Ted Strehlow

Theodor George Henry Strehlow (6 June 1908 – 3 October 1978) was an Australian anthropologist and linguist. The son of pastor Carl Strehlow, he studied the Arrernte people and their language in Central Australia.

Early life and education Theodor George Henry Strehlow was born on 6 June 1908 on the Hermannsburg Mission in the Northern Territory. His father was Carl Strehlow, Lutheran pastor and Superintendent, since 1896, of the Hermannsburg Mission, southwest of Alice Springs on the Finke River. His mother was Friedericke Johanna Henriette (née Keysser).

In 1978 Strehlow received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Max Stuart case

In 1958 a nine-year-old girl, Mary Hattam, was found raped and murdered on the beach at Ceduna. The police subsequently arrested an Aboriginal man, Rupert Max Stuart, for the crime. Stuart was convicted and condemned to death in late April 1959. The case quickly assumed the character of a cause célèbre as civil rights groups questioned the evidence based solely on a confession made to the police which the prosecution and officers affirmed had been taken down word for word. The verdict was appealed, went to the High Court and the Privy Council in London and concluded with a review by a Royal Commission.

Strehlow's involvement came after a Catholic priest who was convinced of Stuart's innocence asked him for an informed judgement on the language of the evidence by which the Aborigine had been convicted. Strehlow, it turned out, had known during his days as a patrol officer at Jay Creek both Stuart's grandfather, Tom Ljonga, and Stuart himself. Ljonga had been his trusted companion through many long journeys through the Central Australian deserts. Four days before the appointed hanging, Strehlow, with the Catholic chaplain, interviewed Stuart at Yatala prison. In the subsequent review process, Strehlow testified several times on what he saw as the incompatibility between the English of the confession and the dialect vernacular Stuart used. Familiar with white men in the Centre who had raped Aboriginal girls of that age, Strehlow did not think this crime fitted with Aboriginal behaviour. Stuart's conviction was upheld, but he escaped the death penalty.

Later career In November 1971, after many years of difficulty due also to the special fonts required to reproduce his text, he published Songs of Central Australia, a monumental study of the ceremonial poetry of the Arrernte tribes. Although reviewed with condescending hostility in the Times Literary Supplement, it was acclaimed by Australian experts like A. P. Elkin as one of the three most significant books ever published on Australian anthropology.

The last three decades of his life were intermittently troubled by the question of the ownership and custodianship on the objects, and records on the Aboriginal people which he had accumulated during his fieldwork over a long career. The government and two universities, who had subsidised his labours, and, towards the end, a younger generation of Aranda people on the Land Rights Council, believed they were the proper bodies for taking over the care and housing of this extensive material. Strehlow felt a personal responsibility for this material, as the man exclusively entrusted by a generation of elders with myths and songs, their secret knowledge and ceremonial artifacts, and held a grievance for what he considered to be the shabby treatment he had received during his life by the establishment. He set difficult and exacting conditions through many negotiations, and when the issue came to a head, determined to will his private collection to his new family, who would house and conserve it in their own home. Strehlow justified his retention of these objects by the personal expense he had laid out, and by the fact, he insisted, that they had been formally handed into his care by 'surrender ceremonies'.

In an apparent paradox, once the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg had sufficient confidence in the Christianised native community to accord them autonomy, and yield church leases on the area to their Aboriginal congregation, many local natives moved out, claimed their tjurunga rights to the land, and began to re-celebrate the older ceremonies. In his final return to the area, he was surprised to discover that his "twin", Gustav Malbunka, who had once saved his life, and who had not only renounced his culture but become an evangelical preacher, was capable of singing tjilpa (totemic quoll) verses that once formed a key part of rituals that Strehlow thought were extinct. The culture, even among Christian converts, had been secretly passed on.

Personal life Strehlow married twice, first to teacher Bertha Gwendoline Alexandra James, in Prospect, Adelaide, on 21 December 1935, with whom he had three children after at least one miscarriage; a daughter and two sons.

A decade later, negotiations between his widow and the Northern Territory government led to the finalisation of the purchase of most of the collection in 1987. It was described by John Morton as containing "some 700 objects (largely secret-sacred), 15 kilometres of movie film, 7,000 slides, thousands of pages of genealogical records, myths, sound recordings [and] 42 diaries", as well as "paintings, letters, maps [and] "a 1,000-volume library".

The Strehlow Research Centre at Alice Springs was established for the preservation and public display of these works. The collection is often accessed by Arrernte people as well as other Central Australian Aboriginal groups. Contemporary anthropologist Jason Gibson has shown how Strehlow's collection is actively used and interpreted by descendent Arrernte and Anmatyerr communities. He has also recorded how Strehlow is remembered and respected by some senior men as a "ceremony man" while others feel betrayed by his use of their ceremonial material.

In the arts Journey to Horseshoe Bend was turned into a cantata of the same name by Gordon Williams and Andrew Schulz, and premiered in the Sydney Opera House in May 2003, performed by the Hermannsburg Ladies Choir and starring Aaron Pedersen. It was commissioned by Symphony Australia for performance by Sydney Symphony Orchestra, funded by the Australia Council.

The first half of a double biography of Strehlow and his wife Frieda, The Tale of Frieda Keysser, based in large part on Frieda's diaries from the period, was published by grandson John Strehlow in 2012, with the second volume published in 2019.

Stephen Orr's 2026 novel The Night Parrots is based on Journey to Horseshoe Bend. According to the author, the novel is primarily "the story of a father and a son".