Download Representations of gender

Representations of gender in E. M. Curr’s
Recollections of Squatting in Victoria
[ Clare Land : 17598 / Gender and Colonialism : 131-135 ]
Research Essay, 2001
Introduction
Edward M. Curr’s Recollections of squatting in Victoria, then called the Port Phillip
District (from 1841 to 1851) was first published in Melbourne in 1883. It was then
republished in 1965, abridged and with a foreword and notes by Harley W. Forster.
Edward Curr hoped the publication of his memories of his experiences as a young
colonial man, ‘mere personal matters… possibly not of a very representative sort,’ would
serve as an interesting contrast between ‘the past and the present state of things in
Victoria’. In 1965 Forster commended the book as ‘delightfully and faithfully’ depicting
the squatting age of Victoria, as well as providing ‘a fascinating picture of white man’s
first use of lands’ against the backdrop of the ‘virgin bush’ and ‘primitive aborigines’.
Local ‘historically-minded’ subscribers from ‘"Curr-country"’ supported the 1965
republication.
Curr’s book has recently been elevated to loftier status in legal discourse. Federal Court
Justice Olney relied heavily on Curr’s Recollections in his negative determination on the
1996 Yorta Yorta Native Title claim. Indigenous legal scholar Wayne Atkinson, a
principle Yorta Yorta Native Title claimant, has criticised Justice Olney’s ‘almost
exclusive’ reliance on Curr’s text to elicit traditional laws and customs in the case.
Atkinson argues that Justice Olney made an error of law in privileging, as he did, two
written European sources over the evidence, both written and oral, of Yorta Yorta
witnesses. The case has been embroiled in a lengthy appeal process since 1988.
Even more recently, as part of the Centenary of Federation celebrations of August 2001
in Echuca, a regional centre near the heartland of the Yorta Yorta claim, Curr’s
Recollections have been published yet again. This time the publication has been
sponsored by the local Campaspe Shire Council and two local businesses. The Council
has described Curr’s Recollections as ‘one of the most important historical books written
about the shire’. Curr’s recollections are certainly of value for what they tell us about
Curr and his attitudes. They also provide a general picture of the changing physical
environment of northern Victoria under pastoralism, and the life, evidently somewhat
embellished, of a young colonist all expressed in the jovial, verbose narrative style of the
day. However, the contemporary misuse of the narrative as a reliable source in a native
title case necessitates a contemporary critique.
Employing analytical tools developed by some contemporary Indigenous scholars,
this essay is an academic exercise and a political expedient. It seeks to throw doubt on the
worth and reliability of Curr’s book as evidence in a legal setting through an analysis of
the way he represented gender in Recollections. By revealing the Anglo-centric, gendered
bias of Curr’s observations of Yorta Yorta Bangerang people this analysis undermines the
authority recently lent to the text by its contemporary appropriators.
The essay begins by positioning Curr as a pastoralist in the context of the Australian
settler colony, then infers his intended audience and analyses the way he styled his own
character in the book. It then examines Curr’s representations of Koori men and women how he understood their behaviour according to contemporary European gender norms. It
evaluates Curr’s book according to the claims of Indigenous women scholars Larissa
Behrendt, Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Marcia Langton that the male colonial gaze
subordinated Indigenous women’s culture and that Indigenous women’s relationship to
land has more importance to contemporary land justice claims than anthropology has so
far attributed it. Other critiques of classic gendered colonial discourse are touched upon
as illustrative examples arise in Curr’s narrative.
Edward M. Curr in the settler colonial context
Edward Curr was twenty years of age in 1841 when he embarked on his ten-year
squatting career in the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now the
State of Victoria. This was an early stage in the colonisation of Kulin nation lands, and as
such a very busy time for pastoral expansion. Squatters were spreading out from Port
Phillip Bay, taking up runs of ‘unoccupied’ territory by herding stock onto land and
gaining government permission as a retrospective formality. As a settler colony, the
primary objective of Europeans was obtaining land and replacing Indigenous people on it.
