Ted Strehlow
Encyclopedia
Theodor George Henry Strehlow (6 June 1908–3 October 1978) was an anthropologist
who studied the Arrernte
(Aranda, Arunta) Australian Aborigines in Central Australia
. He was considered a member of the Arrernte people, by dint of his ritual adoption by the tribe. He married twice, to Bertha James, in Prospect
21 December 1935, who bore him three children, Theo, Shirley and John, and Kathleen Stuart in 1972, who bore him a son, Carl.
, the Lutheran pastor and Superintendent
, since 1896, of the Hermannsburg Mission, southwest of Alice Springs
on the Finke River
. Strehlow was born, a month premature, at Hermannsburg
, the native placename being Ntaria
. He was raised trilingually
, speaking, in addition to English, also Arrernte with the aboriginal
maids and native children, and German
with his immediate family. After a family visit to Germany
when he was three years old (1911), he returned with his parents, and grew up parted from his four elder brothers and a sister, who were raised in Germany. He studied both Latin
and Greek
as part of his home school
curriculum
.
When Strehlow was 14 years of age his domineering and charismatic father contracted dropsy and the story of the transport of his dying father to a station where medical help was available was recalled in Strehlow's novel Journey to Horseshoe Bend. The tragic death of his father marked Strehlow for life. He left Hermannsburg for secondary school
ing at Immanuel College, a boarding school for country boys of German stock, in Adelaide
. He was top of the State in Latin, Greek and German in his final year Leaving Certificate
examinations in 1926, and thus won a government bursary
to study at the University of Adelaide
.
At the University he eventually enrolled in a joint honours course in Classics and English
, graduating in 1931 with Honours
in both. With support from his tutor, and from both A. P. Elkin
and Norman Tindale
, he received a research grant
from the Australian National Research Council
to study Arrernte culture, and to that purpose returned to his home in Central Australia
which was stricken by four years of drought
and disease that had carried off many people, and emptied the land of wildlife
.
The tribes of Central Australia had already become the object of worldwide interest through the joint work of exploration
and ethnographic enquiry undertaken by Baldwin Spencer
and Frank Gillen
, whose researches exercised a notable impact on both sociological
and anthropological
theory, in the works of Émile Durkheim
and James G. Frazer, and on psychoanalysis
, in the thesis proposed by Sigmund Freud
in his Totem and Taboo
. One of Freud's disciples, Géza Róheim
, had actually conducted fieldwork while based in Hermannsburg among the Arrernte in 1929.
His first major informants, old and fully initiated men, were Gurra, from the northern Arrernte, and Njitia and Makarinja from Horseshoe Bend, later to be joined by Rauwiraka, Makarinja, Kolbarinja, Utnadata and Namatjira, the father of the famous painter of that name
. Mickey Gurra (Tjentermana), his earliest informant and last of the ingkata or ceremonial chiefs of the bandicoot
totem
centre known as Ilbalintja, confided in Strehlow in May 1933 that neither he nor any of the other old men had sons or grandsons responsible enough to be trusted with the secrets of their sacred objects (tjurunga
) (many of which were being sold for food and tobacco as the native culture broke down)), together with the accompanying chants and ceremonies. They were worried that all their secrets would die with them. Several, such as Rauwiraka, confided to Strehlow their secret knowledge, and even their names, trusting him to conserve the details of all their sacred lore and rites.
In the following two years, covering more than 7,000 grueling miles of desert to witness and record aboriginal ways, Strehlow witnessed and recorded some 166 sacred ceremonies dealing with totemic acts, most of which are no longer practiced. His academic stature firmed with the publication of Aranda Traditions (1947). This work had been assembled in 1934 but Strehlow delayed publication until all his informants were dead.
Soon after, in 1949, he received an ANU
fellow
ship, which, though he soon found out carried with it no prospect for an academic career in Canberra
, enabled him to complete further studies in the field, and travel to England for research. His sojourn left him disappointed, both with England, and with many of its leading anthropologists, such as Raymond Firth
and J. R. Firth, who in his view failed to extend to him the support and interest his research required, since they were critical of his lack of formal anthropological credentials. He toured the continent and lectured, with considerable success, in France and Germany, and met up with his siblings and mother in Bavaria
.
