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Aboriginal Dreaming Paths and Trading Routes
The Colonisation of the Australian Economic Landscape

In the series:
First Nations and the Colonial Encounter

Dale Kerwin
Dr. Dale Kerwin is Aboriginal Research Fellow at Griffith University. His academic career has been driven by the need for a proper conversation between the colonisers’ history and the first Australians’ history. He began his journey to university through correspondence courses, whilst at the same time being taught by his Elders to engage with non-Aboriginal people with a view to continuing that conversation for the benefit of both communities.

“The greatest challenge in writing the history of First Nations peoples is that of discerning the views and meanings that indigenous people attached to their colonial experiences, to distinguish the insider viewpoint from the interpretations of those outside the indigenous culture—the ‘emic’ from the ‘etic’, in the formulation of linguist Frederick Pike. In this regard, the best intentions of scholars to delineate the indigenous meanings and interpretations have often resulted in indigenous cultures being portrayed as the ‘Other’ (coined by Edward Said), often with the subtext that indigenous peoples are merely victims of colonialism or the post-colonial state. The range of responses of First Nations peoples included, then as now, many creative options as they came to perceive European cultures and colonialisms as fountainheads of opportunities to enhance the welfare of their nations and communities. Dale Kerwin’s path-breaking, ‘emic’ study explicitly eschews this ‘othering’ of Australian Aboriginal societies. His book identifies a pan-Aboriginal culture while acknowledging the sheer variety of its cultures and languages, and provides a welcome focus on their relationship to the Australian environment. The dreaming paths of the nations were not only ceremonial pathways but trade routes that criss-crossed the continent and along which goods and knowledge flowed. This study, rejecting as it does the hunter-gatherer image of Aboriginal Australia, represents a fresh appreciation not only of their nations but also inscribes them, to a greater extent than hitherto, into the very body of Australian history.” From the Preface by series editor David Cahill

The dreaming paths of Aboriginal nations across Australia formed major ceremonial routes along which goods and knowledge flowed. These became the trade routes that criss-crossed Australia and transported religion and cultural values. This book highlights the valuable contribution Aboriginal people made in assisting European explorers, surveyors and stockmen to open the country for colonisation, and explores the interface between Aboriginal possession of the Australian continent and European colonisation and appropriation. Instead of positing a radical disjunction between cultural competencies, Dale Kerwin considers how European colonisation of Australia appropriated Aboriginal competence in terms of the landscape: by tapping into culinary and medicinal knowledge, water and resource knowledge, hunting, food collecting and path-finding. As a consequence of this assistance, Aboriginal dreaming paths and trading routes also became the routes and roads of colonisers. Indeed, the European colonisation of Australia owes much of its success to the deliberate process of Aboriginal land management practices.
… Dale Kerwin provides a social science context for the broader study of Aboriginal trading routes by providing an historic interpretation of the Aboriginal/European contact period. His book scrutinises arguments about nomadic and primitive societies, as well as Romantic views of culture and affluence. These circumstances and outcomes are juxtaposed with evidence that indicates that Aboriginal societies are substantially sedentary and highly developed, capable of functional differentiation and foresight – attributes previously only granted to the European settlers. The hunter-gatherer image of Aboriginal society is rejected by providing evidence of crop cultivation and land management, as well as social arrangements that made best use of a hostile environment. This book is essential reading for all those who seek to have a better knowledge of Australia and its first people: it inscribes Aboriginal people firmly in the body of Australian history.

List of Illustrations and Maps Series Editor’s Preface, by David Cahill Author’s Preface Acknowledgements Chapter One Common Sense and Common Nonsense The continent of Australia The European imagination: the land and people of Australia An affluent society or just hunter-gathers? Aboriginal people as beings An Aboriginal perspective Chapter 2 Coming of the Aliens Eora People and the first convict settlers Galgalla or smallpox A wilderness Chapter 3 Only the Learned Can Read Introduction Re-authoring The social game Bula (friend) Antiquity in Australia Population density To whom the land belongs to Chapter 4 Maps, Travel and Trade as a Cultural Process Maps Astronomy and Astrology Myths Art Way-finding devices Toa Message sticks Shell middens Bora grounds Travel technology Travel Roads and trading routes The Pituri Road White fella knowledge of pituri Associated Dreaming tracks related to the trade of pituri Trade goods Shells Fur cloaks Ochre Market places/ trade centres Stone Trading paths Storylines Song/story Chapter 5 To Travel Is To Learn South-east Queensland South-west Queensland corner: Mooraberrie (the Channel Country) The nomads and their penetration of the Aboriginal landscape Ludwig Leichhardt Thomas Mitchell highway to Carpentaria Edmund Kennedy The Gregory brothers The Jardine brothers W.O. Hodgkinson Stockmen and introduced beasts Chapter 6 Misrepresentation of the Grand Narrative – ‘Walk Softly on the Landscape’ Bibliography Index

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