The Lisa Jackson Pulver Story - Her Mother's Family Tree - Part 5
The Alleged Family Tree of Professor Jackson Pulver’s Mother
In Part 4 of the Story of Lisa Jackson Pulver, we believe we established that Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver has no Aboriginal descent via her father’s family.
The records that we uncovered provided no evidence that her father was a Wiradjuri man, as she claims.
In this new post we will start the process of tracing Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s maternal ancestry, the branch of her family tree that comes from her mother’s side.
The reader should be aware that this research into the Professor’s maternal family tree will take several, separate posts as this investigation has proved to be the longest that we have ever undertaken as part of the ‘Deep Fake Project.’
The Professor’s maternal family branch runs to 250, A4 pages of research notes because the Professor, on her mother’s side, comes from ‘Australian royalty’ - ‘convict royalty’.
The Professor’s maternal family tree contains many branches of ancestors because, as our research will show, the Professor’s family were participants at the dawn of Australia’s colonisation and had a significant part in the expansion of the colony and its settlement.
Are any of these maternal ancestors Aboriginal, as the Professor claims in the video below?
We shall see.
Searching for Lisa Jackson-Pulver’s Maternal Aboriginal Ancestors
In the video below, we summarise, as a series of film clips, a few of the many public pronouncements by Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver regarding her claimed Aboriginality.
The film clips are arranged from the earliest to the more recent and illustrate the development of her Aboriginal persona, and how she has developed in her own performances of Acknowledgments of Country, over the past 10 years.
Today, she is emphatic that she is a Wiradjuri Aboriginal woman from Wagga Wagga based on her ‘Wiradjuri’ father’s family. She also claims she has ‘connections’ via her ‘Aboriginal’ grandmother to the Aboriginal peoples of the North Coast of NSW.
Our research seems to indicate that her claims to ‘Aboriginality’ only appeared publicly in the past 10 years or so, when she began to ‘identify’ once she entered the senior ranks of academia.
Looking for ‘Markers’ in the Maternal Side of Professor Lisa Jackson’s Family
As we described in the previous post, before we embark on determining any person’s family tree, we need to study their public disclosures to see what information, or ‘markers’, they themselves have provided about their family and their ancestors.
These ‘markers’ are critical to our research as they ensure that we start constructing the correct family tree. In Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s case, there are very many families called ‘Jackson’ and we need markers supplied by the Professor herself to ensure that we embark on researching the correct Jackson family.
We have collated and analysed many of the Professor’s public disclosures and identified a number of markers (in bold below) concerning her mother and her maternal family tree.
For example, we have highlighted in bold several possible markers from an interview the Professor gave on the 25th of February 2013[4] at the University of New South Wales, where she told her interviewer that,
‘… I've got two lines of ancestry that I'm aware of and I'm covering more – thank you very much Ancestry.com !
My mother was born a Smith and her mum was born up on the far north coast of New South Wales in an island in the mighty Clarence River and she fled to come down to Sydney and lived in Sydney as a Maori for a while and then, yes, eventually got back with her family and identified who she was. So that’s my mum’s side…
... I always wanted to join the military. My dad was a RAAFie, he served in the war. My grandfather served in the army … my mother’s father died in World War II serving the navy… [“He was a Scotsman who jumped boat…Source: Listen on ABC from 03:45]
[in my RAAF job]… a lot of my work is around … why they [the RAAF] need to look at Aboriginal people as being an integral part of how it is we serve on this country … we’ve been here for sixty thousand years, so we know something of it and we’d like to share that. So that’s my job…
[Interviewer: And have you ever experienced any racism in the armed forces or in life in general?]
Well, they're two different questions and it’s yes to both, of course. I mean I'm a fair-skinned Koori like you and we often – well, I'll talk for me – I often have been asked “So, what part Aborigine are you?” It’s like “Oh, God, here we go again”….
