The Seriously Silly Science of Making Stuff Up

It’s great that the federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources is acknowledging pre-colonial Aborigines as “Australia’s first scientists”. The department sets this out in a key document this week on the nation’s science and research priorities.

Australia is a powerhouse of science and research. Our record of discovery and achievement is oversized in comparison to our population. That record began 65,000 years ago with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Australia’s first scientists. Their unbroken connection to the lands, waters and skies of Australia is a source of deep knowledge unique in the world.

Our peak science bureaucracy wants these “Indigenous scientists” to pair with their Western counterparts and, in the testimony of Indigenous academic Professor Bradley J. Moggridge, “have their knowledge seen as equal”. Each team should share their insights, “benefitting the scientific community more broadly, and Australia”.

But whatever involves the Aboriginal team must also be “culturally safe”. If you ask me, the process should also be culturally safe for the Western science team.

Astrophysicists and cosmologists might need trigger warnings and a safe space if Bruce Pascoe gets going about Dark Emus.

The Department of Science sympathises with Aboriginal claims for their know-how to be “reflected throughout the [science] priorities, rather than as a stand-alone area.” This echoes the “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals” of 2008, led by PM Julia Gillard, for schools to have three cross-curriculum priorities including Aboriginality. Some say the priorities accelerated Australian teens’ slide down the Naplan/PISA rankings of international student excellence, but that must be misinformation. The Department says,

To achieve the best outcomes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should guide research.” Aboriginal knowledge is to be incorporated into development of emerging technologies, “particularly digital and data technologies“.

How this ‘blak’ digital technology would work I’m not sure. Traditional Aboriginal maths typically involved counting to five, after which any larger number (e.g. of kangaroos or constellations) were just “a big mob”. I learnt that in the 1960s from linguist Dr Carl Georg von Brandenstein, who had mastered four Pilbara dialects.[1] If Australian scientists are to achieve a breakthrough towards a quantum computer, they might need enjoy the insight that they need to deploy “a big mob” of electrons.

Apart from Aboriginal input, the Department sees the Australian science sector much in need of climate change brainy-work and, of course, coddling by authorities against any mis- and disinformation. All us Australians are lamentably susceptible to mis- and disinformation, don’t you know, and need Big Science Department to protect us from it.

The departmental urgings were not derived lightly: the bureaucrats and helpers spent “more than 1,300 hours to shape and refine these priorities in workshops and meetings. This does not count the time devoted to considering and writing submissions and other feedback.” The feedback was “intended to re-energise conversations across the Australian science and research sector.

The far-left Academy of Technology, Science and Engineering (ATSE), with 900 members, is thrilled with the department’s program, which it helped generate. It likes especially the impossible net-zero targets and elevating the mysterious Indigenous knowledge systems, which “positions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as leaders”. Its sister group the green-left Academy of Science (620 members) put out a statement by president Chennupati Jagadish which curiously didn’t single out Indigenes for acclaim although it’s geared up for years to affirmative action for Aboriginal scholars.[2] The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation came to the party with all atoms blazing, saying with a straight face

ANSTO recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Australia’s first scientists, navigators, mathematicians, and engineers.

The Department of Science authors don’t spell out who exactly is an Aborigine these days (in South Australia a stat dec will now do the trick), nor what comprises this unique Aboriginal knowledge. To help “energise this conversation”, I’ll now provide some snippets of culture concerning our ancient land’s First Scientists.

Pharmacology and Energy Saving

The Rev. George Taplin (1831-79) was Missionary to the Aborigines at Point Macleay, South Australia. He began outreach and education there in 1859 to the 18 groups of the Ngarrindjeri (he learnt their language) and “published invaluable anthropological studies which were much superior to contemporary work on South Australian Aboriginals. His papers on philology and ethnology were acclaimed in Australia and abroad.” The Ngarrindjeri were already dispossessed and persecuted when he arrived, “and by helping them become literate and numerate and to acquire trades he enabled them to survive and flourish briefly in European society. Today hundreds of their descendants remain in various districts of Australia; their durability can largely be attributed to Taplin.” Exhausted by toil at the mission, he died there of heart disease.

In his journal of October 23, 1863, he ranked causes of Aboriginal mortality, with third ranking to “The putrid stench of dead bodies in wurlies.” He elaborated on July 5, 1864 as follows[3]

The practice of the natives in drying their dead is a very horrible one. Fancy a corpse over a slow fire in a state of putrefaction and the juices of the body gradually frying out and dropping into the fire below and making a horrible fetid smoke…I have no doubt that the practice is killing them, and will do so in increasing numbers, for every death causes disease.

I have known horrible old men to catch the corruption dropping from a dead body in a pannikin, and then besmear their bodies with it to make them strong. Fancy how the smell afterwards. I would fain visit the wurleys more, but am often kept outside by the horrid smell. There will be perhaps 15 or 20 dead bodies all more or less decayed in the wurley or hut, and the stench from them is often indescribable.

