Young historian Brian James spoke with Josie Newton who has shared her Wiradjuri family history story, and is looking to find out more.
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Questions have been provided by Brian James, with the answers from Josie.
Why do you want to search your family history?
Understanding more about your family history/heritage leads the way to community identity, family identity and individual identity, and those embedded traditions and values.
I choose to identify as Wiradjuri because I feel very strongly about that connection to country, spirituality and community. In my families case, I know my ancestry is both Wiradjuri and Celtic (Irish) so it's natural to gather what I know from my father and my mother and search more broadly.
In our (Wiradjuri) culture and all cultures, belonging is knowing who your mob are - that has always been the motivator for me. Where did my family come from? What did they do? How did they survive? Where did they go? Why did they go? And who are they? Finally, and most importantly who would not want to be connected to the oldest continuous living culture on earth?
What you have found so far?
The context or story is shaped by the dramatic impact colonisation continues to have on our family and all First Nations families. I have a great deal of information about how my family lived from the 1860s onwards, and what they did to survive in the region and contribute to the story of Burrangong and later, Young.
I gathered this information through family story-telling and from information provided to me in the 1980s from the Young Family History Centre.
I would like to take the opportunity here to acknowledge the kindness, superior local knowledge and great interest in my family history shown to me by the late Mrs Joyce Simpson who as a young girl, recounted her memories of Mrs Kitty Woods, my great great grandmother, seeing her in the streets of Young where she walked into town daily.
I also looked to traditional methods of family history research - the Aboriginal organisation Link-Up, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, NSW State Archives, and the National Library Trove.
Through interested Aboriginal history researchers, for example Phillipa Scarlett, a researcher for The Black Diggers Project, who linked me with a close relative also researching the Kennedy/Riley/Woods history, and I have shared my families deep roots and my genealogical and historical connection to country with the Young Local Aboriginal Land Council (established 1984).
The above is a snapshot of my journey - 40 years of looking for my mob, commenced in 1976 with my dad Neil Newton, and I capture our story in order to show respect to my family elders, and what they endured.
I learnt that my great great grandmother had at least 14 children, and that she was barely a teenager at first birth.
This story is not unusual for the times, nor is the fact that during this period - 1840s onwards, all over our region there were many infant deaths due to smallpox, and other factors related to poverty, dispossession and dismantling of traditional family life.
I also read stories of great resilience and strength, as people who knew her recollect in her very late years, losing the Star Hotel (previously The Post Office Hotel) and approaching local landowners to 'pay the rent'.
These stories paint a picture of a determined, stout brown woman, sturdy, healthy in old age, and much loved by her family and those around her. And, there are layers to her story and the families story that are shrouded in secrecy against the backdrop of racism and apartheid.
What are you studying at university?
I am enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Health Promotion: Social and Emotional Wellbeing through the University of Sydney.
I have worked in Aboriginal health for many years, my whole career actually. Right now I am working on a project looking at how we can improve wellness and support to young Aboriginal women leaving custody and returning to their communities. I learn Wiradjuri language with Aunty Iris Reid at Dubbo TAFE and also help out with an Aboriginal medical service in Forbes.
Explain your interest in and your connection with your Aboriginal history.
I have always been connected to my culture. The overwhelming urge to search though is hard to put into words. I can only believe that my ancestors are guiding me. If we talk about say spirituality, what is it? what does it mean? In the western context, we go to church, we believe in 'god', or a higher being, invisible and omnipresent (always there).
Aboriginal spirituality is no different. In fact, as the oldest continuous living culture on earth, the most researched race on earth, it's surprising and sad that this dimension of spirituality is maybe not so well known or rather, appreciated as the essence of being Aboriginal.
Tell us about your recent trip to Young.
The recent trip to Young was great. I was met by the Mr Brian James, Young Family Historian, and other friends of Young Historic Society and we went to places where my family had a presence, mainly in Burrangong.
We went to the Burrangong homestead of James White, and to places where my great uncle and his wife ((William Woods (Burramunda) and Annie (Bamblett)), visited and stayed for lengths of time in a horse drawn cart, that is in some gullies out back of Burrangong.
While it was sad, it also showed me again, family pride and resilience, travelling great distances by horse and cart from Forbes, to be close to country, a place of great significance to him (William). There is pride in that for me - to stand in the shadow of the same trees and for a moment time stands still.
What is your intention for the future?
I'd like my family to be remembered in Young - the great Jimmy Sharman boxers Peter and Leo Woods, the horse trainer Peter Woods (snr) (my great grandfather) who worked at both the Commercial and Criterion in Young as the groomsman, his brother William Woods, who reportedly rode a Lance Skuthorpe outlaw, and most of all Kitty (Catherine) Woods (nee Riley/Kennedy) - my great great grandmother, strong in the face of adversity, the courage I always draw on, and my link to the deep dimension of spirituality - my special place.
Kitty's parents are known as James Riley and Katherine Kennedy, her sister Maggie and brother James.
Our family have footprints all over Wiradjuri country - in Burrangong, Young, Forbes, Griffith, Condobolin (Merriwa) and Greenthorpe (Iandra) and on Gadigal country - Redfern, Marrickville and Kensington.
- Brian James produces a history column each Tuesday for publication in the Young Witness on behalf the Young Historical Society Inc. He contributed this column after Josie's recent visit to Young.