'In our first article, Mark Finnane and Jonathan Richards write in response to the provocation of Henry Reynolds that leading figures in the history of colonial Australia – some honoured in the naming of universities, for example – should be held to account for their conduct. Investigating how one such figure – Samuel Griffith, Attorney-General 1874–78, Premier of Queensland 1883–88 and both Attorney-General and Premier 1890–93 – could be held morally responsible for his part in the violent dispossession of Aboriginal people, Finnane and Richards acknowledge the proximities between history writing and the more overtly political work of ‘truth telling’. They test the accusation that in both his political and legal offices, Griffith failed to condemn several well-publicised killings of Aboriginal people including those carried out by Native Police, thus with the apparent endorsement of the state. By examining a series of cases in which Griffith’s decisions and policies are documented, they portray Griffith as both ‘lawmaker’ and ‘war-maker’ – responsible for ‘policies and prosecutions that both harmed and protected Aboriginal subjects of the Crown’. The difficulties of bringing violence – both among and against Aboriginal people – under the rule of British law were not his alone. The ‘politics of memory’ will determine whether this singularly commemorated man will now be singularly condemned.' (Publication summary)
'In his 2021 book ‘Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement’, Henry Reynolds called for an inquiry into the historical record of Samuel Walker Griffith, Federation ‘father’ and first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Reynolds’ iconoclasm targeted a historical figure whose name is memorialised in a Riverina town, a Canberra suburb and a Queensland university. Reynolds charged that Griffith was morally and politically responsible for the violence carried out by an agency of the Queensland government, the Native Police. This historically grounded allegation relates to Griffith's pre-Federation Queensland political career, 1874–93, when he served intermittently as Premier, Attorney-General and Colonial Secretary. In this article we consider the historical record of S.W. Griffith as law-maker and ministerial decision-maker, asking what elements of fact and context may be brought to the important work of reckoning with a violent colonial past and its memorialisation in the present.' (Publication abstract)
'What did it mean to be widowed in Australia in the 1860s? Bettina Bradbury explores this question through a close examination of the extraordinary plight of English-born Protestant Caroline Bax. Caroline, at age nineteen, married Irish-born Catholic Edward Kearney in 1853. Kearney, aged thirty-four at the time of the marriage, was an ambitious man, hoping to make good on a sheep station in South Australia. Clearly a hard-working wife and children would help supply the labour to back his grand plans. Bradbury’s close examination of one family story provides a model of how to highlight the larger structures that governed women’s lives, across continents, in the nineteenth century.' (Introduction)
'Ceremony Men makes a fine addition to a growing scholarship on engaging with and making sense of historical collections of Aboriginal material today, particularly contentious collections that carry a fraught legacy. The collection in question in Gibson’s study is that assembled by linguist and ethnographer T.G.H. (‘Ted’) Strehlow, now housed at the purpose-built Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs. Gibson describes this archive as ‘a wondrous collection of diaries, papers, maps, genealogies, audio recordings, films and artefacts’ (40). And due to Strehlow’s detailed record-keeping, ‘each item can be linked to other parts of the collection’ (40).' (Introduction)
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