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Unearthed: The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island
Revealing the story of the single family of Aborigines on Kangaroo Island, Australia, who would grow to become the island's largest land owners—and then mysteriously disappear—this dramatic work of history explores what became of this family and why they left their land. What emerges is a saga that is both remarkable and sadly familiar and a fascinating microcosm of European expansion in both Australia and the United States. Also included are pertinent discussions of the profound effect aboriginal displacement has had on the Australian psyche.
390 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 25, 2017
A new book is on my TBR: it’s called Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search for Human Antiquity and it’s by historian Rebe Taylor. But as soon as I started reading it, I knew I wanted to read her first book, so I reserved that at the library… and lo! it was available the very next day. This promptness made me think I could read the book at my leisure and renew it if necessary, but no, *pout* somebody else wants it now and I’ve ended up having to dash through the last half of it because it’s due back tomorrow. So Unearthed, the Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island is not going to get the review it deserves from me, because I now don’t have time to read it all.
(But actually what Unearthed really deserves is a proper review from a proper historian and there seems not to be one online, only an archived Hindsight program about it on the ABC, and one lonely 4-line review at Goodreads. How has this happened to a book nominated for the 2003 Dobbie, that tells such an interesting story?)
Maybe it’s because Kangaroo Island doesn’t seem so very important in the national consciousness? Yet it’s our third-largest island (after Tasmania and Melville Island), and it’s a bit bigger than Majorca and Long Island. It’s also the site of first European settlement in South Australia – a settlement which followed an Indigenous settlement that predates the loss of the land bridge about 10,000 years ago when sea levels rose, creating the body of water now known as Backstairs Passage, separating Kangaroo Island from the Fleurieu Peninsula. Its Aboriginal name was Karta, ‘Isle of the Dead’ and there is a Dreaming story which tells the story of the people who did not get away in time from the flooding.
The fascinating aspect of this island’s settlement history is that modern day descendants of the sealers and Aboriginal women who re-settled Kangaroo Island in the early 19th century had – until recently – no idea of their ancestors’ existence. The simplistic explanation for this seems to be that the sealers, their Aboriginal ‘wives’ and their way of life had been given such a bad press that their story was suppressed both by their embarrassed descendants and by the victors in the land-grab.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/03/26/u...
(But actually what Unearthed really deserves is a proper review from a proper historian and there seems not to be one online, only an archived Hindsight program about it on the ABC, and one lonely 4-line review at Goodreads. How has this happened to a book nominated for the 2003 Dobbie, that tells such an interesting story?)
Maybe it’s because Kangaroo Island doesn’t seem so very important in the national consciousness? Yet it’s our third-largest island (after Tasmania and Melville Island), and it’s a bit bigger than Majorca and Long Island. It’s also the site of first European settlement in South Australia – a settlement which followed an Indigenous settlement that predates the loss of the land bridge about 10,000 years ago when sea levels rose, creating the body of water now known as Backstairs Passage, separating Kangaroo Island from the Fleurieu Peninsula. Its Aboriginal name was Karta, ‘Isle of the Dead’ and there is a Dreaming story which tells the story of the people who did not get away in time from the flooding.
The fascinating aspect of this island’s settlement history is that modern day descendants of the sealers and Aboriginal women who re-settled Kangaroo Island in the early 19th century had – until recently – no idea of their ancestors’ existence. The simplistic explanation for this seems to be that the sealers, their Aboriginal ‘wives’ and their way of life had been given such a bad press that their story was suppressed both by their embarrassed descendants and by the victors in the land-grab.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/03/26/u...
June 19, 2023
This book was from the Lifeline book fair, still on till tomorrow in the Brisbane Convention Centre.
Rebe Taylor has done serious research into the history of the Aboriginal Tasmanians who survived and survive on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
In the early 1800s, 22 English seal hunters took a group of Tasmanian Aboriginal women to Kangaroo Island with them, to live in huts, hunt seals, mutton birds, kangaroos, pelicans and fish. These women included three sisters of Trukanini (Truganini), supposedly the last 'pure' Tasmanian Aborigine, women from the north west and south of Tasmania. They spoke a patois of Tasmanian dialects to their children and each other. Other white settlers thought that these men had 'degenerated', and though their families grew and spread to own land all over the island, and appear white, they were still discriminated against by newer white settlers.
Over the next 200 years, eight main families owned the land on Kangaroo Island, some intermarried, others left for the mainland. When researcher Taylor went looking for their descendants around the year 2000, she found only three who were interested and willing to share family history, photos and information.
As Rebe Taylor interviewed the living descendants, she uncovered a treasure trove of stories from the wild old days of the island, men who went away to the world wars, a population which grew then dwindled to 80 souls, of men and women who never married, or left the island to marry, as many were related. Internalised racism made many descendants 'forget' their indigenous roots, newer settlers discriminated against the Kangaroo Islanders for being 'white-skinned blacks', fearing giving birth to 'throw-back' babies, who might have Aboriginal features.
'Unearthed' ends on a happy note, with the youngest of the Golder family given his four times great grandfather's name.
Though printed in 2002, before Ancestry dot com and such sites were popular, this research could benefit from modern DNA analysis. DNA information fills out our knowledge of our relatives, as DNA gives us the undocumented relatives, the runaways, the illegitimate, everyone, as well as the documented legitimate family which research of births, marriages and deaths, written history, will find. Taylor's inclusion of family trees, photos and maps gives the reader a real feel for the island, the people and the times.