He gained recognition for the linguistic work which his father had begun. After the war, in 1946, he was appointed lecturer in English and Linguistics, and then Reader
in Linguistics
at Adelaide University in 1954, and became a full professor when awarded a personal chair in linguistics
in 1970.
In November 1971, after many years of difficulty due also to the special fonts required to reproduce his text, he published Songs of Central Australia, a monumental study of the ceremonial poetry of the Arrernte tribes. Although reviewed with condescending hostility in the TLS, it was acclaimed by Australian experts like A. P. Elkin
as one of the three most significant books ever published on Australia anthropology.
The last three decades of his life were intermittently troubled by the question of the ownership and custodianship on the objects, and records on the aboriginals which he had accumulated during his fieldwork over a long career. The Government and two universities, who had subsidized his labours, and, towards the end, a younger generation of Aranda people on the Land Rights Council, believed they were the proper bodies for taking over the care and housing of this extensive material. Strehlow felt a personal responsibility for this material, as the man exclusively entrusted by a generation of elders with myths and songs, their secret knowledge and ceremonial artefacts, and held a grievance for what he considered to be the shabby treatment he had received during his life by the establishment. He set difficult and exacting conditions through many negotiations, and when the issue came to a head, determined to will his private collection to his new family, who would house and conserve it in their own home. Strehlow justified his retention of these objects by the personal expense he had laid out, and by the fact, he insisted, that they had been formally handed into his care by 'surrender ceremonies'.
In an apparent paradox, once the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg had sufficient confidence in the Christianized native community to accord them autonomy, and yield church leases on the area to their aboriginal congregation, many local natives moved out, claimed their tjurunga rights to the land, and began to recelebrate the older ceremonies. In his final return to the area, he was surprised to discover that his 'twin', Gustav Malbunka, who had once saved his life, and who had not only renounced his culture but become an evangelical preacher, was capable of singing tjilpa (totemic quoll
) verses that once formed a key part of rituals that Strehlow thought were extinct. The culture, even among Christian converts, had been secretly passed on.
Strehlow died of a heart attack in 1978, just before the opening of an exhibition of his collection of artefacts, while conversing with Justice Kirby and his friend and colleague Ronald Berndt
on the extinction of the bilby
(the key animal in the bandicoot ritual) by introduced rabbits, a metaphor for what was happening to the aborigines and their culture with the spread of white civilisation. He was cremated. His career and his role as the custodian of Aboriginal secrets has been dogged by controversy which has followed him beyond the grave.
A decade later, negotiations between his widow and the Northern Territory
government led to the purchase of most, though not all, of the collection on 27 February 1987. The Strehlow Research Centre
at Alice Springs was established for the preservation and public display of these works.
, for the crime. Stuart was convicted and condemned to death in late April 1959. The case quickly assumed the character of a cause célèbre
as civil rights groups questioned the evidence based solely on a confession made to the police which the prosecution and officers affirmed had been taken down word for word. The verdict was appealed, went to the High Court
and the Privy Council in London, and concluded with a review by a Royal Commission
.
Strehlow's involvement came after a Catholic priest who was convinced of Stuart's innocence asked him for an informed judgement on the language of the evidence by which the aborigine had been convicted. Strehlow, it turned out, had known during his days as a Patrol Officer
at Jay Creek
both Stuart's grandfather, Tom Ljonga, and Stuart himself. Ljonga had been his trusted companion through many long journeys through the Central Australian deserts. Four days before the appointed hanging
, Strehlow, with the Catholic chaplain, interviewed Stuart at Yatala prison
. In the subsequent review process, Strehlow testified several times on what he saw as the incompatibility between the English of the confession and the dialect
vernacular
Stuart used. Familiar with white men in the Centre who had raped aboriginal girls of that age, Strehlow did not think this crime fitted with Aboriginal behaviour. Stuart's conviction was upheld but on release from gaol, he went on to become a major figure on an Aboriginal Land Rights Council
.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
who studied the Arrernte
Arrernte people
The Arrernte people , known in English as the Aranda or Arunta, are those Indigenous Australians who are the original custodians of Arrernte lands in the central area of Australia around Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The Arrernte tribe has lived there for more than 20,000 years...
