English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

European colonisation of south-eastern Australia brought Aboriginal people into contact with a vast array of new material culture items. These were often first introduced via ‘gift giving’ and exchange in an attempt to create and cement social alliances. Many Aboriginal people engaged in the new economy including the cash economy via trade and exchange, employment and what the Europeans described as begging. For the most part such engagements have not been systematically studied or analysed. In Melbourne, Kulin people used a form of economic action that Europeans perceived to be ‘begging’ as a means to engage with the settler economy from the very earliest days of contact. Although there were other mechanisms used by Aboriginal people to obtain funds and material culture, begging was highly visible and tended to elicit negative responses from the settlers. In this chapter, I explore Aboriginal economic engagement and what was described as begging. I argue that this was far from a mere opportunistic strategy for the acquisition of money, food and other goods, but was perceived by the Kulin as a viable, justifiable form of economic engagement – a kind of reciprocity for what they had lost. This was both economic entrepreneurialism and agency as the Kulin shifted their traditional econoscape to accommodate the new resources presented by European colonisation. In using the term econoscape I am drawing on the working of Arjun Appadurri, via the Australian analysis of Rae Norris.3 An econoscape refers to the mode of production, its variability and capacity to change. It is overlain with cultural relevance and recognises that different cultural groups will perceive these differently. I use this term to describe the economic landscape of the Kulin. This framework allows an interrogation of three interwoven themes: begging and reciprocity; wages, employment and begging; and finally, the longevity of begging as a form of economic engagement.

Tickpen’, ‘Boro Boro’: Aboriginal economic engagements in early Melbourne