Gugu Badhun: people of the Valley of Lagoons
Book ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
This is a story of achievement in the face of adversity. It is the story of the Gugu Badhun people from the upper Burdekin River in North Queensland: an Aboriginal group which, like others, experienced the anguish of invasion, dispossession and discrimination but still maintained their solidarity, identity and connectedness to country. In the aftermath of colonisation, they successfully negotiated new roles for themselves and established new niches in a radically transformed social order. Theirs is a story shot through with tragedy, though with a stronger theme of triumph; a story of hardships and injustices met with resilience, courage and determination. The Gugu Badhun were among the first Aboriginal groups in inland northern Australia to encounter European intruders, specifically Ludwig Leichhardt’s exploratory party in 1845. After the pastoral invasion hit in the 1860s, the Gugu Badhun were among the Aboriginal groups that held out longest against the squatters, the rough and fissured character of their country facilitating a lengthy resistance. Following their incorporation into the pastoral economy, the Gugu Badhun continued to assert their autonomy, and members of the group were among the first Aboriginal people in the district to leave the pastoral stations to seek employment and opportunity in local towns. A Gugu Badhun man, Dick Hoolihan, became one of the most outspoken Aboriginal political leaders in North Queensland in the 1950s and 1960s. Those traditions – of autonomy and activism – are still cherished and maintained by Gugu Badhun people today, as this book explains. The story we tell is multi-faceted. It lays bare the violence and oppression experienced by Gugu Badhun people, but also acknowledges the inter-racial cooperation and friendships that were equally part of their experience. It tells of a people whose options were limited by state power and popular racism; but also of a people who remained proud and undaunted, making their own decisions for their own collective and individual benefit. It conveys new understandings of Aboriginal-European interactions, and of how Aboriginal people maintained their identities and exercised agency. This is a timely book for an Australia in which notions of Indigenous autonomy and self-determination are being re-imagined and re-configured.
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978-1-922102-64-5
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144
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Aboriginal Studies Press
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Canberra, ACT, Australia
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