Norman Tindale
Norman Tindale | |
---|---|
Born | Norman Barnett Tindale 12 October 1900 Perth, Western Australia, Australia |
Died | 19 November 1993 Palo Alto, California, U.S. | (aged 93)
Alma mater | University of Adelaide |
Awards |
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Norman Barnett Tindale
Life
Tindale was born in
The family returned to Perth in August 1917, and soon after moved to Adelaide where Tindale took up a position as a library cadet at the Adelaide Public Library, together with another cadet, the future physicist, Mark Oliphant.[1] In 1919, he began work as an entomologist at the South Australian Museum.[3] From his early years, he had acquired the habit of taking notes on everything he observed, and cross-indexing them before going to sleep, a practice which he continued throughout his life, and which lay at the basis of the vast archive of notes he left to posterity: he was observed writing by lamplight far into the night long after others had gone to bed, during an expedition to the Pinacate.[4]
Shortly after this, Tindale lost the sight in one eye in an acetylene gas explosion which occurred while assisting his father with photographic processing. In January 1919, he secured a position at the South Australian Museum as Entomologist's Assistant to the formidable Arthur Mills Lea.[5] He had already published thirty-one papers on entomological, ornithological and anthropological subjects before receiving his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Adelaide in March 1933.[1]
Early ethnological expeditions, 1921–1939
Tindale's first ethnographic expedition took place over 1921–1922. His principal aim was to gather entomological specimens for the South Australian Museum, the ethnographic aspect being almost an accidental sideline that developed, as his curiosity was stimulated, into close observation of the indigenous people he encountered from the Cobourg Peninsula to the Gulf of Carpentaria.[6]
Tindale's family background had qualified him to be taken on by the
In 1938–39, Tindale teamed up with
Tindale's vast collection, held at the
Wartime service
On the outbreak of World War 2, Tindale tried to enlist, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight. When Japan
In 1942 an Air Technical Intelligence Unit was established under Captain Frank T. McCoy at Hangar 7, Eagle Farm airfield just outside Brisbane,[18] and on Tindale's initiative it was tasked with examining parts recovered from the wreckage of Japanese airplanes that had been shot down, working out whatever intelligence could be gathered from the manufacturing markings, and reassembling them where possible. Jones states that Tindale's unit's meticulous analysis of the metallurgical debris and serial numbers enabled them to arrive at the companies responsible for producing the components, deduce production figures and infer what crucial alloys the Japan military was beginning to suffer shortfalls in.[1]
Tindale also played a major intelligence role in putting a halt to Japan's
He was instrumental in cracking the Japanese aircraft production code system, which gave the Allies reliable information as to Japanese air power. More importantly, he and his unit deciphered the Japanese master naval code.[1]
Later years
On retirement after 49 years service with the South Australian Museum, Tindale took up a teaching position at the
Film making
The Adelaide Board for Anthropological Research began a programme for filming Aboriginal life in 1926, and was the first to systematically do so. Over an 11-year period they produced over 10 hours of footage concerning many aspects of Aboriginal life, from material culture to hunting and gathering practices, cooking, love-making and even ceremonies of circumcision observed during their field expeditions. Tindale produced the film while the camera-work was undertaken by E. O. Stocker.[20]
Work
Tindale is best remembered for his work mapping the various tribal groupings of Aboriginal Australians at the time of European settlement, which he based on his fieldwork and other sources, leading to the publication of his Map showing the distribution of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia.[21] This interest began with a research trip to Groote Eylandt where Tindale's helper and interpreter, a Ngandi, impressed him with the importance of knowing with precision tribal boundaries.[22] This led Tindale to question the official orthodoxy of the time, which was that Aboriginal people were purely nomadic and had no connection to any specific region. While Tindale's methodology and his notion of the "dialectal tribe" have been superseded, this basic premise has been proved correct.[citation needed]
His salvage ethnography also involved collecting by trade objects for his museum. He was meticulous in making notes on the provenance of each object purchased. Philip Jones writes:
one of Tindale's key tasks was to record the names and sociological details of each of the Aboriginal people participating in the fortnight-long intensive survey. This had a crucial outcome in that each object, drawing, photograph, sound recording or even film record subsequently collected by Tindale during these expeditions could be keyed, not only to place and tribal group, but to their individual makers or owners.'[23]
At the same time, these collections were often made using mere lollies or tobacco as barter goods for precious items, and at times exploited the dire conditions of undernourishment suffered by Aboriginal people. After one successful expedition at Flinders Island he wrote: "The Flinders Island people are hungry and in exchange for flour etc have been scouring the camp for specimens. We have pretty well cleaned them up, & nothing of much interest remains".[24]
