Norman Tindale

Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist.

Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900.

His 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 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 where Tindale took up a position as a library cadet at the Adelaide Public Library, together with another cadet, the future physicist, Mark Oliphant.

In 1919, he began work as an entomologist at the South Australian Museum.

From his early years, he had acquired the habit of taking notes on everything he observed, and cross-indexing them before going to sleep, a practice which he continued throughout his life, and which lay at the basis of the vast archive of notes he left to posterity: he was observed writing by lamplight far into the night long after others had gone to bed, during an expedition to the Pinacate.

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

In January 1919, he secured a position at the South Australian Museum as Entomologist's Assistant to the formidable Arthur Mills Lea.

Tindale's first ethnographic expedition took place over 1921–1922.

His principal aim was to gather entomological specimens for the South Australian Museum, the ethnographic aspect being almost an accidental sideline that developed, as his curiosity was stimulated, into close observation of the indigenous people he encountered from the Cobourg Peninsula to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Tindale's family background had qualified him to be taken on by the Church Missionary Society of Australia and Tasmania which was interested in proselytizing in the north.

He 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 subsequently established on west coast of Groote Eylandt.

He followed this up with a further 9 months nearby on the mainland around the Roper River.

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.

The Adelaide Board for Anthropological Research began a programme for filming Aboriginal life in 1926, and was the first to systematically do so.

Over an 11-year period they produced over 10 hours of footage concerning many aspects of Aboriginal life, from material culture to hunting and gathering practices, cooking, love-making and even ceremonies of circumcision observed during their field expeditions.

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

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.

This interest began with a research trip to Groote Eylandt where Tindale's helper and interpreter, a Ngandi, impressed him with the importance of knowing with precision tribal boundaries.

He 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.

In 1938–39, Tindale teamed up with Joseph Birdsell, an anthropological graduate student, who was under Earnest Hooton of Harvard University, after meeting the pair on a 1936 visit to the US.

They were to undertake an extensive anthropological survey of Aboriginal reserves and missions across Australia, and the relationship forged between the two developed into a half century of collaboration.

Tindale would study the genealogies, while Birdsell undertook the measuring, and with government support the pair travelled across south-east Australia, parts of Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania.

In May 1938, the two men and their wives visited Cummeragunja Aboriginal reserve in New South Wales.

A later study looking at their 1939 expedition to the Cape Barren Island Aboriginal reserve said that this contributed to their decision to advocate assimilation ("absorption") as a solution to "the half-caste problem".

Tindale's vast collection, held at the South Australian Museum, is made up of genealogical information about Aboriginal communities throughout Australia, journals, papers, sound and film recordings, drawings, maps, photographs, vocabularies and personal correspondence.

Each State Library in Australia holds copies of 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.

while the State Library of Queensland has genealogical sheets for the communities of Bentinck Island, Cherbourg, Doomadgee, Mona Mona Mission, Mornington Island, Palm Island, Woodenbong, Woorabinda and Yarrabah.

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

On the outbreak of World War 2, Tindale tried to enlist, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight.

When Japan precipitated war with the United States however, Tindale's knowledge of Japanese, rare in Australia at the time, made him an asset for military intelligence.

In 1942 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.

In 1942 an Air Technical Intelligence Unit was established under Captain Frank T. McCoy at Hangar 7, Eagle Farm airfield just outside Brisbane, and on Tindale's initiative it was tasked with examining parts recovered from the wreckage of Japanese airplanes that had been shot down, working out whatever intelligence could be gathered from the manufacturing markings, and reassembling them where possible.

Jones states that Tindale's unit's meticulous analysis of the metallurgical debris and serial numbers enabled them to arrive at the companies responsible for producing the components, deduce production figures and infer what crucial alloys the Japan military was beginning to suffer shortfalls in.

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

His team's forensic analysis of the debris enabled the U.S. Air Force to identify and bomb the production facilities in Japan.

Jones adds two other key contributions by Tindale to the war effort:

"He was instrumental in cracking the Japanese aircraft production code system, which gave the Allies reliable information as to Japanese air power. More importantly, he and his unit deciphered the Japanese master naval code."

On retirement after 49 years service with the South Australian Museum, 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.