'Bad Aboriginal' anthropology

摘要

In his article, 'The Hindmarsh Island Bridge and the credibility of Australian anthropology' (ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, August 1996), Ron Brunton criticizes a number of anthropologists in Australia, including myself, for what he alleges to be an ideologically motivated defence of a group of women of the Ngarrindjeri language group, descendants of the original inhabitants of the Lower Murray River region of South Australia. As I described in my previous article (A.T., October 1995), these women (who came to be termed the 'proponent women') claimed knowledge about traditional Ngarrindjeri women's beliefs and ritual practices of a religious-cosmological significance on Hindmarsh Island in the mouth of the Murray, where a bridge linking the island and the mainland town of Goolwa was to be built.