In historical context, Tindale's firm insistence on the unit of a tribe, with its set territory and fixed boundaries, flew in the face of
Entomology
Tindale made a particular study of the primitive
Awards
Tindale was awarded the
During 1993 Tindale received unofficial confirmation of his appointment as an
Evaluations
The prevailing criticism of Tindale's influential overview of Australian tribes stresses the dangers in his guiding premise that there is an overlap between the language spoken by a group, and its tribal domains. In short, Tindale thought that speakers of the same language constituted a unified territorial group identity.[citation needed]
It has been argued that Tindale's early familiarity with Japanese affected his hearing and transliteration of words in a number of Aboriginal languages, such as Ngarrindjeri. Japanese is written syllabically reflecting its phonetic consonant+vowel structure, and in writing down words like tloperi (ibis), throkeri (seagull) and pargi (wallaby) he perceived and transcribed them as toloperi, torokeri and paragi respectively.[36]
Aboriginal Legal Aid lawyer and land council lawyer Paul Burke, first in his book Law's Anthropology,[37] and in a later essay,[38] argues that Tindale's map of Australian territories had not only achieved "iconic status",[39] but had begun to exercise a deleterious impact on native title judgements made in suits that have been brought to court by indigenous peoples following the landmark Mabo decision of 1992, and negatively affect their rights to land tenure in a number of cases.
In evaluating claims, there is, Burke argues, a tendency to exaggerate the value of the earliest ethnographic reports of anthropologists like A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, A. P. Elkin, Tindale and others, and privilege it over more recent scholarship although the accuracy of many of these "classic" texts and papers has, over time, often come to be viewed sceptically by modern anthropologists.[40]
Specifically, Burke noted that in his
Ray Wood argues that Tindale's mapping of Cape York Peninsula tribes is suspect, since there is evidence he disregarded the in situ observations of reliable earlier ethnographers in favour of material he later gathered from informants among the remnants in places like Palm Island.[42]
Margaret Sharpe has found problems with Tindale's mapping in South East Queensland, since he generally located other groups where Sharpe puts the Yugambeh people.[43]
Other have noted that the editor of Tindale's paper on Groote Eylandt in 1925, Edgar Waite,[1] changed his drawn boundaries as dotted lines, obtrusively insisting that Aboriginal people were nomadic, and not place-bound. When Tindale finally managed to print, unaltered, his own map, he represented the Aboriginal peoples as filling every nook and cranny of what became colonial Australia, avowing their former presence, much to the unease of many cartographers, everywhere. In doing so he placed a disappearing people back "on the map", much to the later discontent of mining corporations, which fund research that would revise Tindale's approach and restrict Aboriginal territoriality.[44]
David Horton later used Tindale's map as a basis for the maps included in his Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture (1994) and the separate map published in 1996.[45][46]
Links to eugenics
When Tindale was writing up his work on Aboriginal people at the
A 2007 article looking at Tindale and Birdsell's 1939 expedition to Cape Barren Island reserve argues that this "was the last major eugenic research project to be undertaken in Australia".[11]
One critic of Tindale's work on Aboriginal people wrote in 2018 that it "contributed to a larger landscape of objectification and categorisation of racialised ideas about Aboriginal people and was part of a global movement of analysis using the ideologies of eugenics, concerned with
Works
Novels for children
- The First Walkabout (1954) with Harold Arthur Lindsay, illustrated by Madeleine Boyce
- Rangatira (1959) with Harold Arthur Lindsay
Non-fiction
- The Land of Byamee: Australian Wild Life in Legend and Fact (1938)
- Aboriginal Australians (1963) with Harold Arthur Lindsay
- Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names (1974)
Notes
- ^ This device was called a "balloon bomb" (fūsen bakudan:風船爆弾) or "dirigible bomb" (kikyũ bakudan: (気球爆弾).[19]
- ^ "A tribal area is ever varying, although a group of people do through the passing of many years become associated with a particular stretch of country. For example, there is the tendency expressed in cult totemism for a man to desire his son to be born near his own totemic birthplace, that is, the water or stretch of country containing a sacred site associated with a particular totemic ancestral being. Even when the family group is at a great distance from their ancestral country, if a birth be expected, they will travel back. By being born near his father's water-hole (and if his father has married a woman born in a particular country through which the ancestral being associated with him has passed), the child, after initiation, becomes a full member of his father's cult lodge. His fellow tribesmen constitute those who are born along the ancestral route, or adjacent ones which cross or run near the main one."[27]
Citations
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Jones 1995.
