Unpacking the Testimony of Gerald Blitner
Cross-cultural brokerage and the Arnhem Land Expedition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20053392 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin Thomas (0000-0002-2261-5888, Harvard University Press, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Publication date | 2011-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | ANU Press (PUBLISHER • AU) |
| DOI | 10.22459/elale.06.2011.19 |
| OpenAlex | W2203408242 |
| ISBN | 9781921666445 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The story begins at Umbakumba on the east coast of Groote Eylandt, the first base for the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. The party arrived there early in April 1948 and stayed three months. The position in the modern atlas of Umbakumba-an Aboriginal camping place for millennia-dates from the 1930s when it became a refuelling base for the Qantas Empire Airways flying boats that travelled the long-haul route between Sydney, Singapore and the south of England. Since World War II, Umbakumba had grown and morphed to the extent that officials in Darwin had come to cautiously recognise it as an Aboriginal settlement, intended in some indeterminate way for the betterment of the local population. Elsewhere in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Christian missionaries had been entrusted as the agents of this 'civilising' process. Umbakumba, in contrast, was effectively the initiative of a solitary individual: a self-styled superintendent named Frederick Harold Gray, who is said to have developed the settlement 'in protest of missionary methods'. 1 Gray had no religious agenda or affiliation, and there was no place of worship, at least in the Christian sense. The Expedition botanist, Raymond Specht, has described it as a 'secular mission '. 2 Within days of getting there, the Australian Museum anthropologist, Frederick McCarthy, was expressing frustration and disappointment in his diary: 'I went to bed at 9 pm. Though tired out, couldn't sleep because of our situation. Here we are, 16 of us, backed by U.S. & Australian funds, but the natives are almost completely civilized, speaking English
Archaeology · Art · Geography · Linguistics · Media studies · Sociology · Unpacking · Visual arts · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Philosophy · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2014 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |