Eaglehawk and Crow: Aboriginal knowledges, imperial networks and the evolution of religion

In March 1974, a group of Aboriginal leaders presented an open letter to the then Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies. Demanding Aboriginal ownership of Aboriginal knowledge from the anthropologists and other experts,they titled their letter, Eaglehawk and Crow.1In doing so, they alluded to an 1899 book. In hisEaglehawk and Crow, ethnographer and Presbyterian minister JohnMathew madethe unusual move of taking Aboriginal stories(he called them myths)and transforming them into historical sourcematerial,buttressing his theories about Aboriginal history in deep time. His peculiar use of Aboriginal knowledge was possible because of aparticular conception of the nature of myth andreligion and theirrelation to history, based onnewideas in the new field of comparative religion, originating in debates within Protestantism as well as encounters with diverse ritual and cultural practices born of expanding imperial networks.