But racism was something that we got grown up with. We had our parents trying to hide who they were; they had to; it was a survival mechanism…
For me as a Koori I also think of what people lost because, you think about, you know, there’s lots of communities gave so much: their men went away and their women went away and often they didn’t come back. Like my mother’s family, she was a Legatee from a very young age, her and all of her siblings were Legatees because grandad was killed - his boat got sunk in the war – and died and so he left his wife vulnerable with all these kids, just absolutely vulnerable.
Similarly, in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 March 2017, we learn that,
‘Jackson Pulver was born in Stanmore in 1959, but grew up on a quarter-acre block in Revesby…
‘Jackson Pulver never knew her grandfather and was brought up to say her grandmother was a "Maori princess", but both her maternal grandparents were Aboriginal.
She says her grandmother was paranoid. "We weren't allowed to take gifts from people, because they would be laced with poison. That was her family history coming out, because they were poisoning Aboriginal people when she was a wee kid…’
Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s Mother - Merle Joan Smith
As we described in Part 3 of our investigation, the break-through that our genealogists were able to make was in locating the Marriage Certificate of the Professor’s parents. This not only gave us her parent’s names and ages, but also their parent’s names, that is, the four grandparents of Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver.
This Marriage Certificate in Figure 1 confirms some of the markers provided by the Professor herself - that her mother’s name was Smith (Meryl Joan), and that her father was ‘deceased’ by 1953 and his profession was listed as ‘soldier’, which is consistent with her claim, ‘my mother’s father died in World War II.’
Figure 1 - Marriage Certificate for Meryl Joan Smith and Raymond Leonard Jackson - the Parents of Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver. Source: Sydney Registry BD&M, 2022
There is some discrepancy as to whether the Professor’s mother’s first name is Meryl as on the Marriage Certificate or Merle, as given on the sequential electoral rolls in Figure 2. We know that these are the correct electoral roll extracts for the Professor’s parents as their address is Revesby, which is another marker, it being the suburb where the Professor said she ‘grew up on a quarter-acre block’. We could find no electoral records for any other couple called Ray(mond) and Meryl Jackson living in, or near, Revesby.
For the purposes of our investigation it is not critical whether her mother’s first name was spelt Meryl or Merle and, given that her mother could well still be alive, for privacy reasons we don’t need to investigate her mother’s life in any more detail. All we need are the names of Meryl/Merle’s parents, which we now have from her Marriage Certificate.
We can thus advance to the next generation - Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s maternal grandparents - who are George Smith (deceased, soldier) and Clarice Powell (her maiden name).
Figure 2 - Extracts of Electoral Roll records for Ray Leonard Jackson and Merle Joan Jackson (nee Smith) of Revesby
Professor Jackson Pulver’s Maternal Grandparents
We located a Marriage Certificate for a George Smith and a Clarice Smidt (Figure 3), who are the parents of the Meryl [Merle] Smith in Figure 1, and thus Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s maternal grandparents.
The details in the grandparent’s Marriage Certificate (Figure 3) corroborate the markers that the Professor has provided above, namely that,
‘her grandfather was a Scotsman’ (the Certificate shows the groom was born in Glasgow Scotland);
her grandmother ‘was born up on the far north coast of New South Wales in an island in the mighty Clarence River’ (the bride was recorded as being born in Maclean, NSW, a town on the Clarence River), and
although the bride is recorded as Clarice Smidt (her deceased father’s surname), her mother is recorded as a widow using her maiden name - Ada Beatrice Powell (Figure 2). Powell is the maiden name Clarice uses in her daughters Marriage Certificate in Figure 1.
There is enough correlation and consistency in these two Marriage Certificates with what Professor Jackson Pulver has publicly declared about her grandparents for us to conclude that we have located the correct Jackson family members in the records.
We can now confidently go ahead and start filling in the family member details for each of the next generation of ancestors in the maternal branch of the Professor’s family tree.