(Aranda, Arunta) Australian Aborigines in Central Australia
Central Australia
Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
. He was considered a member of the Arrernte people, by dint of his ritual adoption by the tribe. He married twice, to Bertha James, in Prospect
Prospect, South Australia
Prospect is a suburb located to the north of the centre of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia.Surrounding suburbs include Kilburn, Fitzroy, and Medindie. Prospect is a middle to upper class suburb of Adelaide...
21 December 1935, who bore him three children, Theo, Shirley and John, and Kathleen Stuart in 1972, who bore him a son, Carl.
Life
Strehlow's father was Carl StrehlowCarl Strehlow
Carl Friedrich Strehlow was a German Lutheran missionary in outback Australia who headed the Finke River Mission in Hermannsburg, Northern Territory from 1894-1922. He learnt and documented the languages of the Arrernte and Luritja people, and published together with Moritz von Leonhardi a...
, the Lutheran pastor and Superintendent
Superintendent (ecclesiastical)
Superintendent is the head of an administrative division of a Protestant church, largely historical but still in use in Germany.- Superintendents in Sweden :...
, since 1896, of the Hermannsburg Mission, southwest of Alice Springs
Alice Springs, Northern Territory
Alice Springs is the second largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Popularly known as "the Alice" or simply "Alice", Alice Springs is situated in the geographic centre of Australia near the southern border of the Northern Territory...
on the Finke River
Finke River
The Finke River is one of the largest rivers in central Australia. Its source is in the Northern Territory's MacDonnell Ranges, and the name Finke River is first applied at the confluence of the Davenport and Ormiston Creeks, just north of Glen Helen. From here the river meanders for approximately...
. Strehlow was born, a month premature, at Hermannsburg
Hermannsburg, Northern Territory
Hermannsburg is an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia, 131 km southwest of Alice Springs. It is known in the local Western Arrernte language as Ntaria....
, the native placename being Ntaria
Ntaria Ladies Choir
Ntaria Ladies Choir are a choir from Hermannsburg in Central Australia. The members are aboriginal women from the area and they sing a mixture of English and Arrente. The choir has its roots in work done by Lutheran Pastors Kemp and Schwartz in 1887 They created an Arrente language hymn book from...
. He was raised trilingually
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
, speaking, in addition to English, also Arrernte with the aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
maids and native children, and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
with his immediate family. After a family visit to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
when he was three years old (1911), he returned with his parents, and grew up parted from his four elder brothers and a sister, who were raised in Germany. He studied both Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
as part of his home school
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
curriculum
Curriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
.
When Strehlow was 14 years of age his domineering and charismatic father contracted dropsy and the story of the transport of his dying father to a station where medical help was available was recalled in Strehlow's novel Journey to Horseshoe Bend. The tragic death of his father marked Strehlow for life. He left Hermannsburg for secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...
ing at Immanuel College, a boarding school for country boys of German stock, in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
. He was top of the State in Latin, Greek and German in his final year Leaving Certificate
Leaving Certificate
The Leaving Certificate Examinations , commonly referred to as the Leaving Cert is the final examination in the Irish secondary school system. It takes a minimum of two years preparation, but an optional Transition Year means that for those students it takes place three years after the Junior...
examinations in 1926, and thus won a government bursary
Bursary
A bursary is strictly an office for a bursar and his or her staff in a school or college.In modern English usage, the term has become synonymous with "bursary award", a monetary award made by an institution to an individual or a group to assist the development of their education.According to The...
to study at the University of Adelaide
University of Adelaide
The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...
.
