32 Facts About Norman Tindale

Norman Barnett Tindale AO was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist.

Norman Tindale is best remembered for his work mapping the various tribal groupings of Aboriginal Australians at the time of European settlement, shown in his map published in 1940.

Norman Tindale was born on 12 October 1900 in Perth, Western Australia.

Norman Tindale's family moved to Tokyo and lived there from 1907 to 1915, where his father worked as an accountant at the Salvation Army mission in Japan.

Norman Tindale attended the American School in Japan, where his closest friend was Gordon Bowles, a Quaker who, like him, later became an anthropologist.

The family returned to Perth in August 1917, and soon after moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where Norman Tindale took up a position as a library cadet at the Adelaide Public Library, together with another cadet, the future physicist, Mark Oliphant.

Shortly after this, Norman Tindale lost the sight in one eye in an acetylene gas explosion which occurred while assisting his father with photographic processing.

Norman Tindale had already published thirty-one papers on entomological, ornithological and anthropological subjects before receiving his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Adelaide in March 1933.

Norman Tindale spent half a year, accompanying the missionary Hubert E Warren to sound out the area for an appropriate site for an Anglican mission, which as the Emerald River Mission, was established on west coast of Groote Eylandt.

Norman Tindale wrote up his observations for the South Australian Museum in two continuous reports, which constitute the first detailed account of the Warnindhilyagwa people on that island.

Each State Library in Australia holds copies of Norman Tindale material pertaining to their respective state; for example, the State Library of New South Wales has copies of genealogical charts and photographs from the communities of Boggabilla, Brewarrina, Cummeragunja, Kempsey, Menindee, Pilliga, Walgett, Wallaga Lake and Woodenbong.

Norman Tindale's genealogical collection is a key research tool for Australian Aboriginal people to discover evidence of their family lineage and connection with community.

In 1942 Norman Tindale joined the Royal Australian Air Force and, assigned the rank of wing commander, he was transferred to The Pentagon, where he worked with the Strategic Bombing Survey as an analyst for estimating the impact of bombing on the military and civilian population of Japan.

Norman Tindale played a major intelligence role in putting a halt to Japan's balloon bombing assault on the western coast of the United States.

Norman Tindale was instrumental in cracking the Japanese aircraft production code system, which gave the Allies reliable information as to Japanese air power.

On retirement after 49 years service with the South Australian Museum, Norman Tindale took up a teaching position at the University of Colorado and remained in the United States until his death, aged 93, in Palo Alto, California on 19 November 1993.

Norman Tindale is best remembered for his work mapping the various tribal groupings of Aboriginal Australians at the time of European settlement, which he based on his fieldwork and other sources, leading to the publication of his Map showing the distribution of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia in 1940.

Norman Tindale was meticulous in making notes on the provenance of each object purchased.

Norman Tindale dedicated the book to German Pallottine missionary, linguist, and anthropologist Ernest Ailred Worms, with these words "To the memory of Father Ernest A Worms whose active encouragement, beginning in the year 1952, led to the preparation of this work in its present form".

Norman Tindale produced the film while the camera-work was undertaken by Stocker.

Norman Tindale made a particular study of the primitive Hepialidae or ghost moth family of the order Lepidoptera.

Norman Tindale was awarded the Verco Medal of the Royal Society of South Australia during 1956, the Australian Natural History Medallion during 1968 and the John Lewis Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia during 1980.

Norman Tindale was eventually honoured with a doctorate by the Australian National University in 1980.

When Norman Tindale finally managed to print, unaltered, his own map, he represented the Aboriginal peoples as filling every nook and cranny of what became colonial Australia, avowing their former presence, much to the unease of many cartographers, everywhere.

The prevailing criticism of Norman Tindale's influential overview of Australian tribes stresses the dangers in his guiding premise that there is an overlap between the language spoken by a group, and its tribal domains.

In short, Norman Tindale thought that speakers of the same language constituted a unified territorial group identity.

Specifically, Burke noted that in his magnum opus, Norman Tindale had recognised and mapped in the land of a Djukan people, despite the fact that it was absent from the map of the area prepared by Ernest Wurms.

Again, Norman Tindale conjured up, or made a separate entry for, a tribe, the Jadira, on the basis of very scant evidence, but there is almost no independent testimony that would allow the inference.

Ray Wood argues that Norman Tindale's mapping of Cape York Peninsula tribes is suspect, since there is evidence he disregarded the in situ observations of reliable earlier ethnographers in favour of material he later gathered from informants among the remnants in places like Palm Island.

Margaret Sharpe has found problems with Norman Tindale's mapping in South East Queensland, since he generally located other groups where Sharpe puts the Yugambeh people.

When Norman Tindale was writing up his work on Aboriginal people at the University of Virginia in the 1930s, he worked alongside eugenics scientists who supported a proposed law on involuntary sterilisation of women with disabilities or mental illness, and who influenced the Nazi program in Germany.

Norman Tindale wrote of his attendance at a Nazi rally in Munich, writing of Hitler as an "impressive figure".