Creating the Aboriginal Pauper: Missionary Ideas in Early 19th Century Australia

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne O'Brien

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between nineteenth century English poor law discourse and missionary work in colonial Australia. The text analyses key sites of Christian missionary philanthropy in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria in the period 1813-1849. It looks at changes in the ethos of one benevolent institution set up for poor whites, the Benevolent Society of New South Wales. Activated by Christian paternalism at its foundation in 1813 the ethos of this institution became dominated by the language of moral reform by the 1830s. The article also examines the first institution established for Indigenous people, the Native Institution at Parramatta, NSW, founded in 1814. Its aims and character will be compared and contrasted with those of the Female and Male Orphan schools for white children. The text considers also how Christian philanthropic visions for the improvement of Indigenous people were affected by factors such as accelerating pastoral expansion, loss of Indigenous food sources and retaliatory violence. Cet article examine la relation entre le discours relatif aux lois sur les pauvres au 19e siècle en Angleterre et le travail missionnaire en Australie coloniale, en se penchant sur les sites clés de la philanthropie chrétienne dans le New South Wales et Victoria durant les années 1813 à 1849. Ainsi, le texte analyse les transformations de l'éthos d'une institution bénévole créée pour s'occuper des pauvres blancs, la Société Bénévole de New South Wales. Alors qu'il était un produit du paternalisme chrétien à sa fondation en 1813, l'ethos de l'institution fut marqué par le langage de la réforme morale vers les années 1830. Le regard se porte également sur la première institution pour les peuples indigènes, la Native Institution at Parramatta, fondée en 1814. Ses buts et son caractère sont comparés et contrastés avec ceux des orphelinats pour filles et garçons blancs. Le texte considère enfin comment les vues philanthropiques chrétiennes pour l'amélioration des peuples indigènes ont été affectées par des facteurs tels que l'expansion pastorale croissante, la perte de nourriture indigène et la violence de représailles.

Author(s):  
Anne Gray

Russell Drysdale was an Australian artist who created an original vision of the Australian landscape from the 1940s to the 1960s, portraying the emptiness and loneliness of the Australian outback and country townships in his paintings, drawings, and photographs. During World War II, he depicted everyday subjects, including groups of servicemen waiting at railway stations. He traveled numerous times to the interior of Australia, including a trip to record the drought devastation in South Western New South Wales in 1944, where he created images that convey the environmental degradation of the landscape. In 1947, he explored the Bathurst region with Donald Friend where he discovered Sofala and Hill End, an area that served as the subject matter for his art for a number of years. Drysdale painted many images of deserted country towns as well as brooding landscapes peopled with stockmen and station hands. In his paintings of Aborigines, Drysdale expressed a deep concern for the Indigenous people, often placing them within his paintings in a manner that conveys a sense of dispossession. His work was singled out by Kenneth Clark in 1949 as being among the most original in Australian art, and his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1950 convinced British critics that Australian artists had an original vision.


2006 ◽  
Vol 184 (5) ◽  
pp. 217-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen F Clapham ◽  
Mark R Stevenson ◽  
Sing Kai Lo

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Hansen ◽  
Frank Ainsworth

The Wood Report is the product of a Special Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection Services in NSW that was set up in June 2006 and reported in November 2008. In March 2009, the NSW Government published a response to the report, ‘Keep them safe: A shared approach to child wellbeing’. The NSW Parliament in April 2009 also passed the Children Legislation Amendment (Wood Inquiry Recommendations) Act 2009 with little debate. This legislation has introduced many of Justice Wood's recommendations and has enacted other changes that were not included in the Commission of Inquiry report. While many of the amendments are welcome, there is cause for concern about the likely consequences of some of the new provisions.


1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.M. Boyd

A listening program geared to the interests of rural Aboriginal children was prepared and sent out to two Year S classes in the north-west of New South Wales. The class, with 19 Aboriginals and 4 whites showed measurable gains in listening comprehension at the end of the program. The Experimental Class with one Aboriginal girl and 10 white children did not show improvements in listening until the Aboriginally oriented listening program was terminated. The significance of these results, particularly for minority groups in a classroom, are discussed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. B. Whalley ◽  
J. N. Price ◽  
M. J. Macdonald ◽  
P. J. Berney

The Murray–Darling Basin is a Social-Ecological System (SES) of major importance to Australia and includes extensive wetland areas in the north-western parts of New South Wales. The Gwydir Wetlands and the Macquarie Marshes are the particular focus of this paper. These two wetland SES have undergone five successive adaptive cycles (phases) since they were first visited by Europeans in the early 19th century and the ecological, economic and social drivers initiating each transformation to a new cycle are described and analysed. The arrival of the European settlers with their domestic livestock rapidly displaced the Indigenous SES and the wetlands were extensively grazed; during wet periods the livestock were moved out of the wetlands and moved back in as the water receded. More recent land-use changes resulted from the building of major dams to enable storage of water for use in irrigated agriculture. A consequence of dam construction and water use has been a reduction in the frequency and extent of flooding, which has allowed many parts of the wetlands to be continually grazed. Furthermore, as machinery capable of cultivating the very heavy textured soils became available, dryland cropping became a major enterprise in areas of the floodplain where the likelihood of flooding was reduced. With the reduction in flooding, these wetland sites have been seriously degraded. The final phase has seen the invasion by an exotic weed, lippia [Phyla canescens (Kunth) Greene], which is a perennial that grows mat-like between other species of plants and spreads to produce a virtually mono-specific stand. The domestic livestock carrying capacity of the land becomes more or less zero and the conservation value of the wetlands is also dramatically decreased. Therefore, we suggest that lippia should be classed as an ecosystem engineer that has caused the latest transformation of these wetland SES and suggest research directions to investigate how they can be managed to revert to a state in which lippia is no longer dominant.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Cheryl Taylor

Archibald Meston (b. 1851) is remembered as the framer in Queensland of the 1897 Aboriginal Protection Act, legislation which he later helped to implement as Southern Protector. From 1870 until his death in 1924, he published hundreds of articles, stories, poems and letters in Queensland and New South Wales newspapers. While by no means distinguished as literature, this mass of material invites attention not only for its diverse discourses on Indigenous people, but also because it helped to shape the idea of Queensland held by residents and outsiders. The state's history, natural history and geography are Meston's most frequent subjects. This essay seeks to understand further the ideological significance of his journalistic construction of Queensland by examining the connections cultivated in his writings with the poetry of the Romantics, Byron and Shelley, and their American successors, Longfellow and Poe.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (01) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
Margaret Shield

AbstractCommissioners of Crown Lands were the first government officials appointed to the newly declared pastoral districts surrounding Moreton Bay after it was opened to free settlement in 1842. These officers had a significant impact on the formation of regional communities, the administration of justice and the treatment of the Indigenous people but their primary responsibility was the implementation and enforcement of government policies relating to Crown Lands. Commissioners were required to oversee pastoral leases, ensure payment of fees for pastoral and other licences and undertake expeditions to provide the New South Wales government with information regarding the nature of the land and its resources. Extracts from the original correspondence between the Commissioners and the Colonial Secretary indicate that, despite enormous challenges, early Crown Lands Commissioners were largely successful in ensuring the orderly settlement of pastoral districts. Their success however, came at the expense of the Indigenous people, who were systematically driven from their lands without compensation and with scant consideration for their welfare.


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