At the University he eventually enrolled in a joint honours course in Classics and English
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, graduating in 1931 with Honours
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
in both. With support from his tutor, and from both A. P. Elkin
A. P. Elkin
Adolphus Peter "A. P." Elkin CMG was an Anglican clergyman, an influential Australian anthropologist during the mid twentieth century and a proponent of the assimilation of Indigenous Australians.-Early life:...
and Norman Tindale
Norman Tindale
Norman Barnett Tindale was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist and entomologist. Born in Perth, his family moved to Tokyo from 1907 to 1915, where his father worked as an accountant at the Salvation Army mission in Japan. Soon after returning to Australia, Tindale got a job at the South...
, he received a research grant
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
from the Australian National Research Council
Australian Research Council
The Australian Research Council is the Australian Government’s main agency for allocating research funding to academics and researchers in Australian universities. Its mission is to advance Australia’s capacity to undertake research that brings economic, social and cultural benefit to the...
to study Arrernte culture, and to that purpose returned to his home in Central Australia
Central Australia
Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...
which was stricken by four years of drought
Drought
A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region...
and disease that had carried off many people, and emptied the land of wildlife
Wildlife
Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative....
.
The tribes of Central Australia had already become the object of worldwide interest through the joint work of exploration
Horn Expedition
The Horn Scientific Expedition was the first primarily scientific expedition to study the natural history of Central Australia. It took place from May to August 1894, with expedition members first traveling by train from Adelaide to the railhead at Oodnadatta in South Australia, then using camels...
and ethnographic enquiry undertaken by Baldwin Spencer
Walter Baldwin Spencer
Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer KCMG was a British-Australian biologist and anthropologist.Baldwin was born in Stretford, Lancashire. His father, Reuben Spencer, who had come from Derbyshire in his youth, obtained a position with Rylands and Sons, cotton manufacturers, and rose to be chairman of its...
and Frank Gillen
Francis James Gillen
Francis James Gillen was an early Australian anthropologist and ethnologist.Gillen was born at Little Para South Australia. He entered the public service in 1867, and was employed as a postal messenger at Clare. He was transferred to Adelaide in 1871 where his duties also included telegraph...
, whose researches exercised a notable impact on both sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and anthropological
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
theory, in the works of Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
and James G. Frazer, and on psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, in the thesis proposed by Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
in his Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo
Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud published in German in 1913 under the title Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker...
. One of Freud's disciples, Géza Róheim
Géza Róheim
Géza Róheim was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist. Originally based in Budapest, he is often credited with founding the field of psychoanalytic anthropology, since he was the first psychoanalytically trained anthropologist to do fieldwork...
, had actually conducted fieldwork while based in Hermannsburg among the Arrernte in 1929.
His first major informants, old and fully initiated men, were Gurra, from the northern Arrernte, and Njitia and Makarinja from Horseshoe Bend, later to be joined by Rauwiraka, Makarinja, Kolbarinja, Utnadata and Namatjira, the father of the famous painter of that name
Albert Namatjira
Albert Namatjira , born Elea Namatjira, was an Australian artist. He was a Western Arrernte man, an Indigenous Australian of the Western MacDonnell Ranges area...
. Mickey Gurra (Tjentermana), his earliest informant and last of the ingkata or ceremonial chiefs of the bandicoot
Bandicoot
Bandicoots are a group of about 20 species of small to medium-sized, terrestrial marsupial omnivores in the order Peramelemorphia.- Etymology :...
totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
centre known as Ilbalintja, confided in Strehlow in May 1933 that neither he nor any of the other old men had sons or grandsons responsible enough to be trusted with the secrets of their sacred objects (tjurunga
Tjurunga
A Tjurunga or as it sometimes spelled, Churinga, is an object of religious significance by Central Australian Indigenous Australian people of the Arrernte groups...
) (many of which were being sold for food and tobacco as the native culture broke down)), together with the accompanying chants and ceremonies. They were worried that all their secrets would die with them. Several, such as Rauwiraka, confided to Strehlow their secret knowledge, and even their names, trusting him to conserve the details of all their sacred lore and rites.
In the following two years, covering more than 7,000 grueling miles of desert to witness and record aboriginal ways, Strehlow witnessed and recorded some 166 sacred ceremonies dealing with totemic acts, most of which are no longer practiced. His academic stature firmed with the publication of Aranda Traditions (1947). This work had been assembled in 1934 but Strehlow delayed publication until all his informants were dead.
