Aunty Brenda Kanofski, a Bidjara-Wakka Wakka woman, had always wondered about her Chinese heritage.
"My grandma used to call me the china doll," the 68-year-old told the ABC.
At age four, Aunty Brenda discovered why.
"She told us that we are of Chinese heritage and we wanted to know a little bit more, and she said it was through my great-great grandpa."
Aunty Brenda grew up in Gayndah, around 350 kilometres north of Brisbane. Her mother's family are among the traditional owners of that area known as Wakka Wakka country.
Apart from the conversation with her grandmother Lucky Law and the flavour of fried noodles cooked by her mother May, Aunty Brenda lived most of her life knowing next to nothing about her Chinese heritage, let alone the origins of her mysterious Chinese great-great grandfather.
"I didn't learn a lot off my grandma Lucky, because in those days they didn't talk a lot about those sort of marriages I guess you'd say, and it was just through curiosity that I asked one day," she said.
Chinese shepherds arrived before the gold rush
Several years ago, Aunty Brenda started to delve further into her family's past while teaching part-time at a primary school.
One branch of the family tree stretches back to her great-great grandfather John Law.
"He came to Australia in 1842 … he was a shepherd," she said.
"The other thing we knew was that he has come from Amoy."
Some 3,000 Chinese men and boys came to Australia from Amoy — now known as Xiamen, in China's eastern Fujian province — in the 1840s, to work as shepherds across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
The so-called Amoy shepherds were part of the first organised movement of labour from China after the first Chinese migrant arrived in 1818.
Historian Dr Maxine Darnell has been retracing the history of the Amoy shepherds. She said they came as indentured labourers on what would be regarded today as unconscionable five-year contracts and often worked under harsh conditions.
"Their indentures meant that they were essentially locked into their employment and could not easily leave for the goldfields as much of the free labour force did," she said.
Many Chinese workers were shipped in to fill labour shortages after British convict ships ceased in 1840, about a decade before the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s brought many more Chinese people to Australian shores.
Although Dr Darnell said there is little record about why these men moved to Australia, she noticed the time coincided with when China was recovering from the Opium Wars.
From 'hostility' to intermarriages
The historical connections between Indigenous and Chinese people in Australia started at least 150 years ago, yet their stories have largely gone unrecorded.
Historian Dr Sandi Robb has been researching the relationships and marriage patterns of Chinese men and Aboriginal women in Queensland.
Dr Robb said the relationship between the two communities had a bumpy start and met with "hostility and fearfulness".
"From the Chinese perspective, they were looking after sheep and from an Aboriginal perspective, they are different people that look differently and dress differently, [who] are on their country and haven't asked permission," she told the ABC.
Dr Robb said the relationship gradually turned positive towards the end of the 1800s. As traditional customs of Aboriginal marriages deteriorated, some intermarriages occurred.
"By the time it came to 1890, [Aboriginal women] were forced to step outside of their traditional law and make other marriage choices, or able to step outside, because, one, the partners that they may have been traditionally betrothed to were not available because they have been killed," she said.
John Law was one of the small number of Chinese shepherds who married an Aboriginal woman.
Their daughter, Kate Law, married a Chinese shepherd, James Coy, in 1877. They had 11 children, among them Aunty Brenda's grandma Lucky Law.
"[As the Chinese] went to certain places in Queensland to work, they struck up a friendship or an association with the Indigenous people and between the two parties, the two countries," Aunty Brenda said.
"I believe that both the Chinese and the Australian Aboriginals learnt a lot about the different cultures, the different agricultural aspects of the land and the cattle industries, and also more importantly in Gayndah was the orchards, the citrus fruit."
In 2019, the Queensland Government acknowledged the Chinese shepherds' contribution to establishing the farming region of Darling Downs with "traditional skills in irrigation and crop production across the arable land".
Bonding over a search for the past
Aunty Brenda's journey to retrace her family history needed the help of a Chinese friend.
She met Brisbane resident Xianyang Tang through Facebook in 2018 and they quickly bonded with each other.
"I really have discovered a lot more in the last two years, since I've been friends with this young Chinese man," she said.
"Tang knows I was really wanting to find at least one relative, at least see where my [great-great] grandfather was from. He has continued to find links for me to Amoy, to Chinese people."
Mr Tang said he was touched by Aunty Brenda's determination to seek her roots and volunteered to help her.
"I was just recently discovering my family history at that time and I completely felt for her," he told the ABC.
Mr Tang said he found a few Law family connections in Xiamen, but because many records were destroyed during China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, many answers remain unknown.
"I've always been very proud of my identity … I've got a very huge family from John Law, not one of us denies our Chinese heritage," Aunty Brenda said.
"My dream is to go over to China, to Amoy [Xiamen] specifically, and see and try to visualise the trip my grandfather had done.
"There's not much I don't know about my Aboriginal heritage, but I come from two heritages and I'm determined to find the other one."
Read the Chinese version: 阅读中文版本
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA1LTI5L2F1c3RyYWxpYW4tYWJvcmlnaW5hbC13b21hbi1sb29rcy1mb3ItaGVyLWNoaW5lc2Utcm9vdHMvMTIyODIzMzLSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTIyODIzMzI?oc=5
2020-05-28 20:20:38Z
CAIiENw7RXIpFqEUOQlDZX2KuC0qFggEKg4IACoGCAow3vI9MPeaCDDciw4
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "An Aboriginal woman's journey to uncover her lost Chinese roots amid the coronavirus pandemic - ABC News"
Post a Comment