Talk:Ellen Atkinson

Aunty Ellen: The Pastor's Wife
I have just read the chapter by Diane Barwick in the book "Fighters and Singers: The lives of some Australian Aboriginal women" and I urge others to spend the $20 or so to buy this book and read it also. They will be inspired and infuriated. I hope I can write this article properly and do Aunty Ellen justice. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 16:07, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

From 1935
So a quick summary of key dates:
 * Payne removed and Atkinsons move to Church of Christ
 * Daughter Daisy moves in with Paynes in 1935 for better education in Echuca
 * J. G. Danvers becomes manager in 1934 of Cummerangunja, provides needed rations to aborigines ignoring policy
 * Danvers removed in 1936
 * Eddy's uncle is William Cooper who collects 1,814 signatures in petition sent to Canberra by 1937
 * Aboriginal league formed by Cooper, another formed in Melbourne by William Ferguson (father-in-law of one of Ellen's nieces)
 * league lobbying results in Select Committee inquiry into reserves in November 1937
 * finds conditions terrible
 * inquiry useless, only released in 1940
 * Jack Pattern becomes president of Sydney league, warns that Board planned to create a closed compound, control earnings and take away children
 * 3 February 1939 Pattern is seized by police on charge of "inciting Aborigines to leave their reserve" and 170 people cross Murray to camp at Barmah - Cummeragunja walk-off
 * Atkinsons move with community - public meeting 26 February 1939
 * moves to Mooroopna because of migration to fruit growing centres by 1941 (p188 Barwick)
 * Move to Melbourne, then move back to Cummerangunja by November 1941
 * continue to support Ferguson and Shadrach James, involved in deputations to Minister for the Interior in 1949
 * flooding at Mooroopna - many lost homes in March 1950, Atkison's home in April 1951 - lived in Eddy, Ellen, Muriel (daughter) two young orphaned gradnsons lived in three-roomed hut lined with plaster sheets
 * Eddy dies 2 November 1952 of heart failure (p. 192, Barwick)
 * Church of Christ opens in Mooroopna in 1957, Ellen supports Eddy's nephew, Pastor Dough Nicholls (p. 178, Barwick) along with her son Geoff
 * Diane Barwick meets and documents Ellen's life at end of 1960
 * died on 30 August 1965 at Mooroopna, buried in the local cemetery

Editing
Hi Chris, you've asked for feedback online about this article and I've come to do that but you're reverting the edits I make. You've written an article which contains wide ranging detail about Ellen's husband and his life and work, and about land issues and reforms, all of which have little to no relevance to her life and life experience. It's very common for a biography about a woman to veer off into the story of her husband's life or the community that she was part of, but it's really important to centre her and her life story in her article. Information about her husband belongs in his biography. Information about the community belongs in an article about the community. Her life is the subject of this article. MurielMary (talk) 02:16, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * And yet it's not true what you have stated. Ellen specifically commented on her father-in-law and he did make up a part of her life. The rubbish tip is relevant as she also commented on this, and it was relevant to how she eventually got housing commission aid. You removed all this material without commenting until now. In actual fact, it is quite normal to go into background about her life. Her life and her community is tied up together intrinsically.
 * If what you say is true, I'll need to rip out all the stuff about the walk out, and many more things beside. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:28, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * She probably made lots of comments about lots of people in her life but that doesn't mean they all have to be included in her biography. Why does her description of her father-in-law shed any light on her and her life? How does her opinion of him add anything to her biography? The risk is that the article becomes a collection of quotes of her about other people, and then how does that tell us anything about her life? The measure of whether something should be included is "what does that tell us about her?" All the detail about legal situations over the land is what was happening in the world around her - how does that tell us anything about her as a person? The relevant part is her response to it i.e. when the church was finally built, she was very moved and regretted that it hadn't been built during her husband's lifetime. The long background of the disputes, if it must be included, could be summarised in a sentence or two. It's not the focus of this article and the more of it that's included, the more diluted and lost her life story becomes in a sea of wider historical description and commentary. MurielMary (talk) 02:37, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Because in Aboriginal communities kinship ties were very important. It does say something about her in that she felt he was a "leader of his people" and said as much to Barwick. Specifically. Unless, of course, her opinion means nothing?
 * As for "long background of disputes" diluting her story - I'm afraid I disagree. Her entire life was tied up in a struggle for just living on the land. She was an activist and these were significant struggles and events she participated in. I think if you did the research and read Barwick's article you might realise this.
 * I do not consider to have produced commentary, incidentally. All the events I describe are part and parcel of understanding the context of the events which she was involved in and that affected her life. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC)


