Professor Jakelin Troy and Chameleon Indigeneity - Part 4
As our researchers continue to move through the archives using SAT Analysis (Note 1) to trace the links to Ngarigu ‘Country’ of University of Sydney’s Indigenous Professor Jakelin Troy, it is comforting to find that Professor Troy corroborates herself a number of our researching findings.
We have selected some excerpts from a short documentary Professor Troy has produced on her travels back to her Ngarigu Country.
In this documentary Professor Troy confirms that:
- her mother Shirley Troy was one of the first people to start a ski-lodge at Thredbo, as described in our Part 1 post. We do note that she does not acknowledge at all the contribution made by Shirley’s husband at the time, Derek King, in establishing the Berghutte Ski Club.
- Troy confirms at 02:50 that her great-grandmother was called Olive Thomas as we have confirmed in our Part 3. However, she implies Olive was Aboriginal. To date we have found no evidence that this was the case.
- her High Country family made their living from ‘sheep and cattle.’ [at 03:40] This is a very interesting point that we will provide evidence for in a subsequent post about the branches of her pioneering, colonial family who were into ‘sheep and cattle’ but had no Aboriginal ancestry at all.
- Troy appears to suffer from ‘exaggeration by association’ - at 03:50 she says her family had sheep and cattle and, ‘because of that we were also horse people’…’I’ve often thought that the women in my family were the '“Women of Snowy River”…’ we know that all across Australia Aboriginal women in the cattle industry were involved as stock people…and they were great riders. And my great grandmother Olive was a wonderful rider…’
Thus, it appears that she expertly uses the ‘Bruce Pacoesque‘ technique of extrapolating the idea that because her ancestors had sheep and cattle in the Snowy Mountains region at the time of settlement, she thinks her family must then have contained expert Aboriginal women horse riders on a par with the Man from Snowy River. In a previous post we have proven that her family is not related at all to Banjo Paterson’s Man from Snowy River, and in another post that her great grandmother Olive shows no evidence of being of Aboriginal descent.
Indicative Timeline for Professor Jakelin Troy and her Family’s Claims to Aboriginality
As our research progressed, we decided to make a time-line indicating the years in which Jakelin Troy self-proclaimed her Aboriginality or lack thereof. This time-line indicated that in the early years of her career she appears to have made no claims whatsoever that she or her family were Indigenous Ngarigu people from the Snowy Mountains. Only from about 2015 onwards could we find public statements describing Professor Troy as a woman of Ngargu descent. We will add to this timeline as more information becomes available.
1943 - Mother Shirley Beed as a 14 year old girl writes a prizewinning essay extolling the proud ancestry of her pioneering, non-Aboriginal family:
- ‘The pioneers of these parts of the Colony were wonderful people, who make one proud to think they were our ancestors…The aboriginals were troublesome and savage and were always causing trouble.’ - Shirley Beed
1993 - Jakelin Troy writes a book, King Plates: A History of Aboriginal Gorgets , where the publicity about the author makes no mention of any Aboriginality,
About the Author
Jakelin Troy headed the New South Wales (NSW) Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre (ALRRC), established by the NSW Government within the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs, to play a key role in the preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages in New South Wales. She has extensive experience researching and documenting Aboriginal languages. - Amazon Books
1994 - Similarly, a review in the Aboriginal newspaper, the Koorie Mail of 26 Jan 1994 (68th edition) reviews Jakelin Troy’s book, but makes no mention that she is Aboriginal. If she had identified as being Aboriginal at that time, one would have expected that the Koorie Mail would have stressed that fact
1994 - Jakelin Troy writes her ANU PhD thesis in which she acknowledges her family but makes no mention that she is Aboriginal and she does not acknowledge the Ngarigu people or Country;
1994 - Dr Jakelin Troy is not refered to as being ‘Aboriginal’ in this Sydney Morning Herald article.
1996 - Jakelin Troy is referred to as a, ‘scholar with a wide knowledge of Aboriginal people …’ If she herself was Aboriginal, it would be customary to note this, but it wasn’t.
Source - Book review in Aboriginal History Vol. 20 (1996), pp. 231-233, Published By: ANU Press
2000 - Dr Jakelin Troy is working as a project officer at ATSIC where she addresses the FATSIL AGM. There is no acknowledgement that she is Aboriginal.
