Finding your Mob from home transcript Start of transcript Text on screen: Logan City Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waterways across the city of Logan. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, please be aware that this presentation contains images and names of deceased people. Some of the material contains terms which reflect the author's views or those of the period which the item was written or recorded but may not be considered appropriate today. These views are not necessarily those of the Logan City Council. While the information may not reflect the current understanding, it is provided in a historical context. Description: In the centre of the screen is Hilda Maclean, the Local Heritage Specialist. Hilda Maclean: Hello everyone, my name is Hilda Maclean and I'm the Local Heritage Specialist for the Logan City Council. Description: Logan City Council floral branding is displayed in the background with the Logan City Council logo shown in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: Finding your Mob from home Hilda Maclean, Local Heritage Specialist July 2021 Hilda Maclean: Today, I'm going to give a short presentation on how you can find out about your Mob from home. Description: In the centre of the screen is Hilda Maclean, Local Heritage specialist. A speech bubble with a lightbulb is displayed on the left side of the screen with text inside. Text on screen: All links included in this presentation can be found in the video description. Hilda Maclean: The purpose of today is not to help you identify individual Indigenous ancestors, but to help you find out more about where they came from and what their lives were like. Description: On the left-hand side of the screen is Hilda Maclean with a whiteboard behind her displaying the Logan City Council Logo on the bottom right hand corner of the screen and text. Text on screen: The Queensland Government introduced the Aborigines Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act (Queensland) 1897 created reserves for the purpose of preventing Aborigines from contacting and inter-mixing with other peoples. The 1897 Act was also meant to provide protection for Aborigines against exploitation, especially in the pearling and beche-de-mer industries. The Act quickly became oppressive. It implemented tight controls over Aborigines and decreed segregation which was strictly enforced by “Local Protectors”, who were usually local police officers. Protectors were appointed for each district and had virtually complete control over the lives of the Aborigines in their district. Hilda Maclean: First of all, I need to give you some background on how Aboriginal people were treated in the 1890s onwards. The Queensland Government introduced the Aborigines Protection and the Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act in 1897. This created reserves for the purpose of preventing Aborigines from contacting and inter-mixing with other peoples. The 1897 Act also was meant to provide protection for Aborigines against exploitation, especially in the pearling and beche-de-mer industries. However, the Act quickly became oppressive. It implemented tight controls over Aborigines and decreed segregation, which was strictly enforced by the local protectors. These were usually the local police officers. Protectors were appointed for each district and had virtually complete control over the lives of the Aborigines in their district. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a whiteboard behind her displaying text with the Logan City Council Logo in the right hand bottom corner. Text on screen: What did it mean to be Living under the Act? The Act (and its subsequent amendments) controlled: • Where people could live • What work they could do and how much of their wages they received • Who they could associate with • Who they could marry … which generated a sizeable quantity of correspondence and records (not all of which was kept). Very little of this material has been digitised, but there are some indexes available online. https://aiatsis.gov.au/collection/featured-collections/remove-and-protect Hilda Maclean: So what did it mean to be living under the Act? The Act and its subsequent amendments controlled where people could live, what work they could do, and how much of their wages they physically received. Who they could associate with, who they could marry, which generated a sizeable quantity of correspondence and records, not all of which were kept. Now very little of this material has been digitised, but there are some indexes available online. If you'd like to read more about the Acts that controlled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the State or Territory which you live, you can find this data at the website on the slide here. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on left hand side with whiteboard behind her displaying text. Logan City Council Logo is in the bottom right hand corner. A speech bubble with a lightbulb is displayed on the left side of the screen with text inside. Text on screen: Queensland State Archives www.qld.gov.au/recreation/arts/heritage/archives/collection/atsi Admission Register – Myora Aboriginal State School (1895-1936) www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM638305 (1930-1941) www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM638306 Admission Register – Purga Aboriginal State School (1895-1947) www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM639781 All links included in this presentation can be found in the video description. Hilda Maclean: Now of recent time, a great deal of material has been collected by the Queensland State Archives and they're starting to digitise these collections so you can look at them from home. Here is an example from their catalogue under the ATSI, the ATSI collection. For example, if you know that you have ancestors who attended either the Myora or Purga Aboriginal State Schools, the original admission registers have now been digitised and you can browse them, page by page, as if you were turning over the pages of the actual book. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a white board in the background. The whiteboard displays text and an old piece of paper with names, towns, occupation, and wages listed. The Logan City Council Logo is shown in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: https://www.qld.gov.au/dsiti/qsa/search#index-categories 1915-1916 Aboriginal War Census Returns Hilda Maclean: Another very useful resource that's recently been digitized is called the Aboriginal War Census Returns. These are also available to be searched from home online. These are arranged by district. So if you know where your ancestors may have been living, you can browse through the pages, because many people appear under different names, or shortened names. You may know them as Alfred, but they may simply appear in the register as Fred, Frank instead of Francis, or they may have their own nicknames. So it's a case of you're better going to the district where the Census Return was taken and just having a look at the page. You may find a number of family connections all in the same place. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a white board behind displaying the Australian War Memorial Website. A search box is shown where a name can be entered. A black and white image of Trooper Frank Fisher is displayed on the right-hand side. The Logan City Council Logo is displayed in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: www.awm.gov.au/advanced-search/people?roll-Indigenous%20Service Hilda Maclean: If for example, you know that you have Service men and women in your family tree, go to the Australian War Memorial. They have a special section called Indigenous Service, where they have gathered together the records of over two thousand people. There you can place in the name and you'll often get links to either a photograph or records about any Indigenous Service personnel. And these go from the Boer War right through to the present-day conflicts. Here we have pictured Trooper Frank Fisher, who served during World War One, and he happens to be the great grandfather of Olympian Cathy Freeman. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown in the left-hand side with a whiteboard behind that shows the State Library of Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family history website. The Logan City Council Logo is displayed in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: www.slq.qld.gov.au/resources/family-history/atsi Hilda Maclean: Another place you can find resources from about Aboriginal people is the State Library Queensland. They have their own special Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history page, and they have some very useful step-by-step guides. And they cover such topics as education, living on reserves, links to photographic resources. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a whiteboard behind displaying the National Library of Australia Trove website. The Logan City Council Logo is displayed in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: https://trove.nla.gov.au/landing/first-australians Hilda Maclean: Another place you should go is also the National Library of Australia. They have a special First Australian section, and what they have done is they have gathered a vast array of resources from around Australia. And these include photographs, language samples, maps and biographical information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as including such items as newspapers. Simply a case of just once you get to the First Australians landing page, just put in the title, or the place, or the name of the person you are interested in looking for. Description: The Trove Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Biographical Index website is displayed. Hilda demonstrates how to use by scrolling through the biographical index and showing names. Text on screen: https://trove/nla/gov.au/collection/aiatsis/abi Hilda Maclean: Recently they have put together one very powerful tool to help you find particularly individual people, and this is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Biographical Index. It's simply a case of landing on this page and putting in the name of the person that you are interested in. And it will give you a list of places and resources which you can click on. It will also link up people who appear in the index with other people who are related. So this is a very easy way to expand your family tree. Description: Hilda is shown on the left side with a whiteboard showing part of the front cover of the Torres News from 11 January 2015. The Logan City Council Logo is displayed on the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: Torres News (1957-2015) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-title1489 Hilda Maclean: Another very useful resource that's being hosted by the National Library Australia is the Torres News. This newspaper started in 1957 as a couple of very simple photo roneo copied pages, but it grew into this newspaper. It contains lots of information about births, deaths and marriages, and goings on with people coming and going from the various Torres Strait Islands. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a whiteboard behind displaying the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies – Canberra website with text and search option images shown. The Logan City Council Logo is shown on the bottom right hand corner. Hilda scrolls through the website displaying different Acts. Text on screen: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies – Canberra http://aiatsis.gov.au/research/finding-your-family Hilda Maclean: But perhaps the biggest collection of resources, which you can just browse at home, comes from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies located in Canberra called AIATSIS for short. It has a huge array of resources. It has resources which you can search through, and it has resources you can just browse. Description: An edition of the Koori Mail is displayed. Hilda arrows through the pages. Hilda Maclean: And one of the resources which is very popular to browse is the Koori Mail. It commenced in 1991 and it is being digitised progressively. So issues from 2021 are already online. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left side with a whiteboard behind displaying an edition of The Australian Evangel Magazine. Logan City Council Logo is shown on the bottom right hand corner. Hilda arrows through the pages. Hilda Maclean: Also on the AIATSIS website is The Australian Evangel Magazine. It is one of the newsletters from the Aborigines Inland Mission, and this ran for several decades. It is absolutely full of photographs and information on baptisms, burials and marriages of people from all over Australia. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left-hand side with a whiteboard displaying an edition of Dawn magazine. Logan City Council Logo is shown on the bottom right-hand corner. Text on screen: Dawn (1915-1969) DAWN: a Magazine for the Aboriginal People of N.S.W. October, 1966 http://aiatsis.gov.au/collection/featured-collections/dawn Hilda Maclean: Another useful magazine that has been digitised is the Dawn magazine. Although it says primarily a magazine for Aboriginal people from New South Wales, it did include quite a bit of South East Queensland content. Again, it is full of photographs of high quality and lots of information in the form of snippets, just saying who married who and who welcomed the new child into the world, and where people were living and working at the time. It is particularly good for mapping sporting achievements as well. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left side with a whiteboard behind displaying and edition of the New Dawn Magazine. Logan City Council Logo is shown on the bottom right hand corner. Hilda arrows through the pages of the magazine. Text on screen: New Dawn (1970-1975) NEW DAWN: a Magazine for the Aboriginal People of N.S.W. June 1970 http://aiatsis.gov.au/collection/featured-collections/new-dawn Hilda Maclean: And after a short hiatus, it returned in the form of New Dawn. Again, like the Dawn, it covers the same content but has quite a deal more material from all over Queensland as well as in New South Wales. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left side with a whiteboard behind displaying the Indigenous Australia biographical database. Logan City Council Logo is shown in the bottom right hand corner. A search bar is shown. Text on screen: Indigenous Australia biographical database https://ia.anu.edu.au Hilda Maclean: One of the most useful resources which is available, and this is for both living and deceased people, is the Indigenous Australia Biographical Database. It is hosted by the Australian National University. And it's simply a case of putting in the person's name, either in the search box, and searching under text, or putting in the name of a place or an event. It will search all fields. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left side a whiteboard is behind displaying the Cherbourg Memory website. Logan City Council Logo is displayed on the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: Cherbourg Memory Welcome to the Cherbourg Memory http://cherbourgmemory.org/ Hilda Maclean: And then another place you can go is the various projects which have been put up privately. A particularly good one is Cherbourg Memory. Collecting information, photographs and family stories from all people who were living at Cherbourg. Many of the other Aboriginal settlements have started to put up their own projects. So it's a case of looking for them by the name of the settlement, and seeing if they have placed together a website where you can contribute your own contributions. Or in the case of Cherbourg Memory, they have a very useful project where they have lots of unidentified photos and they invite you to perhaps put a name to a face. Description: Hilda Maclean is shown on the left side with a whiteboard behind displaying text. Logan City Council Logo is shown in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: Hilda Maclean Local Heritage Specialist 3412 4165 localstudies@logan.qld.gov.au logan.qld.gov.au Hilda Maclean: That's all the resources we're going to do today. Now let's have a closer look at them by doing some online searching. Description: Hilda is shown in the centre of the screen with a computer behind her. Hilda shows the Koori Mail website scrolling through the lists of magazine covers. Hilda enters 2002 in the search field and clicks apply. Hilda clicks on the issues she is interested in and it opens a black loading screen. Arrows are displayed on the left and right side. Hilda clicks to move to the next page. There is a control panel at the bottom that shows arrowing left and right, the page numbers and the zoom function. Hilda Maclean: Now let's have a closer look at the Koori Mail on the AIATSIS website. You can browse the collection simply by scrolling down and having a look at the covers. This is particularly useful if you just want to have a look at something that's being published in the last couple of months or so. If you want an event that happened in say, 2002, just enter 2002 and hit apply, and then you will find the issues from 2002 will come up. And once you find an issue you're interested in, say for example, the NAIDOC Awards from 2002, you just click on the cover image of the newspaper and then you see this reader will open up. So it's just a case just like you were reading a hard copy newspaper. Just click on the next page arrow, which you'll find on the right-hand side, and you can read through the paper. Description: Hilda demonstrates zooming in and out and the hand icon to move the image and make it larger. Hilda demonstrates the ellipses icon that allows you download the magazine in a PDF file. Hilda clicks on the downloading PDF file on the bottom left hand corner to open the file, it opens the entire newspaper. Hilda Maclean: And if you find an article that you're particularly interested in, you can use the controls at the bottom. You can zoom in, you can use the little hand icon to drag the image around and you can make it larger. You can then also download the page that you are looking at as a PDF file onto a USB stick, and then take that image away. So here's a case that we're looking at, the honouring of a leading Northern Territory educator. So, again, you can scroll in and zoom in till the text is large enough for you to be comfortably reading it. And you either can read the story or if you click on those three dots, you can download that story as a PDF file. And we can now open that file where it gives you the prompt to open the file. And you will see that it is actually, in fact, downloaded the entire newspaper. But there you go, there's the story that we're interested in. So now you have a file which you're able to print the page where you want, or you can save just a page you’re interested in as well. Description: Hilda clicks the left and right button to demonstrate moving between the newspaper pages. She demonstrates closing the newspaper by clicking the red cross in the top right-hand corner. Hilda scrolls through the issues searched to the bottom where it shows an arrow pointing to the left and the two page numbers. Hilda Maclean: So that is how to look up stories in the Koori Mail. See, just go through the left button. If you want to go backwards or the right button, if you want to go forwards and then if you want to close that issue and have a look at another issue, just go to the cross in the top right hand corner where you can then close the particular issue. And that will take you back to the page where you had your issues from 2002. So you will find that you may not have all the issues on the same page. So just keep an eye on the bottom and it will let you know how many pages you will find the issues on. Description: Navy text is shown on a white screen with the Logan City Council Logo in the bottom right hand corner. Text on screen: Thank you For assistance, please enquire through the contact below Hilda Maclean – Local Heritage Specialist (07) 3412 4165 localstudies@logan.qld.gov.au logan.qld.gov.au End of transcript