 * P.S. when you edit an article, please be careful to not mess up the referencing. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:46, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll try again. The way the article is written, e.g. the detailed paragraph about the walk-off, means there is a lot of material which describes the land struggles which happened in her community and of course were important to her. But this is an article about her and her life and actions, so the central narrative needs to be what her actions were and what was happening in her life, rather than the background events. For example, in an article about a black woman civil rights activist in the south of the US in the 1960s, it would be relevant to describe the events of a particular strike or action in relation to her involvement in that strike or action, but not necessary to describe in detail the events that were going on at the same time as she was alive if she was not involved in them. It might just be a sentence such as "As X's school district was segregated, she was not able to attend XX high school". No need to go into detail over what a segregated school district meant or how it was created or who was fighting against it. I still hold that the paragraph on the walk-off is too detailed as it stands for an article about Atkinson - alternatively, the paragraph needs to be edited to show how all those stages and actions impacted on her life or what her responses were to those actions. Her life is the centre of this article. MurielMary (talk) 10:37, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Edwin's name
Edwin's name is commonly referred to as "Eddy". Diane Barwick used this in an academic context, not sure why we are doing otherwise. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Choose one name and use it throughout. The article sometimes uses Edwin and sometimes Eddy. MurielMary (talk) 02:37, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure, done. There are some places where it makes sense to use Edwin, I have done so there. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:38, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Her name
Ellen was not born as an "Atkinson". She was a Campbell. To avoid confusion, in the early life section I referred to her as "Ellen". - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:34, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * More research needed - see the guidelines at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biography#Changed_names which says that subjects should not be referred to by their first name, but by a surname. See the example in that guideline of Hilary Rodham Clinton and how she is referred to as Rodham sometimes and Clinton at other times, but never as Hilary.

MurielMary (talk) 02:44, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, then I'll switch it to Campbell. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:48, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * So, I'm going through all the places where I use her first name:
 * Atkinson's father, Alick Campbell, was a "half-caste" Aboriginal stockman and a widower who had followed his first wife, Emma Jackson Patterson, from Ganawarra Station (near Kerang) to Coranderrk. When his first wife died he married Elizabeth Briggs Charles, and Ellen was born at Madowla Park, near Echuca, in August 1894. - I'm not calling her Campbell here, because there are multiple Campbells referred to and it becomes ambiguous who I'm talking about.
 * The Campbell family had a dislocated history. Ellen’s mother was born to John Briggs and his "quarter-caste Aboriginal" wife, Louisa. Same reasoning - multiple Campbells referred to, which Campbell's mother is being referred to becomes confusing if I call her "Campbell".
 * Before Ellen was born, Alick Campbell had found it increasingly hard to get adequate work, so returned to Ganawarra station. "before Campbell was born, Alick Campbell had found it..." again, confusing.
 * Ellen was married to Edwin "Eddy" Atkinson "Atkinson was married to Atkinson", and she can't be called Campbell as that's confusing. Keeping this as Ellen.
 * The general principle is that we use the surname, but only when it makes sense and does not cause confusion as to who is the subject. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 02:54, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * P.S. I think you need to review MOS:SAMESURNAME. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 08:33, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Cummerangunja walk-off and aftermath section
The whole first paragraph of this section makes no mention of Atkinson at all and is actually already covered in the page on the walk-off itself. Suggest removing it all and replacing with a summary and link to the next paragraph e.g. "Following the Cummerangunja walk-off the Atkinsons ......." MurielMary (talk) 03:26, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No, I disagree. You cannot understand why the Atkinsons moved without this background. The background is necessary for the reader to understand what was happening at the time. It's a significant event and also gives background to the key activists the Atkinsons supported. It also shows her being part of this absolutely key walk-off, the first significant Aboriginal strike of the time. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It's far too detailed. Needs to be summarised or refer to the main article on the walk-off, or there needs to be specific links between the detailed events and actions taken by Ellen Atkinson. MurielMary (talk) 03:34, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid we have to agree to disagree then. To understand this extremely important and pivotal part of Ellen's life, you need some background. I don't think it needs much shortening, it's one short paragraph. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:39, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Education
Unfortunately, I've been forced to revert an edit. The revert is this one. That's because there was literally no education given to Aboriginal children, so to say that "than was available" is misleading. What I said was accurate - "something she could not get at Cummeragunja" is absolutely correct.

