REVIEW #3 THE ORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS

REVIEW #3

The Original Australians
By Josephine Flood
Allen & Unwin, 2019
Review by Julie Wright

Josephine Flood was motivated to write her history of the First Australians to provide clear and unambiguous facts in answer to the many questions that people ask about the impact colonization had on Indigenous Australians. She begins with a discussion of the contested ‘black armband’ view of our history and a desire to cut through to the facts, in order to build a pathway to genuine reconciliation between the First Australians and those who have come since Australia was settled by the British. Flood admits to being an outsider, having only arrived in Australia in 1963, but perhaps that outsider’s curiosity to “understand both white and black motives for past actions” will bring a more objective critical perspective, reinforced by a long career in archaeology and the evidence-based anthropological insights that come with that.

One of the aspects of the book that I appreciated the most were the many extracts from the writings of the early explorers such as Dampier and Cook who had contact with the First Australians. Also, the interpolated texts in each chapter were like artefacts creating a type of “verbal museum” of background information supporting the historical text. For example, there were explanations of spears, spear-throwers and shields, as well as boomerangs, but also more curious discussions such as an explanation for the lack of coconut trees in Australia and the macabre ‘science’ of mutilating the bodies of Indigenous citizens or, in Truganini’s case, putting her body on display in the Hobart museum from 1904 to 1947. Even the footnotes to each chapter were fascinating to read, sometimes extending the discussions in the text such as that on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, supporting the chapter on the origins of the First Australians. A great deal of research went into this chapter with Flood examining competing theories of origins as connected to different environmental changes over millennia and pictures gained from comparisons of blood group systems and molecular biology after the discovery of DNA family trees.

One of the observations of traditional societies in Australia was the strict segregation of rituals for men and women. Among men, however, there was an egalitarian approach to decision-making where a group of elders would reach a decision after free discussion. Flood describes the typical group of First Australians as being a “classless, unstratified society without any formal government,” though the women were without a voice just as the colonists wives were initially. Rituals for both boys and girls involved having ‘cuts inflicted on their chests, stomachs, thighs or buttocks with stone or shell knives.’ For boys around the age of 14, in the Top End especially, initiation ceremonies involved the cutting of the young man’s foreskin ‘to symbolise severing the umbilical cord’ and his readiness to take his place as a responsible man of the group. Traditions, beliefs and rituals were recounted from all areas of Australia and, wherever possible, Flood turned to First Australians to tell their story. One of the most powerful statements came from Galarrwuy Yunupingu who explained that “‘an Aboriginal deprived of his tribal land is like a leaf torn from its tree.’”

The balance between the distant past, recent past and the present is impressive. To attempt to reconcile so many aspects of so many societies across this vast continent seemed to me to be a rather ambitious project, but Josephine Flood has been thorough in her research. Her choice of photographic sources enables the reader to achieve a powerful visual summary of the First Australians since colonisation. It was particularly pleasing to see the space given to Assimilation and the first Aboriginal strikes for equal pay and conditions. Younger readers need to know about Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji mob’s strike against their poor pay and conditions and their fight to reclaim their traditional land. Flood does not gloss over the problems that need to be addressed today, or their historical roots. In her final chapter, she surveys some of the major gatherings and policies since the mid-1920’s right up to the Uluru Statement from the Heart on 26 May, 2017. Her final sentence sets a positive tone for the future: ‘Notwithstanding the disruption of colonisation, the world’s oldest living culture has thrived and remains defiantly resurgent and resolutely committed to ensuring the survival of indigenous culture as a core and essential part of the modern, multiracial and prosperous Australian nation.’ Anyone who feels they need a broader and deeper understanding of the First Australians would find this text would connect the dots admirably.