Inside the Tribe

The artist Albert Namatjira was one of the very few Aborigines who have gained a partial acceptance by the highly colour-conscious Australian white community by virtue of a special talent. Mrs Batty, a student of Aboriginal legends, who was closely acquainted with Namatjira, has written this account of his life and work. It seems that Namatjira steered a difficult middle course between the tribal groups, which he never abandoned, and the adulation of members of the white community, who regarded him as a curiosity. Mrs Batty writes unpretentiously and with evident sympathy, though there are touches of condescension in her description of the culture of the Aranda tribe to which Namatjira belonged. There was in fact a school of Aranda artists, who had adapted the method of Aboriginal art to produce mock weapons for sale, with designs burnt into the wood with red-hot fencing wire. Namatjira extended their techniques, using mulga plaques; and eventually, instructed by the artist Rex Battarbee, he learnt the use of water-colours.

Namatjira’s subsequent life was not wholly tragic. He raised a family, and his paintings earned money which he used chiefly to benefit his tribe. But the irony of his relationship to the white community is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that having been granted full Australian citizenship – a right denied to the Aborigines – and thus having acquired the right to buy liquor, he was sentenced in 1959 to six months’ hard labour for supplying liquor to a fellow tribesman. The sentence humiliated him and extinguished his desire to paint. He died soon afterwards. Mrs Batty’s account of his last years is particularly effective. It could be said that Namatjira died a victim of that dubious scale of values by which a man is considered important because of what he does, not because of who he is.

1965 (337)