National Aboriginal Conference resolutions concerning Aboriginal control of such remains and of scientific research on them.20 The TAG also filed charges against the director and chair of the museum under the criminal code and the Aboriginal Relics Act.21 The criminal charges were immediately dismissed, and later so was the charge of violating the Relics Act. The TAG began to actively seek public support and received it. The Tasmanian Uniting Church Synod committed itself to parallel efforts to obtain the return of those remains and encouraging the state government to establish land claims legislation.22 Apparently the TAG was using the bones issue to gain more favourable publicity for its land claims. The TAG was also active in searching for information on other Tasmanian Aboriginal remains and their locations. These were scattered across Australia, the United States, Britain, and Europe. The skull of William Lanny was tracked to the University of Edinburgh, and a request made for its return which was rejected.23 Again, this effort received considerable positive media attention throughout Australia. A key figure in the subsequent political confrontations was the state attorney-general, E.M. Bingham. At first he appeared willing to turn over the bones from the Crowther Collection, probably because Truganini had established a convenient legal precedent to resolve an unpopular issue. After a number of meetings with the TAG, his attitude changed. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence for his turn around. Possibly the fusion of land rights with skeletal remains became evident, as did recognition of the latter's implications for the former. At any rate, Bingham rejected the TAC's demands on two grounds—uncertainty about what the Aboriginal community would do with the remains and questions as to whether the TAG represented that community: It has emerged from correspondence and discussion that the Aboriginal Centre expects the Tasmanian taxpayer to substantially contribute to a

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political demonstration organized by a radical group not representative of the Aboriginal community.... The nature of the TAG proposals is indicated by their demand for $10,000 to defray the travelling and accommodation expenses of mainland Aborigines, including more political activists, to participate in the "Ceremony". The Government view is that the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community at large wants no part of the political chicanery in which the TAG is already engaged.24

This charge was met by protests from some members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community who led a march on the state parliament.25 The TAC rejected the attorney-general's accusations as unfounded. It stated that the bulk of the funds requested were to bring Aborigines in from Cape Barren Island, that only a few representatives of the larger Australian Aboriginal community were to be included. Public opinion appeared to be polarized, and an increasing number of questions were raised in Parliament over the government's stand. Bingham, however, remained adamant and continued to depict the TAC's position as little more than political opportunism. A curious wrinkle in these ongoing debates was the silence of scientists, although the government had tried unsuccessfully to use the scientific importance of the remains as a reason for retaining them. Elsewhere in Australia, archaeologists and physical anthropologists were facing similar problems over osteological research. By 1984 the AAA had adopted the position developed by the AIAS concerning bones of known individuals, and was exploring age criteria that could be used to define reasonable accommodation between Aboriginal and scientific interests.26 That the remains in the Crowther Collection were predominantly, if not exclusively, modern put them outside primary archaeological interests in early prehistory. One Tasmanian member of the Aboriginal Treaty Support Group used this silence to attack the government's position: "After abandoning the pseudo-scientific justification for its retention, they are guaranteeing an even wider and more embarrassing advertisement of their bloody mindedness."27 The legitimacy which science and government had at one time given each other over Truganini was no longer evident. In 1984 the AIAS met with TAC representatives to discuss the Crowther Collection and proposed the notion of a "Keeping Place" for the remains under Aboriginal custodianship.28

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If the major Australian research institution for the study of Aborigines was willing to be accommodating, then the state government needed bases other than scientific interest for retaining the Crowther Collection. As hypothesized, what remained unsaid was that government recognition of an Aboriginal claim to those remains had broader implications for the state—of which ongoing land claims were the most visible. The attorney-general's strategy was two pronged. The first was to continue his attack the TAC's credibility, the second was to raise technical points about the TAC's demands for disposing of the remains. In particular, Bingham argued that traditional cremation would not insure complete destruction of the remains. He put forward a bill proposing the state be responsible for the cremation, as had been the case with Truganini.29 The TAC attacked the bill as inconsistent with Aboriginal control of the disposal and the Aboriginal community's wishes to have the ceremony at Oyster Cove. The opposition party in the Tasmanian Parliament quickly rallied in support of the TAC, which contributed to even greater media coverage. The commonwealth government also entered into the fray on the side of the Aborigines. The minister for Aboriginal affairs offered funding for the a ceremony at Oyster Cove and threatened to make a legislative intervention into the matter if the state continued to reject the Aboriginal claim to the Crowther Collection remains.30 Bingham's plan for treatment of the remains gained little if any vocal support outside his own party. A central theme emerged—the government's insensitivity to the wishes of the Aboriginal community. Bingham repeatedly queried whether the TAC actually reflected what the community wanted done. This tactic put the TAC on the defensive. It met with the other eleven members of the Council of Aboriginal Organizations (which has not been considered thus far because it had not taken an active role in either land claims or the Truganini and Crowther confrontations). The other members of the council included regional organizations such as the Flinders Island Community Association and bodies like the Tasmanian Aboriginal Child Care Association. The council represented the largest formal political entity in the Aboriginal community, hence could provide legitimacy for the TAC's proposals. It unanimously affirmed the principle of Aboriginal control over the remains and the TAC's proposals.31

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The attorney-general did not back off and continued to refer to the existence of differences in opinion within the Aboriginal community. The state cabinet used this argument to delay voting on the proposed bill which had been designed hurriedly to forestall commonwealth legislative intervention.32 The Opposition demanded Bingham provide evidence for his assertions, and he countered, in a challenge that could not be ignored, that the TAG had to prove the representativeness of its position.33 The organization's external legitimacy was at stake, but the matter had been framed as one internal to the Aboriginal community. The AIC's success with Truganini's remains had given a foothold on a politically important moral high ground. To lose it over the Crowther Collection had implications for the TAC's special mandate to develop a land claim which could not draw upon an equivalent to the proposition that Tasmanian Aborigines had "the same rights [as whites] to obtain their dead."34 The TAC had asserted an Aboriginal consensus over disposal of the remains in the Crowther Collection, one vulnerable to possible differences of opinion with the Aboriginal community. In all likelihood the government could find individual Aborigines who viewed the bill as reasonable and use those people to undermine the TAC. As one extreme dissenting voice put it, "You can't have everyone burning up their ancestor's remains at picnics."35 The Aboriginal community's attitudes toward the disposal of the Crowther Collection's skeletal remains became an empirical question which could not be ignored. Bingham proposed that a respected member of the Aboriginal community, Roy Nichols who had been chair of the National Aboriginal Conference, be responsible for making the determination.36 The TAC had no choice but to acquiesce, but it did state preferences concerning how the study would be done. The TAC favoured community meetings over the use of questionnaires. Social science methodology had now entered into the Tasmanian political arena in a new way; sampling techniques were queried as providing valid bases of generalization.37 Despite the TAC's resistance, a sample survey was undertaken; it indicated virtual unanimity—148 out of 150 Aboriginal respondents agreed with the TAC.38 The TAC did not challenge these findings, and the government had to honour its prior commitment to this form of determining representativeness. The minister responsible

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for the museum, R.J. Beswick, announced that representatives of the Aboriginal Community would cremate and disperse the skeletal remains from the Crowther Collection.39 The TAC's victory had another dimension. The media throughout Australia had been more than willing to contextualize the Crowther Collection controversy in terms of the historical treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines, paying particular attention to the nineteenth century scandals around the deaths of Lanny and Truganini.40 How the contemporary Tasmanian government had dealt with the bones issues was put forward as no different in kind from colonial government efforts to deny the existence of Tasmanian Aborigines. This interpretation spoke to other unresolved legacies from the past, land claims being one of them. As one newspaper article stated: "It is only natural to expect that some form of land rights will be sought by Tasmanian Aboriginals." The same source referred to a public opinion poll cited in the previous chapter supporting rights to "lands which they [Tasmanian Aborigines] consider to be of historical or religious significance."41 Attorney-General Bingham's assessment of the wider implications of the Crowther controversy had been correct. What of the other community which had previously been so important—science? As discussed, both the AAA and the AIAS were attempting to work out ways in which reasonable compromises might be achieved with a number of Aboriginal organizations throughout Australia. For at least one anthropologist, Tasmanian Aboriginal remains symbolized all the complexity of both the historical and ethical dimension of such disciplinary accommodations. In 1985 John Mulvaney commented that: (1) Aboriginal demands for return of their ancestors' remains should be treated as a cultural property issue, (2) there are scientifically important questions which can be answered from the study of even historic remains, (3) there are ethical priorities which cannot be ignored over access to remains of historically known persons, (4) the continued retention of Lanny's skull exemplified an unwarranted violation of ethics, and (5) any custodians of Aboriginal remains should be aware of a responsibility to future generations—of which knowledge potential is one.42 What occurred in Tasmania was of a different order. The minister formally responsible for the return of the Crowther Collection skeletal remains to the Aboriginal community refused to meet with

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the TAG over related concerns: (1) costs of the ceremony at Oyster Cove, (2) returning all Aboriginal remains from Tasmanian museums, (3) acting on behalf of the Aboriginal community to get back bones held by other institutions around the world, and (4) ensuring state recognition of Aboriginal title to Oyster Cove.43 As the second item suggests, the Crowther Collection did not exhaust the bones held by the state's museums, and the TAC maintained that all specimens should be included in the disposal. The government held that the Crowther Collection was a specific issue because there were possible illegalities surrounding how it had been acquired which did not apply to other museum acquisitions. He also gave token acknowledgment to the potential impact on science of destroying the few remaining specimens.44 Less than a month after having stated them, the minister withdrew his objections. The Museum (Aboriginal Remains) Act of 1984 represented the government's acceptance of the TAC's major demands. Through this act, all Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains which were property of any state-controlled institution would be turned over to designated elders of the Aboriginal community. No requirements were stated for disposal of the remains, and a provision was made that it would not be an offence under existing legislation to cremate them at Oyster Cove. In addition to the act, the government promised to provide half the costs for the ceremony. In 1985 the remains were formally turned over to two Aboriginal elders; promises for financial support for a ceremony accompanied them.45 Fifteen years had been spent on a controversy over Aboriginal bones, in addition to the previous requests by the church concerning Truganini. According to informants, after the event the TAC turned its attention to a number of unresolved issues. One of them was the limitations of the 1975 Aboriginal Relics Act which the Tasmanian government also viewed as problematic. In 1985 the minister of parks and wildlife invited the TAC to participate in a working group to review the legislation. Two additional representatives from the Council of Aboriginal Organizations were invited to attend. This move, which the TAC could not plausibly attack, was probably intended to weaken it as sole representative of the Tasmanian Aboriginal position. The main foci of the discussions were human skeletal remains and Aboriginal sites, neither of which was adequately

