Portraits explore Dutch sailor link

The Museum of Geraldton has opened a new exhibit that looks into the potential of Dutch ancestry in the family trees of indigenous West Australians.

“Descendants of the VOC (Dutch East India Company)” explores the cultural identities of indigenous people who intermarried with Dutch sailors throughout South Africa and the Pacific Islands, and collects oral histories of the Nanda, Malgana, Wadjarri and Noongar peoples pointing to the possibility of 17th century castaways integrating with WA Aboriginal population.

The exhibit also incorporates a series of photographic portraits taken by Dutch photographer Geert Snoeijer, rendered in the style of 17th century paintings.

Curtin University historian Nonja Peters said people of mixed heritage faced oppression from the colonial governments in South Africa and from the native inhabitants in Indonesia.

“What they used to do in Africa was a pencil test, if the pencil stayed in your curls you were too black to go to school,” she said.

“It’s interesting the way they treat some of the names they’ve been called like the Basters (bastards, in South Africa) or the Mesticos (mixed race, in Indonesia), they don’t treat it like a negative term ... they say ‘we are the Basters and we’re proud of it’.

“It’s about identity and belonging.”

Even more unfortunately for these groups, 20th century German anthropologists came to study their features, and would eventually deliver reports to Adolf Hitler indicating which groups should be exterminated.

Mr Snoeijer said the key difference between colonial settlers and sailors who washed ashore in WA was that they were 100 per cent dependent on the help of Aboriginal Australians to survive.

He said that the Australian people he photographed had none of the “inbetweenership” found in the other groups, the families took pride in their unique piece of Dutch heritage but ultimately identified as Aboriginal far more than anything else.

Local participant in the portrait study, Rod Ogilvie, said he could remember his elders talking about the Dutch from about age five or six.

“I was very confused of course but it makes a lot of sense now,” he said.

“My grandmother, my uncles, my aunties, people who lived around Kalbarri, Shark Bay, Carnarvon and even further down the coast were very much aware that there was a connection going way back.

“I always make the point (to my kids and grandkids) that we are firstly Nanda people, and they know where their country is, where we belong, and that they were descendants of first Australians but now I also make the point that we’re also descendants of second Australians — the Dutch who were marooned on the coast.”

WA Museum chief executive Alec Coles said the issue of whether marooned Dutch sailors cohabitated with WA’s indigenous population was a contentious one but he suspected the portraits would convince some people.

“In some cases these descendants bear physical features which seem to suggest Dutch heritage. In other cases their oral histories include stories of white survivors of a ‘tall ship’ shipwrecked on the cliffs,” he said.

The exhibition is at the Museum of Geraldton until February 2017.