Figure 3 - Marriage Certificate for George Smith and Clarice Smidt (nee Powell) - the maternal grandparents of Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver. Source: Sydney Registry BD&M, 2022
Further research showed that, based on the electoral rolls during the 1930s Depression, the Professor’s grandparents moved frequently in Sydney (see here).
Grandfather George then enlisted in the Second World War and served at sea as part of the US Navy Small Ships Program to combat the Japanese in New Guinea. Unfortunately he was killed in 1942 (Figure 4).
Figure 4 - War Memorial record for Geioge Kenneth Smith, Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s maternal grandfather. Source: 1942 Death Australian War Memorial
As further evidence that we are on the right track with our research, listen here from 00:38 where the Professor herself confirms her mother’s dad died in New Guinea as part of the US Navy, Small Ships collaboration.
The Professor is either relaying some family oral history passed down from her mother about her grandfather’s war experiences, or she is on the same Ancestry.com journey as us, perhaps under the alias “LizzySmiths” ? [As we speculated in Part 4]
We also located the birth record for a 'Clarice W [sic] Powell, born in 1900 in the district of Maclean in NSW, to a mother recorded as ‘Ada B’ [who was Ada Beatrice Powell] (Figure 5). Clarice's birth was registered only under her mother's maiden name, Powell, meaning that her parents weren't married when she was born.
A baptism record of 31 January 1901 details Clarice’s birth date as being 21 August 1900, with her name at baptism now recorded as Clarice Mary Smidt. She carries her father’s name, so her parents must have married after she was born but before she was baptised (Figure 5).
This was confirmed by a record of marriage between a Charles J Smidt and an Ada B Powell in Maclean, a town on the Clarence River in NSW. They were married in 1900 (Figure 6).
These records only provide the year of marriage, not the actual date of marriage. Because the marriage was registered in 1900, we know that it thus occurred sometime after the baby Clarice’s birth and before the end of 1900, prior to the baptism of 31 January 1901, when baby Clarice was carrying her new, legitimised, father’s name.
Figure 5 - Extracts of Birth Record for Clarice W[sic] Powell under mother’s maiden name, and Baptism Record for same child, Clarice Mary Smidt under father’s surname. Sources: Original data - Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013, and Database on-line - Ancestry.com. Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Figure 6 - Marriage Record extract for the marriage of Clarence J Smidt to Ada Beatrice Powell in late 1900. This marriage legitimised their daughter, Clarice Mary Smidt (Powell), who was Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s grandmother. Source: NSWBDM 8972/1900
The Professor’s Aboriginal Grandmother - Or maybe not?
The key to the veracity of Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s claim for Aboriginality on her mother’s side is the ancestry of the woman, Clarice Mary Smidt (nee Powell), the Professor’s maternal grandmother.
The Professor claims that,
‘My mother was born a Smith and her mum was born up on the far north coast of New South Wales in an island in the mighty Clarence River and she fled to come down to Sydney and lived in Sydney as a Maori for a while and then, yes, eventually got back with her family and identified [as Aboriginal] who she was.’ Source
Fortuitously, we have located a film clip where the Professor provides a small snippet of a photograph of her grandmother that helps us identify what she looked like.
In about 2014, the Professor gave a lecture at the University of NSW where she presented a lecture on Public Health in Aboriginal Australia. As way of introduction, she put up two slides and told her audience,
‘I also have to disclose who I am in context and where I come from.
These are two of my grandmothers [See slide below Figure 7]. One of my grandmothers comes from a place across the border from here, not far away actually, just across the mountains on Wiradjuri lands. And there's a lot of Wiradjuri people in Canberra, so if you've ever seen the Wiradjuri dances - well, they're people that are Smiths and they're sort of related to my mob.
My other grandmother comes from the far North Coast of New South Wales, up on the Dungardi [Dainggati?] lands and the Bundjalung [Badjalang] lands, okay.
So two of my grandmothers are Aboriginal … yeah, so I'm proudly standing here … fiercely Aboriginal and don't anyone forget it … eeeee’
In the film clip, the viewer doesn’t get a full look at the slide of her two Aboriginal grandmothers, but we do see part of one of the photographs of one of them (Figure 7).
Observant readers will recognise it as the photograph of one of the women from the Professor’s 2020 presentation, which we detailed in our Part 4 post - see Page 2 of the 2020 presentation by Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver (Figure 9).
Presumably, the second grandmother, who we do not see in the 2014 lecture film clip, is the woman standing next to the gentleman in the cropped photograph in Figure 9. We recognise this woman from our Part 4 post as being a member of the wedding party that is believed to have been the Professor’s mother’s wedding. This woman, we believe, is the Professor’s paternal grandmother, “Nan Jackson”, Hazel Marion Milne [Llewellyn].
Figure 7 - Snapshot from Professor Jackson Pulver’s lecture partially showing one of her ‘Aboriginal’ grandmothers on the screen behind her. Source: Watch from 02:10.
Figure 8 - Excerpt from a 2020 Presentation by Professor Jackson Pulver, which shows the same photograph as referred to in Figure 7, claimed to be her Aboriginal grandmother from the NSW North Coast. Source: Figure 9 below
Figure 9 - Page 2 of the 2020 presentation by Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver. The photograph of the ‘Maori-looking woman’ is claimed by the Professor to be her Aboriginal grandmother from the North Coast of NSW. This photograph appears to match the photograph used in the Professor’s 2014 lecture (Figure 7). (Source here).
We have not been able to verify whether this photograph of a woman, with perhaps some Aboriginal, or even Maori, facial features, is really of the Professor’s maternal grandmother. It might be, but then again, the Professor could be ‘just making it up’ so as to create a ‘narrative’ for her claimed Aboriginality - is she presenting a photograph of a woman, who viewers might be convinced has ‘indigenous’ features, and thus the Professor’s claim that her grandmother was Aboriginal has more credibility. We just don’t know.
But what we can do is research the ancestry of the Professor’s maternal grandmother via the records, to determine whether she is of Aboriginal descent, whether we have a verified photograph of her or not.
The Ancestry of Clarice Mary Smidt (nee Powell) - Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s Maternal Grandmother
Our analysis of the publicly available records shows that Clarice Smidt (nee Powell) has no apparent Aboriginal descent.
She was born in 1900 into the Smidt family, whose ancestral roots go back to patriarch, Charles Albert Smidt, who was born, according to his baptism certificate, in 1846 in Lambeth, London, England. The German-derived surname, ‘Smidt’ was Anglesized frequently to, ‘Smith’ such that on his baptism certificate in London, and his Victorian marriage record, he was ‘Smith’, whereas during his much celebrated working life as an innovative coach-builder and civic leader in NSW he was known as ‘Smidt’, as he was on his death certificate (Research notes here)
His wife, Sarah Jane Atkinson, was born in Killarney, Ireland.
So they were both British, not Aboriginal (Figure 10).
Figure 10 - The Smidt Family Branch of Professor Jackson Pulver’s Alleged Maternal Family Tree. Sources: Public Records.
It is possible that the Professor obtained her Aboriginality via her great-grandmother, Ada Beatrice Powell (Figure 11).
However, we researched the paternal-line of the Powell family and found that it goes back four generations to an English couple, Edward Powell (Snr) and his wife, Elizabeth Fish, who were both born in England in the years 1762 and 1771 respectively.
Figure 11 - The Powell Family Branch of Professor Jackson Pulver’s Alleged Maternal Family Tree. Sources: Public Records.
It is possible that the Professor obtained her Aboriginality via one of the wives of these Powell men. It could be that one or more of these wives, Mary Robinson, Isabella Elizabeth Siddins or Mary Eliza Matilda Cowper were Aboriginal.
