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INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS AND GERMAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE ERA OF ‘DECOLONIZATION’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2019

MATTHEW P. FITZPATRICK Open the ORCID record for MATTHEW P. FITZPATRICK [Opens in a new window]
MATTHEW P. FITZPATRICK*
Affiliation:
Flinders University
*
CHASS, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, South Australia5050, Australia[email protected]
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Abstract

Decolonizing history and anthropology is often presented as a theoretical enterprise, through which a more rigorous and inclusive framing of historical precepts will deliver a clearer and less Eurocentric understanding of the past. Yet it is arguably necessary to decouple decolonization from the broader practices of anti-Eurocentric historiography. Via an empirical assessment of the legacy of Hermann Klaatsch, a German anthropologist working on the colonial frontier, this article examines the possibilities and limitations of a decolonizing approach to settler colonial history. The article reflects upon its own study of colonial anthropology and the historical complexity of the repatriation of Indigenous human remains, and suggests that not all anti-Eurocentric interrogations of the colonial past are synonymous with decolonization.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , June 2020 , pp. 686 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council Grant DP 180100118: ‘Monarchy, democracy and empire’, as well as by the UA-DAAD Joint Research Co-Operation Scheme Grant ‘German anthropological legacies in Australia’. Thanks to Peter Monteath, Hilary Howes, Felicity Jensz, Anja Schwarz, Amanda Kearney, Christine Winter, Yann Le Gall, Sarah Fründt, and Kris Natalier for their insights while conducting this research. Above all, thanks to Kirsty Gillespie and Vera Ketchell for their invaluable time, assistance, and expertise. The conclusions reached in this paper are mine rather than theirs.

References

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2 The following makes use of the convention of capitalizing ‘Indigenous’ when used in association with Aboriginal Australians, while beginning ‘indigenous’ with a lower-case ‘i’ when used as an adjectival descriptor for non-European peoples on their colonized territories more generally.

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32 Tuck and Yang, ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’, p. 19.

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40 Plates 9 and 10 from the published version of the conference paper showed Indigenous prisoners with only waist ropes secured by chains. Copies of the more damning photos from Wyndham are in Erckenbrecht, Auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen, p. 151.

41 ‘The science congress: fourth day's proceedings’, Express and Courier, 10 Jan. 1907, p. 1; ‘Three years among blacks: German scientific enterprise: Professor Klaatsch's researches’, Evening Journal, 10 Jan. 1907.

42 ‘Dr Klaatsch on the blacks’, Daily News, 11 Jan. 1907, p. 5. This longer, more detailed version of Klaatsch's experiences in northern Western Australia was also published in Launceston's Daily Telegraph: ‘Australian Aborigines: notes by Dr Klaatsch at the science congress’, Daily Telegraph, 18 Jan. 1907, p. 7. Compare this to the anaemic reporting of another Adelaide paper: ‘The chief attraction in the morning was a lecture, for men only, by Professor H Klaatsch, on the aboriginals of Northern Australia. This was beautifully illustrated by lantern views of the natives in various districts, and proved most instructive’ (‘The science congress: interesting reports: fourth day's proceedings’, Advertiser, 11 Jan. 1907, p. 7).

43 Roth, Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives report.

44 ‘Australian Aboriginals: condition in West Australia: interview with Professor Klaatsch’, Brisbane Courier, 21 Feb. 1907, p. 5.

45 Ibid.

46 ‘Herr Professor Doktor Klaatsch’, Australische Zeitung, 16 Jan. 1907, p. 1.

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51 Geoffrey Gray, ‘Walter Edmund Roth: royal commissioner of Western Australia, 1904’, in McDougall and Davidson, eds., Roth family, pp. 209–19; Lydon, Jane, ‘“Behold the tears”: photography as colonial witness’, History of Photography, 34 (2010), pp. 234–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gill, Andrew, ‘Aborigines, settlers and police in the Kimberleys 1887–1905’, Studies in Western Australian History, 1 (1977), pp. 1–28Google Scholar; Harman, Kristyn and Grant, Elizabeth, ‘“Impossible to detain … without chains”? The use of restraints on Aboriginal people in policing and prisons’, History Australia, 11 (2014), pp. 157–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 McAllister, Rowlands, and Westaway, ‘The blood and the bone’, pp. 115–16, 132.

56 Klaatsch, ‘Some notes on scientific travel’, p. 583.

57 Roth would also sell ‘eighty skulls and other bones of thirty nine individuals’ to Klaatsch before leaving. See Turnbull, Science, museums and collecting the Indigenous dead, p. 268.

58 Turnbull, ‘Theft in the name of science’, pp. 160–6; Zimmerman, ‘Adventures in the skin trade’, pp. 156–8.

59 Vera Ketchell, interview with ABC North Queensland, 2–3 May 2017, https://soundcloud.com/abc-north-queensland/sets/king-ngtjas-remains-repatriated-to-north-queensland (no longer available; last accessed 4 Dec. 2017); Vera Ketchell, personal correspondence with the author, 16 Nov. 2018. The following account has been published with Vera Ketchell's kind permission.

60 Ketchell, interview with ABC North Queensland, 2–3 May 2017.

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63 Vera Ketchell, interview with the author, 15 Dec. 2017.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.; Ketchell, personal correspondence with the author, 16 Nov. 2018.

67 Natalie Fernbach, ‘Aboriginal ancestor's mummified remains repatriated to northern Queensland from German museum’, 2–3 May 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-02/indigenous-ancestor-remains-returned-to-queensland/8479888.

68 Ketchell, interview with the author, 15 Dec. 2017; Ketchell, personal correspondence with the author, 16 Nov. 2018.

69 Erckenbrecht et al., ‘Artefacts and collectors’, p. 352.

70 Klaatsch, quoted in Erckenbrecht, Auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen, p. 86.

71 Ibid.

72 Erckenbrecht, Auf der Suche nach den Ursprüngen, pp. 86–7.

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77 ‘Postcolonial’ is used here to describe a theoretical approach, not to imply that settler colonial successor states such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have entered a ‘postcolonial’ era in their history. See Xie, Shaobo, ‘Rethinking the problem of postcolonialism’, New Literary History, 28 (1997), pp. 7–19, at pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

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79 Ibid., p. 11.

80 Ibid., p. 35.

81 Evelyn Araluen, ‘Resisting the institution’, Overland, 227, https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-227/feature-evelyn-araluen/.

82 Long, ‘Decolonising higher education’, pp. 22, 25.

83 National Native Title Tribunal, ‘Native title recognised south of Cairns’, http://www.nntt.gov.au/News-and-Publications/latest-news/Pages/NativetitlerecognisedsouthofCairns.aspx.

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88 Tuck and Yang, ‘Decolonization is not a metaphor’, p. 3.

89 Araluen, ‘Resisting the institution’. More bluntly, she has argued elsewhere that, ‘When people seek to replace postcol[onialism] with decol[onisation] they reinforce the same issues but corrupt a language we are still building for ourselves … you can't decolonise your nice middle class house on stolen land. You can't decolonise academia as such.’ Twitter, 6 Aug. 2017, https://twitter.com/evelynaraluen/status/894386631787991040.

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