School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemColouring within the lines: settler colonialism and the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station, 1888-1960s( 2010)This thesis presents the New South Wales Aboriginal station, Cummeragunja, as a complex site of exchange within a context of settler colonialism in south-east Australia, from its official commencement in 1888 through to the 1960s, by which time the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had ceased to manage it and the Cummeragunja residents regained land previously leased to neighbouring farmers. Using a variety of sources, including oral testimonies, this thesis reveals the competing interests of residents, settler governments, scientific and religious organisations and members of nearby settler communities in the Cummeragunja station. While many in these non-Aboriginal groups sought fairness in their interactions with the Indigenous people of Cummeragunja, much of their behaviour reinforced Cummeragunja’s marginalisation. Importantly, this thesis also shows the unwavering attachment of this community’s members to their right to fair and equal treatment as they dealt with the members of these non-Aboriginal groups – managers, officials, settlers, scientists, missionaries and employers – in the daily rounds of school and religious observance, in waged and unwaged work, and in leisure pursuits. In doing so, the thesis enhances contemporary understanding of the Cummeragunja community’s determined claim to the station’s site and its defence of its rights over this seventy-five period, this latter defence most famously reflected in the 1939 walk-off across the Murray River into Victoria. It reveals Aboriginal people sustaining their sense of worth and dignity amidstsettler discrimination, as they sought the wider opportunities that settler society promised, while maintaining their commitment to their families, their community, their culture and their land: their heritage.