This necessitated their elimination; stories of fatal clashes with ‘the Blacks’ over land and
resources abounded in Curr’s ‘frontier days.’ Despite his fears of native ambush, Curr
took ‘pleasure’ in ‘traversing unknown country, and being the first white man to see
streams, lakes and pasture lands’. Curr’s delight in the exploration of new lands, in
viewing ‘the virgin sward unprofaned by flock or herd,’ codes the landscape as female,
and settler-colonisation an ‘inherently gendered project.’ Tiffany and Adams argue that
‘unexplored’ lands symbolised a ‘personal fantasy’ for colonial agents, of which Curr
was one, as colonisation represented a sexualised penetration of the feminised ‘New
World’.
Curr’s sketch of bush life was aimed at newcomers to the colony as well as ‘to sell… to a
British readership avid for exotic news of their far flung empire’. Written from memory
almost forty years after the events described and focussing on his own youthful exploits,
one could assume a certain amount of creative embellishment in Curr’s writing, as
Atkinson suggests. Curr’s lengthy book dabbles in a number of related colonialist genres,
such as the travel tale, the adventure narrative and novice ethnology, all of which
function to ‘represent the Other’ to a general, popular audience, as argued by Linda
Tuhiwai Smith. As the key character in the book, which details his role as ‘one of the first
white people to misappropriate Yorta Yorta lands’, Curr’s representation of his own
impact on Yorta Yorta Bangerang peoples is of interest. Curr’s recollections in this
respect are not devoid of a touch of ‘imperialist nostalgia’. Contemporary anthropologist
Renato Rosaldo has identified the phenomenon of ‘imperialist nostalgia’ as common to
the ideological spaces shared by anthropologists and colonial agents such as officials,
missionaries and police. He describes it as centring on a paradox: people ‘mourn the
passing’ of ‘traditional culture’ that ‘they themselves have transformed’. Such
sentimental discourse works to ‘conceal the complicity’ of the colonial agent with ‘often
brutal domination’. Curr engages in such a form of nostalgia in a number of passages in
Recollections. Speaking of his acquisition of Moira country, Curr laments:
[s]ince that day, some five-and-thirty years only have passed, and Blacks,
reeds, and bell-birds are gone. Of the first scarce one remains; his cooey is
heard no more in those parts… when the subject occurs to me it is to
remember with regret the primitive scene, the Black with his fishing
canoe, the silence and the gum trees.
A second example towards the end of the book is worth quoting at length. Here Curr
again mourns the passing of his dear friend, ‘the Black’. In addition he seeks to
demonstrate his empathy with Bangerang culture by using a sprinkling of their language,
footnoted to English translations:
I must have done with my sooty friends and their ways, of which I have,
perhaps, said more than enough. So adieu, my Enbena, for I cannot even
now, amidst the din of the city, forget thee, friend of my lone days… many
a time when weary of books… right glad I was to see thee… with lubra,
picaninni, and all thy belongings… even though thou heldest an empty
pipe somewhat prominently before me, or pressed on me thy longing for a
share of the contents of my flour-bags… But our civilization has rolled
over thee, my Enbena, somewhat rudely since those times; ending alike,
for the most part, thy merry ways and thy rascalities… Adieu! Let the cry
of the j‚‚ring [cockatoo]… and the loud laugh of the wigilÙpka [laughing
jackass]… be thy memento; thy monument the lone malÙga [sandhill]
grave… and the west wind… the dirge of a people which have passed
away!
Curr has broken into old world expression, juxtaposing nostalgic and picturesque
language with blunt images of begging (‘thou heldest an empty pipe…’). He also refers to
Koori culture as ‘merry ways and rascalities,’ and gives a euphemistic description of the
process of stealing Koori land and devastating the Koori population (‘rolled over
thee…’). Curr cultivates the impression that he misses his merry, sooty friends and that
colonisation was an inexorable process. The part Curr played in their ‘passing away’, that
is, alienating Koori land and disrupting their economy, is not mentioned. As Atkinson
states, Justice Olney’s reliance on this squatter to elicit traditional Yorta Yorta customs in
the Yorta Yorta Native Title case is ‘monstrously ironic.’
