Academic Integrity at Western Sydney University, or Not?
After our recent post on Western Sydney University Professor, Aunty Kerrie Doyle’s unbelievable claim that she had a recording of Aboriginal man, Pemulwuy, singing a Welcome to Country, we received an email from one of our Aboriginal readers, Bob, that put a whole new spin on the Professor’s claims.
After reading our post, Bob felt sure that the words that Aunty Kerrie Doyle claimed Pemulwuy sang,
‘Barrabula barra ma, mangine wey enguna’
looked surprisingly familiar.
After some searching through his files, Bob realised he had indeed seen these words before. They were the opening lines of ‘A Song of the Natives of New South Wales’ that had been written down in London in 1793 by Edward Jones (1752-1824), ‘the Welsh harpist, composer, folk music collector and bard to the Prince of Wales (later George IV)’ (Ref. 1).
Jones had written down the song based on ‘the Singing of Bennelong and Yam-Roweny [Yemmerrawanne or Yuremany] the two Chiefs who were brought to England some years ago from Botany Bay by Governor Phillips [sic]. The subject of the Song is in praise of their Lovers…’ (Figure 1).
Jones published the words and music in 1811 as, ‘A Song of the Natives of New South Wales’ in Musical Curiosities (London, 1811). A copy of the relevant page is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - Source
So it would appear that a professor of Western Sydney University, Aunty Kerrie Doyle, has ‘lifted’ the words, from a piece of sheet music from 1811, that was a song of praise for the lovers of two Aboriginal men, Bennelong and Yam-Roweny, and then claimed that these same words were sung as a Welcome to Country by another contemporary Aboriginal man, Pemulwuy.
The professor claims that she has an actual recording of Pemulwuy singing this welcome to country, despite the fact that he died in 1802, more than 50 years prior to the invention of sound recordings.
We could not find anywhere that Professor Doyle acknowledges or cites that these words she is using in her ‘Pemulwuy Welcome to Country’ were orginally published by Edward Jones in 1811 as the opening lines of a song in ‘praise of Lovers’ by Bennelong and Yam-Roweny, first performed in London in 1793.
In our opinion, this is a serious breach of academic integrity by Professor Aunty Kerrie Doyle. It should not be acceptable for a university lecturer to take Aboriginal words from a song in one context and then use the same words in another, unrelated context and give them completely new meanings, and then teach this to naive students. It may not be ‘plagiarism’ [Doyle doesn’t claim the words as her own] but it is damn very close given that she alone now publicly performs this particular Pemulwuy Welcome to Country in her own ‘kindergarten-tempo’ clap stick style.’
As a comparison to Professor Doyle’s version, we have located a recording of Edward Jones’s, ‘A Song of the Natives of New South Wales’, performed by a Clarence Slockee and posted on Facebook by NITCV on 19 November 2018 (Ref. 2)
In our opinion, it would seem that Western Sydney University students are being greatly mislead about the colonial and Aboriginal history of our country if they attended classes by Professor Doyle.
Reference 1 - Smith, Keith Vincent, 1793: A Song of the Natives of New South Wales, eBLJ 2011, Article 14, Copy here and source here
Reference 2 - NTIV Facebook
Further Reading
Below is a film clip of Aunty Kerrie performing her unique rendition of Pemulwuy’s ficticious Welcome to Country with the ‘lifted’ lyrics from ‘a song in praise of lovers’ by Bennelong and Yam-Roweny.
We will welcome any submissions of short audio clips from readers who can read sheet music - please send us your rendition of Edward Jones’s Song of the natives of New South Wales (Figure 1). It would be interesting for our readers to hear how Jones actually presented the song.
Update 7 Jan 2022.
An ‘interested reader’ sent us a link to another version of the ‘song in praise of lovers’. It is presented in a slightly different style again and is sourced from ABC Radio (Source)
Further Reading here
