Authority and leadership in a 'new style' Australian aboriginal community: Pindan, Western Australia

Abstract

In the ’traditional' past, Aborigines in Australia maintained their own communities. These were loosely linked by kinship, economic, and religious ties. In everyday activities, however, local groups were largely independent of one another. With the coming of the Europeans there were disruptions in the Aborigines’ way of life. They became increasingly dependent on the settlers. The nature and result of the contact between them and the Europeans varied somewhat from the close settlements of the southern seaboard to the sparser pastoral holdings of the northern areas. In the north, the Europeans were more dependent on Aboriginal labour; also there were proportionately fewer settlers than in the south. In the northern pastoral areas, new social systems emerged in which Aborigines and Europeans were dependent on each other for existence. The Europeans held and developed means of maintaining their higher status positions in these systems. The Aborigines retained much of their traditional social organization and religious beliefs, although modified to fit in with their new economic activities. Groups of Aborigines and part-Aborigines grew up around the pastoral properties. Although there was dissatisfaction amongst these people at their relative status, there was much identification with the particular pastoral stations and the groups residing there. This particular investigation focusses on contact between Aborigines and European settlers in the Pilbara District of North- Western Australia. Even though the pattern followed the broad outline mentioned above, in 1946 a new style of Aboriginal community emerged. This was known as the Group and later as Pindan. Economically, it was based on the mining of mineral concentrates, yet socially it showed features common to both Aboriginal and European systems. Although it broke from the pastoral traditions of the stations, culturally, many aspects of station life remained. The new community was an attempt by the Aborigines and part-Aborigines to raise their status in the local Aboriginal-European system so as to have greater control over their own economic, social and religious affairs Show more