- ^ Price 2008, p. 291, n.46.
- ^ Burke 2011, p. 180.
- ^ Hayden 2011, p. 172.
- ^ Matthews 1986, pp. 31–32.
- ^ Macknight 2011, p. 127.
- ^ Tindale 1925, pp. 61–102.
- ^ Tindale 1926, pp. 103–134.
- ^ Frederick & Clarke 2008, p. 157.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-920899-42-4. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
- ^ a b D'Arcy, Jacqueline. "'The Same but Different': Aborigines, Eugenics, and the Harvard-Adelaide Universities' Anthropological Expedition to Cape Barren Island Reserve, January 1939". Tasmanian Historical Studies. 12. Retrieved 16 June 2020 – via Informit (Humanities & Social Sciences Collection).
- ^ "Dr Norman Barnett Tindale". South Australian Museum. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
- ^ "Tindale and Aboriginal Languages". State Library of Queensland. 29 October 2012. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
- ^ "Tindale genealogies". Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
- ^ "Tindale Genealogical Collection". State Library of Queensland. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
- CC BY licence, accessed on 1 June 2022.
- ^ Price 2008, p. 39.
- ^ Smith 2014, p. 27.
- ^ Yoshida 2014, pp. 162–163.
- ^ Bryson 2002, p. 5.
- ^ "Map showing the distribution of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, 1940".
- ^ Tindale 1974, p. 3.
- ^ Jones 2008, p. 318.
- ^ Jones 2008, p. 341.
- ^ Burke 2011, p. 181.
- ^ Berndt 1959, p. 83.
- ^ Berndt & Berndt 1942, p. 327.
- ^ Berndt 1959, pp. 81–107.
- ^ Burke 2011, p. 184.
- ^ Tindale 1932, pp. 497–536.
- ^ Tindale 1933, pp. 13–43.
- ^ Tindale 1935a, pp. 275–332.
- ^ Tindale 1935b, pp. 15–46.
- ^ Tindale 1942, pp. 151–168.
- ^ Tindale 1955, pp. 307–344.
- ^ Hobson 2010, p. 398.
- ^ Burke 2011.
- ^ a b Burke 2015, pp. 102–126.
- ^ Burke 2011, p. 41.
- ^ Burke 2011, pp. 126, 129.
- ^ Burke 2011, p. 123.
- ^ Wood 2016, p. 355.
- ^ Cunningham 1969, p. 97.
- ^ Gelder & Jacobs 1998, pp. 56–58.
- ^ Zdanowicz, Cathryn (July 2019). "MS5086: David Horton, papers, including Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia 1984-1999" (PDF). AIATSIS. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
- ^ "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia" (map). Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Published online by AIATSIS on 3 June 2015. 1996. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
- ^ a b c Clark, Maddee (6–12 June 2020). "Yhonnie Scarce's art of glass". The Saturday Paper (304). Retrieved 15 June 2020.
- ^ "Influence of Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act - Eugenics: Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Virginia, Eugenics & Buck v. Bell". University of Virginia. Historical collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
- ^ Baker, Ali Gumillya (June 2018). Bullen, Clothilde; Tylor, James (eds.). "Camping in the shadow of the racist text". Artlink Indigenous: Kanarn Wangkiny Wanggandi Karlto (Speaking from Inside). 38 (2): 14–21. Retrieved 16 June 2020 – via The National 2019.
Sources
- JSTOR 40327957.
- JSTOR 40329194.
- Bryson, Ian (2002). Bringing to Light: A History of Ethnographic Filmmaking at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. ISBN 978-0-855-75382-5.
- Burke, Paul (2011). Law's Anthropology: From ethnography to expert testimony in native title (PDF). ISBN 978-1-921-86243-4.
- Burke, Paul (December 2015). Roberts, Amy; McCaul, Kim (eds.). "Cartographic Ethnogenesis: Tindale's Invention of the Jadira Tribe in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia" (PDF). Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia. 39 (Special Edition: Norman B. Tindale's Research Legacy and the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Australians): 102–126.
