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For the Minnesota politician, see Walter Roth (politician).

Dr Walter E. Roth

Walter Edmund Roth (2 April 1861 – 5 April 1933) was a British colonial administrator, anthropologist and medical practitioner, who worked in Queensland, Australia and British Guiana between 1898 and 1928.

Roth and his brother, Henry Ling Roth, are the subject of a joint biography by Russell McDougall & Iain Davidson: The Roth Family, Anthropology, and Colonial Administration (2008).[1]

Queensland

Roth was appointed the first Northern Protector of Aboriginals in 1898 and was based in Cooktown, Queensland. From 1904 to 1906 he was Chief Protector and part of his duties was to record Aboriginal Australian cultures.[citation needed]

Controversies

A “vigorous Protector” in North Queensland, according to historian Barrie Reynolds, “Roth attracted “the hostility of the local European residents” for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous Australians.[2]

It was, however, the reaction to his controversial anthropological research that would trigger Roth’s departure from Queensland. In either 1900 or 1901, Roth paid an Aboriginal couple to demonstrate a sexual position of which he took photographs. In 1904 and 1905, speeches in the Queensland Parliament on this and other aspects of his work were said to form “a pile as high as the Eiffel Tower”.[3]: 7–8  According to V. B. (Joe) Lesina MP: “Hansard teemed with speeches delivered against the administration of Dr Roth until they had a pile as high as the Eiffel Tower, and the Minister brushed everything aside as he would a fly from his aristocratic nose”.[4] Roth attempted to defend his actions by stating that the photographs were taken for purely scientific purposes,[5] Social Scientist Helen Pringle (School of Politics and International Relations) writes of the episode that in her opinion: “Forcing, or persuading, Aborigines to perform sexual acts like performing bears for a white male audience fits squarely even within then current criteria of enslavement, a heinous crime that shocks the conscience of mankind then and now.”[3]: 28  The controversy contributed to his resignation on the grounds of ill health and departure for British Guiana in 1906.[citation needed]

Publications

References

  1. ^ Russell McDougall & Iain Davidson, (2008), The Roth Family, Anthropology, and Colonial Administration, Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London Institute of Archaeology Publications, Left Coast Press ISBN 978-1-59874-352-4
  2. ^ Roth, W. (1984) The Queensland Aborigines, 1984 facsimile edition, Queensland Government Printer; originally Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines (1897).
  3. ^ a b Pringle, Helen (2004). The fabrication of Female Genital Mutilation: the UN, Walter Roth and ethno-pornography (PDF). University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia: Australasian Political Studies Association 2004 Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 May 2016. Refereed conference paper: presented to the APSA Conference, University of Adelaide, 29 September – 1 October 2004.
  4. ^ According to MP V. B. (Joe) Lesina, Queensland Parliamentary Debates (QPD), 24 November 1905, 1810; cited by Pringle, op cit.
  5. ^ According to Roth: “The description and illustration of the posture assumed in the sexual act was of the highest anthropological interest in that it in large measure defended my thesis that the mutilation known as Sturt’s terrible rite, or sub-incision (by Professor Stirling) or intro-cision (by myself) did not act as had hitherto been supposed as a preventive to procreation…The photograph was taken for purely scientific purposes only and is one of a series (defecation, micturition, tree climbing, sitting, standing) of natural postures which every anthropologist makes inquiry about, with a view to ascertaining the connections (if any) between the highest apes and the lowest types of man.” Roth to Bishop White, 19 June 1904, QSA A/58850, tabled in QPD, xcii, 13 July 1904, 585. Bishop White wrote to Roth on 3 June 1904, and Roth’s reply is dated 19 June 1904. White telegrammed that he was satisfied with Roth’s explanation, letter of 8 July 1904.