How horrible it is too to see a mother or father basting with oil and red ochre an infant’s corpse as it is squat up on a sort of bier or stage. And then the mourners will be daubed (that is, the women) with human ordure and consequently stink till you cannot approach them. I have known people to die through the stench of the dead, and yet the poor souls keep on the practice. The young men and women would I believe fain do away with it, and would be glad if the civil power compelled them to bury their dead. And then, most of their witchcraft depends on the practice.

Elsewhere the horrified Taplin notices breast-feeding mothers smearing their breasts with these body juices and then suckling their children, with predictable results for the health of the child (p268). He then ruminates on infanticide or what in today’s scientific/legislative terms would be “Involuntary Assisted Dying” (p269).

There is good reason to believe not only that infanticide occurs in all parts of the Province but that it prevails to greater extent than is generally supposed. I am unable to assign any more probable motive for the commission of this crime than the common belief that the lubras do so to save themselves the trouble of nursing their children and the burden of carrying them about as the tribe wanders from place to place.

It does not appear to have its origin in Superstition, nor does it arise from scarcity of food or apprehension of want, for on the River Murray above Overland Corner where supplies of flour, rice, sugar etc have long been issued to them most liberally, where their natural food also is most abundant and easily obtained, and where the facilities for moving about are greater than in most other districts, the crime of infanticide is I believe more frequent than in any other part of the Colony. It cannot be of much surprise if under such circumstances the Native population is rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth.

Evidence-based Payback

Leading anthropologist Bill Stanner (1905-81) interviewed from 1932 a warrior called Durmugam, then about 37, who confessed to the recent murders of four men. One-time Labor minister Dr Gary Johns in The Burden of Culture, p288-92, says that while Durmugam’s description of events and context cannot represent all Aborigines or lives, it is mightily illustrative of real events, not some construction of past lives to suit present sensibilities. Durmugam, in Stanner’s opinion,

represented and embodied all the qualities which the blacks admire in a man … A good hunter, a good fighter, and a good brother … a man who left other women alone … unless invited to enjoy them; and a man with a “hot belly” for his rights.

Through initiations and teachings, Durmugam became intimately associated with Aboriginal High Culture around the Northern Territories’ Victoria River.

Murder one: Durmugam gave an acquaintance. Lamutji, a sacred bullroarer, on promise of a substantial payment. The unwritten contract involved death for non-payment, unless Lamutji could kill Durmugam first. After five years non-payment and many reminders, Durmugam decided to kill Lamutji. Stanner writes, “He ambushed the bilker in a jungle near the river and transfixed him from behind with a shovel-spear.” In general, any deliberate or accidental sacrilege to do with the bullroarer entailed a death penalty.

Murder two: All the tribes believed in the “warlock” or wizard, who could cut people open for their fat which gave life-giving and protective properties (today this might need scholastic verification financed by an ARC Grant). A man, Waluk, visited a brother of Durmugam, who later fell sick and died. Tribal report was that Waluk had physically stolen the brother’s kidney fat – Durmugam’s uncle publicly claimed to have seen an incision in the brother’s side and then seen Waluk with a tin containing human fat and red ochre. Durmugam and an ally followed Waluk to a quiet place, deceived him with friendliness, then killed him with a shovel-spear.

Three of Waluk’s kin gave Durmugam a punishment by trial where they threw spears at him simultaneously, one spear wounding him. That completed the authorised payback cycle.

Murders three and four: His third and fourth victims were an old man named Barij and his son, Muri. A classificatory brother of Muri had killed an old man in a camp fracas at which Durmugam was present. The murderer, Mutij, fled and was later arrested by a party of natives including Durugam, under the control of police-trackers. Mutij was sent to gaol for seven years. The spirit of the dead old man allegedly and falsely named Barij and Muri for prompting the death. Durmugam and accomplices lured the father and son to a quiet place after a kangaroo-hunt, lulled them into a false security, and killed them.

Durmugam later blamed others who had egged him on, a typical rationalisation. But Durmugam acted within established custom and under an acknowledged sanction in killing Barij and Muri. The custom was universal, but practised within specific clan groups, Stanner wrote.

Gary Johns mentions (p294) that a psychologist, Malcolm Frost, took down conversations with key Alice Springs men in a violence prevention program. One described, with humour, the three rules in culture of being Aboriginal.

1. If you do the wrong thing, you get a flogging – i.e. payback ranging from minor to fatal.
2. If you do nothing you get a flogging – i.e. you get blamed for anything bad happening to anyone else. You have no excuse and might have no idea why you’re being punished.
3. If you do the right thing, you get a flogging – i.e. if you are caring for someone who is ill and dies, you are punished for the death. A case in point was a teenager who died of stomach cancer. Relatives bashed the mother, father and sister with nulla-nullas. Thereafter the matter was ‘finished’ in terms of customary law.

Such rules can be exploited today by young drunks and drug-users who tell grandparents to give them cash or they’ll kill themselves, he writes. If the grandparents don’t pay up, they have the double jeopardy of losing the youngster to suicide and then suffering payback against themselves.

Skills in Surgical Science

Explorer Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) writes of the ceremony performed on young women of cicatrise (scarring) of the back.[4]

The woman is taken out early in the morning and squatted on the ground with her back to the operator (always male), and her head bent down between the knees of a strong old woman who is sitting on the ground for that purpose; the back is thus presented in the best position to the operator, and the girl, as long as her head is kept firmly in that position, cannot arise until all is over.

