Knowing and not knowing : the Ngarrindjeri dilemma

Doreen Kartinyeri (1935–2007) was an Aboriginal historian, in particular, a genealogist of several regions and lineages in South Australia. In her posthumously published autobiography she evokes the tensions between two orders of knowledge that were mobilised when she wrote things down. Written genealogy, drawing on oral, scientific and bureaucratic sources, was sometimes in tension with Indigenous strategies of forgetting and silence. And her inscription of secret/sacred Law—a tactic intended to mobilise the state's defence of ‘Aboriginal heritage’—was intensely controversial among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In this reading of Doreen Kartinyeri: My Ngarrindjeri Calling, I highlight the author's attempts at resolving these tensions—metaphorically (her body) and ethically (her conception of the interests of future generations).