- Frederick, Ursula; Clarke, Anne (2008). "The mark of marvellous ideas: Groote Eylandt rock art and the performance of cross-cultural relations". In ISBN 978-1-876-94488-9.
- Cunningham, M. (1969). A Description of the Yugumbir Dialect of Bandjalang (PDF). Vol. 1. University of Queensland Papers. pp. 69–122.
- Gelder, Ken; Jacobs, Jane Margaret (1998). Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. ISBN 978-0-522-84816-8.
- Hayden, Julian D. (2011). Broyles, Bill; Boyer, Diane E. (eds.). Field Man: Life as a Desert Archaeologist. ISBN 978-0-816-52905-6.
- Hobson, John Robert (2010). Re-awakening Languages: Theory and Practice in the Revitalisation of Australia's Indigenous Languages. ISBN 978-1-920-89955-4.
- Jones, Philip G. (December 1995). "Norman B. Tindale - 12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993 - An Obituary". Records of the South Australian Museum. South Australian Museum. pp. 159–176.
- Jones, Philip (2008). "The 'idea behind the artefact': Norman Tindale's Early Years as a Salvage Ethnographer,'". In Peterson, Nicolas; Allen, Lindy; Namby, Louise (eds.). The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections. ISBN 978-0-522-85568-5.
- Macknight, Charles Campbell (2011). "The view from Marege': Australian knowledge of Makassar and the impact of the trepangindustry across two centuries". JSTOR 24046930.
- Matthews, E. G. (1986). "Arthur Mills Lea (1868–1932)". Lea, Arthur Mills (1868–1932). Melbourne University Press. pp. 31–32.
- Monaghan, Paul (1974). Laying down the country: Norman B. Tindale and the Linguistic Construction of the North-West of South Australia (PDF) (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Australia.
- Price, David H. (2008). Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War. ISBN 978-0-822-34237-3.
- Smith, Peter C. (2014). Mitsubishi Zero: Japan's Legendary Fighter. ISBN 978-1-781-59319-6.
- Tindale, Norman (1925). "Natives of Groote Eylandt and the west coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, Part I". Records of the South Australian Museum. 3: 61–102.
- Tindale, Norman (1926). "Natives of Groote Eylandt and the west coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, Part 1I". Records of the South Australian Museum. 3: 103–134.
- Tindale, Norman (1928). "Australasian Mole-Crickets of the Family Gryllotalpidae (Orthoptera)". Records of the South Australian Museum. 4: 142.
- Tindale, Norman (1932). "Revision of the Australian Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera, Homoneura, family Hepialidae). Part I". Records of the South Australian Museum. 4: 497–536.
- Tindale, Norman (1933). "Revision of the Australian Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, Family Hepialidae). Part II". Records of the South Australian Museum. 5: 13–43.
- Tindale, Norman (1935a). "Revision of the Australian Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, family Hepialidae). Part III". Records of the South Australian Museum. 5: 275–332.
- Tindale, Norman (1935b). "Revision of the Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, Family Hepialidae). IV". Records of the South Australian Museum. 7: 15–46.
- Tindale, Norman (1942). "Revision of the Ghost Moths (Lepidoptera Homoneura, Family Hepialidae), Pt. V.". Records of the South Australian Museum. 7 (2): 151–168.
- Tindale, Norman (1955). "Revision of the Ghost Moths, Part VI". Records of the South Australian Museum. 11 (4): 307–344.
- Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University.
- Wood, Ray (2016). "The problem of 'tribal names' in eastern Australia: the Kuku Yalanji example". In Verstraete, Jean-Christophe; Hafner, Diane (eds.). Land and Language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country. ISBN 978-9-027-26760-3.
- Yoshida, Kazuhiko (2014). Yami no file: senka no kage ni hisomu ningenzō. PHP Kenkyūjo.
External links
- Dr Norman Barnett Tindale – Bio and index page to the huge collection of archives at the South Australian Museum
- Map showing the distribution of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia, via State Library of Queensland
- Tindale Genealogical Collection 1928-1960: a treasure of the John Oxley Library - John Oxley Library Blog, State Library of Queensland.
- Transforming Tindale: Interview with Exhibition Curators 5 June 2012 via State Library of Queensland