South Australia's Highest Ranking Aboriginal Family - Or maybe not? - The Maher Family, Part 3
In our previous two posts (1 & 2 ) on South Australia’s highest ranking Aboriginal family, that of SA’s Attorney-General, the Hon Kyam Maher MLC, we investigated the maternal genealogy of this highly respected Labor family.
In those posts we found that the genealogical evidence did not support the assertions of the late Viv Maher, nor those of her son Kyam Maher, that she was a 'Tasmanian Aboriginal woman’ by descent.
The alleged family tree of Viv Maher shows that all her ancestors could be traced back to England or Germany.
As we discussed in our second post on the Maher family, this apparent lack of Aboriginal descent by ‘Aunty’ Viv Maher posed a conundrum for our readers. For if Viv Maher herself had no demonstrable Aboriginal descent, how could her son, the Hon Kyam Maher, Attorney-General of South Australia, claim to be Aboriginal from his mother side, as he indeed does claim according to newspaper reports?
Kyam Maher shifts slightly in his office chair, pauses in thought for a second, and then, for the first time, talks publicly about his family’s Aboriginal heritage.
It’s never been a secret to Mr Maher or his family that his mum and country Labor stalwart Viv Maher is a descendant of Tasmanian Aborigines — but says it is a personal journey that only now he feels comfortable to freely talk about.
But once he starts, he has the distinct air of a man who is finally speaking words he has wanted to say in public for a long time.
“I don’t want to be unclear — I am extraordinarily proud that I have Aboriginal heritage and that I am an Aboriginal man,” Mr Maher says.
- The Adelaide Advertiser , May 13, 2017
For the avoidance of doubt, we thought we had better undertake the genealogy of Kyam Maher’s father, James (Jim) Maher. We thought that perhaps the Hon Kyam Maher MLC is confused and his Aboriginality really derives instead from his father’s side of the family?
So for completeness, our researchers have completed the alleged paternal family tree of Kyam Maher, that of his father James Maher, which is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - The Alleged Paternal Family Tree of South Australia’s first ‘Aboriginal’ Attorney-General, the Hon Kyam Maher, MLC showing that all his father’s (James Maher) ancestors were only from Ireland or England.
James Maher appears to have no Aboriginal ancestry. Consequently SA’s Attorney-General, Kyam Maher, appears to have no paternal Aboriginal ancestry. Full file here.
Our researchers, using the publicly available records, could find no evidence of any Aboriginal ancestors on the paternal branches of Kyam Maher’s alleged family tree. His father, James Maher, was of solid Irish descent, with a touch of English ancestry as well.
Now maybe our researchers missed something, or were wrong in their conclusions?
For example, perhaps there is some hidden factor that we are unaware of, such as an undocumented adoption of an Aboriginal person into James Maher’s family in the past, which therefore flows through as Aboriginal descent to him and his son Kyam. Or perhaps there is an Aboriginal ‘love-child’ way back in James Maher’s ancestral tree that was quietly incorporated into his family. We just don’t know. But we note that James Maher himself, as far as we could determine, has never claimed any Aboriginal descent.
Thus, based on our research and the lack of any Aboriginal affirmation by James Maher, there appears to be no prospect that Kyam Maher has any paternal Aboriginal descent either.
So it seems that South Australia’s claimed, ‘first Aboriginal Attorney-General’ , has two parents Viv and James Maher who both appear to have no Aboriginal descent.
This quite a conundrum for our readers in that, arguably the highest ranking Aboriginal family in South Australia’s modern history (in a legal sense - Kyam being the Attorney-General) actually appears to have no members who have any Aboriginal ancestry.
Figure 2 - South Australian Attorney-General, the Hon Kyam Maher MLC (centre), with his late mother, the alleged ‘Tasmanian Aboriginal’ woman, Viv Maher, and his Irish-English-Australian father, James Maher. Is this an Aboriginal family? The genealogical evidence suggests not. Photo source
To illustrate the depth of research that we undertake in our work, when constructing family trees, we have included in this post the full 112 pages of genealogical research notes of the alleged paternal family tree of Kyam Maher (in two files due to their size):
Part A of James Maher’s alleged Family Tree - Research notes
Part B of James Maher’s alleged Family Tree - Research notes
To try to clarify our reader’s conundrum, we have written to the South Australian Attorney-General’s Office requesting a comment from the Hon Kyam Maher (or his office) on what appears to be his mistaken belief that his mother was of Aboriginal descent.
Our letter is below, along with the preliminary acknowledgement of receipt by the SA Attorney-General’s Office. We will post on this site any further response from the Hon Kyam Maher MLC should it eventuate.
Further Reading
Another ‘warning bell goes off’
As we mentioned in our first post on the ‘Aboriginal’ Maher family, our genealogical researchers are now very experienced in recognising the ‘warning-bells’ that start to go off during genealogical investigations into ‘fakes.’
One such warning bell is that ‘fake’ Aborigines often publicly endorse other ‘fake’ Aborigines.
So the ‘warning bells’ are ringing loudly when we learn that, Kyam Maher has spent time driving ‘fake’ Aboriginal author Bruce Pascoe around South Australia, and Maher publicly recommends Pascoe’s thoroughly discredited book, Dark Emu.
