Mathinna: A Colonial Parable
A question that teachers can pose to students is how do mushrooms get their names? Classes can discuss the importance of naming in the identification process of fungi. How do cultural expectations shape the names we are given?
In recent times I found that a mushroom (scientific name Entoloma mathinnae) was named after Mathinna, an Aboriginal girl born on Flinders Island in 1835. (20) Who was Mathinna? It is a tragic story. During the so-called Black War of the 1830s in Tasmania, a large Australian island then called Van Dieman’s Land, British settlers and soldiers attempted a genocide of the Aboriginal people. Her father was named Towterer, chief of the Lowreenne people of south-west Tasmania, and her mother Wongerneep. (21) She was adopted by the colonial Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin and his wife Jane. (22) It can be speculated Lady Jane Franklin wanted to adopt Mathinna to be fashionable: the aristocratic tradition in European contexts often included having dwarfs or enslaved people as part of the household. (23) Mathinna and other children suffered terrible abuse, based on an account she gave in 1846. (24) The Franklins left her behind when the couple returned to England with their daughter Eleanor in 1843. She is remembered in the name of the mushroom because it grows in her home territory.
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