Representations of gender
Smith has found that observations of Indigenous peoples by white colonial men were
generally ‘constructed around their own cultural views of gender and sexuality’.
‘Observation of Indigenous women’, she argues, ‘resonated with views about the role of
women in European societies based on Western notions of culture, religion, class and
race’. This view is shared by many other critics of colonialist writing and anthropology,
and is a criticism that has since been grappled with in anthropological methodology.
There is an extensive literature on this topic. Feminist criticisms made in the 1960s
followed critiques which made explicit the colonial context of development of the
discipline of anthropology. This addressed the ‘inherent Eurocentrism of much
contemporary Western feminist theory-making’, exploding the idea that the discipline’s
‘problem of women’ could be solved by adding female practitioners and stirring. The
relevance of the Western concept of gender as an analytical category in anthropology is
now questioned.
However, past challenges to anthropology need to be revisited given the lack of
awareness of such bias in cross-cultural discourses displayed by Justice Olney. The
integral role anthropologists have come to play in the native title process means the
reliability of their knowledges is vital to contemporary land justice mechanisms under
current Anglo law in Australia.
Turning then to representations of gender in Recollections, many passages illustrate
Curr’s views on the role of both women and men in European societies. Curr’s own
cultural views about gender and sexuality can be identified in his descriptions of the
marriage and domestic arrangements of local Kooris, which he compares and contrasts
with European practices. In this recount of a Bangerang marriage exchange, Curr recalls
that the ‘aboriginal young ladies’ had
absolutely relinquished their ordinary attentions to personal appearances,
and sat in the camp in that discontented, pouting mood which they, as well
as their civilized sisters, can occasionally assume… if the civilized man is
undecided as to the advantages of matrimony, the Australian savage is
unmistakably an advocate for that state; so that not only do the influential
men get as many wives as they can, but no lubra is allowed to remain
single after the age [of about twelve or fourteen years].
Curr describes the ‘hearty young bachelors’ of the camp as performing appropriate
masculine enthusiasm for the arrival of their future wives from the neighbouring clan, by
showing their interest in the preparations of their older women relatives, Curr’s ‘ancient
dames,’ for the upcoming ceremony. The young men appeared as ‘roystering [sic] blades,
who, in greasy grandeur, slyly watched [the older women’s] doings with much zest.’
Once married, according to Curr,
the man was despotic in his own mia-mia or hut… as regards his wife he
might ill-treat her, give her away, do as he liked with her, and no one in
the tribe interfered; though, had he proceeded to the last extremity, her
death would have been avenged by her brothers or kindred.
Somewhat contradicting this qualification, Curr later claimed that ‘[w]ith the death of
women and young children the Blacks did not generally much concern themselves’. He
claims ‘[w]omen were interred with less ceremony’ than men. Perhaps Curr did not
witness many women’s burials, or simply did not recollect them.
Curr’s reading of the power relations between Koori men and women, one which
characterised the men as brutal patriarchs and the women as victims, is a not uncommon
one, according to historian of colonialism, Margaret Jolly. Descriptions of the
‘debasement of women’ in Indigenous societies were a feature of much male colonial
writing; Patricia Grimshaw and Andrew May concur for the Australian context.
Grimshaw and May argue that characterising Koori society in this way played a crucial
role in legitimation of the imperialist project:
Where indigenous women could be portrayed as oppressed by men of their
group, the destruction of traditional culture through western appropriation
of indigenous resources and political systems could be made to appear
moral.
