Social context:
Remember aborigines only got the rights to vote in 1967.
The Aboriginal poet Kevin Gilbert grew up in the 1930s. He describes an “apartheid system” whereby the aborigines “were not allowed to be in ‘town’ later than 30 minutes after the end of the last movie. “We were separated from the white audience by a roped enclosure, not allowed into hospital dormitories, but kept out on the verandahs of the hospital known as the ‘boong’ ward where pillows, sheets, bedding were stencilled in black with the word ‘Abo’ on them.” They had to ask for a ‘pass’ from the manager to visit ‘missions’ where the relatives lived. (“Inside Black Australia: an anthology of Aboriginal Poetry” edited by Kevin Gilbert.)
“I was born ‘black’ in a white society that spoke oh so easily of ‘justice’, ‘democracy’, ‘fair go’, ‘Christian love’ and had me and mine living in old tin sheds, under scraps of iron, starving on what we could catch – goanna, rabbit, kangaroo, or on what we could find – bread and fat, treasures of old lino and hessian bags from the white man’s rubbish tip to keep us a little bit dry and warmer in the winter.’
In the 1980s and 1990s in Western Australia, the aborigines consisted of 3 per cent of the population, yet their numbers in prison often increased to 30 per cent of the population. As Gilbert echoes Davis’ beliefs that this disproportionate number reflects not the aborigine’s criminality, but the government’s policy of discrimination and the attitude of a police force that practices racial profiling and targets a minority group.
Originally aboriginal rights were written into the Letters Patent that approved land and usufructuary rights to hunt; 15% of land sales were to be set aside for aboriginal benefit; but governments did not honour the Letters Patent obligations. The people were placed in reserves.
The aboriginals were exiled in areas euphemistically called ‘reserves’. Apartheid laws were enacted and co-habiting with whites in a loving relationship was savagely punished, while house slavery and sexual abuse was considered more or less a ‘civilising’ influence. Children were not allowed to speak their aboriginal language in many of the ‘missions’ and were discouraged by the simple expedient punishment of locking an offender away in solitary confinement on a bread and water diet. Even saying “hello’ in the local lingo was punished. The ‘master’ of the camp determined degrading roles such as tinker, tailor, drover, jacky, dish washer, maid and cane-cutter.
Protectionist legislation
By 1911, the Northern Territory and every State except Tasmania had “protectionist legislation” giving the Chief Protector or Protection Board extensive power to control indigenous people. The management of the reserves was delegated to government-appointed managers. Enforcement of the protectionist legislation at the local level was the responsibility of protector’s who were usually police officers. In the National Overview, “Bringing them Home Report” into the Separation of Aboriginal Children from their Families (April 1997) it is claimed that: “in the name of protection, indigenous people were subject to near-total control. Their entry to and exit from reserves was regulated as was their everyday life on the reserves, their right to marry and their employment. With a view to encouraging the conversion of the children to Christianity and distancing them from their Indigenous lifestyle, children were housed in dormitories and contact with their families strictly limited.” (p. 29) In Tasmania, most indigenous families had been removed to Cape Barren off the north coast. “Until the late 1960s Tasmanian governments resolutely insisted that Tasmania did not have an Aboriginal population, just some ‘half-caste’ people.”
In some states and in the Northern Territory, the Chief Protector was made the legal guardian of all Aboriginal people, displacing the rights of parents. Mr Neville, (the Chief Protector of WA) was of the view that “within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct.” He reported that in 1937, the population of full-blooded had decreased from 60,000 to 20,000. He believed that it was important to segregate half-castes from full-blooded Aborigines because the increase in the numbers of the former created a problem. In his view, “skin colour was the key to absorption. Children with lighter skin colour would automatically be accepted into non-indigenous society and lose their Aboriginal identity”.
Accordingly, the ‘protectionist’ legislation was used to remove indigenous children. The protector did not have to establish whether or not the child was neglected. The aim was to remove children from their mothers around the age of four years and place them in dormitories away from their families. They woud be sent to missions to work at 14 years of age.