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protected under the Relics Act. The creation of an advisory body to the minister and the issue of Aboriginal representation on it were also considered. The minister had set up the working group with equal representation of Aborigines and non-Aborigines, but the TAG proposed that the group have an Aboriginal majority. There was some tension over whether the council of Aboriginal Organizations or the TAG spoke for the Aboriginal community. The two TAG representatives withdrew from the working group in 1986, though the council members remained. The resignation was explained as due to the unwillingness of the working group to recommend that Oyster Cove be placed under the protection of a revised Relics Act. The council members on the working group both continued to press the importance of how skeletal remains should be treated and questioned limiting the scope of the act to bones dated prior to 1876. A number of more recent Aboriginal grave sites in places like Oyster Cove, Flinders Island, and Cape Barren Island, the council representatives felt, should be protected. In essence, the existing act perpetuated a conception of authentic Tasmanian Aboriginality which other legislation ignored under the guise of equal treatment for all human remains. The discovery of an Aboriginal skull fragment on the Tasman Peninsula brought about a overt rift between the Aboriginal Council and the TAC. The council proposed to the working group that the specimen be treated in the same way as had the bones under the Museum (Aboriginal Remains) Act. The TAC took a different position and wrote to the minister proposing adoption of commonwealth legislation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Heritage Act of 1984, and demanding that the fragment in question be given over to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. The minister agreed to contact the appropriate commonwealth authorities, but left open whether or not the fragment would automatically be turned over to Tasmanian Aboriginal representatives. While the minister was considering a policy for dealing with this case, three other discoveries of Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal materials occurred. One was in the Museum of Victoria, which offered to return its specimens to the Tasmanian government for transmission to the appropriate Aboriginal organization. This offer had two dimensions. The State of Victoria had legislated in favour of such Aboriginal claims; and the TAC had made representations

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for the return of all such specimens from museums and universities outside Tasmania. TAG president Michael Mansell had personally visited those institutions known to have Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains. Ultimately, the Tasmanian government established a policy consistent with the recommendations of the working group and the Museum Act. The newly discovered remains, and those offered by any institution, were to be turned over to elders representing the Aboriginal community. In turn, these bones were stored at Oyster Cove while the community considered what would be done with them. In 1988 the commonwealth offered a parcel of Crown land to the state in return for its giving over Oyster Cove to the Aborigines. In the same year, vandals broke into the storage facility and took some bones (they were later recovered). Neither the disposal of those remains nor the ownership of Oyster Cove is resolved at the time of writing. As mentioned, TAC efforts to recover Tasmanian Aboriginal skeletal remains were global. In 1990 public attention was focused on the recovery of remains of two individuals.46 The first was the skull of William Lanny held in the University of Edinburgh. Although unsuccessful, the TAC was able to use the Lanny incident to present a Tasmanian Aboriginal view of history and critically examine the past and contemporary roles of science. The second was the skeleton of an Aborigine named Shinall held by Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons. In commenting on the recovery of those remains, Michael Mansell said: When they [Irish passersby] realized what the protest was about and that the college would not release the remains of Shinall, they became aggressive to the staff at the college and actually started abusing them. It made me see then that once people listened to what you are on about, they have no problem in saying that its wrong and that it shouldn't continue.... From a public point of view it is a clearly winnable issue. We have conducted the campaign on the basis that we are lesser Aborigines if we don't get these remains back.47

The phrase "lesser Aborigines" invites attention. To not make such demands would be a rejection of ancestral connections, which were externally vulnerable to criticism both biologically and

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culturally. A "winnable issue" speaks to the recognized importance of non-Aboriginal support which was not restricted to Tasmania, something the commonwealth government had been forced nationally to acknowledge in the 1930s and later in the 1950s. As with Truganini and Lanny, Shinall was a named person who provided a basis for Aboriginal leaders like Michael Mansell not only to challenge scientific institutions and interests but to gain international recognition and legitimacy for the Tasmanian Aboriginal rights movement. If some non-Tasmanian scientific institutions refused to return ancestral skeletal remains, the response could readily be made to appear as an illustration of continuing ethnocentric and immoral European attitudes. Alternately, scientific acceptance of Tasmanian Aboriginal claims to ancestral skeletal remains could be used to argue for rationally based international support. POLITICS, BONES, AND CULTURAL OBJECTS (1985-92)

What Penrith started in Tasmania was a legitimacy crisis for the human sciences. By the mid-1980s research on Aborigines was no longer a self-evident good. The Aboriginal demand for the return of Truganini's remains began a political process which ultimately led to Aboriginal control over future research concerning them. Osteology was brought into this political arena by virtue of a subject matter central to Tasmanian Aboriginal status and rights claims. The Truganini and Crowther controversies were defined as moral ones. The state government was made to appear intransigent and racist about respect for the dead. Physical anthropology and archaeology were caught in the middle of this quagmire, the AIAS change in position over Truganini and the AAA's willingness to consult over future archaeological research notwithstanding. From the mid-1980s, anthropologists had to confront the question of their research's relevancy for Tasmanian Aborigines. The TAC's answer was simple—it had very little. Unlike other parts of Australia, in Tasmania the discipline could contribute nothing significant to either Aboriginal land claims or contemporary identity (e.g., language recovery). Sociology had more use. It could at least provide documentation of Aboriginal marginality. Archaeological research on time immemorial occupancy and pre-contact tribal territoriality had no contemporary legal relevancy. Physical anthropology was virtually

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anathema, and cultural anthropology was of minimal worth in describing the modern Aboriginal community. At best, anthropologists specializing in ethnohistory could re-interpret European-Aboriginal interactions, but in broad terms that had been accomplished.48 Anthropological research in Tasmania was caught between a political rock and hard place. The most recently published osteological study to deal specifically with Tasmanian Aborigines illustrates old academic questions which continue to arise in a new political situation.49 The study used the most recent statistical models to make cranial comparisons to test competing theories about prehistoric relationships between Tasmanian and Australian Aborigines. Some of the commentaries on this publication by other specialists refer to Aboriginal political interests. One reviewer noted existing restrictions on research as made by "some people in Tasmania calling themselves Tasmanian Aborigines" (emphases mine).50 This phrasing constituted an attack on the legitimacy of claims to Aboriginal status. Another reviewer complimented the author for making a "nonracial and noninvidious assessment of human biological similarities and differences" which both recognized and ignored Tasmanian politics altogether.51 In his reply to these comments, Colin Pardoe acknowledged the need for the discipline to consider the ethical implications of research and its consequences for "real people." He added that a more collaborative relationship with Aborigines was indeed appropriate for archaeologists.52 The TAC and AAA had in fact agreed that Tasmanian Aborigines would be part of all archaeological field crews. The next chapter will more thoroughly analyze those ethical considerations and assertions of common interests. As we have seen, bones as cultural property and the centrality of cultural property to Aboriginal identity had, in part, been recognized by the Australian High Court in the Gordon-Franklin dam case. Under international law this relationship was a matter of nationhood and sovereignty—and included repatriation of material culture.53 In a non-legal sense, discussions of Aboriginal artifacts as cultural property had started in Australia during the late 1970s with a particular focus on museum ownership.54 This discourse involved questions of who should decide what is meant by Aboriginal culture. To continue a theme explored in the last chapter, museums are European institutions which until recently had the exclusive prerogative of

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publicly defining what was meant by culture. The argument that the museum role was to preserve Aboriginal heritage became vulnerable in the 1980s. Museums have typically given greatest legitimacy, by virtue of what is displayed, to pre-European contact Aboriginal material culture. This distinction became problematic when it began to intrude on public and official perceptions of the legitimacy of Aboriginal status and on Aborigines' constructions of their own identity. The pre-1960s Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's presentation of Truganini's remains as those of "the last Tasmanian Aborigine" was an extreme form of that problem. Even into the early 1990s, the Tasmanian Aboriginal exhibits were largely made up of pre-contact artifacts with a poorly connected set of photos of contemporary Aborigines doing quasi-traditional things (e.g., mutton-birding). Not well hidden were lingering European assumptions about authentic Aboriginality. If the TAG have ignored cultural exhibits such as these, it is because they have minimal political use-value compared to skeletal remains. The latter spoke directly to a history of denial and dehumanization. For other Aboriginal peoples, culture has been more central to their self-determination; if for no other reason than the appropriation of Aboriginal culture as a means of creating a national Australian identity. Films such as Crocodile Dundee and advertisements like those for Qantas Airlines speak at a popular level to this change, as does the commercial and intellectual elevation of Aboriginal art and dreamtime. A Canadian example shows the complexity of the representational crisis faced by museums. In 1988 the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, mounted an exhibit entitled The Spirit Sings. Its subject was Canadian Native culture, and the opening, scheduled to coincide with the Olympic Winter Games hosted by that city, was intended to give the exhibit international attention as part of a more general effort to make a distinctly Canadian artistic statement. The exhibit was also to later go on tour, partially reflecting loans from other museums—some of which were outside Canada. Given sensitivity to Native issues, the Glenbow had invited Native participation in designing the exhibit.55 A Native boycott of the Olympic Games was announced by a small Alberta Indian band, the Lubicon Lake Cree, to protest their treatment by the provincial and federal governments with respect to

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an outstanding land claim. The Spirit Sings exhibition took on special significance within that protest because one of its sponsors was Shell Oil which was conducting explorations in the Lubicon's land claim area. From an aboriginal perspective, at issue was the seeming recognition of Native culture by the government and industry while simultaneously rejecting Native land claims. From the Glenbow's vantage point, the exhibit made an apolitical statement about Canada's Native peoples. It should be noted that no Lubicon items were in the exhibit, and the band had not accepted the offer to participate in the design process. The Lubicon boycott was highly successful with respect to The Spirit Sings. The exhibit received international attention favourable to the Lubicon position and a number of museums withdrew their participation. Not surprisingly, the whole matter became a concern among museologists, anthropologists, and art historians. The representational issue became the focus of debates within professional associations, and led to a national meeting of representatives from Native organizations and state-funded museums, with academics also participating. The key questions were who should control such exhibitions, and what messages they should convey.56 Indigenous spokespersons rejected the presentation of Native cultures as interesting only when they fitted pre-European contact biases and as perpetuating a static view of the past which denied authenticity to contemporary Native culture. Contrary to what one might expect, only a small minority of Canadian museologists and anthropologists raised objections to museums making an a priori commitment to indigenous political interests. Similar kinds of discourse over Aboriginal cultural property has occurred in Australia. In the early 1980s, Australian museums could readily define themselves as beneficial to Aborigines because their culture was being preserved. By the end of the decade this claim was relegated to, at best, an accidental consequence of European interests in Aborigines as curiosities. One Aboriginal critic, Henrietta Fourmile, defined museums as reflecting a continuing form of scientific colonialism.57 She argued that Aborigines had no involvement—"managerial, advisory, or custodial"—in their cultural property and that museums were guided by scientific interests (e.g., classification) inconsistent with Aboriginal "moral, social, and

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cultural" ones. Likewise, anthropologists could readily define and claim their interpretations as "intellectual property," whereas Aborigines could not. Fourmile cited a 1986 statement to one state agency in this regard: Surely this must be about the greatest humiliation a society can inflict upon a minority group. It first steals the land, secondly the culture, then analyses it, makes a new artificial intellectual tradition, then has the audacity to hand it back, saying "Here, this is your heritage."58

This heritage has been re-presented by physical anthropologists as well as by archaeologists and cultural anthropologists. As already argued, however, osteological researchers have had a more difficult task in making accommodations to Aboriginal interests than specialists in the other sub-disciplines. Physical anthropologists in Australia, and elsewhere, were largely restricted to defining their relevancy in terms of knowledge for its own sake. If turning over the Truganini and Crowther Collection remains to Aboriginal claimants represented a reasonable accommodation, it was made because those remains were relatively unimportant. The dominant scientific questions required access to significantly older specimens. The Kow Swamp burial controversy, in contrast, maximized the conflict between Aboriginal and scientific interests. The skeletal remains in question were defined by scientists as having world class heritage status because of their age (9,000 to 15,000 BP) and what they could say about human change.59 A local Aboriginal organization claimed these remains for reburial and obtained ownership to them through state legislation. They refused the option of a "Keeping Place," despite attempts by a few anthropologists to prevent that outcome. A joint committee of four Australian learned academies had earlier challenged the legislation, to no avail with respect to the return of the Murray Black collection of skeletal remains.60 In discussing the matter, DJ. Mulvaney cited a survey of Victorian Aboriginal communities which indicated an Aboriginal preference for research on ancestral remains and retention of them for such purposes, and argued that the state's decision was unreasonable even in terms of Aboriginal interests.61 He further held that research of this kind had been useful to Aboriginal land claims, and would in future become more so as Aborigines themselves became

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professional researchers and possibly began to ask different sorts of questions. Finally, Mulvaney viewed the claim as reflecting political opportunism on the part non-representative Aboriginal activists. Authentic Aboriginality and the legitimacy of Aboriginal demands with respect to research about them contributed to a heated debate within anthropology over the politics of research and ethics.62 Two points are worth noting here. First is the absence of disciplinary consensus over what weight should be given to its interests and how they relate to Aboriginal ones. Second is that anthropologists speaking for scientific interests had become unusual; more typically they spoke critically about their interests, ostensibly on behalf of Aboriginal ones.63 Widening the context, demands for the return of ancestral bones from museum and private collections have also occurred in North America.64 Exactly the same generic political reasons have been given by Native organizations there as in Australia—those collections represent a past and present dehumanization of indigenous peoples which are contrary to the their spiritual beliefs and rights. The number of such remains are staggering: between 18,500 and 34,000 specimens held by the Smithsonian, 25,000 by the National Museum of Natural History, and 20,000 by the National Parks Service. In total, there are possibly 600,000 Native skeletal remains currently in collections in the United States. As in Australia, government response in the U.S. has tended to favour Native interests. Federal legislation empowering a government commission to deal with such claims was proposed in 1987 and enacted in 1991. Although known as the "Bones Bill" it gave recognition to Native concerns with all items of contemporary spiritual significance to indigenous peoples. Some archaeologists organized to fight this legislation, challenging "antiscience laws based on race and religion."65 More generally, professional associations in the United States have attempted to make accommodations, with the Society for American Archaeology asking for "demonstrated biological, or cultural affinity with the remains in quest" [emphasis mine].66 Are demands for such demonstrations legitimate? Many professionals, either by their silence or vocal support of indigenous claims to cultural property, have asserted that they are not. As mentioned, only a few Australian anthropologists have been willing to speak against the proposition that Aborigines have an unquestionable and

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exclusive ownership of their culture, all indigenous skeletal remains, and how both should be represented.67 Those minority voices from within anthropology might well be dismissed as an embarrassing echo of nineteenth century amoral and ethnocentric science, but they will not be. In the next and final chapter, they will take on prominence in considering the ethics of scientific inquiry as applied to indigenous peoples. NOTES

1. C.B. Macpherson. 1977. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 93-94. 2. Letters to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from F. Wood-Jones, August 12, 1953; A. Abbie, September 7, 1953; A.N. Burkitt, September 9, 1953; A.P. Elkin, September 9, 1953; J. Wunderly, 8 October, 19533. Letter to G. Archey, Auckland Museum from the Director of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, October 15, 19534. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from A.P. Elkin, June 22, 1954. 5. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from C.E. Mitchell, Archdeacon of Hobart, December 30, 1959. 6. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from Raymond Firth, October 20, 1953. 7. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from the Premier's and Chief Secretary's Department, September 30, 19698. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from H. Penrith, March 24, 1970. 9. Letter to K.O. Lyons from W.F. Ellis, April 27, 1970. 10. Letters to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from J. Wunderly, April 5 and May 2, 1970; Letter to the Premier from J.V.S. Megaw, May 29, 1970; Letter to the Principal, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies from N.W.G. Macintosh, June 30, 1970. 11. Letter to the Curator, Hobart Museum from E.M. Foster, May 13, 1970. 12. Memo by A.L. West n.d. in response to letter June 12, 1974 from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. 13. Letter to the Director, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery from the President of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, July 1, 1974. 14. Letter to E.G. Whitlam, Prime Minister of Australia from the Premier of Tasmania, November 18, 1974.

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15. PJ. Ucko. 1975. "Review of AIAS Activities, 1974." ALAS Newsletter: 6-17. 16. The Mercury, June 4, 1974, 4. 17. The Mercury, June 4, 1974. 18. The Mercury, March 5, 1982. 19. R.F. Langford. 1983. "Our Heritage—Your Playground." Australian Archaeology 16:3. 20. Peter B. English. 1985. Land Rights and Birth Rights (The Great Australian Hoax). Bullsbrook: Veritas Publishing Company, 318-26. 21. The Mercury, September 2, 1982. 22. Launceston Examiner, October 18, 1982. 23. The Australian, December 20, 1982. 24. Tasmania. 1983. Parliamentary Debates of the House of Assembly, 5 December. 25. The Mercury, December 8, 1983. 26. D.J. Mulvaney. 1991. "Past Regained, Future Lost: The Kow Swamp Pleistocene Burials." Antiquity 65:16. 27. Canberra Times, February 1, 1984. 28. The Mercury, January 24, 1984. 29. The Mercury, March 20, 1984; The Launceston Examiner, April 4, 1984. 30. The Australian, March 2, 1984; The Launceston Examiner, March 3, 1984; The Mercury, April 6, 1984. 31. Canberra Times, April 12, 1984. 32. The Brisbane Courier Mail, April 12, 1984. 33. Australian Labour Party (Tasmania). April 13, 1984. News Release. 34. The Launceston Examiner, April 17, 1984. 35. The Swan Hill Guardian, April 13, 1984. 36. The Launceston Examiner, May 9, 1984, 9. 37. The Mercury, May 21, 1984. 38. The Mercury, July 18, 1984, 1. 39. Media release dated July 17, 1984 from the Honourable RJ. Beswick. 40. Australian National Daily, April 26,1984. 41. The Mercury, July 20, 1984. 42. John Mulvaney. 1985. "A Question of Values: Museums and Cultural Property." In Who Owns the Past?: Papers from the Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, edited by Isabel McBryde. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 93. 43. The Launceston Examiner, July 18, 1984.

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44. R.J. Beswick. August 9, 1984. Media Release; The Mercury, August 10, 1984. 45. The Mercury, November 2, 1984. 46. The Sunday Tasmanian, March 11, 1990, 7. 47. Ibid., 7. 48. Lyndall Ryan. 1981. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. 49- Colin Pardoe. 1991. "Isolation and Evolution in Tasmania." Current Anthropology 32(1):1-15. 50. NJ.B. Plomley. 1991. "Comments." Current Anthropology 32(l):l6. 51. C. Loring Brace. "Comments." Current Anthropology 32(1):15. 52. Colin Pardoe. 1991. "Reply." Current Anthropology yi($):\9. 53. Mark F. Lindsay. 1990. "The Recovery of Cultural Artifacts: The Legacy of our Archaeological Heritage." Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 22(1): 165-82; Douglas N. Thomason. 1990. "Rolling Back History: The United Nations General Assembly and the Right to Cultural Property." Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 22(l):47-96. 54 Robert Edwards and Jenny Stewart. 1980. Preserving Indigenous Cultures: A New Role for Museums. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. 55. Julia Harrison. 1988. "Museums and Politics: The Spirit Sings and the Lubicon Boycott." Muse (Autumn): 12. 56. See Muse 6(3), 1988 for a number of articles on the subject; also Valda Blundell and Laurence Grant. 1989. "Preserving Our Heritage: Getting Beyond Boycotts and Demonstrations." Inuit Art Quarterly (Winter): 12-16. 57. Henrietta Fourmile. 1988. "Museums and Aborigines: A Case Study of Contemporary Scientific Colonialism." Black Voices 4:23-37. 58. Ibid., 27. 59. Bruce Stannard. 1988. "Bones of Contention." The Bulletin, October 11: 40-44; The Weekend Australian, July 28-29, 1990:1,10; D.J. Mulvaney, "Past Regained," 13-14. 60. D.J. Mulvaney, "Past Regained," 15. 61. Ibid., 15. 62. Sandra Bowdler. 1992. "Unquiet Slumbers: The Return of the Kow Swamp Burials." Antiquity 66:103-06. 63. D.J. Mulvaney, "Past Regained," 17-18.

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64. American Anthropological Association. 1987. American Anthropological Association Newsletter 30(5): 1,18; and Maine Weekend, Dec.5-7, 1987, 30. 65. Cited in Jane Hubert. 1989- "A Proper Place for the Dead: A Critical Review of the 'Reburial' Issue." Journal of Indigenous Studies 1(1):37. 66. Ibid., 41. 67. John Mulvaney, "A Question of Values," 87-88; D.J. Mulvaney, "Past Regained," 16.

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The transformation, partly juridical, partly real, of the people anthropologists write about, from colonial subjects to sovereign citizens, has altered entirely the moral context within which the ethnographical act takes place. Clifford Geertz, "Being There, Writing Here"

CHAPTER VI

TT N THE HUMAN SCIENCES, concern with the ethics of research I is far from new. Weber's often misunderstood concept of value ^ I neutrality, for example, involved the necessity of making moral choices about what topics to investigate and how results should be used. In a more concrete sense, Boas raised objections to scientists' acting as spies for the U.S. government and was censured by the American Anthropological Association for publishing his views in a popular magazine.1 Likewise, the Society for Applied Anthropology began the process of establishing a professional code of ethics in 1946.2 The contemporary situation differs from its historical counterparts in several ways:(l) the amount of attention paid to the issue of ethics as reflected by the number of publications dealing with it, (2) professional codes of ethics covering pure as well as applied research, and (3) the degree to which ethical research is equated with supporting those who are "subjugated, silenced, repressed, oppressed, and discriminated against."3 Anthropological research concerning indigenous peoples is ideal for exploring these changes and their implications. Although linked to the aforementioned altered moral context, the issues are not limited to ethnographic inquiry. As we have seen, osteological research has became an Aboriginal site of resistance in which claims to scientific knowledge as politically disinterested and self-evidentially beneficial have been seriously challenged. What is striking is how anthropologists have responded. Their currently dominant ethical orientation seems to define research as appropriate only when it is acceptable to indigenous peoples, even when this qualification proves detrimental to the discipline. Why anthropology would adopt such an ethical stance is not obvious. It represents an effort to adapt to a changing socio-political situation—the discipline is being redefined not only by its practitioners, but by those most affected by it. Indigenous peoples have created a moral discourse over how they have been treated by Europeans, including anthropologists as the European specialists on biological and cultural "others." Given the nature of this ongoing political discourse, ethics has become a central component of anthropologists' attempts to maintain legitimacy for their profession. The analysis in this chapter will expand on these arguments. My position is consistent with Sir Raymond Firth's contention that

ETHICS IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES an empirically informed relative neutrality is not only possible, but necessary for intellectual inquiry—ethical questions included.4 As stated in the introduction, no attempt will be made to define ethically appropriate research. Rather, the focus will be on a critical examination of how anthropologists have dealt with the ethical issues currently facing them. In adopting this stance, a reaction can be anticipated from many readers that such an approach is old-fashioned and merely a way of reclaiming a privileged position for science. In a highly limited sense, such characterization is accurate. I will give primacy to when and why "underdog advocacy" gained ethical dominance over assumptions that science either transcended ethical considerations or was intrinsically ethical. Similarly, ongoing discourse about research and ethics will be treated as an empirically situated phenomenon. Proponents of inter-disciplinary cultural studies will likely view the analysis as a manifestation of the New Right, and post-modernists will probably reject the ideas of a neutral analysis and ethics as a problematic.5 Crosscutting these concerns is that indigenous peoples will once again be "disappeared" within yet another instance of European discussion about them in which they have no real voice.6 Little can be said in reply that will not be seen as purely defensive.7 The intent is not to privilege anthropology, but to revise Firth's definition of it as the "uncomfortable science" against what is currently an all too ethically comfortable posture.8 POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND LEGITIMACY

In contrast to the era immediately preceding World War II, contemporary Western society is characterized by overt value conflict. An expression of this is the prevalence of new social movements (environmental, women's, ethnic, indigenous) which are part of pluralistic and participatory democracy. These movements demand social change and espouse value orientations contrary to those held, if not explicitly put forward, by dominant institutions and societal elites.9 Whether or not non-elite interests have any real political meaning is unimportant for our purposes. What is relevant is that competing political interests are framed within specific value orientations.10

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A pluralistic view of politics began to emerge in liberal democracies during the 1940s. This model differed from its predecessors in some critical ways. It made no moral claims about improving the human condition, satisfying the general will, or representing the common good; rather it operated on principles more closely approximating the market economy in attempting to satisfy conflicting interests.11 The social cleavages represented by the resultant social movements were not limited to classes, but included dimensions like gender and ethnicity. The 1960s and the growth of participatory democracy represented a shift toward what has been called "postmaterial values of humanism ... and social emancipation."12 It is in this political context that indigenous peoples acquired a significant profile and more active voice. Creating a distinct identity has been a central concern—a key element of which is the development of articulate indigenous values and perspectives. This outcome has had specific implications for scientific research. One of the most extreme examples is found in New Zealand. During the late 1960s the Maori began to assert their matauranga [knowledge] as the core of who they are, how they should be understood, and what changes had to be made to the social order.13 The Maori took a highly critical posture toward science, with anthropology bearing the brunt of the initial attack by virtue of its specialization in cultural "others". The discipline was defined as methodologically flawed and imperialistic, and Western conceptions of science were presented as ethnocentric. Since the mid-1980s the Maori have claimed to have their own science. They have used that claim to gain control over all research affecting them and to support their efforts at selfdetermination. Science has become part of national moral debates about the future of New Zealand. As we have seen, in Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia such indigenous political efforts have led to legislative restrictions on the research enterprise in which osteology has been targeted. Even where these formal constraints do not exist, the research enterprise has been affected. Again in New Zealand, there has been a gradual reduction in the number of ethnically European anthropologists doing fieldwork concerning the Maori, and those few who do are Maori advocates if not "ghostwriters."14 In general terms the new moral context has presented legitimacy problems for anthropology which did not exist previously.

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In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, science was defined, and largely accepted, as a self-evident good. Scientific conceptual rationality was consistent with the legal-rational basis of the state and had use-value which fitted elite assumptions about progress. Anthropology derived legitimacy from being a scientific discipline with practical value for colonization. As the keynote speaker at the London Society meetings of 1848 commented: Let us hope that the Science of Man ... will not only be supported by those who pursue sciences which will be mostly benefited by a more extensive study of the physical history of man ... but also by those to whom the knowledge of man must be of great interest and vital importance from the connections with Colonial possessions of this great Empire.15

In nineteenth century Tasmania the link between science and elites was strongly evident. The Royal Society was created and funded by the colonial government for the development and dissemination of knowledge. Its members were the colony's economic, political, and religious elites. In this milieu, to be a scientist meant membership in that elite, sharing common assumptions, perceptions, attitudes, and interests. During the Lanny scandal, the political, economic, and religious elites legitimized scientific interests in Lanny's remains and only nominally acknowledged non-elite concerns with moral conduct. Science in turn, particularly evolutionary theory, provided the colonial government with justifications akin to religious arguments of an earlier period for the apparently inevitable extinction of Tasmanian Aborigines. The few scientists who were critical of Tasmanian Aboriginal policy were mostly concerned with a loss to science from the extinction of an "interesting" people. Likewise, the government's refusal to recognize Islander claims to Aboriginal status had tacit scientific support—Islanders were not racially pure. Tasmanian history, however, also indicates that elite interests were not always identical or unchanging. The colonial government often confronted conflicting demands from Britain and colonists as to how Aborigines should be treated. Although the Anglican Church had been instrumental in establishing and implementing the general British policy of civilization and conversion, the church was not always an agent of the state. The church initially supported, if not

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instigated, Islander claims to Aboriginal status against government nonrecognition; later, Anglican clergy opposed government legislative efforts to give some protection to the Islanders' economy. In the first half of the twentieth century the Tasmanian scientific community was generally silent about Aboriginal affairs. This muteness stemmed in part from a lack of scientific curiosity about the Islanders, who were deemed to be neither biologically nor culturally Aborigines. Fieldwork was limited to archaeology and the study of what was assumed to be an extinct race. Elsewhere in Australia, anthropologists were becoming more politically active because they were dealing with living peoples as subjects. Applied anthropology emerged in Australia during the 1920s and it had one client—the state. Elkin could quite comfortably commit to the principle of assimilation as a moral duty of a "higher race," and Williams could criticize the moral implications of anti-assimilationist anthropological theory. Both Elkin and Tindale deliberately attacked public attitudes against Aboriginal assimilation while treating the social order as a given. Elkin could assert discipline-based legitimacy to speak for Aborigines in the political arena and have his claim generally recognized by state and commonwealth governments. Prior to World War II, anthropologists like Elkin were selfdefined Aboriginal advocates. The church and a few "part-Aborigines" involved in Australian politics challenged them for being overly protectionist and paternalistic, but those criticisms had little import. Although there was no consensus over assimilation policy, decision making was limited to elites who were non-Aboriginal and shared a secular view of the issues. As we have seen, political discourse changed in some fundamental ways during the 1960s. The most important change was reflected in competing constructions of Aboriginality. Self-identification vied with biological and cultural criteria in the determination of special rights. Aboriginal organizations like the AIC and TAG represented a new expression of an old problem, the existence of individuals who historically had not seen by Euro-Australians as either European or Aborigines. Those individuals had been denied Aboriginal status, but their experiences where inconsistent with being accepted as Europeans. Aboriginal identity made more sense of their situation and provided more political leverage than the alternative. The 1986 Australian national and prison censuses suggest why that

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might be the case. In comparison to Euro-Tasmanians, Tasmanian Aborigines continued to be marginalized. They had: (1) higher rates of unemployment, (2) lower levels of education and income, (3) greater participation in menial occupations, and (4) higher rates of incarceration.16 Such outcomes spoke of systemic discrimination and the need for special solutions. Anthropology has been caught in the dual processes of Aborigines' constructing their own identities and attempting to achieve greater self-determination. In court cases like Milirrpum v. Nabalco and in legislation like the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, government has used anthropological models of culture to define contemporary Aboriginal rights, sometimes ignoring researchers' conclusions and intent. From an indigenous perspective, anthropology constitutes both a problem by virtue of its legitimacy within dominant political institutions and a potential means for achieving political ends. In Tasmania, the ambiguities of the post-1960s relationship between anthropology and Aborigines are readily apparent. Anthropologists and their professional associations have assisted Tasmanian Aboriginal organizations in a number of ways: (1) providing information and interpretation supporting positive images of Aborigines, (2) describing social and economic marginality to justify Aboriginal demands for change, (3) critically examining state government policies and definitions of Aboriginality, and (4) giving external recognition to Aboriginal land and cultural property rights. In contrast, other anthropologists have rejected the validity of Aboriginal claims to skeletal remains, and have interpreted prehistoric culture so as to perpetuate the inferior human status of Tasmanian Aborigines. Polemically, moral action can be judged either in terms of its intent or its consequences. The latter always involves the question of effects on whom. There is little doubt that anthropologists have benefitted from studying Tasmanian Aborigines, while the Aboriginal subjects have gained relatively little from anthropological research. It is arguable that all the anthropologists alluded to thought of themselves as participating in a moral activity—adding to knowledge about humankind. If our perceptions of that knowledge have altered, it is because science is a social activity and the social world has changed. In a pluralistic state with competing interests and

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conflicting values, it is difficult to imagine a human science that can produce universally beneficial knowledge. It is equally hard to conceive of a science that is not seriously concerned with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. How that purely scholarly interest articulates with its real political consequences is at the heart of current ethical issues facing anthropology and related disciplines. As subjects of anthropological research affected by what has been said about them, indigenous peoples have attempted to establish for themselves standards of appropriate and inappropriate inquiry. Their contemporary position considers studies about Aboriginals legitimate only when they are consistent with indigenous understandings and objectives. Ongoing efforts by Aboriginal organizations to control research have raised practical and ethical problems, particularly for anthropologists. According to Michael Mansell, what is being asked is a reasonable accommodation.17 But as we have seen, the TAC's definition of what is reasonable has denied physical anthropology access to both existing and new sources of data. This form of Aboriginal control has at least some historic legitimacy. As one researcher recently commented: [The] observation that the handing over of prehistoric skeletal remains to Aboriginal communities reflects a "long-overdue change in the relationship between archaeologists and Aboriginal people" is welcome, particularly from a biological anthropologist who recognizes that this may well be restrictive of future research. The point is, however, that this situation has come about because archaeologists and biological anthropologists have in the past elevated their scientific goals above the wishes of an oppressed indigenous minority and public opinion now tends to support that minority.18 The media have been crucial in creating public support. As Pardoe notes, however, journalists have had a "vested interest in controversy and confrontation" which has exaggerated the polarization between scientific and Aboriginal interests.19 Pardoe has further argued that the bulk of the professional writing on the reburial issue has come from those who are not osteologists and may be using the topic to focus attention away from other disciplinary interests. As he ironically concludes, there are only five professional osteologists in Australia, which is inconsistent with the

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degree of controversy and visibility surrounding research on skeletal remains.20 It is apparent that the subject has become a convenient and morally loaded site of resistance for Aborigines, governments, and anthropologists who are Aboriginal advocates but not necessarily interested in osteology. The few who do pursue osteology face legitimacy problems from within the discipline as well as from other parties involved in ongoing politics. Archaeology has been also been affected by this context because human bones are part of its subject matter. However research on prehistoric Tasmanian Aboriginals has increased over the past two decades. Why? Archaeologists can find personal/disciplinary relevancy in the antiquity of Tasmanian sites; there are advantages to the TAG—namely the discovery of sites of special cultural significance which can be integrated into Aboriginal selfidentification and a land claim; and the state can give quasi-recognition to Aborigines with respect to their "authentic" past. No ethnographic examination of the contemporary Aboriginal community has been done; there are a variety of reasons why not. One is the secondary status of nontraditional peoples in cultural anthropology. The 1986 National Census indicates that 71.7 percent of self-identified Aborigines in Tasmania lived in urban areas and 98.3 percent of the total Aboriginal population spoke English only.21 Not entirely parenthetically, anthropology is not taught at the University of Tasmania, but sociology is. Why there has been no sociological research on the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, given some pressure to be locally relevant, can be partially understood as a result of historical disciplinary distinctions. To over generalize, sociologists deal with dominant culture and ethnic immigrants; indigenes are the preserve of anthropologists. Contemporary Tasmanian Aborigines have fallen into an inter-disciplinary crack. Nor has the TAC seen any major advantage in producing an ethnography of the Aboriginal community, and one Aboriginal scholar has been highly critical of such representations.22 Post-1960s publications by cultural anthropologists about Tasmanian Aborigines have taken a historic focus, and this book is no exception. The anthropologist-as-historian is not new, and ethnohistory provides an interdisciplinary basis of legitimacy. Anthropology has long been interested in culture change,

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particularly change brought about by contact with Europeans. What is new is the way in which contemporary anthropologists interpret historical data. Lyndall Ryan's The Tasmanian Aborigines represents a deliberate decision to speak from an Aboriginal perspective. Unlike Tindale who earlier had first-hand contact, Ryan commented: "I met the Cape Barren Island people, who confronted me with their Aboriginal community which suffered discrimination in work, health, and housing yet was denied identity as an Aboriginal group ... my work moved in a different direction."23 Why Ryan would be so moved and Tindale not can be seen as a difference in moral-political contexts. Tindale's definition of applied research was consistent with government interests. Ryan's choice was to establish a personal and professional alliance with Tasmanian Aborigines. Their interests also constituted an opportunity to say something academically new and important which supported Tasmanian Aboriginal constructions of themselves. Thus far, the focus has been on the changing nature of research concerning indigenous peoples. Other contemporary social movements have made similar arguments as Aborigines. Environmentalists, for example, have become concerned with science as contributing to current global problems, not only technically but ideologically. Scientific claims to universalism have served Eurocentrism for centuries. In contrast, modern environmentalism has been presented as a "fundamental break with centuries of western ethical philosophy."24 It was (ethnocentrically) homocentric, destructive not only of humans as a species, but of all life.25 Carolyn Merchant has suggested that this ideology was also the basis of European conceptions gender relations.26 Aboriginal world views represent potentially more viable relationships with nature which fed into this ethical break within European culture. The fact that pre-industrial modes of adaptation placed real limits on population size, forms of social organization, and life styles was not important ideologically. Pre-contact Aboriginal peoples provided empirical examples of seemingly better conceptions of humanness and progress and for rejecting a central element of Western secularization— the disenchantment with nature.27 Consistent with that posture was the resacralization of politics by at least some indigenes and European environmentalists.

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To summarize the argument thus far, the existence of different value orientations, and the interests they reflect, has provided alternative and competing external bases for using, examining, and legitimizing scientific research. Knowledge for its own sake, which was historically at the core of the scientific enterprise, is no longer universally accepted as a self-evident good. Further, the new moral context neither gives unchallenged primacy to scientific rationality nor allows scientists the exclusive prerogative of determining what they should do or say. LEGITIMACY, POLITICS, AND ADVOCACY RESEARCH

Before the 1960s pure research had higher status than applied research because of associations with knowledge for its own sake and with theory as the exemplar form of understanding. Anthropology was somewhat unusual among the human sciences in giving descriptive studies centrality. Ethnographic investigation, for example, was seen as an important type of pure research, constituting both an end in itself and a necessary element for the development of cross-cultural theory. In contrast, applied research was viewed as making no contribution to knowledge about specific cultures, human variability, or to the development of theory. The legitimacy of applied research rested in the discipline's usefulness, which was perceived as emancipatory. One of the first indications of a change in disciplinary attitudes occurred in the early 1950s with the emergence of action anthropology.28 Its proponents argued that the existing assumptions about differences between pure and applied science were mistaken. Action anthropologists viewed applied research as a basis for developing theory, not merely using it. Further, they were committed to an involvement in indigenous community problems, many of which resulted from relationships with the wider society. Sol Tax, the founder of action anthropology, saw its role as "participant interference."29 What he meant by interference was assisting indigenous peoples to identify problems for themselves and understand their causes—which often proved to be relations to external institutions. Action anthropology involved a formal commitment to indigenous value orientations and interests as well as to the further development of scientific knowledge. In effect there were two distinct

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bases of accountability, although problems with them were not initially recognized.30 Rejection of the classical observer-subject dichotomy was central to action anthropology. Native peoples were clients and active participants in the research process. Their values and concerns were not merely data. From the action anthropology vantage point, researchers were not outside other cultures looking in; nor were indigenous peoples outside science with nothing legitimate to say about its assumptions, activities, and conclusions. Although action anthropology had some effect on how the discipline perceived applied research, the approach did not displace conventional conceptions of the research enterprise. The premises of action anthropology were inconsistent with basic assumptions about science as first and foremost the disinterested and objective pursuit of knowledge. This goal continued to represent for most practitioners what scientific inquiry should be. Similarly, the major clients for applied anthropology remained government agencies which shared the view of the discipline's practical value as derivative. From the 1960s onward, however, pure and applied researchers began to face a new set of demands. The discipline's "others" increasingly asserted their control over the research enterprise and rejected the primacy of a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Past experience with pure research was much the same as with applied research done for government—neither were particularly useful to Aborigines. Ethnography has been central to the redefinition of anthropological studies. Ethnographies are by their nature external constructions of "others." Researchers have had to face a representational crisis. They have relied on culture members for information, interpretation, and confirmation. As one anthropologist stated, the dilemma is that, " No amount of evoking the 'other' can establish him as the agent of the words or deeds attributed to him in a record of dialogue unless he too is free to reinterpret it and flesh out with caveats, apologies, footnotes and explanatory detail."31 The notion of "agent" is critical. Indigenous peoples now speak for and about themselves and their situation. In so speaking, they have confronted what anthropologists have said about them as experts within Western conceptions of disciplinary expertise and its subject matter. "Others" have become more than subjects. They have become part of anthropology's audience and concerned/specialized critics.

