2001, Volume 4, Paper 44
ISSN: 2209-6612

J.H. Kelly Revisited

Dr. Glen McLaren  – Division of Humanities,  Curtin University of Technology

Historians are a capricious lot. Schools of thought wax and wane, sympathies shift and slide, and yesterday’s dogma is today excused as naivety. And so it is with assessments of the Northern Territory pastoral industry. For the past several decades Northern Territory cattlemen have been intensely criticised by academics, the media and commentators for a variety of reasons, most notably their alleged mistreatment of Aboriginal employees and dependants. While some of this criticism has been warranted there is now very clear evidence that Territory cattlemen have also been subjected to intemperate, ill-informed and inaccurate charges. Frank Stevens, for instance, who carried out extensive field work on Territory stations before writing his acclaimed work Aborigines in the Northern Territory Cattle Industry, is demonstrably guilty of highly selective use of evidence, misrepresentation and naivety. Agricultural economist J. H. Kelly is equally culpable.

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