On the road to Nerrigundah : an historical anthropology of indigenous-settler relations in the Eurobodalla region of New South Wales

Abstract

Aside from notable exceptions, the nature and variety of Indigenous participation in Australian settler economies has been largely neglected in the anthropological and historical literature. In the Eurobodalla region of the New South Wales south coast, there has been a significant disjuncture in the regional literature between anglocentric local histories, and research that acknowledges Aboriginal people through historical investigations or through the collection of oral histories. There is also a significant gap in the anthropological literature between the early ethnographies, specific studies on Aboriginal labour and social conditions that were biased by ideological presuppositions, and recent work undertaken in relation to judicial processes. This thesis combines theorising of intercultural domains with a utili sation of notions of economic hybridity to examine the history of settler-Indigenous relations in the Eurobodalla and the character of emergent complexes of transactions that entailed a highly plural range of intercultural interactions, which transformed both Indigenous and settler subjectivities. The thesis is grounded in historical and local specificity while it places 'the local' within a broader geopolitical context. Drawing on both anthropological and historical approaches, the thesis argues that present socioeconomic conditions in south coast Aboriginal communities can only be understood through the broader historical context. The thesis examines the highly localised character of the changes brought about by European colonisation and the gradual expansion of the settler economy in the Eurobodalla during the early-mid 19th century. Aboriginal people were drawn into the emerging settler economy through reciprocal relationships of labour, while the presence of settlers was also incorporated into pre-existing, dynamic patterns of economy and sociality. The evidence suggests that semi-nomadic patterns of mobility persisted well into the 20th century, despite the efforts of the Aborigines Protection Board to curtail this movement. The period between the 1940s and 1970s is remembered as a relatively bounded era in which Aboriginal families were both on the run from ' the welfare', and following patterns of seasonal movement (or 'beats'). Aboriginal people were broadly employed in forestry work and seasonal vegetable picking until both industries collapsed in the late 1970s. Through a range of factors, including industry decline, increases in Indigenous political agency, the provision of town housing, welfare and citizenship entitlements and generational change, Aboriginal people in the Eurobodalla have experienced a fraught transition to the era of so-called 'self determination'. The thesis also seeks to 'muddy the waters' of some widespread, but erroneous, generalisations about settler-Indigenous relations and the manifestation of government policies. It identities several historical moments (or processes) that are comparable to trajectories of settler-Indigenous relations elsewhere in Australia. In doing so, this thesis makes a contribution to knowledge by providing a localised and historically situated case study o f settler-Indigenous relations. Research of this type has the potential to mediate the extreme positions generated by the ' history wars'.