We researched the family branches of two of these wives - Mary Robinson in Figure 12 below, and Isabella Elizabeth Siddins in Figure 13.
Neither of these two women were Aboriginal. In both cases their ancestors were all born in England or Ireland.
Figure 12 - The Robinson Family Branch of Professor Jackson Pulver’s Alleged Maternal Family Tree. Sources: Public Records.
Figure 13 - The Siddins Family Branch of Professor Jackson Pulver’s Alleged Maternal Family Tree. Jane Powell was the sister of the Edward Powell Jnr in the Powell family branch in Figure 11 and her parents, Edward Powell Snr and Elizabeth Fish, were both born in England. Sources: Public Records.
Thus, all the family members of these branches have been traced back to ancestors who were born in England or Ireland, except for the ancestors of Mary Eliza Matilda Cowper, whose family we have not provided details on as yet. The Cowper family ancestors arrived in Australia at the dawn of colonisation with the First Fleet and they will be discussed separately in the next post due to the complexity and magnitude of their family history.
So, there is no evidence so far that we have found that indicates that Professor Jackson Pulver’s maternal grandmother, Clarice Mary Smidt (nee Powell) was an Aboriginal woman from, as the Professor claims,
‘… the far North Coast of New South Wales up on the Dungardi [Dainggati ?] lands and the Bundjalung [Badjalang] lands …’
Figure 14 - A version of the Aboriginal tribal boundaries in the Clarence River region of the North Coast of NSW showing the Dainggati lands very far south of the Clarence River. Source
Figure 15 - Extract of Normal Tindale’s 1974 map of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia showing the Dainggati inland from Kempsey and the Jiegera around Maclean and the islands of the Clarence river. Source
Now, maybe we are wrong because we don’t know of some deeply hidden secret in the family - perhaps, for example Ada Beatrice Powell had a secret affair with an Aboriginal man and the issue, baby Clarice, the Professor’s grandmother, was in fact Aboriginal by descent. Or maybe baby Clarice was the result of an illicit relationship between one of men of the Powell household and an Aboriginal woman and Ada agreed to ‘adopt’ the child into the family as her own.
Without the discovery of say, a personal diary detailing these events, we just can’t know if these are valid reasons as to why Professor Jackson Pulver believes that her grandmother Clarice was Aboriginal. Certainly the Professor herself has never publicly provided any real or documentary evidence to support her Aboriginality claims for her grandmother.
All the Professor has ever done is display an old photograph of a woman, who viewers may or may not think has some ‘Maori-like’ facial features, and claim that this is a photograph of her Aboriginal grandmother. Maybe it is - but then maybe it is just a random family (or not?) photo of a woman of British descent that the Professor, a la Dennis Foley , pulls out of the air to represent her Aboriginal grandmother. We don’t know, but the Professor hasn’t put much effort, we believe, into providing the real evidence that this photograph is of her bona-fide Aboriginal grandmother.
And in the case of the above scenarios for Ada, it is true Clarice was born out of wedlock (see section above and Figures 5 & 6), but the fact that Ada’s marriage to Clarence Joseph Australia Smidt ended in apparent failure - he was charged and imprisoned for abandoning his wife after 14 years of marriage (see here) seems to suggest that he really was the father of baby Clarice. Why would he agree to the apparent ‘shot-gun’ wedding a few months after Clarice was born, and his apparently subsequent, unhappily married life, unless he accepted he was the father?
So, to summarise this Part 4 post of the Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver story, we have constructed the following partial, alleged maternal family tree, up to the branch of Mary Eliza Matilda Cowper (Figure 16).
All family members researched so far have their ancestry originating in England or Ireland.
There is no evidence of any family members so far having any Aboriginal ancestry.
Figure 16 - Partially completed (page 1), alleged, maternal family tree for Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver. This family tree will continue on page 2 via the Cowper and Small family lines, which are investigated in the next post. Full file here
Further Reading
Yarning with Fakes
During the Deep Fake Project we have listened to countless hours of interviews and watched YouTubes of Australian academics who profess to be of Aboriginal descent and ancestry, but ultimately just turn out to be ‘fakes.’