Soon after, in 1949, he received an ANU
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
ship, which, though he soon found out carried with it no prospect for an academic career in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
, enabled him to complete further studies in the field, and travel to England for research. His sojourn left him disappointed, both with England, and with many of its leading anthropologists, such as Raymond Firth
Raymond Firth
Sir Raymond William Firth, CNZM, FBA, was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the particular society...
and J. R. Firth, who in his view failed to extend to him the support and interest his research required, since they were critical of his lack of formal anthropological credentials. He toured the continent and lectured, with considerable success, in France and Germany, and met up with his siblings and mother in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
.
He gained recognition for the linguistic work which his father had begun. After the war, in 1946, he was appointed lecturer in English and Linguistics, and then Reader
Reader (academic rank)
The title of Reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth nations like Australia and New Zealand denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship...
in Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at Adelaide University in 1954, and became a full professor when awarded a personal chair in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
in 1970.
In November 1971, after many years of difficulty due also to the special fonts required to reproduce his text, he published Songs of Central Australia, a monumental study of the ceremonial poetry of the Arrernte tribes. Although reviewed with condescending hostility in the TLS, it was acclaimed by Australian experts like A. P. Elkin
A. P. Elkin
Adolphus Peter "A. P." Elkin CMG was an Anglican clergyman, an influential Australian anthropologist during the mid twentieth century and a proponent of the assimilation of Indigenous Australians.-Early life:...
as one of the three most significant books ever published on Australia anthropology.
The last three decades of his life were intermittently troubled by the question of the ownership and custodianship on the objects, and records on the aboriginals which he had accumulated during his fieldwork over a long career. The Government and two universities, who had subsidized his labours, and, towards the end, a younger generation of Aranda people on the Land Rights Council, believed they were the proper bodies for taking over the care and housing of this extensive material. Strehlow felt a personal responsibility for this material, as the man exclusively entrusted by a generation of elders with myths and songs, their secret knowledge and ceremonial artefacts, and held a grievance for what he considered to be the shabby treatment he had received during his life by the establishment. He set difficult and exacting conditions through many negotiations, and when the issue came to a head, determined to will his private collection to his new family, who would house and conserve it in their own home. Strehlow justified his retention of these objects by the personal expense he had laid out, and by the fact, he insisted, that they had been formally handed into his care by 'surrender ceremonies'.
In an apparent paradox, once the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg had sufficient confidence in the Christianized native community to accord them autonomy, and yield church leases on the area to their aboriginal congregation, many local natives moved out, claimed their tjurunga rights to the land, and began to recelebrate the older ceremonies. In his final return to the area, he was surprised to discover that his 'twin', Gustav Malbunka, who had once saved his life, and who had not only renounced his culture but become an evangelical preacher, was capable of singing tjilpa (totemic quoll
Western Quoll
The western quoll , also known as the chuditch or western native cat, is a medium sized predator and like its eastern and northern relatives, has a white-spotted brown coat and a long tail. It is most closely related to the eastern quoll from which it differs in possessing a first toe on the...
) verses that once formed a key part of rituals that Strehlow thought were extinct. The culture, even among Christian converts, had been secretly passed on.
Strehlow died of a heart attack in 1978, just before the opening of an exhibition of his collection of artefacts, while conversing with Justice Kirby and his friend and colleague Ronald Berndt
Ronald Berndt
Ronald Murray Berndt was an Australian anthropologist. With his wife Catherine Berndt, they worked in the Northern Territory, in the Daly River....
on the extinction of the bilby
Bilby
Bilbies are desert-dwelling marsupial omnivores; they are members of the order Peramelemorphia. Before European colonisation of Australia, there were two species. One became extinct in the 1950s; the other survives but remains endangered....
(the key animal in the bandicoot ritual) by introduced rabbits, a metaphor for what was happening to the aborigines and their culture with the spread of white civilisation. He was cremated. His career and his role as the custodian of Aboriginal secrets has been dogged by controversy which has followed him beyond the grave.
