Governing Savages: Commonwealth and Aboriginies, 1911-39

By Andrew Markus

This provocative study breaks new ground. It argues that, in a period dominated by the white Australia ideal, the nation's political leaders were content to allow disease and malnutrition, as well as punitive police raids, to ravage the Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory, and that for decades there was a failure to provide funding to implement publicly announced policies. Written for a general readership, Governing Savages explains how such a state of affairs could arise and be tolerated in a professedly humane society. The result of almost a decade of research by one of the leading scholars in the field of Australian race relations, the book analyzes the attitudes of pastoralists, missionaries, administrators, judges, and politicians and of thoseincluding Aboriginal leadersseeking to awaken the conscience of Australians and bring to an end generations of brutality and callous indifference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allen Unwin
• Release date: Oct 31, 2000
• ISBN: 9781742690094

Book preview

book.

Introduction

The interest awakened during the late 1960s in the history of white-Aboriginal relations was at first primarily concerned with frontier conflict in colonial Australia. In the 1980s attention began to shift to more recent developments: this book is part of the new direction, the systematic study of relations following the period of dispossession. Various emphases have been evident in the writing on Aborigines: until recent times the focus was on the actions and motivations of the Europeans, with hardly a passing reference to Aboriginal perspectives. Not surprisingly, such an approach is now disdained, but attempts to redress the balance face the major problem of inadequate sources, although, as this book demonstrates, some written records for the first half of the twentieth century survive.

Those wishing to document Aboriginal perspectives in northern Australia, which until the post-war period lacked Aboriginal populations utilising the written communication of the whites, must place almost total reliance on oral recollections. In addition to the usual problems of assessing the reliability of oral history, notably the problem that such evidence represents a filtering of the past through the present by the informant, there is an additional complication: because of the harsh conditions of life for Aborigines in outback Australia the survivors from the early decades of the twentieth century may not be typical or representative both in terms of their experience and their values, simply by virtue of having survived. This, however, is a counsel for caution, not a call for the abandonment of oral sources. To date oral history of Aboriginal-white relations has been presented mainly in the form of full or fragmentary autobiographies, often with the editorial assistance of white scholars. There have been few attempts by historians to bring together both written and oral material, the most notable exception being Ann McGrath’s ‘Born in the Cattle’: Aborigines in Cattle Country.

This book, while concerned with the twentieth century, reflects the older tradition of studies of the attitudes and behaviour of the superordinate group, the whites, although in the final chapter it discusses the attempts of Aborigines to influence directly the white political process. It is concerned with the impact of the actions of Europeans and for much of the book Aborigines appear through the eyes of outsiders. The book does not examine Aboriginal orientations and understandings unknown or little understood by the whites; it is not the task here to explore the ways in which Aborigines in the north sought to control their destiny, and gain solace and comfort in their lives, under the oppressive conditions which confronted them. The justification for the approach adopted is that there are still fundamental questions to be answered concerning the circumstances which shaped the life-chances of Aborigines, questions which can be dealt with only through a Eurocentric approach using traditional written sources.

It is well known that the expectation of white Australians in the first decades of the century was that Aborigines would become extinct as a race of people. This study, which is concerned primarily with the Northern Territory, sets out to investigate whether the view of inevitable extinction was merely a passive observation, simply an idea in the minds of white Australians, or whether it served to inform and guide policy, providing the basis and rationale for actions designed to ensure that the Aborigines would indeed die out. A second focus is the nature and treatment of Aborigines at sites of contact with white Australians. While not pretending to be exhaustive — a major gap is coverage of Aborigines in towns, particularly Darwin, where they were employed as domestic servants and in a range of menial occupations — the book does address a range of contact situations with agents of the government, in the pastoral industry and on missions.

A third issue, which occupies the major portion of the study, is the exploration of the value system which provided the justification for treatment of Aborigines. Values are analysed from the perspectives of contemporary academics, popular writers, and those with direct influence over the lives of Aborigines — pastoralists, missionaries, politicians, judges and public servants. The final issue concerns the process of change, the struggle to establish a new paradigm for race relations. Although in the inter-war period racism was, if anything, becoming more entrenched in Australian society, the first signs of a concerted challenge to the dominant value system were apparent in the late 1920s and by the next decade the new approach was clearly and forcefully articulated. Those mounting this challenge included Protestant clerics and other white humanitarians, Aboriginal activists, and of major significance in terms of impact on policy, the leading Australian anthropologist. These people sought to establish that the Aborigines were not subhuman and that there was prospect for adaptation to a new way of life. The path to the future was through understanding Aboriginal society. At the end of the 1930s a change in the definition of ‘expert’ was underway, from one who ‘knew’ the Aborigines through personal contact and observation, from first hand experience of conditions of life in the outback, to the ‘expert’ whose ‘knowledge’ was based on theoretical study and systematic anthropological research.