One thing we have noticed is that a ‘fake’ will rattle on about their ancestors, plucking seemingly plausible bits of family history out of the air and weaving a non-stop narrative that lulls their audience into meek acceptance of the family history story they are being told.
Not once have we observed an interviewer or audience member ever put their hand up and challenge the ‘fake’s’ story, no matter how implausible it sounds. This is despite the fact that there must be a few listeners who are thinking to themselves, “is that really true?”
Now, at this stage of our investigation, we are not calling Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver a ‘fake.’ It could well be that, in the last branch of her family tree that we have yet to research - the Cowper and Small families (Figure 16) - we might actually find evidence of a family member who is demonstrably Aboriginal. This would allow the Professor to claim Aboriginality by descent, as per the Commonwealth’s 3-part rule.
However, the Professor frequently displays the ‘fake’s’ habit of ‘rattling on about her family history’ in way that prompts us to ask ourselves, “is that really true?.”
For example, in a previous post, the Professor made a quite bizarre claim that her father was a Wiradjuri man and his family originally came from South Australia and Victoria, which are way out of Wiradjuri country. How is that possible?
Also in this post, the Professor told us that her grandmother,
‘was born third tree from the left on a small island in the beautiful Clarence River, on the Northern New South Wales Coast.’ (listen here from 04:40)
Is that really true? Did Ada Powell give birth to her baby girl, Clarice, the Professor’s grandmother under a tree on an island?
Or is the Professor ‘just making this up’, a la Pascoe, for literary effect, hoping that the listener will imagine an Aboriginal woman giving birth in the bush so as to lend support to the Professor’s claim that her baby grandmother was Aboriginal.
But just think about it - Clarice was born in 1900 - was it normal for women at that time to give birth outside under a tree? Clarice’s mother was Ada Powell, the daughter of land owning Edward Richard Powell and Mary Eliza Matilda Cowper, the granddaughter of Venerable Archdeacon Cowper, of Sydney, whose 1880 wedding was announced in the Sydney Morning Herald (Source).
Does the Professor really want us to believe that this Ada Powell was really an Aboriginal great-granddaughter of a Sydney Archdeacon and she was giving birth to an Aboriginal child under the ‘third tree from the left on a small island in the beautiful Clarence River’ twenty years after her parent’s fashionable wedding? Come on Professor, pull the other leg.
If Clarice really was a ‘bush-birth’, why did we locate both birth and baptism records for her (Figure 8)?
If Clarice really was Aboriginal - and so must have been her mother Ada, as we know her father, Clarence Joseph Australia Smidt wasn’t, his parents being from England and Ireland - why don’t we find a record for either of Clarice or Ada in the Aboriginal Registered Births, Deaths & Marriages 1788 - 1905, NSW listing?
If Ada, who was born in 1880, was Aboriginal, why wasn’t she recorded as such in the 1891 census when her father, Edward Powell recorded that there were 5 males and 5 females in his residence on census night, none of which were noted as being Aboriginal [or Chinese]? Similarly for the census of 1901 where no Aboriginal [or Chinese] were in his residence (those columns on the census were left blank - see Figures 17, 18 and 19).
Figure 17 - Census record of 1891 showing Edward R Powell’s Clarence river household having no Aboriginal or Chinese occupants. The four right-hand columns are blank (no numbers). These four columns have the the headings: ‘Number of Chinese and Aborigines [M & F] Included in two previous columns] (See Figure 19 below for headings).
The ‘tick’ in the first column on the right [the Chinese male column] is just made by the clerk as he cross-referenced the information from the original forms filled out by the occupants.