I'm sliightly concerned some of these edits are factually changing the situation of the time, something I did a fair bit of research into. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:27, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree with this edit, thank you. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:30, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Later life section
Who is James? Doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere then mentioned in the later life section? MurielMary (talk) 03:31, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thomas Shadrach James. That's his last name. I called him "Shadrack James" but it got shortened to just James. See "Early life":
 * At Cummerangunja the Campbell children received a basic education by preacher, teacher and doctor Thomas Shadrach James.
 * - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:35, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I have fixed this now to avoid confusion I have renamed him to "Shadrack James". - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:38, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I see you removed your response "hilarious" to my question. Look, you asked for feedback on this article and I'm giving it to you. There is absolutely no need to mock me or laugh at me or whatever that comment was intended to express. This is a collaborative space and people are voluntarily critiquing your article with the aim of improving it for readers. You're not creating a situation where people are going to want to engage with you on other articles when you laugh/mock/tease fellow editors for making suggestions or asking questions. MurielMary (talk) 03:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I removed this as I thought better of it. But I do find it funny that you literally spent paragraphs lecturing me about using surnames and but then found it hard to follow who was being referred to.
 * To my way of thinking, you haven't discussed most of the changes on this article, you started hacking away at it, destroyed referencing and seem convinced that background paragraphs somehow detract from the subject when in fact they are crucial to understand their life. Not only that, but you stated that "land issues and reforms" had "little to no relevance to her life and life experience" when referring to a dispossessed Aboriginal woman. I think you should, perhaps, consider your words more carefully. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:46, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thomas Shadrach James' surname is "James", there is no other "James" mentioned in the article, so I suggest that WP:SURNAME applies and he should be referred to (after first mention) as "James", not "Shadrach James". Mitch Ames (talk) 03:49, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * no probs, I have reverted back to your edit. I only changed it as there was some confusion above, but happy to go with your edit. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:52, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

ndash and mdash
For this article, per MOS:DASH, we can use either html entity encoding or actual unicode characters. However, I find it far easier to distinguish between html entity encodings than I do the unicode characters so I've chosen this. Now the convention is that whatever is started is what should be used, and I started with html encodings. On other articles they use unicode, and I'd stick with this even though it isn't my preference. But this article uses entity encodings. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 05:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Aborigines Inland Mission
you've added an apostrophe to Aborigines' Inland Mission, but: I propose that that AIATSIS is incorrect in their use of the apostrophe here, and that the apostrophe should be removed from Ellen Atkinson and Aborigines' Inland Mission. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:42, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Their website history page does not include the apostrophe
 * Their newsletters, available at https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/collections-online/digitised-collections/aborigines-inland-mission-newsletters/our-aim-newsletters, https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/collections-online/digitised-collections/aborigines-inland-mission-newsletters/australian-evangel-newsletters, do not include the apostrophe in the publisher's name
 * That could be correct. If you wanted to do the honours I would not object - I took it from AIATSIS, but they look like they got it wrong. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 08:43, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That being said, all three cited references in Ellen Atkinson show the apostrophe in the digitized images. Possibly they changed their name at some point. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:09, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd be inclined to leave the apostrophes in Ellen Atkinson, to match the refs, but change Aborigines' Inland Mission to match the more recent newsletters and https://australianindigenousministries.org.au/about-us-read-more/ Mitch Ames (talk) 09:14, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I’m wondering if we should move the article to their current name and have a redirect for both spellings of the old name? Would that be reasonable? I’m happy either way. I will eventually have to flesh out that article, but I’m focusing on WiR articles for now. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 09:17, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I’m wondering if we should move the article to their current name and have a redirect for both spellings of the old name? — Agreed, that would be better. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:24, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:50, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks, really appreciate this! - Chris.sherlock (talk) 01:40, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Shadrack James
In all the literature, he is not referred to as “James”, but as “Shadrack James”. I think it would be clearer if we called him this. Whilst I understand the guidelines for surnames, I think it best to WP:IAR in this case and fo with what he is conventionally referred to as. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 06:55, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Not all of the literature:,.
 * Is there any ambiguity in referring to him as James? Is anybody else in the article called "James"? Is there any evidence that his surname was "Shadrach James"?
 * If there's no ambiguity and nothing that says his surname was "Shadrach James", I don't think there's any need to ignore WP:SURNAME.
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 07:10, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In the Australian Dict of Biography he's referred to as "James". http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/james-thomas-shadrach-10610 MurielMary (talk) 12:10, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, probably best to keep it James. - Chris.sherlock (talk) 03:18, 4 May 2020 (UTC)