Consequently, aborigines lived in sub-human conditions. Many were denied access to rivers and waterholes by pastoralists and miners; they lived in scraps of tarpaulin and hessian and derelict car bodies, and died from curable eighteenth century diseases.
In 1984, Robert Walker, (aged 25) died in Freemantle Gaol; in protest, he cut his wrists and played his guitar. The prison officers removed him from his cell; screaming in mortal fear he was removed to a grassed area; held by officers and beaten with fists, boots and truncheons over a period of 17 minutes. 126 Coroner McCann dismissed the evidence of prisoner witnesses; he found that “death arose by way of misadventure”.
Aboriginal culture, dreamtime origins and oral stories To many white people, a group of Aboriginals who sit around a camp fire are just singing a corroboree song or “yacking”. But for the aborigines, it is a deeply sacred and spiritual experience; so much so that if an uninvited man or woman enters the circle unbidden, they can well court a death sentence, for which that circle the Great Creator Essence is present.
Davis also highlights the importance of oral histories in Aboriginal culture. Martin Flanagan says of “revisionists” in Australia concerning Aboriginal history: “if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen”. (The Age, 19/7/14)
Indigenous labourers were forced to work without pay, apart from a few rations – dry bread or flour, camp meat, a stick of tobacco. If aborigines killed cattle to eat, they risked death or at the very least, imprisonment, or removal from family.
Doris Pilkington Garimara Writer 1937 — 10-4-2014
“Sometime in 1937, Doris Pilkington Garimara was born Nugi Garimara under a wintamarra – mulga – tree on Balfour Downs Station, the daughter of Molly Craig and Toby Kelly, an Aboriginal stockman. Six years earlier, in 1931, Molly had escaped from Moore River Native Settlement with her two sister/cousins, Daisy and Gracie, and walked all the way back to Jigalong, an extraordinary journey along the rabbit-proof fence that took them three months. (See Rabbit Proof Fence).
When Doris was 4, she, her mother and Annabelle, her new little sister, again came to the attention of Auber Octavius Neville, the chief protector of Aboriginals in Western Australia. They were interned at Moore River. Molly ran away, taking the baby with her but leaving Doris behind. She did not see her mother again for 21 years.
Pilkington grew up at Moore River and at 12 was transferred to Roelands Mission where missionaries brought her up to believe Aboriginal people were dirty and evil. ”I actually despised my own traditional culture because we were taught to,” she said. ”We were told that our culture was evil and those that practised it were devil worshippers. I was taught to deny my own people – be ashamed of them even. The blacker your skin was, the worse individual you were.””
She described the conditions as “more like a concentration camp than a residential school for Aboriginal children”.
“Young men and women constantly ran away (this was in breach of the Aborigines Act. Not only were they separated from their families and relatives, but they were regimented and locked up like caged animals, locked in their dormitory after supper for the night. They were given severe punishments, including solitary confinements for minor misdeeds. (Choo 1989, p. 46.)
The per capita funding for the Moore River Settlement was half that of the lowest funded white institution (the Old Men’s Home). The children were taught basic literacy, numeracy and hygiene, with a view to employment as domestic servants and rural labourers. An Aboriginal witness to the “Bringing them Home” Inquiry in Perth who taught in the school at Moore River during the 1950s gave evidence that inmates were flogged with a cat-o’nine-tails (now held in the Western Australian museum).
In 1936, Western Australia spent less per capita on Aboriginal affairs than any other State.
See full article: “Fearless writer revealed the lives behind the Sorry Day stories of dispossession”, The Age, 26/4/13 Published: April 26, 2014 – 3:00AM
“Where are my first-born, said the brown land, sighing/ They came out of my womb long, long ago. They were formed of my dust – why, why are they crying / And the light of their being barely aglow?” “The First-born” (poem by Jack Davis).