Figure - Dr Jaky Troy as ATSIC Project Officer, 2000. Source
2002 - Described as simply, ‘Jaky Troy, colonial historian, linguist and anthropologist’ and as an ‘Exhibitions Advisory Committee member’ on page 47 of the 2002-3 Annual Report of the Historic Houses Trust of NSW. No acknowledgement of any Ngarigu ancestry is mentioned.
2002 - Described simply as, ‘Jaky Troy, Senior Curriculum Officer, Aboriginal Curriculum Unit…specializing in Aboriginal peoples...’ in the NSW’s Board Of Studies Bulletin, Vol 11, No 4, August 2002. Jaky Troy makes no mention of her Ngarigu ancestry in this publish biography in 2002 and speaks of the ‘Aboriginal peoples’ in the third-person; that is, she is not including herself as one of them.
2003 - Linguist Dr Jaky Troy head of the NSW Aboriginal Languages Research and Resources Centre is quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald with no acknowledgement that she is an Indigenous woman, Ngarigu or otherwise.
2003 - Jaky Troy was a Sydney Aboriginal word expert at the Dual Naming Workshop hosted by the ALRRC, where Jaky Troy is a Director. Aboriginal people from many tribes - the Darug, Tharawal, Yuin and Guringai - were acknowledged as being in attendance, but none from the tribe that Jaky Troy professes to belong to, the Ngaringu. Was she not self-describing as a Ngarigu in 2003?
2004 - Jaky Troy is described as "an avid supporter of First Australians" , that is in the third-person - she does not consider herself one of them
"Visitors from Coraki participated in theJune AIATSIS ‘Keeping Your History Alive’ workshop organised by Jaky Troy, Director of the New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre, an avid supporter of First Australians’.
2005 - Jaky Troy teams up with Bruce Pascoe - two ‘Aboriginal language experts’ - neither of whom admits that they can actually speak an Aboriginal language.
2006 - ‘A Cultural Awareness’ recommendation for Jaky Troy without any reference to her claimed Ngarigu heritage. These ‘cultural awareness’ recommendations we understand are provided by Aboriginal organisations to non-Aboriginal people and organisations as a way of publizing that the reciepent is appropriately ‘culturally aware’.
2006 - Is this a comment by the ‘non-Indigenous in 2006’ Dr Jaky Troy that will come back to haunt her? It was made when she attended an exhibition of the works of Joseph Lycett, the convict artist:
Source - Newsletter of the Professional Historians association NSW, Number 218 – May-June 2006, p17
Joseph Lycett artwork
2008-9 - Dr Jakelin Troy shares a publishing advisory position with Bruce Pascoe on an AIATSIS Committee
Whilst on the Committee, was Dr Troy influenced by Bruce Pascoe in her decision to increase the profile of her ‘Aboriginality’?
Was Dr Troy a ‘New Identifier’?
“In the past half century, the Indigenous Australian population has grown at a far faster rate than can be explained by births alone, and has come to include more western-educated people living in the south-east of the country…[these]…”New Identifiers”…were more likely to believe their ancestors – known and unknown – played an active role in defining their identity…[and] were particularly drawn to Indigenous ancestors, it would appear, because they seemed to offer them a sense of deep belonging to the Australian continent, a holistic spiritualism, and a meaningful family history.”
- Elizabeth Watt and Emma Kowal, ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 2019, VOL. 42, NO. 16, 63–82.
Only Dr Troy would know if the ‘chameleon effect’ was starting to influence her career.
2011 - This University of Canberra Bio Sketch appears to be the first time that Jakelin Troy refers to herself in a professional reference as a “Ngarigu woman and my country [sic Country?] is the Snowy Mountains.’ Is this the year she became a ‘New Identifier’?
2015 - Professor Jakelin Troy of the University of Sydney, is described as being ‘from the Ngarigu people of the Snowy Mountains’, in an article on Maori languages in New Zealand.
2015 - Dr Jaky Troy appears on ABC radio, described as ‘the Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at Sydney University. Jaky is a Ngarigu woman whose country is the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales’.
