Abstract
In May 1873 Gippsland magistrate Alfred William Howitt replied to Fison’s letter in the Australasian requesting assistance in gathering kinship data. Howitt’s response led very quickly to a fertile partnership with Fison and eventually the co-authored Kamilaroi and Kurnai. As the men only met in the years after the book was published, their entire collaboration was through very regular lengthy letters. Fison’s were recorded in his Letterbooks and, as a careful tidy worker, he saved most of Howitt’s replies. This rich seam of correspondence ranged over methods of kinship collection and interpretation, debates on evolution, musings on origins and regular outbursts against the ignorance and failings of other collaborators, indigenous experts and European theorists. Howitt’s very first efforts at kinship collection revealed a mix of skills that made him particularly well suited to Southern anthropology. He was interested in research techniques; he was a skilled bushman and was well-read in the theories of human development. His close engagement with the people from the Kurnai nation (also referred to as Gunai, Gunnai and Gunaikurnai) gave him ample opportunity to test kinship theories, question the analysis of metropolitan theorists and, eventually, develop a new style of writing on Aboriginal people.
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© 2015 Helen Gardner and Patrick McConvell
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Gardner, H., Mcconvell, P. (2015). Howitt and Tulaba. In: Southern Anthropology — a History of Fison and Howitt’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai. Palgrave Studies in Pacific History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463814_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463814_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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