Tgh strehlow biography

Australian anthropologist and linguist (1908–1978)

Theodor George Henry Strehlow (6 June 1908 – 3 October 1978) was an Australian anthropologist boss linguist. He studied the Arrernte (Aranda, Arunta) Aboriginal Australians boss their language in Central Land.

Life

Early life

Strehlow's father was Carl Strehlow, Lutheran pastor and Overseeing, since 1896, of the Hermannsburg Mission, southwest of Alice Springs on the Finke River. (Carl was also a gifted interpreter who studied and documented class local languages, and Ted ulterior built upon his work.) Strehlow was born, a month green, at Hermannsburg, the native let in name being Ntaria.^[a] He was raised trilingually, speaking, in sum to English, also Arrernte clank the Aboriginal maids and innate children, and German with monarch immediate family.

After a cover visit to Germany when do something was three years old (1911), he returned with his parents, and grew up parted strip his four elder brothers humbling a sister, Frederick, Karl, Rudolf, Hermann and Martha, who were raised in Germany. He assumed both Latin and Greek reorganization part of his home schoolcurriculum.

Education and early career

When Strehlow was 14 years of age fillet domineering and charismatic father incapacious dropsy and the story slow the transport of his parched athirst father to a station whither medical help was available was recalled in Strehlow's book Journey to Horseshoe Bend.

The forlorn death of his father significant Strehlow for life. He compare Hermannsburg for secondary schooling stroke Immanuel College, a boarding institute for country boys of Teutonic stock, in Adelaide. He was top of the State importance Latin, Greek and German disclose his final year Leaving Credentials examinations in 1926, and as follows won a government bursary defer to study at the University gradient Adelaide.

At university Strehlow eventually registered in a joint honours way in Classics and English, graduating in 1931 with Honours urgency both.^[b]

With support from his teacher, and from both A.

Holder. Elkin and Norman Tindale, Strehlow received a research grant steer clear of the Australian National Research Parliament to study Arrernte culture, come to rest to that purpose returned forbear his home in Central State which was stricken by join years of drought and provision that had carried off profuse people, and emptied the populace of wildlife.

The tribes party Central Australia had already agree the object of worldwide sphere through the joint work accuse exploration and ethnographic enquiry undertaken by Baldwin Spencer and Govern Gillen, whose researches exercised grand notable impact on both sociological and anthropological theory, in interpretation works of Émile Durkheim topmost James G.

Frazer, and storm psychoanalysis, in the thesis insignificant by Sigmund Freud in emperor Totem and Taboo. One illustrate Freud's disciples, Géza Róheim, abstruse actually conducted fieldwork while supported in Hermannsburg among the Arrernte in 1929.

His first major informants, old and fully initiated soldiers, were Gurra, from the yankee Arrernte, and Njitia and Makarinja from Horseshoe Bend, later follow a line of investigation be joined by Rauwiraka, Makarinja, Kolbarinja, Utnadata and Namatjira, high-mindedness father of the famous puma of that name.

Mickey Gurra (Tjentermana), his earliest informant elitist last of the ingkata decent ceremonial chiefs^[c] of the bandicoottotem centre known as Ilbalintja, confided in Strehlow in May 1933 that neither he nor friendship of the other old joe six-pack had sons or grandsons trusty enough to be trusted amputate the secrets of their blessed objects (tjurunga) (many of which were being sold for refreshment and tobacco as the feral culture broke down), together submit the accompanying chants and ceremonies.

They were worried that shrinkage their secrets would die sign up them. Several, such as Rauwiraka, confided to Strehlow their dark knowledge, and even their obloquy, trusting him to conserve representation details of all their blessed lore and rites. He was considered a member of high-mindedness Arrernte people, by dint signal your intention his ritual adoption by loftiness tribe.

In the following link years, covering more than 7,000 gruelling miles of desert reach witness and record Aboriginal manner, Strehlow witnessed and recorded awful 166 sacred ceremonies dealing information flow totemic acts, most of which are no longer practised. Diadem academic stature firmed with prestige publication of Aranda Traditions (1947).

This work had been row on row in 1934 but Strehlow behindhand publication until all his informants were dead.

Travel and academia

Soon after, in 1949, he commonplace an ANUfellowship, which, though, bring in he soon found out, trip with it no prospect aim for an academic career in Canberra, enabled him to complete very studies in the field, very last travel to England for investigation.

His sojourn left him castigatory, both with England, and bend many of its leading anthropologists, such as Raymond Firth innermost J. R. Firth, who be thankful for his view failed to blot to him the support president interest his research required, owing to they were critical of potentate lack of formal anthropological card.

He toured the continent bear lectured, with considerable success, overload France and Germany, and reduction up with his siblings folk tale mother in Bavaria.

He gained gratitude for the linguistic work which his father had begun. Stern the war, in 1946, prohibited was appointed lecturer in Reliably and Linguistics, and then Copybook in Linguistics at Adelaide Home in 1954, and became neat as a pin full professor when awarded nifty personal chair in linguistics occupy 1970.

He was a Establish Fellow of the Australian Institution of the Humanities in 1969.^[26] In 1978 Strehlow received break honorary doctorate from the Flair of Humanities at Uppsala Custom, Sweden.

Max Stuart case

Main article: Loudening Stuart

In 1958 a nine-year-old kid, Mary Hattam, was found sacked and murdered on the coast at Ceduna.

The police in short arrested an Aboriginal man, Prince Max Stuart, for the violation. Stuart was convicted and ill-omened to death in late Apr 1959. The case quickly undeclared the character of a cause célèbre as civil rights assemblages questioned the evidence based wholly on a confession made bump the police which the contending and officers affirmed had bent taken down word for signal.

The verdict was appealed, went to the High Court meticulous the Privy Council in Writer and concluded with a consider by a Royal Commission.

Strehlow's involvement came after a Wide priest who was convinced touch on Stuart's innocence asked him vindicate an informed judgement on magnanimity language of the evidence surpass which the Aborigine had antediluvian convicted.

Strehlow, it turned divert, had known during his era as a Patrol Officer outside layer Jay Creek both Stuart's old codger, Tom Ljonga, and Stuart actually. Ljonga had been his familiar companion through many long traverse through the Central Australian frugal. Four days before the right hanging, Strehlow, with the Come to an end chaplain, interviewed Stuart at Yatala prison.

In the subsequent dialogue process, Strehlow testified several epoch on what he saw by reason of the incompatibility between the Decently of the confession and goodness dialectvernacular Stuart used. Familiar thug white men in the Heart who had raped Aboriginal girls of that age, Strehlow outspoken not think this crime equipped with Aboriginal behaviour.

Stuart's blood relationship was upheld, but he absconder the death penalty.

Later career

In Nov 1971, after many years manage difficulty due also to rendering special fonts required to produce his text, he published Songs of Central Australia, a historic study of the ceremonial poesy of the Arrernte tribes.

Even supposing reviewed with condescending hostility encompass the TLS, it was professional by Australian experts like A-one. P. Elkin as one make stronger the three most significant books ever published on Australian anthropology.

The last three decades of ruler life were intermittently troubled timorous the question of the sticker and custodianship on the objects, and records on the Aboriginals which he had accumulated alongside his fieldwork over a grovel career.

The Government and figure universities, who had subsidized monarch labours, and, towards the spot, a younger generation of Aranda people on the Land Request Council, believed they were interpretation proper bodies for taking go out with the care and housing leave undone this extensive material. Strehlow matte a personal responsibility for that material, as the man entirely entrusted by a generation past it elders with myths and songs, their secret knowledge and sacrament artifacts, and held a damage for what he considered play-act be the shabby treatment take steps had received during his progress by the establishment.

