Sorry Lewis Descendants, Whitfield the White has cast you out!

In response to Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation founder Warren Whitfield’s last 48 hours of commenting on bungaree.org

It has now been 2 days since Guringai Tribal Link Founder, and ‘brainchild behind the whole thing,’ Warren Whitfield reemerged to lay down yet another wild twist on established history.

In a dramatic rearranging of GuriNgai doctrine/deckchairs Warren Whitfield has now made public the following claims; posted on my website, by Whitfield himself (for some reason):

That Bob Waterer discovered documents in 2004 and one document among them led him to believe that his ancestor originated from the Broken Bay Clan.
That the nick name Biddy is not accepted by all of Bob’s family and a lot say it is a construct by Bob to try and link Sarah to Bungaree.
That Keith Vincent Smith said that there is no connection between Sarah Wallace and Bungaree’s family group.
That Biddy Salamander, was in Bungaree’s family group through marriage,.
That Biddy Salamander wasn’t from the Broken Bay Tribe,
That Biddy was married to a Broken Bay man named Salamander and you can’t marry within your clan.
That Biddy Salamander has no relationship with Sarah Wallace anyway.
That Tom Richmond, a school teacher, with Bob Waterer invented Sarah’s connection with the Broken Bay Tribe.
That there is absolutely no (0) evidence that Sarah was ever associated with the Broken Bay Tribe in any way.
That Nan Bosler didn’t support it and she credited that claim to Tom Richmond, who credited Bob Waterer for that information, based on one marriage document.
That Keith Vincent Smith said that Sophy was Bowen’s sister (despite video evidence of KVS denying this, and laughing at Warren Whitfield).

Yikes!

Amid 4 comments of rambling ad hoc non sequiturs Whitfield reveals he now in 2023 believes that Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation directors and members descended along the ‘Lewis line’ are not descendants of Bungaree, despite their 2 decades of claims to the contrary.

Such people as Sharlene Leroy Dyer;

Guringai Tribal Link Director Laurie Bimson;

Mr Neil Evers;

Bradley Tynham

even past Guringai ‘Elder’ Bob Waterer, who’s daughter is still a member of the Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation.

It’s almost as if Warren Whitfield and Tracey Howie have been planning this split ever since Tracey Howie announced back in February 0f 2021 that she was not of the same bloodline as Laurie Bimson, or “those spoken about in Bob Waterer’s book.”

Yet these Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation directors and members remain ok with rewriting history on a whim. To me the inaction of GuriNgai members adversely effected speaks volumes of their actual Cultural awareness, in my humble opinion. It is already a matter of public record through Bob Waterer’s book and other sources just when their families left Aboriginal Culture behind to live as non-Aboriginal People.

Now those people’s descendants suddenly started claiming Culture when there are material benefits available, and are now complacently letting it be stolen without protest by the most transparent of colonising frauds.

Might be worth decolonising a little hey GuriNgai?

Remember way back in Chapter 2, we mentioned 81 year old Bob Waterer discovered documents in his late sister’s house that revealed his Aboriginal heritage?

It turned out Bob Waterer was a descendant of Sarah ‘ Biddy’ Lewis, even though Bob lived 81 years without knowing, or caring to know this:

Bob and a non-Aboriginal local historian wrote a book on Bob’s discovery, and what the two of them had been able to piece together since the discovery was made.

Click to access Book-The_Story_of_Bob_Waterer.pdf

This is the Nan Bosler Whitfield’s referring to apparently.

Here we find Bob giving a matter of fact account of how he stumbled upon ‘Love among the Prawns,’ and subsequently met Hawkesbury historian Tom Richmond.

This book also appears to be where Warren Whitfield has sourced his claim my Ancestor Sarah ‘Biddy’ Lewis was born in 1803.

But Nan Bosler states “in about 1803 a child was born.” Warren Whitfield shoots straight past that ‘about’, just as he did when Dr Keith Vincent Smith told him Sophy ‘may possibly‘ be a relative of Bungaree. Whoops again.

He also misses the glaring clue in the timeline of Authenticated Dates and Events in the life of Sarah Biddy Lewis on page 23.

In this same source document, used by Warren Whitfield to make his latest baseless claims, we find the following:

So the Country where our families lived was recognised as Darug, my Nan learned Darug words and learned we were Darug over 90 years ago, on Dyrubin, and all of our family lines that still retain Cultural and kinship ties to this day all identify as Darug. For our genuine Aboriginal families this has remained consistent, as that is how Aboriginal Culture works for the most part.

Hence there was no need for us to apply any of the labels of Guringai, GuriNgai, Walkaloa, Wannagini, Wannungine, or any other name misapplied by successive non-Aboriginal People to Broken Bay, the Northern Beaches, Sydney, the Central Coast, and anywhere south of the Hunter River.

I have tried to minimise my family story from this work in particular, as we would prefer to have nothing at all to do with these people falsely claiming to be Aboriginal, falsely claiming to be descendant’s of my Ancestors, and falsely claiming to have any semblance of genuine Aboriginal Cultural Knowledge.

My own connection to Bungaree and Matora also comes through this Lewis line, although you won’t find me in Bob and Nan Bosler’s book.

Throughout the book you will find small hints towards the Genuine Aboriginal Families still connected to Marramarra Creek today.

For example:

Indeed, there were, and still are genuine Aboriginal families that remained in connection with each other, with our Country, and with our Culture, well before Bob Waterer’s discovery. For this reason alone we knew we were not GuriNgai, and that we had never heard our Senior people refer to themselves, us, our clan, our language, our nation, as Guringai. We also did not discover our family line, clan, language, or country as recently as 2004, or even as far back as 2001 – nor did we learn it in a book, or from non-Aboriginal sources.

Bob Waterer as it turned out, was a very, very distant cousin of mine, that my family and I were unaware of, and I never had a chance to meet before he passed. Bob’s book states he is descended from Catherine Lewis, daughter of Sarah and John Ferdinand.

I am descended from Catherine’s older sister, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sarah and John Ferdinand.

It had been a very long, long time since I’d looked at this book, and give credit to Whitfield for encouraging me to dust off the old pdf once more.

I’m curious if a non-Aboriginal Reverend William West Simpson MA, in the 1800’s is enough to trigger Whitfield’s ‘appeal to authority’ reflex?

It’s not clear from my reading of the text how Bob Waterer came to believe he was a descendant of the Guringai, or that Guringai was the name for the people of the Broken Bay region, or that Bungaree was Guringai. I can however say with certainty that this nonsense was only being perpetuated Warren Whitfield and his family at that time, just as they are the ones financially benefiting from this deception right up to the present.

Whitfield demonstrates he is still operating under the impression that “official records are irrelevant,” and therefore the reality of his and his family, including Tracey-Lee Howie, having no DNA connection to any actual descendant of Bungaree and Matora can be explained away with more lies.

Sadly it’s worked well enough for them for the last 22 years, why stop now?

See below the comments from Warren Whitfield in just the last 48 hours: