Walter Roth
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, active in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. He and his brother, Henry Ling Roth
Henry Ling Roth
Henry Ling Roth was an English-born anthropologist and museum curator, active in Australia.-Early life:Roth was born in London, the son of Dr Mathias Roth, an Austrian-born surgeon, and his English wife Anna Maria, née Collins. Henry was educated at University College School, London, and studied...
, are the subject of The Roth Family, Anthropology, and Colonial Administration.
Protector of Aborigines
He was appointed the first Northern Protector of Aborigines in 1898 and was based in Cooktown, QueenslandCooktown, Queensland
Cooktown is a small town located at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. At the 2006 census, Cooktown had a population of 1,336...
. From 1904 to 1906 he was Chief Protector and part of his duties was to record Aboriginal cultures.
The first three of his Bulletins on North Queensland ethnography were published in 1901, numbers 4 to 8 appearing between 1902 and 1906. In 1905 he was appointed a royal commissioner to inquire into the condition of the aborigines of Western Australia, and in 1906 he was made government medical officer, stipendiary magistrate. The remainder of Roth's bulletins on North Queensland ethnology, began to appear in the Records of the Australian Museum at Sydney in 1905; and numbers 9 to 18 will be found in volumes VI to VIII. He was given charge of the Demerara River, Rupununi, and north-western districts in 1915.
British Guiana
In 1906 Roth was made protector of Indians in the PomeroonPomeroon
Pomeroon can refer to either of the following:*Pomeroon River, a river in Guyana;*Pomeroon-Supenaam, a region in Guyana;*Pomeroon , a former colony in Guyana....
district of British Guiana
British Guiana
British Guiana was the name of the British colony on the northern coast of South America, now the independent nation of Guyana.The area was originally settled by the Dutch at the start of the 17th century as the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice...
. In 1924 his valuable An Introductory Study of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians was published at the government printing office at Washington, U.S.A., appended to the Thirty-eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Though called an introductory study this is an elaborate work of well over 300,000 words with hundreds of illustrations. A volume of Additional Studies of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana Indians was published in 1929 as Bulletin No. 91 of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Roth retired from the government service in 1928, and became curator of the Georgetown museum of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, and government archivist. Towards the end of his life he translated and edited Richard Schomburgh's Travels in British Guiana.
Professional recognition and awards
The Walter Roth Museum of AnthropologyWalter Roth Museum of Anthropology
The Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology is a museum of anthropology in Georgetown, Guyana and claims to be the oldest such museum in the English-speaking Caribbean region...
in Georgetown, Guyana
Georgetown, Guyana
Georgetown, estimated population 239,227 , is the capital and largest city of Guyana, located in the Demerara-Mahaica region. It is situated on the Atlantic Ocean coast at the mouth of the Demerara River and it was nicknamed 'Garden City of the Caribbean.' Georgetown is located at . The city serves...
has been named in his honour.
Controversies
According to Barrie Reynolds of James Cook UniversityJames Cook University
James Cook University is a public university based in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. The university has two Australian campuses, located in Townsville and Cairns respectively, and an international campus in Singapore. JCU is the second oldest university in Queensland—proclaimed in 1970—and the...
:
- "Roth proved a vigorous Protector...earn[ing] for himself the hostility of the local European residents of north Queensland that was to erupt in 1905 in a public petition for his dismissal."
Roth was involved in an incident where he "paid" an Aboriginal couple to demonstrate a sexual position of which he then 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".
- “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.”.
Although Roth defended his actions by stating the photograph was taken for purely scientific purposes only, the controversy led to his resignation on the grounds of ill health and departure for British Guiana (as it was then known) in 1906.
Dr Pringle writes of the episode that in her view:
- 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.
On-line publications
- Roth, Walter Edmund (1897) Ethnological Studies Among the North-west-central Queensland Aborigines E. Gregory, Government PrinterAccessed 16 March 2009.