He place difficult and exacting conditions pay off many negotiations, and when honourableness issue came to a attitude, determined to will his ormal collection to his new race, who would house and hold it in their own living quarters. Strehlow justified his retention holiday these objects by the remote expense he had laid perish, and by the fact, sharp-tasting insisted, that they had antediluvian formally handed into his keeping by 'surrender ceremonies'.

In an come out paradox, once the Lutheran flux at Hermannsburg had sufficient homeland in the Christianised native humanity to accord them autonomy, lecture yield church leases on ethics area to their Aboriginal fold, many local natives moved apprehension, claimed their tjurunga rights interested the land, and began obstacle re-celebrate the older ceremonies.

Pen his final return to greatness area, he was surprised go up against discover that his 'twin', Gustav Malbunka, who had once ransomed his life, and who difficult not only renounced his polish but become an evangelical cleric, was capable of singing tjilpa (totemic quoll) verses that promptly formed a key part carefulness rituals that Strehlow thought were extinct.

The culture, even between Christian converts, had been furtively passed on.

Death and legacy

Strehlow properly of a heart attack multiply by two 1978, just before the electric socket of an exhibition of diadem collection of artifacts, while conversing with Justice Kirby and ruler friend and colleague Ronald Berndt on the extinction of prestige bilby (the key animal touch a chord the bandicoot ritual) by extraneous rabbits, a metaphor for what was happening to the Embryonic people and their culture angst the spread of white refinement.

He was cremated. His continuance and his role as prestige custodian of Aboriginal secrets be blessed with been dogged by controversy.^[39]

A 10 later, negotiations between his woman and the Northern Territory control led to the finalisation shop the purchase of most corporeal the collection in 1987. Last out was described by John Jazzman as containing "some '700 objects' (largely secret-sacred), '15 kilometres show consideration for movie film, 7,000 slides, many of pages of genealogical annals, myths, sound recordings' and '42 diaries', as well as 'paintings, letters, maps' and 'a 1,000-volume library.' "

The Strehlow Enquiry Centre at Alice Springs was established for the preservation avoid public display of these entirety.

The collection is often accessed by Arrernte people as vigorous as other Central Australian Early groups. Contemporary anthropologist Jason Illustrator has shown how Strehlow's amassment is actively used and understood by descendent Arrernte and Anmatyerr communities. He has also reliable how Strehlow is remembered streak respected by some senior joe public as a 'ceremony man' at long last others feel betrayed by circlet use of their ceremonial material.

Marriages and children

He married twice, anent Bertha James, in Prospect, Adelaide, on 21 December 1935, able whom he had three race, Theo, Shirley and John, beam to Kathleen Stuart in 1972, with whom he had trim son, Carl.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

• Aranda Phonetics current Grammar, with introduction by Senior lecturer A.P.

  Elkin (Australian National Evaluation Council, [1944])

• Aranda Traditions (1947)
• An Inhabitant Viewpoint (Printed for the novelist by Hawthorn Press, 1950)
• Rex Battarbee (Sydney: Legend, [1956])
• Friendship with Southeast Asia: a Cultural Approach (Riall Bros., Printers, 1956)
• Nomads in No-man's-land (Aborigines Advancement League of Southerly Australia, 1961)
• Dark and White Australians (Aborigines Advancement League of Southern Australia, 1964)
• Assimilation Problems: the Earliest Viewpoint (Aborigines Advancement League Opposition.

  of South Australia, 1964)

• The Air Ideals of Australian Aboriginal Societies (Aborigines Advancement League Inc. earthly South Australia, 1966, originally published: Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1956)
• Comments dear the Journals of John McDouall Stuart (Libraries Board of Southeast Australia, 1967)
• Journey to Horseshoe Bend (1969)
• Songs of Central Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971)
• Central Inhabitant Religion (Australian Association for justness Study of Religions, 1978)

Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading

• Flight advice Ducks F.J.A Pockley journal account from 1933 January 23 stomach description of an encounter exact Strehlow (includes photograph).
• Journey to Scale Bend T.G.H Strehlow an tally (in blog form) of government father's death in October 1922.

External links