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Aborigines are concerned with the consequences of research for their past, present, and, most important, future. Indigenous control of access to information has forced anthropologists to make accommodations. They are not limited to what is said ethnographically; archaeological constructions of prehistoric culture have been subject to similar kinds of scrutiny and have resulted in indigenous assertions of ownership over the past. More generally, the scientific objectification and reduction of "others" to fit European understandings and interests have been engaged by indigenous peoples. As noted, the centrality given by Maori to their own knowledge system is a deliberate effort to remove themselves from European intellectual imperialism. More significant is that Maori science is a source of empowerment—a way to both increase their status and challenge Western constructions of Maori and New Zealand society. Since the 1970s, anthropologists have largely supported such indigenous efforts at intellectual decolonization. Sometimes that support has been misplaced. A Canadian anthropologist, Marjorie Halpin, criticized a monograph focusing on the researcher's interests: "We have (I think) a moral obligation to submerge our own concerns when telling their story."32 Ironically, the GitksanWet'suwet'en Tribal Council had approved the book in question for publication (my book) because there were advantages for their land claim in having an academic story told. An even better example is found in the disciplinary response within New Zealand to Allan Hanson's treatment of key elements of Maori culture as "invented."33 His analysis, while appropriate to postmodernist concerns, raised questions about cultural authenticity—an inference Hanson later said was unintended.34 Although not stated in those terms, Hanson's research was seen as politically incorrect by his New Zealand colleagues, and the publication fuelled a major national conference on the politics of interpretation.35 Contemporary Tasmanian Aborigines are all too familiar with the stories anthropologists tell which ignore consequences. A 1987 article comparing tool use between chimpanzees and Tasmanian Aborigines indicates that the new moral context has not eradicated those concerns.36 Aboriginal students at the University of Tasmania who were asked to evaluate the study gave consistent reactions. They saw the research as perpetuating nineteenth

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century evolutionary views of Tasmanian Aborigines as at the boundary between humans and nonhumans. Not surprisingly, those students rejected this scientific conception of their ancestors. Those Aboriginal students would not have allowed the study to be undertaken had they controlled the data. The fact that the study was published in an professional journal was reason enough for a few of those students to condemn the entire discipline. This reaction is understandable and is at the heart of the ethical dilemma currently facing anthropology. Are there questions that should not be asked because of how they are perceived by the people being discussed? A comparative study of human and nonhuman tool use which addresses human distinctiveness and how the species has evolved is scientifically legitimate. From another vantage point, this particular study does place Tasmanian Aboriginal technology at the bottom range of whatever is meant by humanness. This placement had very real implications in the past; the implications for the present, though more subtle, are no less important. Were the anthropologist who conducted the tool research asked, he might have said that knew nothing about those external implications and apologized for them as Hanson did for his Maori analysis. The crucial question is whether an anthropologist with such knowledge would have published the results. Such a decision would be ethical and not a simple one to make. As we have seen repeatedly, anthropological representations of "others" have sometimes had, however inadvertently, negative consequences for subjects. This reality has led some anthropologists to view advocacy as built into the research enterprise.37 Disciplinary discussions of advocacy have typically rejected the model provided by the legal profession and its suspension of moral judgments about clients. In contrast, anthropologists have generally viewed their advocacy as involving moral choices about whose interests should be served, and they have typically defined those of subjects as paramount. In a recent Canadian land claims court case, Delgamuuk v. Queen, the provincial and federal governments were unable to get a single anthropologist to act as an expert witness for them, even from within their own ranks. Casual conversations with Australian and New Zealand anthropologists evoked an identical in-principle commitment.

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Whereas Elkin in the 1930s could think of himself as an advocate by speaking for what he had believed were the Aborigines' interests, this type of paternalism is currently unacceptable. One New Zealand anthropologist has defined the current advocacy role in applied research as a "ghostwriter" who subordinates his or her voice, and sometimes identity, to assist indigenous organizations to speak for themselves.38 Consistent with that view, the Centre for Maori Studies and Research at the University of Waikato has as part of its charter this kind of a relationship with Maori tribes. The issues become more complex with respect to representations derived from secondary sources such as museum collections and government archives. Here the researcher is relatively free to choose a topic and examine it as a purely academic matter. But it may not be. What cannot be avoided is that the results may have also have negative implications for indigenous identity, interests, and political efforts. Avoidance of such consequences may therefore mean not doing certain kinds of research even though they have disciplinary importance. Land claims litigation is one arena where pure and applied anthropologists have had to re-examine their commitments. By definition, litigation is adversarial, and applied researchers have typically had to make a choice of working either for the state or for indigenous plaintiffs.39 Likewise, so-called pure researchers have been asked by both sides to act as expert witnesses and have had their field notes and publications used to support the arguments made by one or other party in the litigation. Further, litigation occurs within a dominant institution, the court, which has its own rules concerning evidence and expertise, as well as having its own constructions. One example of the last is whether or not pre-contact cultures actually constituted legal conceptions of an "organized society."40 A more significant factor is that courts tend to employ a highly conventional definition of science and use it to evaluate expertise. The crossexamination of Stanner in Milirrpum v. Nabalco is illustrative.41 His research methods and data were challenged by the defendants' lawyers in a way that would never happen within the discipline of anthropology. An anthropologist acting as an expert witness can generally only provide "opinions," and judges have rejected them in terms of how they define the discipline and its methods. A Canadian

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Supreme Court Justice who had decided on the Calder case told me that judges tend to give more credence to published "academic" research because it is less likely to be biased towards one or other party in the proceedings and has satisfactorily undergone peer evaluation. Aboriginal land claims litigation exemplifies a legitimacy crisis for anthropology. For the discipline to continue studying indigenous peoples requires, in varying degrees, their acceptance—and acceptance usually means advocacy. Effective advocacy is problematic in so far as it involves dominant institutions which give greater credibility to "disinterested" scientific research. Compounding the problem is that cultural anthropology is arguably the most useful sub-discipline to indigenes, but is the one with least consensus over what constitutes valid research. These debates go back to Boas, and even before, on the appropriateness of applying natural science methods to the study of humans. Since the 1950s there has been a range of alternate meta-methodologies proposed (such as structuralism and phenomenology) and some postmodernists have recently argued against commitment to any methodology. The best single characterization of modern cultural anthropology is its methodological and theoretical pluralism.42 While allowing for accommodations to be made to support indigenous political interests, that pluralism creates legitimacy problems within dominant institutions where political confrontations occur and are resolved. In contrast, archaeology and physical anthropology have remained relatively consistent in their more conventional view of science. Those subdisciplines are the best and worst potential Aboriginal advocates—demonstrating long-term Aboriginal occupancy and challenging the ancestral continuity of contemporary claimants. Exaggerating only somewhat, a cultural anthropologist can say almost anything and find methodological justification for it, while physical anthropologists and archaeologists are significantly more limited. Adding to anthropology's legitimacy problem is the increased academic importance of Aboriginal issues. Pre-1960s anthropology could more or less claim "others" as an exclusive research domain. The opportunities stemming from indigenous political movements have caused anthropologists to intrude even more into spaces already occupied by disciplines such as history, sociology, law,

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economics, and political science. Those same opportunities have likewise led other disciplines to intrude into anthropological territory. Natives as clients for research might well choose historians or sociologists as advocates over cultural anthropologists, who can no longer take their relevancy to Aborigines for granted. The Canadian land claims case already referred to, Delgamuuk v. the Queen, provides an illustration not only of Aboriginal use of a number of disciplines but of the court's perception of them.43 The Native plaintiffs employed historians, geographers, biologists, geologists, archaeologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists as researchers and expert witnesses. The judge, in reviewing expert testimony, dismissed the ethnographers as biased but generally accepted what the other expert witnesses said. The judge was particularly scathing about overly idealized ethnographic depictions of contemporary Indian cultures, commenting, "One would almost think the motor vehicle had never been invented."44 What is interesting is that the ethnographer in question defended his cultural representations on the basis of a professional commitment to advocacy. By the time of this trial a number of anthropological associations had ethical codes favouring this view of research. That the judge rejected this ethnographer's testimony became a topic of discussion at the next annual meeting of the Canadian Anthropological Society, which subsequently struck a committee to explore the matter further with the intent of formally protesting the judge's evaluation of the discipline. Before considering those ethical codes, a mental experiment will be presented. It would not be overly difficult to imagine contemporary indigenous peoples' rejecting an idealized conception of themselves which stressed cultural continuity. Were such an indigenous response to have occurred, one could also predict how anthropologists might collectively respond. The researcher would be held in disrepute. Following from the above, the key issue is who makes the criticism, not necessarily the content of the research itself. Post-World War II anthropology was no longer the European elite activity it had been in the nineteenth century. The discipline now has to compete for legitimacy in complex ways. For cultural and historic reasons high status has been ascribed to scientific knowledge. For anthropologists to prefer that the discipline be seen as a science is understandable, as was their desire to determine for

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themselves the nature of anthropology as a science. In a pluralistic society, however, what constitutes science and how it should be used are debated. Knowledge for its own sake has less import, and competing political interests create different bases of relevancy and employment for the discipline. What was not new is that anthropological research has political consequences. What is different, from the 1960s onward, is the increasing recognition by anthropologists and Aboriginal peoples of such effects. They were largely negative, especially when viewed in terms of the goals of contemporary indigenous rights movements. How have anthropologists responded? They have done so ethically and consequences have become the locus of discourse. VALUES, INTERESTS, AND ETHICS

As Fabian has suggested, ethics were less problematic at an earlier time, involving little more than "conformity with the norms of the society which sponsors the scientific enterprise."45 Rephrased, the ethics of research were of less concern when there was normative consensus. Did such consensus ever exist? In nineteenth and early twentieth century Tasmania the only consensus was that Europeans should decide Tasmanian Aboriginal status and rights. In more modern terms, they had no voice. Anthropologists did, by virtue of being not only European and members of the elite but by having studied Aborigines. The absence of certain kinds of research should not be forgotten. As considered above, anthropology did contain humanistic and ethical elements prior to the 1960s. In 1919 Boas met professional association sanctions when favouring scientifically disinterested inquiry over immediate political interests of the U.S. government. Approximately fifty years later the opposite disciplinary response occurred. At the end of the 1960s, the United States government asked fieldworkers to conduct counter-insurgency research in Vietnam and Latin America. The political climate of the period was against such military intrusions, and questions arose within anthropology over doing covert research. The ultimate result was the development of professional codes of ethics against such usages of the discipline.