Australian Indigenous scholar Larissa Behrendt argues that ‘early anthropologists
assumed patriarchy within the aboriginal community. They therefore ignored all the
sacred sites and stories of women’. Indeed, Curr appears blind to Koori women’s cultural
and political power, consistently focussing on men’s culture, work, skills and authority
while denigrating those of women. He devotes a long passage to the male initiation,
education and naming practices of the Bangerang, claiming ‘as regards women, these
customs did not obtain’. As for Koori spiritually, Curr stated ‘[r]eligious worship the
Bangerang had none.’ He consigned the Bangerang to a primitive stage of ‘cultural
evolution’ with his assessment of their religious beliefs as nothing more than superstition:
‘[a]s regards superstitions… the Bangerang had a plentiful, if not very interesting, crop.’
He also makes unfavourable comparisons between the physiques of Koori men and
women. Curr seems particularly to admire the bodies and accomplishments of Koori men,
finding their bodies more aesthetically appealing than those of Koori women, and indeed
of European men. Engaging two men to cut a canoe, Curr watched as they ‘stripped to the
work.’ He was impressed by the way ‘the Black… obtains from nature all that he
requires, but also the skill with which he avails himself of the few implements of which
he is possessed.’ He recalls
[a]s they stood before us in ebony, tomahawk in hand, their wellproportioned busts, strong shoulders and light but sinewy arms at once
attracted the attention of the party… It occurred to me, also, how much
less unpleasantly the nude strikes one in the Blackfellow than in his white
brother…
Curr later mused, ‘in Spain it was the women, and amongst the Ngooraialum the men,
who excelled in this way; the muscular opossum-eaters of the male sex exhibiting a
dignity of bearing which was not found amongst their women.’ To him Koori women at
times seemed little more than unfeeling animals, able to withstand beatings from their
husbands, who wielded a ‘nulla-nulla, in a style which would probably have killed most
white women.’ Women’s work was rarely mentioned, except to devalue it: ‘the making of
nets and baskets was left to the women.’
Despite his claims about the debasement of Koori women, Curr left clues to a more
balanced picture. He noted the women’s use of ‘native ovens’ and food gathering
activities which points to the significant contribution women made to the economy of the
communities. While Curr claimed that
[c]oncerning marriage… there was no ceremony attached with it; that the
bride had no choice in the matter, but was simply required to go to the hut
of the man to whom her father, brother, or uncle, as the case may be, had
given her.
However, as a quote above indicates, senior women played a special role in the marriage
ceremonies.
Curr imagined a place for himself in Bangerang society; one example evokes his
paternalistic and frivolous daydream of intervention in serious cultural business.
Observing marriage ceremony, he
entertained serious thoughts at last of asking to be allowed to give away
the brides, and should probably have moved in that matter had not my
very imperfect knowledge of aboriginal tongues prevented me.
Throughout the text, Curr styles himself as achieving the pinnacle of late Victorian
manliness from his naive and youthful beginnings. He describes his acquisition of all the
skills of the squatter, bushman and hunter: from horsemanship, to canny dealings with his
ex-convict shepherds and in pastoral finance, to adaptation to rough bush life and mastery
of some Koori techniques in tracking and hunting.
Curr’s confidence in his abilities to negotiate Indigenous protocol for his own perceived
gain grew as the years passed. However, fundamentally this confidence was based on his
own sense of inherent superiority rather than any profound understanding of or respect
for Koori culture and law. Coming across a group of ‘Lake Boga people’ during a foray
along the Murray river, his party saw a chance to obtain a freshly cooked meal. Curr
employed his cultural sensitivities in order to put the people at ease and procure ‘some
delicious-looking perch’. So as ‘not to alarm them,’ Curr ‘halted the party a short
distance off… walked to the camp, and, chuckling one of the picaninnies under the chin,
and pulling the nose of another,’ communicated his ‘peaceable’ inclinations. Eyeing the
food and discussing the best approach to obtaining a portion, Curr’s men reckoned
they would have given us some at once if we had asked for it; but it was
voted that this would not do just then, as we felt ourselves to some extent
representatives of the imperial race… however, one of our new friends
brought our difficulties to an end by putting a large quantity of the coveted
food on two wisps of fresh green grass and laying it before us… we
thought the proper thing was to accept the fish as proof of good feeling on
our part… so we set to work accordingly with great gusto, and without the
help of forks, our hosts being apparently much gratified to notice ways so
entirely in accordance with their own.