A decade later, negotiations between his widow and the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
government led to the purchase of most, though not all, of the collection on 27 February 1987. The Strehlow Research Centre
Strehlow Research Centre
The Strehlow Research Centre is a museum and cultural centre located in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Research Centre is responsible for the care of the Strehlow Collection of indigenous central Australian ethnographic objects and archival materials.Established by the...
at Alice Springs was established for the preservation and public display of these works.
Involvement in the Rupert Stuart child rape case
In 1958 a nine year old girl, Mary Hattam, was found raped and murdered on the beach at Ceduna. The police subsequently arrested an aboriginal, Rupert Max StuartMax Stuart
Rupert Maxwell Stuart is an Indigenous Australian who was convicted of murder in 1959. His conviction was subject to several appeals to higher courts, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and a Royal Commission, all of which upheld the verdict. Newspapers campaigned successfully against...
, for the crime. Stuart was convicted and condemned to death in late April 1959. The case quickly assumed the character of a cause célèbre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
as civil rights groups questioned the evidence based solely on a confession made to the police which the prosecution and officers affirmed had been taken down word for word. The verdict was appealed, went to the High Court
High Court of Australia
The High Court of Australia is the supreme court in the Australian court hierarchy and the final court of appeal in Australia. It has both original and appellate jurisdiction, has the power of judicial review over laws passed by the Parliament of Australia and the parliaments of the States, and...
and the Privy Council in London, and concluded with a review by a Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
.
Strehlow's involvement came after a Catholic priest who was convinced of Stuart's innocence asked him for an informed judgement on the language of the evidence by which the aborigine had been convicted. Strehlow, it turned out, had known during his days as a Patrol Officer
Patrol
A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as police officers or soldiers, that are assigned to monitor a specific geographic area.- Military :...
at Jay Creek
Jay Creek, Northern Territory
Jay Creek is in the MacDonnell Ranges 45 kilometres west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. It was a government settlement for Indigenous Australians which for a time in the late 1920s and early '30s included 45 children from a home named 'The Bungalow' temporarily housed in a corrugated...
both Stuart's grandfather, Tom Ljonga, and Stuart himself. Ljonga had been his trusted companion through many long journeys through the Central Australian deserts. Four days before the appointed hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
, Strehlow, with the Catholic chaplain, interviewed Stuart at Yatala prison
Yatala Labour Prison
Yatala Labour Prison is a low- to high-security men's prison in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It was built in 1854 to enable prisoners to work at the creek, quarrying rock for roads and construction...
. In the subsequent review process, Strehlow testified several times on what he saw as the incompatibility between the English of the confession and the dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
Stuart used. Familiar with white men in the Centre who had raped aboriginal girls of that age, Strehlow did not think this crime fitted with Aboriginal behaviour. Stuart's conviction was upheld but on release from gaol, he went on to become a major figure on an Aboriginal Land Rights Council
Central Land Council
The Central Land Council is an Indigenous Land Council that represents the indigenous people of the southern half of the Northern Territory of Australia, predominantly in land issues...
.
Notable remarks
"There had been no kinder folk anywhere than the Australian natives."
"We have to train ourselves to look upon the land of our birth with the eyes, not of conquerors, overcoming an enemy, but of children looking at the face of their mother. Only then shall we truly be able to call Australia our home. Our native traditions can help up to become finer and better Australians."
External links
- Strehlow Research Centre
- Flight of Ducks F.J.A Pockley journal entry from 1933 January 23 with description of an encounter with Strehlow (includes photograph).
- Journey to Horseshoe Bend T.G.H Strehlow an account (in blog form) of his father’s death in October 1922.
- Ward McNally, Aborigines, artefacts, and anguish, Lutheran Publishing House, 1981
- 'Mr Strehlow's Films' documentary film 2001, 52 minutes, written and directed by Hart Cohen, produced by Adrian Herring, a Journeycam production. Concerns background to the controversy over the artefacts, photographs, recordings and films collected by Strehlow. Contrary to the apparent implication of the title, does not actually make use of any such items. Contains an affecting account of the father's death. Portrays many remote and beautiful places.