This book should put to rest the notion that Tasmanian Aborigines were hunted to extinction, they live on, and they are proud. If your last name is Wells, Cornelly, Marshall, Niven, Richards, Walker, Waller or Simpson, (and you live in Australia) you might also be a Tasmanian First Nations person.
Rebe Taylor has done serious research into the history of the Aboriginal Tasmanians who survived and survive on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
In the early 1800s, 22 English seal hunters took a group of Tasmanian Aboriginal women to Kangaroo Island with them, to live in huts, hunt seals, mutton birds, kangaroos, pelicans and fish. These women included three sisters of Trukanini (Truganini), supposedly the last 'pure' Tasmanian Aborigine, women from the north west and south of Tasmania. They spoke a patois of Tasmanian dialects to their children and each other. Other white settlers thought that these men had 'degenerated', and though their families grew and spread to own land all over the island, and appear white, they were still discriminated against by newer white settlers.
Over the next 200 years, eight main families owned the land on Kangaroo Island, some intermarried, others left for the mainland. When researcher Taylor went looking for their descendants around the year 2000, she found only three who were interested and willing to share family history, photos and information.
As Rebe Taylor interviewed the living descendants, she uncovered a treasure trove of stories from the wild old days of the island, men who went away to the world wars, a population which grew then dwindled to 80 souls, of men and women who never married, or left the island to marry, as many were related. Internalised racism made many descendants 'forget' their indigenous roots, newer settlers discriminated against the Kangaroo Islanders for being 'white-skinned blacks', fearing giving birth to 'throw-back' babies, who might have Aboriginal features.
'Unearthed' ends on a happy note, with the youngest of the Golder family given his four times great grandfather's name.
Though printed in 2002, before Ancestry dot com and such sites were popular, this research could benefit from modern DNA analysis. DNA information fills out our knowledge of our relatives, as DNA gives us the undocumented relatives, the runaways, the illegitimate, everyone, as well as the documented legitimate family which research of births, marriages and deaths, written history, will find. Taylor's inclusion of family trees, photos and maps gives the reader a real feel for the island, the people and the times.
This book should put to rest the notion that Tasmanian Aborigines were hunted to extinction, they live on, and they are proud. If your last name is Wells, Cornelly, Marshall, Niven, Richards, Walker, Waller or Simpson, (and you live in Australia) you might also be a Tasmanian First Nations person.
December 5, 2021
My first couple of degrees were in history. Traditional history. History supposedly without theory. In other words empiricist history. These degrees taught us as students to construct a version of the past that was valued by the dominant and the empowered.
Chronological narrative is like that. One (damn) fact after another. It leaves little space for alternatives or interpretations. Rebe Taylor has written a revisionist history - an important revisionist history - that shows how a chapter of indigenous Tasmanian history survived and survives in Kangaroo Island.
That is an incredibly important revisionist project. The challenge is that a very traditional - chronological narrative - historiography is summoned. A traditional structure rarely permits radical arguments.
The book gains its value from page 315, "How Aboriginal am I?" The historian's positionality and liminality returns to the book. The epilogue through the second edition acknowledges, "the way in which the Tasmanian Aboriginal history is publicly remembered on Kangaroo Island has undergone a significant shift."
This is an important book. It is calmly written with cool, even prose. But this remains a hot history, requiring intense theorization and radical revisioning of violence, dispossession and racism. This is a book of "worthy sentiments" (p. 122). We need a book of intricate arguments.
Chronological narrative is like that. One (damn) fact after another. It leaves little space for alternatives or interpretations. Rebe Taylor has written a revisionist history - an important revisionist history - that shows how a chapter of indigenous Tasmanian history survived and survives in Kangaroo Island.
That is an incredibly important revisionist project. The challenge is that a very traditional - chronological narrative - historiography is summoned. A traditional structure rarely permits radical arguments.
The book gains its value from page 315, "How Aboriginal am I?" The historian's positionality and liminality returns to the book. The epilogue through the second edition acknowledges, "the way in which the Tasmanian Aboriginal history is publicly remembered on Kangaroo Island has undergone a significant shift."
This is an important book. It is calmly written with cool, even prose. But this remains a hot history, requiring intense theorization and radical revisioning of violence, dispossession and racism. This is a book of "worthy sentiments" (p. 122). We need a book of intricate arguments.
May 3, 2020
Thank you Rebe for writing this. While this part of history may be geographically small, it’s significantly large, and the fact you’ve put the time into documenting it in such a way is an outstanding credit. I highly recommend all Australians to read this book.
April 28, 2021
Compelling and moving study of the legacy of covert racism. And the impacts this has had/has on the Australian psyche. Also just really interesting learning more about the colonisation and settlement of SA
April 11, 2022
This is a must read for people committed to hearing First Nation voices. The author has captured the voices of the Tasmanian aboriginal women who enabled their sealer/ whaler captors to live from the gift of the land.
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July 29, 2012A stunning piece of anthropological research and a wonderfully written story. Have read parts of the first edition and am hoping to find the second so i'm sure who they are talking about. I went to school with some of these people.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews