of Anthropology made it the only university in Australia with an anthropology department and its inaugural incumbent, Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, advocated for a more social approach to anthropological research. Together with a new interest in the Pacific regions and Australia’s colony of New Guinea, Sydney’s convenient location promised new and bountiful anthropological fields to explore. The scientists at Adelaide were sorely disappointed. Although the Rockefeller board had recommended SABAR receive a portion of the funding through the ANRC, the scientists at Adelaide believed what they received was penury. A more direct approach was required.
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SABAR’s research direction was closely aligned with the interests of Charles Davenport, head of the Eugenics Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor in the US. Davenport was a member of the influential US branch of the Galton Society3 which enjoyed strong connections with the Rockefeller Foundation board. The decision to establish the new chair of Anthropology at the University of Sydney rather than at University of Adelaide put the Galton Society’s request for eugenics studies in Australia in jeopardy. Davenport, aided by Yale University Professor Clark Wissler, pressed the Rockefeller board to ensure that part of their funding was reserved to support work at the University of Adelaide. In addition, SABAR also accessed direct funding from the Carnegie Corporation and Yale University via Clark Wissler who donated at least one of their film cameras4 as well as private donations. Much of the fieldwork was carried out by researchers from the University of Adelaide on a voluntary basis during their vacations.5 Collectively, the funds enabled the employment of a dedicated cinematographer on the expedition along with the latest film technology available; at least two cinematic cameras; a 35 mm and a 16 mm black-and-white silent format. Some footage of this expedition was recorded on the new Kodachrome 16 mm colour silent cinematic film indicating their access to and uptake of the very latest technology.6 Like Spencer and Gillen, the ←36 | 37→SABAR scientists were looking for “authenticity”. Although the authenticity they were seeking however, had more to do with biometric indicators.
Blood Grouping and the Absorption Policy
The confluence of eugenics, new research in genetics and hereditary, as well as the debates about racial hierarchy, provided the context in which Cleland could conceive that blood groups might provide a useful and objective indicator of racial affiliation. By 1931, Cleland and Professor Harvey Johnston had developed a hypothesis that blood groups could be used as racial markers. The hypothesis was based on the work of a Polish husband and wife team Ludwick and Hanka Hirschfeld who developed the Biochemical Race Index (BRI) during the First World War. The Index linked blood types to geographical locations across the globe, concluding: “the prevalence of the group A is a characteristic of the European peoples … and that blood group B had originated in India”.7 It implied a polygenic origin for humans, challenging the more widely accepted monogenic theory proposed by Charles Darwin.8 The Hirschfelds advocated for an internationalised study of blood groups claiming it “would be necessary to have close co-operation between anthropologists and the blood groupers”.9 The importance of this Index to the work of the SABAR group meant the origin of Aboriginal Australians could be determined through blood grouping.
Cleland had been collecting blood group data since 1922 and the conclusions he drew from his work simultaneously reinforced the findings of two other Australian doctors, A. H. Tebbutt and Sarah McConnel; that Aboriginal people were an early offshoot of Caucasians. He believed that the long isolation and separation of Aboriginal people from other groups ←37 | 38→explained the high numbers in group A and an absence of group B which he believed pointed to a lack of Indian or Asian presence.10 The allure of this hypothesis fitted with the belief that science could provide an objective stage where theories of racial hierarchy could be played out. Cleland believed that the resulting data collected would provide a means to racially identify people.
His results indicated a close relationship between Aboriginal people and Caucasian Australians stimulating heated debate not only within the scientific community but also within the wider community. Controversially, Cleland believed it was feasible that Aboriginal peoples could be biologically absorbed into the mainstream white population without causing any undue genetic detriment. Cleland became the foremost advocate for the biological absorption of Aboriginal people.11 It was believed this attempt to phenotypically12 “disappear” Aboriginal people was the answer to what was commonly referred to as the “Aboriginal problem”.
Two Aboriginal Protectors, Cecil Cook in the Northern Territory (1927–1939) and A. O. Neville in Western Australia (1915–1940) were also enthusiastic supporters of an absorption policy. They saw it as a remedy to the inconvenience of having to make special considerations for a minority population group. Others saw it as an opportunity to ensure a unified society. Contrary to what Cleland and his colleagues had in mind, Cook and Neville sought a more structured and methodical approach to how the policy was managed. Sadly, in the hands of these two men it led to the forced separation of families, The Stolen Generations, and today most Aboriginal families still suffer from the familial and cultural dysfunction caused by their interpretation and management of the policy. Although Life in Central Australia makes no specific references to eugenics or policies regarding absorption, the film is ideologically framed by these contemporary ideas. It demonstrates the processes of collecting the biometric data used to support the range of hypotheses proposed by the research group.
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The Film
The silent black-and-white film shows how the scientists interacted with the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere people who came to the scientists’ camp. It depicts them as test subjects that provide a source of biomedical data with which to test various hypotheses. For example, the audience observes the methods of blood collection used in the field at this time to develop the hypothesis that Aboriginal peoples were “safe” to absorb into the settler Australian population. The film serves as a visual record of the methodology employed in the field, helping to anchor the visual narrative to the scientific circumstances that were in play when the film was produced.
Establishing the integrity and proficiency of the scientists, the film records the performative display of what the researchers believed to be their scientific objectivity. Each of the researchers engaged their imagined audience by regularly acknowledging the presence of the camera whilst they carried out their tests and experiments and interacted with the Warlpiri, Ngarti and Anmatjere people. They demonstrated how they caste Plaster of Paris face masks, took blood samples from earlobes, measured basal metabolic rates, recorded songs and vocabularies and conducted psychological tests; faithfully recorded to demonstrate their scientific objectivity and proficiency.
The film’s narrative of one hour, focuses on the scientist’s three weeks round journey from Adelaide to Cockatoo Creek in three stages. The first comprising 00:05:58 minutes, shows the group of scientists leaving Adelaide by train to Alice Springs. The group included:
Dr T. Draper Campbell [dentistry] (Organiser), Professor J. B. Cleland [pathologist and ornithologist] (Chairman of the Board for Anthropological Research), Professor T. Harvey Johnston [Professor of Zoology specialising in parasitology], Professor C. S.