2016 - Professor Dr Jakelin Troy speaking on the ABC Drum about Constitutional Recognition for ‘her people’.
2020 - Dr Jakelin Troy introduces herself in a reconstructed Aboriginal language and describes her mob as Ngarigu from the Snowy Mountains and South Eastern Australia.
2020 - Professor Jakelin Troy, Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, The University of Sydney tells us that,
“My mother Country is being destroyed by humans who place no value other than commercial on the alps. The mighty Snowy River is now dammed and indeed damned.”
In my family there is a saying that ‘any kind of water, frozen or liquid, is good’. What are we as the High-Country people of the Snowy Mountains without water? We are not who we are without snow and ice, springs, bogs, streams, waterfalls and cascading ice melts that cause the wild mountain rivers to run. My own totem a small river fish, the ‘ghost fish’ or mountain galaxias is the only native mountain fish found above the snowline all year round. This unique little fish might now be extinct in its original habitat, finished off by rain washing the ash from the catastrophic fires in the Snowy Mountains, in early 2020, into mountain waterways. If it is gone from my Country what does this mean for me? It is my spirit the thing I am meant to protect and that protects me, defines me in some senses. Am I no longer a thing myself if it is gone?
There is a sense that we, the Ngarigu people of this Country, have our rights respected, that we can be in our mountains, manage, live and traverse our Country, protected by legislation under Indigenous Land use Agreements, Native Title Act provisions, National Parks and Heritage legislation. But, in practice, we have no rights.
We had ceremonies to increase the snow, the rain, to influence the seasons. To keep this environment stable and productive. Plants flowered in the summer pastures, animals, the giant bogong moths on which we feasted for months over the summer, birds, mountain emus, the whole ecosystem understood, managed and lived in with ease all year round. Now it is the playground of the rich and famous summer and winter, ski season and summer mountain biking, hiking and camping. Some value and respect the Mountains and its liquid environment, most do not. Without Ngarigu people to understand its deep past, human and non-human, it will cease to exist as the cultural place it is, dominated by Kunama Namadgi, the mother of snow.
Is this ‘snow-bunny’ the same Professor Jakelin Troy who now worries that ‘Ngarigu Country’ has become ‘the playground of the rich and famous summer and winter, ski season…’ , people who might not respect, Kunama Namadgi, the mother of snow? - Source - ABC radio
2021 - The ABC increases the promotion of Professor Jakelin Troy and describes her as ‘a Ngarigo woman from Australia's alpine regions in NSW and Victoria, the Director of Indigenous Research at the University of Sydney, and a linguist’.
2021 - ‘Traditional Owner representing the Ngarigo Nation’ Professor Jakelin Troy starts to ‘throw her political and cultural weight around’ as reported by SBS.
‘Traditional owner and custodian’ for the Ngarigu people and their ‘Nation’, Professor Jakelin Troy is a Director for Indigenous Research at the University of Sydney. Source SBS
Professor Troy ‘says she has received no consultation about a plan to dump tonnes of waste spoil on her Country. The Snowy Hydro’s Environmental Impact Statement details plans to excavate approximately seven million cubic metres of earth for the project’s tunnels and subterranean power station. That spoil will then be dumped on 55 hectares across four sites within Kosciuszko National Park.
Professor Jakelin Troy is the Director for Indigenous Research at the University of Sydney and a Ngarigo Traditional Custodian. The national park is her Country and natural habitat for her totem, the Kosciuszko Galaxia.
“To take from one part of my Country and dump on another part of my Country, particularly where my totem lives, is nothing short of complete destruction, I would say of me and my community,” she told NITV News.
She fears the spoil will end up downriver from the two dams and says she has not heard from Snowy Hydro about the proposal.
“The Ngarigo Nation’s Indigenous Corporation, which I’m a member of and my family belongs to as well, has had no consultation about this,” she said.’
Note 1 - SAT Analysis
Spatial-Associate-Temporal Analysis is a well known method used in genealogy but also in police detective work for determining linkages between people and places at certain times. We have adapted this analysis method for use in Australian colonial and Aboriginal historical settings. See a recent published application here.
Acknowledgment to Marc for parts of the time-line research in this post.
