Ted Strehlow

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Theodor George Henry Strehlow (6 June 1908 – 3 October 1978) was an Australian anthropologist and linguist. He notably studied the Arrernte (Aranda, Arunta) Aboriginal Australians and their language in Central Australia.

Life

Early life

Strehlow's father was

Ntaria.[1][a] He was raised trilingually, speaking, in addition to English, also Arrernte with the Aboriginal maids and native children, and German with his immediate family.[3] 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, Frederick, Karl, Rudolf, Hermann and Martha,[4] who were raised in Germany. He studied both Latin and Greek as part of his home school curriculum.[5]

Education and early career

When Strehlow was 14 years of age his domineering and charismatic father contracted

Leaving Certificate examinations in 1926, and thus won a government bursary to study at the University of Adelaide.[8]

At university Strehlow eventually enrolled in a joint honours course in

English, graduating in 1931 with Honours in both.[9][b]

With support from his tutor, and from both A. P. Elkin and Norman Tindale, Strehlow 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.[11] The tribes of Central Australia had already become the object of worldwide interest through the

fieldwork while based in Hermannsburg among the Arrernte in 1929.[12]

His first major informants, old and fully initiated men, were Gurra, from the northern Arrernte, and Njitia and Makarinja from Horseshoe Bend,

ceremonial chiefs[c] 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),[19] together with the accompanying chants and ceremonies.[20] 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.[21]
He was considered a member of the Arrernte people, by dint of his ritual adoption by the tribe.

In the following two years, covering more than 7,000 gruelling miles of desert to witness and record Aboriginal ways, Strehlow witnessed and recorded some 166 sacred ceremonies dealing with totemic acts,[22] most of which are no longer practised. 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.

Travel and academia

Soon after, in 1949, he received an

siblings and mother in Bavaria.[23]

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

chair in linguistics in 1970.[25] He was a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1969.[26] In 1978 Strehlow received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden.[27]

Max Stuart case

Main article: Max Stuart

In 1958 a nine-year-old girl, Mary Hattam, was found raped and murdered on the beach at

Royal Commission
.

Strehlow's involvement came after a

death penalty.[33]

Later career

In November 1971, after many years of difficulty due also to the special

TLS, it was acclaimed by Australian experts like A. P. Elkin as one of the three most significant books ever published on Australian anthropology.[34]

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,[35] 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 artifacts, 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.[36] 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'.[35]

In an apparent paradox, once the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg had sufficient confidence in the Christianised 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 re-celebrate 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

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.[37]

Death and legacy

Strehlow died of a heart attack in 1978, just before the opening of an exhibition of his collection of artifacts, while conversing with

bilby (the key animal in the bandicoot ritual) by introduced rabbits, a metaphor for what was happening to the Aboriginal people and their culture with the spread of white civilisation.[38] He was cremated. His career and his role as the custodian of Aboriginal secrets have been dogged by controversy.[39]

A decade later, negotiations between his widow and the Northern Territory government led to the finalisation of the purchase of most of the collection in 1987. It was described by John Morton as containing "some '700 objects' (largely secret-sacred), '15 kilometres of movie film, 7,000 slides, thousands of pages of genealogical records, myths, sound recordings' and '42 diaries', as well as 'paintings, letters, maps' and 'a 1,000-volume library.' "

The Strehlow Research Centre at Alice Springs was established for the preservation and public display of these works.[40] The collection is often accessed by Arrernte people as well as other Central Australian Aboriginal groups. Contemporary anthropologist Jason Gibson has shown how Strehlow's collection is actively used and interpreted by descendent Arrernte and Anmatyerr communities. He has also recorded how Strehlow is remembered and respected by some senior men as a 'ceremony man' while others feel betrayed by his use of their ceremonial material.[41]

Marriages and children

He married twice, to Bertha James, in Prospect, Adelaide, on 21 December 1935, with whom he had three children, Theo, Shirley and John, and to Kathleen Stuart in 1972, with whom he had a son, Carl.[citation needed]

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 us to become finer and better Australians."[42]

Bibliography

  • Aranda Phonetics and Grammar, with introduction by Professor A.P. Elkin (Australian National Research Council, [1944])
  • Aranda Traditions (1947)
  • An Australian Viewpoint (Printed for the author by Hawthorn Press, 1950)
  • Rex Battarbee (Sydney: Legend, [1956])
  • Friendship with South-East Asia: a Cultural Approach (Riall Bros., Printers, 1956)
  • Nomads in No-man's-land (
    Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia
    , 1961)
  • Dark and White Australians (Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia, 1964)
  • Assimilation Problems: the Aboriginal Viewpoint (Aborigines Advancement League Inc. of South Australia, 1964)
  • The Sustaining Ideals of Australian Aboriginal Societies (Aborigines Advancement League Inc. of South Australia, 1966, originally published: Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1956)
  • Comments on the Journals of John McDouall Stuart (Libraries Board of South Australia, 1967)
  • Journey to Horseshoe Bend (1969)
  • Songs of Central Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971)
  • Central Australian Religion (Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1978)

Notes

  1. ^ This had large implications, since it meant for the local people that he belonged to the Ratapa in the Twin Spirit Boys myth. Coincidentally, he was born in the sign of Gemini, and 'doubleness' was to haunt his life.[2]
  2. ^ There is a contradiction in the source, since Hill earlier cites a source that has it that: 'His brilliance aside, the pressure of work forced him to relinquish the Honours Classics course to concentrate on English.'[10]
  3. ^ Ward McNally in defining ingkata as 'Ceremonial Chief of Ceremonial Festivals'[17] is actually referring to the more extended title, Urumbulak ingkata, which Strehlow says was conferred on him by the elders who were entrusting their full lore to him.[18]

Citations

  1. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 32, 75, 457.
  2. ^ Hill 2002, p. 740.
  3. ^ Hill 2002, p. 32.
  4. ^ Hill 2002, p. 481.
  5. ^ Hill 2002, p. 73.
  6. ^ Hill 2002, p. 7,87ff..
  7. ^ Hill 2002, p. 104.
  8. ^ Hill 2002, p. 107.
  9. ^ Hill 2002, p. 118.
  10. ^ Hill 2002, p. 109.
  11. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 123–124, 134.
  12. ^ Hill 2002, p. 459.
  13. ^ Hill 2002, p. 227.
  14. ^ Hill 2002, p. 745.
  15. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 420ff..
  16. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 302–303, photo, no.20.
  17. ^ McNally 1981, p. 40.
  18. ^ Hill 2002, p. 750.
  19. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 158ff..
  20. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 431, 747, 749.
  21. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 419–420, 713, 749ff..
  22. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 149–159.
  23. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 471–488.
  24. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 53, 374, 553.
  25. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 675–676.
  26. ^ "Our history". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
  27. ^ McNally 1981, p. 167.
  28. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 547–549.
  29. ^ Hill 2002, p. 556.
  30. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 57ff..
  31. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 288–289.
  32. ^ Hill 2002, p. 574.
  33. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 559–595, 595.
  34. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 693, 696.
  35. ^ a b Hill 2002, pp. 731.
  36. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 665ff.
  37. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 726–730.
  38. ^ Hill 2002, pp. 756–758.
  39. ^ "The World Today Archive - Artefact auction draws controversy". Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  40. ^ Morton.
  41. ^ Gibson 2020.
  42. ^ Barry Hill, Broken Song, p. 473.

Sources

Further reading

  • 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.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ted_Strehlow&oldid=1219972737"