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Although not necessary to the argument being elaborated, it is worthwhile to pause and re-examine Boas's reasons for taking an ethical stance. It derived from his commitment to research as an objective activity, contrary to what one might assume from his assertions of cultural relativism, attacks on natural science methods and racism, and disagreements with some aspects of North American assimilation policies. Boas's conventional scientific identity is best illustrated through bones.46 In the 1890s, Perry headed an expedition to Greenland and subsequently took back some Eskimos to New York as exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History. Putting living human beings on display in a natural science museum is arguably akin to a zoo presenting species of an unusual sort and is consistent with centuries-old European assumptions about primitive peoples as animal-like "curiosities." What is interesting about the example is how the museum staff, of which Boas was a member, handled the death of the last surviving adult Eskimo. He had a son who had accompanied him to New York. Museum personnel were sensitive to how his father's death should be culturally handled. Eskimo mortuary rituals were performed, and Boas was among the participants. As had occurred with Truganini, once deference had been shown to the deceased, the skeleton was put on display—only later to be discovered by his son. His all too human reactions were treated as "emotional" by the museum staff who humoured someone holding irrational beliefs. In effect, cultural relativism was subordinated to generic and "higher" scientific interests. The constant across both the spy and bones instances was Boas's view of scientific inquiry as self-interested. More than half a century later anthropologists could comfortably adopt an advocacy position which subordinated disciplinary interests in knowledge to those of indigenous political goals.47 As noted, that view of anthropological research was linked to professional codes of ethics which emerged in the 1970s, often after considerable disciplinary debate. The discourse had four dimensions: (1) primacy given to promoting disciplinary and scientific advancement, (2) fusion of methodological and epistemological issues with ethics, (3) concern with the politicization of research, and (4) limits on personal accountability.48

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The first of these new professional codes of ethics were North American and made no direct reference to indigenous peoples.49 These codes, however, later contributed to considerations elsewhere of the ethics of research, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, where relations to indigenous peoples were central. The Fourth World became more significant for anthropological ethics than the Third World, and this was not an accident. The Fourth World is contained within nation-states where anthropologists usually live and sometimes work. Two of those initial codes will be briefly examined because of their slightly different emphases. One is the code of the American Anthropological Association (AmAA), the other that of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SAA). The SAA code states: To science we have a responsibility of avoiding any action or recommendation that will impede continued advancement of scientific knowledge.... It is recognized that sometimes a delay in publication is necessary in order to protect persons or segments of populations. We should not consent to employment in which our activities and/or scientific data remain permanently confidential. We should not represent hypotheses or personal opinions as scientifically validated principles.50

The AmAA code, on the other hand, reflects a somewhat different perspective: In a field of such complex involvements, understandings, conflicts, and the necessity to make choices among conflicting values are bound to arise and generate ethical dilemmas. It is the prime responsibility of anthropologists to anticipate these and to plan to resolve them in such a way to [do] damage to neither those whom we study nor, in so far as possible, to their scholarly community. Where these conditions cannot be met, the anthropologist would be well-advised not to pursue the particular piece of research.... When there is a conflict of interest, these individuals must come first.51

The SAA believed that applied research had distinct ethical problems not faced in pure research, hence needing a specific code. It defined the primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists as being to science, whereas the AmAA code gave primacy to subjects.

ETHICS IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES This difference may well have reflected the inferior status of applied research in comparison to pure research. The AmAA code made no reference to science, only responsibility to the discipline. The SAA code held closer to the traditional view of science as a self-evident good, the AmAA code presented research as inherently problematic.52 Jorgensen, one of the major figures in developing the AmAA code, was critical of using the development of science as a basis of ethics, citing methodological pluralism as a central feature of the discipline. These differences in orientation to science were also reflected in the degree of attention given to consequences of research as a central ethical concern—a crude measure being the use of terms like effects, damage, etc. The SAA code twice referred to that type of consequence, the AmAA five times. Both codes tended to give exclusive attention to research involving direct interaction between the anthropologist and persons being studied. Similarly, ethical responsibility focused on protecting individuals as informants. The politicization of research brought about by the Aboriginal rights movements does not allow for such convenient restrictions. Pure and applied research are equally politicized, as are field and museum/archival research. From many Aboriginal perspectives, anything said about them—even when dealing with the remote past— has important consequences. One North American Indian, echoing his Tasmanian counterparts, said: You encourage digging in the name of science, starting many other diggings in the graves of our Grandfathers and Grandmothers, exposing their bones for the gawking public eye and their rude comments. You say you want to learn more about the Indians, There are plenty of live ones around to talk. If Indians molested white men's graves they would be thrown in jail. Indians, even if they are dead, have a right to remain Indians. We demand the removal of Indian bones from museums ... and their proper reburial.... Until that comes to pass, no one will rest.53

This quotation refers to a number of previously considered elements. Bones provide a convenient way to assert Aboriginal identity and concerns. Archaeology and physical anthropology were one way of so doing while locating science as: (1) a cultural product which is, (2) ethnocentric and at best concerned with satisfying Western curiosity that is, (3) denigrating to indigenous peoples,

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and thus (4) immoral. The codes of ethics considered above were not entirely compatible with this kind of Third World interpretation. The post-1960s growth in anthropological advocacy mirrors this changed situation. New Zealand provides a useful illustration of the new moral context. In response to the New Zealand Association of Social Anthropologists' (NZASA) adoption of the American Anthropological Association code of ethics, one researcher proposed the following as a more appropriate ethical principle: Anthropologists' primary responsibility is to the powerless who may be harmed by anthropological research, not just to prevent harm but also with a view to empowering those people where possible ... and increasing ... where possible, respect for the subjects of their research.54

Although the NZASA did not formally adopt this principle in its codes of ethics (which was revised in 1990) the association did stress that: (1) ethical conflicts were part of operating in a pluralistic society, (2) consequences apply to general populations not merely individuals, and (3) research agendas need to fit the interests and perceptions of subjects who are defined as "participants" in the research process. As does the AmAA code, however, the NZASA code places exclusive emphasis on field research in which such participation exists, and ignores other forms of inquiry.55 Although not part of any professional codes in anthropology, the conception of ethical research as empowering "others" is widely held. It has been argued, however, that there is a danger with such a view, namely the fostering of anti-intellectualism. In Australia, S.J. Thiele raised this point with regard to the dominance of a type of self-determination which denies legitimacy to any interests other than Aboriginal.56 In the same vein, Australian research has been characterized as responding positively to Aborigines' demands for control of research as a form of atonement for a European "collective guilt," anthropology having been the "handmaiden of colonialism."57 Similarly, the most recent literature on Maori has been depicted as "moral self-flagellation" rather than as providing systematic analyses of a highly complex problem.58 Major discussions of ethics among Australian anthropologists, which began in the early 1980s, did not entirely match the above stereotype—Aboriginals organizations and Aboriginals who were

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researchers both favoured and participated in an advocacy view of ethics. The Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (CAAC), for example, proposed in 1982 that research should: (1) be for and by Aborigines, not on them, (2) stem from Aboriginal definitions of needs, (3) employ frames of reference acceptable to Aborigines, (4) benefit Aborigines, (5) require Aboriginal approval, and (6) not be published without prior Aboriginal censoring and permission.59 One element of the above proposals was the view that research should have practical implications which, as Erich Kolig noted, was part of a more pervasive ethos obscuring a number of difficulties.60 The first difficulty is that competing interests sometimes exist even among Aboriginal peoples, and theirs are not the only concerns found in society. The second problem is a conception of the discipline as a purely practical tool, ignoring that the bulk of research done has had no such relevancy.61 The third is the explicit denial of any right by researchers to determine what constitutes ethically valid research or to choose what political interests (if any) to support. What is seldom mentioned is that Aboriginal interests, like anyone else's, sometimes are opportunistic. More than one archaeologist after a few drinks, has talked of the pre-1980s and being led to grave sites by indigenes who, if asked, were indifferent to the removal and scientific analysis of those remains. Although less strongly stated than by Maori, the CAAC statement gave preference to research being conducted by Aborigines in terms of their own cultural perspectives. Disciplinary efforts to accommodate Aboriginal demands are at best an interim measure. Put another way, Aboriginal advocacy as an adaptive strategy does not ensure survival in the new moral context. From an Aboriginal perspective, indigenous science is a better alternative because it more fully controls who does research, how it will be done, and how the results will be used. This scenario is extreme. Yet there are indications that it has some basis in reality. Aborigines have been successful in gaining partial control over what research can be done; and claims that their world views have equal if not greater legitimacy than Western scientific ones have fallen on fallow ground. Epistemological relativism has increasing credibility in a number of arenas, while the previous status ascribed to science is under attack. Understandings derived from personal experience rather than

