Who Do You - Want Us to - Think Who You Are? - Part 6
‘At the Intersection of History and Identity, individuals look to discover … information from their family histories as a way of shaping their contemporary identities.’
- Matthew Elliott, The Inconvenient Ancestor (1)
Over this six-part series of posts on the ancestry of University of Sydney’s Ngarigu Indigenous woman, Professor Jakelin Troy, we have delved deep into the archives with the aim of confirming her claims of her Aboriginality.
‘I am Aboriginal Australian and my community is Ngarigu of the Snowy Mountains in south eastern Australia.’
- University of Sydney Professor Jakelin Troy. Source
Along the way Professor Troy has provided us with details of her own ancestry and we have married this information with publicly available records to enable the Aboriginality in the family tree of Professor Troy to be determined.
The Professor claims that the branch of her family tree that is Indigenous is through her mother Shirley. Her mother, grandmother and great grandmother provide her with Ngarigu Aboriginality and subsequently a connection to Country that ‘her people’ have had for millennia.
However, most surprisingly our research shows that none of these ancestors appear to be in fact Aboriginal. Professor Troy’s ancestors are in fact mostly colonisers - Anglo-Celtic, Snowy Mountain pioneers, whose ancestries all lead back to England, Ireland or the USA.
We are most confused. We have checked and rechecked our research but believe it, to the best of our ability, to be correct (2).
We have summarised Professor Troy’s ‘Aboriginal’ family tree branch in the following figure.
Summary of alleged family tree of Professor Jakelin Troy via her mother’s branch (Shirley Troy nee Beed), said by Professor Troy to be the branch that provides her Aboriginal descent (Notes 2 & 3).
Ever since we began our research into Professor Bruce Pascoe and his Dark Emu, we had received a stream of emails from Aboriginal people raising their alleged concerns about Professor Troy and her claims for Ngarigu ancestry. This prompted us to undertake a similar genealogical research project into Professor Troy and her work.
Maybe it is time to call upon Professor Troy’s media supporter, the ABC organisation, to ‘Fact check’ the ancestry claims made by Professor Troy on the ABC (here, here and here) and SBS (here)? Or even do an episode of ‘Who do You think you Are?’
Request your ABC Fact Check here
Likewise, we would welcome any comment from Professor Troy or her extended family should they be able to shed any light on the existence of any Aboriginality in her family tree as she claims.
We have done this series of posts into Professor Troy’s ancestry in good faith and only want to ensure that the integrity of the relatively successful ‘3-part-rule’ for Aboriginality is maintained. Some say the ‘3-part-rule’ is bad and yes, in many ways it is, but to many it seems to be the ‘least bad’ of all the dozens of ‘different classification systems (many with significant personal and social consequences) [that] have moved in and out of fashion’ during our history.
‘The definition of Aboriginality has a long and contentious history in Australia’ - and things can only get worse as the divisiveness of The Voice will require a clear definition of ‘Who is an Aborigine’ and therefore entitled to enrol to vote for The Voice if it gets into our Constitution.
Chinese President Xi Jinping might be musing (apocryphally at least), "May you Australia live in interesting times."
Notes
Elliot, Matthew, The Inconvenient Ancestor: Slavery and Selective Remembrance on Genealogy Television, Studies in Popular Culture, Spring 2017, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp74
The material published on this website is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Every effort has been made to ensure the quality of the material presented. The information presented is not intended to be the final determination of Professor Troy’s Aboriginal ancestry. Instead, this publicly available information is provided here in a way so as to assist Professor Troy herself in confirming her claim of Aboriginal descent as required by the ‘3-part-rule’ commonly used in Australia to confirm Aboriginality when receiving benefits linked to identified employment, government grants and Native Title claims.
All the genealogical work done on Professor Troy’s ancestry is supported by primary documentation and reference links, as provided in the six posts of the series published on this website. Should any researchers have any queries on where to find any particular primary source document we will be happy to attend to their request. Please email us.