The man who performs the ceremony then commences by taking hold of a fold of flesh on the girl’s right side, just above the breech, with his left hand, whilst with his right he holds a piece of flint or shell, and cuts perpendicular gashes an inch long, three-sixteenths of an inch deep, and about half an inch apart, in horizontal lines from right to left across the back, the rows being half an inch or three-quarters distant from each other.

This is carried up the whole way from where he commences to the shoulders, and when freshly done, presents one of the most dreadful spectacles imaginable, the blood gushes out in torrents, and though frequently wiped away with grass by some of the women present, is scarcely removed before the crimson stream flows as profusely as ever. … The scene is most revolting and disgusting; the ground near where the poor creature sits is saturated with blood, and the whole back is one mass of coagulated gore.

In one case, where I saw this operation performed on a girl belonging to the Paritke tribe, she seemed to suffer much pain. At first, until nearly a row of scars had been made across the lower part of the back, she bore the operation well, but as it proceeded, her cries were piteous and unceasing, and before it was concluded, they became the most heart-rending screams of agony.

From the position in which she was held, however by the old woman on the ground (and who, by the way, was her mother) it was impossible for her to stir or escape; indeed had she attempted it, she would probably have been most cruelly beaten in addition. …

At this ceremony many other natives of both sexes, and of all ages were standing looking on; but so little did they commiserate the poor creature’s sufferings, that the degree of her pain only seemed to be the measure of their laughter and merriment.

The girls, however, are always anxious to have this ceremony performed, as a well tattooed back is considered a great addition to their other charms, and whenever I have offered to protect them from the cruelty of their tribe for refusing to submit to it, they have invariably preferred to submit to it. [5]

Aspects of Food Science

In southern Victoria, Aboriginal Protector Charles Sievwright was quite sympathetic to local clans. As Peter O’Brien recounts in Bitter Harvest (p146-49) different clans came in to the Protector’s Terang camp (near Warrnambool) competing for access to rations, and intense fighting ensued. At 2am Bolagher natives begged him for protection after a 13-year-old Bolagher girl, Worangaer, was wounded twice in the face by spears of Jarcoort clansmen.

While Sievwright tried and failed to save her, Bolagher men selected a 17-year-old Jarcoort girl, Mootenewharnong, for revenge and felled her with about 20 spears. The Bolagher men took Worangaer’s body into the bush, Sievwright following them. They disembowelled her and Sievwright witnessed ‘the most fearful scene of ferocious cannibal­ism’. As the old man began to portion out the entire con­tents of Worangaer’s viscera, there was a ‘general scramble’ by some of the women for her liver. It was snatched up in pieces and eagerly devoured. Next the women avidly tore up and ate Worangaer’s kidneys and heart, as the old man cupped his hands and quaffed the blood and serum that had collected in her chest cavi­ty. Worangaer’s body was then dismembered and Seivwright was offered a foot. He thought it wise to accept and carried it off to later be buried:

At the end of the day, Sievwright rode off to secretly bury Worangaer’s foot, passing on the way the tree hol­low where her severed head had been placed between some stones heated in the fire, and was undergoing a process of baking.[6]

I hasten to add that the above anecdotes could well be outliers in historical accounts by early colonists and later anthropologists. Many aspects of Aboriginal culture are admirable and worthy of close study by schoolchildren. But students might also want to think for themselves about these issues, rather than passively accept what teachers and activists tell them.

As for the Department of Industry & Science’s gesturing about pre-colonial “Indigenous Scientists”, words fail me, or nearly fail me.

Tony Thomas’s latest book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here.

Endnotes

[1] TARURU – Aboriginal Song-Poetry of the Pilbara, by Carl Georg von Brandenstein and AP Thomas, Rigby, Adelaide, 1974.

[2] A March 2024 Close the Gap Research Paper by Dr Samara McPhedran was titled, Low expectations: Are universities failing

Aboriginal academics? It statistically compared Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal academics and found the Aboriginals got professor/associate professor promotions with about half the scholarly publications and twice as quickly after gaining their PhDs, compared with non-Aboriginals. “These findings suggest that diversity and inclusion targets that emphasise the appointment and promotion of Aboriginal academics may be influencing employment decisions and creating a culture of low expectations,” she found (p16).

[3] Crooks, Alistair and Lane, Joe, Voices from the Past, Extracts from the Annual Reports of the SA Chief Protetors of Aborigines, 1837 onwards. Hoplon Press, Adelaide, 2016. Foreword by Tony Thomas. p267

[4] Crooks, Alistair, Traditional Australian Aboriginal Culture : From Pioneering Sources. Work in Progress, p44.

[5] Eyre, Edward John, 1845, pp197-199. The Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of their Relations with Europeans. Reprinted in facsimile by the State Library of S. A., 2010.

[6] Arkley, Lindsey; The Hated Protector, Orbit Press, Melbourne 2000, p165-8. Note that Sievwright was “hated” not by the Aborigines but by the settlers for his zealous regard for Aborigines