Cartographic ethnogenesis

Abstract

While most critiques of Tindale’s work focus on his uncompromising belief in the tribe as a coherent social unit with relatively precise and defended boundaries, this paper instead explores a lapse in his scientific rigour through a close examination of one exceptional example. In his 1974 magnum$ opus on Aboriginal tribes he introduced the Jadira tribe of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Intensive anthropological research into this area, precipitated by native title claims, has now revealed how little evidence there was for Tindale’s rather bold move. The fragmentary evidence is carefully sifted for any clues to the reasons for such boldness. The example of the Jadira suggests a paradox in Tindale’s empiricism. On the one hand, he was a methodical collector of facts. But faced with conflicting information about boundaries from previous researchers he did not in this case, and probably others, systematically justify where he placed his own proposed boundaries. Such a lapse justifies some wariness about the use of Tindale’s tribal map in native title and his deployment as a ‘phantom expert’. Show more