Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia, 1850-1980

By M A Smith, Canberra: Aboriginal History Monograph, 2005, 104 pages, paperback, $25.00. Reviewed by Jeannie Herbert in the October 2005 issue.

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A fascinating record of the history of a little known area of Australia, Peopling the Cleland Hills does just that -- introduces us to the people who have inhabited the landscape, throughout the period of colonial contact. While the author is a renowned archaeologist, he seeks in this publication to broaden his reach, 'to explore the links between people and place, by- on the one hand -- following the fortunes of Aboriginal people associated with the area and -- on the other -- by following the events shaping its cultural and natural landscapes ... bringing together archaeology, anthropology and history'. (p 2) In providing an 'historical and ethnographic context' (p 3) Smith enables an expansion of the archaeological view of a specific site, breathing life into the experience for the reader. From an Aboriginal perspective this is a critical and welcome development in the discipline for it has been the practice of anthropologists and archaeologists in this country to collect Aboriginal knowledge, interpret it from an objective, scientific approach and effectively write Aboriginal Australians -- people with the lived experience -- out of the story. In choosing to embed an archaeological site, from within a relatively small geographical site, into what became a local contact history', (p 3) the author has been able to make the vital connections between countrymen, links that enhance the historical significance of this work within the context of its value for both Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians within contemporary society.

Interestingly, in relaying the stories associated with making these contact connections, this book provides a stark insight into:

1. the difficulties of surviving in such a harsh, arid landscape;
2. the additional hardships placed upon Aboriginal people as a direct result of the extension of the frontier into country that, while it may have sustained a nomadic lifestyle, collapsed under the additional and unrealistic demands associated with supporting a pastoral industry;
3. the capacity of individual archaeologists and others to understand the country and the society from an Aboriginal worldview; and
4. the problems associated with finding reliable sources of information in relation to both country and geneologies.

Citation

• Jeannie Herbert. 'Review: Peopling the Cleland Hills: Aboriginal history in western Central Australia, 1850-1980 by M A Smith' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), October 2005. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 06 September 2010].

Back Cover Blurb

• This book traces the dynamic contact history of the Cleland Hills through the stories of individual people, both Aboriginal and European. It brings Aboriginal people into historical focus, redressing the anonymity that frontier histories usually confer on Aboriginal people. At the same time it maintains a longer time perspective than a biographical study would normally allow. Historical processes on a frontier can take a century or more to play out, so we need to follow families over several generations. To do this in western Central Australia involves correlating events and people mentioned in the journals of explorers, police and surveyors with descriptions of Aboriginal people in anthropological records and genealogies.