In Figure 19 below, we see the ‘tick’ next to all entries on the page bar one, which records a person of Aboriginal decent (Female Aborigine) at the household of James Hume. (Source NSW Census records)
Figure 18 - Census record of 1901 showing Edward R Powell’s Clarence river household having no Aboriginal or Chinese occupants - the four right-hand columns are blank (no numbers) - See Figure 19 below for the headings of these four columns: ‘Number of Chinese and Aborigines [M & F] Included in two previous columns]. (Source NSW Census records)
Figure 19 - An illustrative comparison, the 1891 census records as filled in over at Ada’s father-in-law’s house and his neighbours’ houses. Her father-in-law, Charles A Smidt, has recorded that his house contained 9 males and 1 female, with none being Aboriginal or Chinese, but his neighbour, James Hume, has indicated that his household contains 1 female Aborigine. (Source NSW Census records)
So, if Ada Powell was Aboriginal why wasn’t she recorded as such in her father’s census form of 1891 when she was 11 years old and presumably living at home on census night?
An important point in all of this is that, if Professor Jackson Pulver wants the community to accept her claim that she is Aboriginal, it is incumbent on her to provide at least some proof that she is of Aboriginal descent. It shouldn’t really be up to third parties like us here at Dark Emu Exposed to have to do this work on behalf of her reputation.
If academics like the Professor, who we must remember are scholars - professionals who know how to do research - can’t even accurately and truthfully do their own genealogical research (or contract a genealogist to do it for them) then their whole professional credibility is at stake if they are ultimately found out to be a ‘fake.’
It would appear to us that Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver’s reputation may be at a cross-roads right now. Our research may ultimatley find supporting evidence that one of the professor’s ancestors in the final branch of her family tree - The Cowpers and the Smalls - may in fact be Aboriginal.
But then again maybe we won’t, and her reputation, just like that Bruce Pascoe’s, will be seen to be based on nothing more than the ability to ‘just make stuff up.’
The next post, Part 5 of the Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver Story will appear soon.
Figure 20 - A photograph of the woman who it is believed that Professor Jackson Pluver claims is her maternal ‘Aboriginal’ grandmother from the Clarence River region of North coast NSW.
Figure 21 - Idealised studio photograph of a real Aboriginal woman from the Clarence River region. See ABC here for story:
Further Reading
Counting Aboriginal People in the Census
Section 25 of the Constitution is often (mis)interpreted as contemplating a denial of the franchise on racial grounds. This section reads:
For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted.
As shown in our simple investigation of the Powell family, it appears that the census forms of NSW did in fact require the ‘counting’ of Aboriginal people [and Chinese as well].(Figures, 17, 18 & 19 above).
‘The reason this section was included in the Constitution is because, in the 1890s, Queensland and Western Australia practiced discrimination. These two States did not allow individuals of exclusive Aboriginal ethnicity to vote in their state elections. The framers thought this was wrong and wanted to bring them into line with all the other States where the Aborigines already had the franchise. Even before Federation, writes Keith Windschuttle, “the great majority of Aborigines had the same political rights as other Australians, including the right to vote, which the Constitution guaranteed in Section 41”.
Rather than denying indigenous people the franchise, the founders effectively supported giving Aborigines voting rights from the very outset. Indeed, most Aborigines had full citizenship in 1901 and, contrary to false accusations of racism, section 25 was designed to penalise the Australian States that discriminated against them by reducing their representation in federal Parliament.
- Augusto Zimmermann in Quadrant 20/2/2021
Indeed, there has been scholarship to show that Aboriginal people were on the voting role of NSW in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. (See here: Jim Smith, Aboriginal voters in the Burragorang Valley, NSW, 1869-1953, JRAHS Vol. 98 Part 2, p170ff ).
We haven’t done the research yet, but we would not be surprised to find these Aboriginal voters being listed in the census records as well, thus putting paid to the claims by some that ‘Aboriginal people weren’t even counted in the census.’ In fact, in some (most?) of Australia they were.