Although he asserts a working knowledge of the ways of ‘the Blacks,’ Curr has an
impoverished understanding of Koori women’s cultural and political agency. Naturally
enough, he views Koori society from the limitations of his own perspective, but unlike
other colonial writers of the time he is unable to achieve any great measure of relativism
or reflexivity. As a white man, he probably had less access to Koori women’s knowledge,
given the ‘gender-differentiated rules relating to Aboriginal ritual knowledge’. Patricia
Grimshaw and Julie Evans have uncovered instances in which white colonial women in
Australia have developed ‘less negative’ understandings of Indigenous women than the
dominant colonial discourses ‘almost exclusively created by white men’. These white
women, who experienced greater access to Indigenous women’s knowledges, ceremonies
and work, were nevertheless constrained by their alignment with colonialist value
systems.
Implications of Curr’s biases for contemporary land justice
Curr’s cultural context of European patriarchy diminished his reading of Koori culture.
Propagation of such a perspective on Indigenous culture has significant political
implications for the survival of Indigenous women’s culture, and for the attainment of
land justice today. Behrendt claims that as the result of early anthropologists’ neglect,
‘the sites of women were not protected as they were never recorded. Aboriginal women’s
sites are destroyed at a faster rate than those of aboriginal men.’ As Marcia Langton
notes,
the androcentric stance of Western observation of the Other still distorts, if
not the scholarship, then certainly the social institutions in which claims
and other aspects of the contemporary Australian recognition of
Aboriginal customary land tenure are carried out.
Langton’s view concurs with that of Atkinson who has suggested, ‘no experienced
historian or social scientist would be likely to repeat the errors that Olney J made’ in
placing so much weight on Curr’s account of traditional Yorta Yorta customs. Langton
perceives an incremental emergence of the understanding that ‘places and country are
gendered’ in land rights literature over the past two decades. She argues that for
contemporary Indigenous claimants, tracing descent through women’s kinship and
religious ties and relationships to land is becoming increasingly important in the
‘determination of membership land rights.’
Curr’s blindness to Indigenous women’s relationships to land severely limits the extent to
which ‘matrifiliation’ can be traced using his Recollections as a source. Indeed, because
Olney J privileged Curr’s Recollections over Indigenous written records and oral
testimony, his book has severely limited the Yorta Yorta’s access to land justice through
the Anglo legal system.
Conclusion
As an agent of colonialism and an original mis-appropriator of Yorta Yorta lands and
waters, Curr’s reliability, and the value of his observations of Yorta Yorta culture, is of
course questionable. As Atkinson states, ‘any person with even basic training in history
or the social sciences’ would be ‘very wary’ of such a source document. However, Justice
Olney’s use of Curr’s Recollections in his negative determination on the Yorta Yorta
native title case, and the book’s recent republication in Echuca has thrown Curr’s text
into currency. This critique of Curr’s text was inspired by the political necessity, in the
current bleak land justice context of Victoria, to challenge the objectivity of his
Recollections. It has demonstrated that Curr brought an Anglo-centric, gendered
perspective to his observations of the Yorta Yorta Bangerang people. His denigration of
Indigenous women has been located in the historical context of colonial and
anthropological writings to show that it typified the dominant white colonial male view.
A critical apparatus developed by feminist and Indigenous scholars has been employed to
analyse Curr’s Recollections. As a matter of urgency, Curr’s book, and similar historical
texts, must be critiqued in this way to ensure their authority does not remain unquestioned
in the social institutions in which land rights claims are considered.
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