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professional training have gained credence within the environmental movement. Feminism and post-modernism have provided internal challenges in number of disciplines to rethink their knowledge claims. Again, what is said and not said (and how it is said) is informative. More than one colleague has observed that the only academics who can "get away" with being critical of Aboriginal political interests are women raising gender issues. Politically, one might view governmental recognition of Aboriginal control over research as token. What cannot be ignored is that governments have legislatively restricted at least osteological research in Australia and the United States. One might well hypothesize that this is not accidental; the least practically relevant research has been conveniently sacrificed as a means of demonstrating concern with indigenes. As alluded to above, indigenous activists may well have focused on "bones" because of their moral leverage in confrontational politics. The Tasmanian case is informative precisely because it provides an exception to one of these generalizations. Aboriginal claims to Truganini's remains and those in the Crowther Collection met with state intransigency. To do otherwise meant formal recognition of Aboriginal status and the other demands it would entail. The history of those claims is equally useful. The bones in question were collected when elite European interests were dominant and scientists were members of that elite. In the 1960s scientific and political elites reinforced each others interests. In the 1980s that fusion was no longer entirely tenable. Osteological research had been preoccupied with hierarchical differences among races and had difficulty throwing off that stigma. The contest over bones may not have produced a victor with regard to more general issues but it did create real losers—physical anthropologists and archaeologists. As one anthropologist who considered these disciplinary consequences appropriate stated, Aborigines have the right to own their past and to determine what is said about it.62 The implications of such a "right" when extended to all Aboriginal representations go beyond limitations on fieldwork and the study of bones and artifacts. Not only does access to some kinds of data become prohibited, so do certain disciplinary perspectives and questions. This is best seen with respect to post-modernist foci on deconstruction. From an Aboriginal advocacy position, it is totally

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appropriate to critically examine anthropology while exempting Aboriginal discourse from similar scrutiny because it is "authentic."63 That privileging is equivalent to giving objective status to indigenous voices (while denying it to all others, including scientific) and is only problematic for advocacy when those voices compete and a choice has to be made as to which, if any, to support. How did anthropologists respond to these research demands from some indigenous peoples and their anthropological supporters? Largely with silence in both Australia and New Zealand.64 That muteness, if viewed as a manifestation of indifference, is difficult to understand given the importance of the issues raised. Other researchers have attempted to find reasonable accommodations to indigenous interests. With respect to the reburial of bones, compromises have been put forward referred to in the previous chapter: (1) differentiating among remains on the basis of their antiquity, completeness, and interest to science, and (2) establishing controlledaccess (Keeping Places) under Aboriginal custodianship.65 Critics of those Aboriginal demands have been least visible, possibly because to challenge those demands is to be open to charges of racism in the new moral context. Broadly speaking, these critiques have been advanced in terms of physical anthropology and archaeology (the most negatively affected subdisciplines) and have taken four forms.66 The first queries both the purely political interests sometimes underlying Aboriginal efforts to gain control over research concerning them and the representativeness of spokespersons for this objective. The second asserts the legitimacy of free scientific inquiry in terms of universalistic interests in knowledge for its own sake about human origins and variability. The third emphasizes that some Aborigines are interested in scientific research done on them and their past and points to the growth in the number of Aborigines who are becoming anthropologists and thus have a stake in matters such as the reburial of bones. The last critique argues that non-advocacy research has been useful to Aboriginal political objectives, of which land claims is one example. (As discussed previously, one might also add that advocacy research has sometimes proven to be detrimental to Aboriginal interests.) Both those anthropologists seeking compromises and rejecting extreme Aboriginal demands have been subject to criticism, most noticeably by Aboriginal anthropologists who claim to represent

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the Aboriginal voice within the discipline. They have drawn on revisionist history to play upon disciplinary guilt for its past sins and on methodological positions which define Western scientific perspectives and interests as ethnocentric—except when they are consistent Aboriginal political objectives.67 There is a disquieting silence within anthropology about controversial issues, suggestive of a strong preference not to be an ethically "uncomfortable" discipline. The New Zealand pattern of withdrawal from studying the Maori is an expression of an ethical stance but also of the privilege to move one's research to locales more amenable to pursuing personal and academic interests. In some ways, anthropologists are like indigenes of the past—in but not of particular societies. Ask a Euro-Canadian, Australian, or New Zealand anthropologist which is the better choice for individual career enhancement—doing locally relevant applied research or engaging in international intellectual controversies—and you will get the same answer: more can be gained from being an academic and internationalist. Where lies ethical responsibility? Is it to empower indigenes who have been historically subordinated, as suggested by the aforementioned proposal to the NZASA?68 Is it to society in general, in which Aborigines comprise a small minority while sometimes demanding major structural changes? Certainly when research involves the direct participation of indigenous peoples, defining a primary ethical responsibility to them is essential. That responsibility, however, should not absolve the researcher from critically examining indigenous interests and objectives—particularly when they impact on others who may be equally disempowered. Likewise, anthropology does have interests in knowledge which does not necessarily have any immediately discernable practical relevancy. Advocacy ethics tends to assume a single ideological stance, attempts to restrict the issues within that frame of reference, and defines certain elements of the public as having illegitimate interests—scientists included. The complex ethical issues currently facing disciplines like anthropology certainly benefit from encouraging indigenous participation. Less useful is the tendency to decontextualize the debate from the world in which is embedded, let alone view it from a single ideological position. Relative neutrality does not require that research be seen as nonideological or privileged in the nineteenth century sense. Rather it means subjecting the research enterprise to

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the same kinds of analyses that one would make of any other human activity. Simple ethical answers will not result, but better questions can certainly be asked. Those questions are more likely to emerge when research is treated like any other social activity; in other words, empirically and critically. It is hoped that the history of osteological research on Tasmanian Aborigines demonstrates what can be learned from such an approach. NOTES

1. Alexander Lesser. 1981. "Franz Boas." In Totems and Teachers: Perspectives on the History of Anthropology, edited by Sydel Siverman. New York: Columbia University Press, 15-19. 2. Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember. 1990. Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 492. 3. Jennifer Slack and Laurie Whitt. 1992. "Ethics and Cultural Studies." In Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, et al. London: Routledge, 573. 4. Raymond Firth. 1992. "A Future for Social Anthropology?" In Contemporary Futures: Perspectives for Social Anthropology, edited by Sandra Wallman. ASA Monographs No. 30. London: Routledge, 219-20. 5. See for example Jennifer Slack and Laurie Whitt, "Ethics and Cultural Studies," and Vicki Kirby. 1989. "Re-writing: Postmodernism and Ethnography." Mankind 19(l):36-45. 6. Michael Ames. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: UBC Press, 155. 7. See for example: David Scott. 1992. "Criticism and Culture." Critique of Anthropology 12(4):371-94. 8. Raymond Firth. 1981. "Engagement and Detachment: Reflections on Applying Social Anthropology to Social Affairs." Human Organization 40(3): 198. 9. C.B. Macpherson. 1977. The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10. Rogers Brubaker. 1984. The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber. London: George Allen & Unwin, 63. 11. C.B. Macpherson, Life and Times, 78-79.

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12. Stephen Padgett. 1986. Political Parties and Elections in West Germany. London: C. Hurst & Company, 172-7313. John J. Cove. 1993- "Ethnic Relations and the Indigenisation of Science by Maori in New Zealand." Paper presented to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. 14. Steven Webster. 1989. "Maori Studies and the Expert Definition of Maori Culture: A Critical History." Sites 18:47; Peter Cleave. 1992. "Mountain Claiming: The Anthropologist as Ghostwriter." In Other Sites: Social Anthropology and the Politics of Interpretation, edited by Michael Goldsmith and Keith Barber. Palmerston North: Massey University, 81-94. 15. J.A. Barnes. I960. "Anthropology in Britain Before and After Darwin." Mankind5(9)372. 16. Australia. Census 86—Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia, States and Territories. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics; John Walker and David Biles, Australian Prisoners 1986. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 17. The Sunday Tasmanian, March 11, 1990, 7. 18. Sandra Bowdler. 1991. "Comments." Current Anthropology 32(1):13. 19. Colin Pardoe. 1991. "Eye of the Storm." Journal of Indigenous Studies 2(^:19. 20. Ibid., 22. 21. R. Smyth. 1989- "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population." Research Paper #4, Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 23. 22. M. Langton. 1981. "Urbanizing Aborigines: The Social Scientists Great Deception." Social Alternatives 2(2): 16-22. 23. Lyndall Ryan. 1981. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2. 24. P.R. Ray. n.d. "Environmental Dualisms: A Cook's Tour through the Dialectics of Ecological Thought," 2. 25. Jennifer Slack and Laurie Whitt, "Ethics and Cultural Studies," 585-90. 26. Carolyn Merchant. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper & Row. 27. Harvey Cox. 1965. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. New York: Macmillan, 21-24. 28. Sol Tax. 1952. "Action Anthropology." America Indigenia 12:103-9. 29. Sol Tax. 1958. "The Fox Project." Human Organization 17:17-19-

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30. Robert A. Rubenstein. 1986. "Reflections on Action Anthropology: Some Developmental Dynamics of an Anthropological Tradition." Human Organization 45(3):270-78. 31. Steven Taylor. 1986. "Post-Modern Ethnography: From Document of the Occult to Occult Document." In Writing Culture, edited by J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 139. 32. Marjorie Halpin. 1989- "Review of Shattered Images: Dialogues and Meditations on Tsimshian Narratives." B.C. Studies 82:70. 33. Allan Hanson. 1989. "The Making of the Maori: Culture Invention and its Logic." American Anthropologist 91(4):890-902. 34. Allan Hanson. 1991. "Reply to Langdon, Levin, and Linnekin." American Anthropologist 93(2):449-50. 35. Michael Goldsmith and Keith Barber. 1992. Other Sites: Social Anthropology and the Politics of Interpretation. Palmerston North: Massey University. 36. W.C. McGrew. 1987. "Tools to Get Food: The Substants of Tasmanian Aborigines and Tanzanian Chimpanzees Compared." Journal of Anthropological Research 43:247-57. 37. Kirsten Hastrup and Peter Elsass. 1990. "Anthropological Advocacy: A Contradiction in Terms?" Current Anthropology 31(3):301-11. 38. Peter Cleave, "Mountain Claiming," 81. 39- Exceptions have occurred. A Canadian anthropologist, Barbara Lane, told me that she has been accepted as an expert witness by both sides in at least one court case. 40. British Columbia. 1991. Delgamuuk v. Queen. The Supreme Court of British Columbia, Smithers Registry No.0843:31-35, 226-67. 41. Australia. 1985. "Cross-Examination: W.E.H. Stanner Versus the Solicitor General of Australia." In Advocacy and Anthropology, First Encounters, edited by Robert Paine. St. John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 174-96. 42. J.A. Boon. 1982. Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21. 43. British Columbia, Delgamuuk v. Queen, 60. 44. Ibid, 50. 45. Johannes Fabian. 1971. "On Professional Ethics and Epistemological Foundations." Current Anthropology 12(2):230.

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