David UNAIPON

UNAIPON, DAVID (b. Point McLeay Mission SA, 28 Sept 1872, d. Tailem Bend, SA, 7 Feb 1967). Aboriginal leader, evangelist, and inventor.

David Unaipon was the fourth of nine children of James Ngunaitponi (simplified to Unaipon) and his wife Nymbulda, both Yaraldi speakers, a sub-group of the larger Aboriginal complex called the Ngarrindjeri. James, born about 1830, became a Christian through the work of an itinerant missionary of the Free Church of Scotland, James Reid. James Unaipon then became associated with George Taplin (q.v.) and his Point McLeay Mission which was run by the Adelaide-based Aborigines' Friends' Association. He was the mission's first adult Christian and the first of the 'Taplin men', Aboriginal evangelists who travelled widely in South Australia. In 1871 James became the first Ngarrindjeri deacon. Never denying the rich heritage of his Aboriginal cultural past, he assisted Taplin to record Ngarrindjeri customs and stories.

Born at the mission, David Unaipon attended the mission school where his intelligence and curiosity were soon evident. At the age of 13, he was placed as a servant with C B Young, a man of learning through whose books and encouragement, David developed his interest in philosophy, literature and science. In 1890 he returned to the mission, and although his frustration at the lack of interesting employment on the mission led him occasionally to seek work in Adelaide, his colour was a barrier and he was more or less associated with Point McLeay for the rest of his life. In 1902 he married Katherine Carter, a woman of the Tangani group.

It was as an inventor that Unaipon first achieved fame. He patented his modified shearing handpiece in 1909. Because of his wide reading of scientific journals, he was often the first person in Australia to make public reference to recent scientific and technological research. His publicising of such predictions as polarised light and helicopter flight led to labels like 'the black genius' and 'Australia's Leonardo', and he did indeed work privately on the development of such innovations. He patented numerous inventions between 1909 and 1944 including a centrifugal motor, a mechanical propulsion device, and a multiracial wheel.

A Christian all his life, Unaipon was active and out-going, a preacher who modelled himself on the forceful, Bible-based style of the missionary evangelists who had influenced him. His obsession with correct English led him to adopt for public purposes a pedantic style of language which owed more to the classics he read, such as Milton and Bunyan, than it did to current English usage. The Aborigines' Friends' Association employed Unaipon as a deputationer, in which role he travelled and preached widely in seeking support for the Point McLeay Mission. He normally emphasised 'improvement'—'Look at me and you will see what the Bible can do'. He was eagerly sought as a speaker, gaining considerable fame in the southern states.

In his own sophisticated way, Unaipon was a political activist in the Aboriginal cause. As early as 1912 he led a deputation to the SA government regarding conditions at the Point McLeay Mission, stressing his belief that the state was failing in its duty to Aboriginal people by leaving their advancement to the funding voluntarily donated to the Mission. He became the acknowledged spokesperson for Aboriginal people generally, and influenced both state and commonwealth policies in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1928 and 1929 he assisted the Bleakley inquiry into Aboriginal welfare. By this time he was the best-known Aboriginal person in Australia. This, together with his obvious erudition and impressive speaking skills, lent him a degree of immunity from the official discrimination suffered by most Aboriginal people. When, however, he spoke of land rights, and began advocating a Commonwealth funded model state for Aboriginal people, he was arrested on a trumped-up vagrancy charge.

Unaipon, like his father before him, never lost touch with his Aboriginal identity. He collected Aboriginal legends, and his researches into Greek and Egyptian Mythology at the SA Museum gave him a framework for stressing their validity and relevance. In 1927, 1928 and 1929, he published his three little books of Aboriginal stories (later plagiarised by W Ramsay Smith).

Unaipon was awarded a Coronation Medal in 1953, but he was then 81, and younger Aboriginal people were beginning to assume political prominence. Less courted by the influential, he nevertheless remained a well-known figure in SA' He travelled widely on foot, preaching in Adelaide and country towns, was regularly refused accommodation because of his race, and often detained by the police. At 87 he retired to Point McLeay to work on his inventions, convinced that he was close to discovering the secret of perpetual motion. Survived by a son, David Unaipon died in the hospital at Tailem Bend aged 94, and was buried in Point McLeay cemetery.

David Unaipon was an interesting, complex and enigmatic person. His fame, learning, erudition, sophistication, fastidious speech and Aboriginal identity combined to confound the widespread stereotype of the lazy, ineducable, uncivilised, socially and culturally inferior native. Unaipon seemed to embody the qualities which those who were kindly disposed to Aboriginal people generally hoped to see them develop. For that reason, he was a person who made many uncomfortable, for he never quite conformed to the model in the minds of the benevolent but paternalistic White Australians. While it is true that many of the reforms he advocated, such as improved education, health and employment opportunities, were the same as those recommended in policies based upon the hope that Aboriginal people might be assimilated into the white Australian community, there were significant differences. Unaipon never advocated the disappearance or absorption of the Aboriginal race and culture. He wanted Aboriginal people to enter the modern world, but on their own terms.

ADB 12; G Jenkin, Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri (Adelaide, 1979); G Rowe, Sketches of Outstanding Aborigines (Adelaide, 1955)

JOHN HARRIS