This book seeks to resolve these issues by examining the formulation and implementation of government policy, and relations between Aborigines and pastoralists and missionaries. While the focus is on a region representative of only part of the continent, of the vast stretches sparsely populated by Europeans, some aspects of the study are placed in an Australia-wide context. The struggle to establish a new approach in dealings with Aborigines cannot be analysed within the confines of northern Australia, for the impetus for change had its source in the south. Analysis in a broad context of the dominant values and of the conflict over policy is particularly relevant for the Northern Territory: although an isolated outpost of European settlement, after its acquisition by the Commonwealth from South Australia in 1911 its government was the responsibility of the Commonwealth parliament, of all Australians. Formulation and implementation of policy in the Territory was a reflection of the values and distribution of power throughout the nation.

As late as 1935 a prominent member of Parliament

told me frankly that ‘The nigger has got to go,

and the sooner the better’. This man is a

respectable citizen, a member of a Christian Church,

and a fine man, except in his attitude to the natives.

Dr Charles Duguid, 1936

Why — it cost more to pay the Resident

Commissioner’s salary than to feed and clothe

and doctor all the thousands of blacks and

halfcastes in the land! Not a word of exaggeration.

And that gentleman’s salary had recently been

raised to meet the increased cost of living. Still

only fourpence per head per day was provided for

the maintenance of the inmates of the Compound.

In the bush the blacks were dying like flies

of consumption and measles and leprosy and

gonorrhoea for the sake of a few pounds’ worth

of facilities to treat them … The man

behind it was the President of the Commonwealth

himself. How the man could sleep of nights with this

monstrous thing on his soul — God knows!

Xavier Herbert Capricornia: A Novel (1938)

1 Protecting Aborigines

The making of an issue

Under the Australian Constitution of 1901, the states assumed responsibility for Aboriginal affairs. The Commonwealth’s involvement began in 1911 when it acquired control of the Northern Territory, a region of sparse white settlement in which the Aborigines were thought to outnumber the combined white and Asian population by a proportion of four or five to one. While there was uncertainty over precise numbers it was estimated that perhaps a quarter of Australia’s surviving Aboriginal population lived in the Territory.

In 1911 it was the hope of the small minority of white Australians who took an interest in Aboriginal welfare that the Commonwealth government, representing all white Australians and with the resources of the nation at its disposal, would set an example for the states in its treatment of Aborigines. Some urged the federal government to recognise Aboriginal welfare as a trust vested in the nation and to assume responsibility for all Aborigines. The newly formed Association for the Protection of Native Races argued that:

The method of relying upon State and Colonial Governments has been tried from the earliest days of colonisation, and has undeniably failed. The Colonial and State Governments have themselves acknowledged the failure. It has been set forth time after time, by their own officials — Special Commissioners, Magistrates, Police, Doctors — publicly and in official reports … It is a recognized political principle that the wider the area from which the governing power is derived, and the larger the task set, the wider and more statesmanlike the policy is likely to be. It follows as a corollary that the Federal Government is likely to deal with the whole problem more adequately than the State Governments with the five separate sections of it.¹

A committee on Aboriginal welfare established by the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science urged in 1913 that ‘the Aboriginal problem will only be solved when all that is left of the race is made a single and National responsibility, and cared for in a National way … A national sentiment of sympathy and pity would be created towards this unfortunate race whom we have dispossessed’.²

The call for federal control was not taken seriously. After an initial period of reform, the federal government lapsed into the inactivity that had characterised South Australia’s administration of the Territory. For a decade there was almost no public or government interest in Aboriginal issues. Apathy and complacency were sustained by the assumption that the Aborigines were a dying race.

The first signs of a new mood amongst white Australians became evident in the mid 1920s. The growing level of dissatisfaction with policies pursued in the north was manifested in a movement for the establishment of an Aboriginal state. Although originating in South Australia, the idea attracted attention throughout the country and a petition circulated by its proponents secured 7000 signatures. In 1927 a group of influential citizens, including Mr Aubrey Williams of the Sydney Morning Herald, the retired Bishop Dr Gilbert White, the anthropologist Professor Radcliffe Brown of the University of Sydney, the Reverend J. S. Needham, chairman of the Australian Board of Missions, the Reverend W. Morley, secretary of the Association for the Protection of Native Races, and five members of Parliament, met with the Minister of Home and Territories to urge the establishment of a royal commission into the status of Aborigines throughout the country, with special attention to the area controlled by Western Australia and the Commonwealth. The government was sufficiently impressed to solicit the views of the states, and when co-operation was not forthcoming decided to conduct its own investigation into conditions in the Northern Territory.³ The inquiry was undertaken by the Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines, J. W. Bleakley, and his subsequent report served momentarily to focus attention on government policy. In the same year a royal commission on the Constitution led to renewed pressure for federal control.

The new mood was also evident in the attention accorded to the activities of punitive expeditions. For a brief period the curtain was drawn aside to reveal the brutal reality of race relations in the north. In 1926, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, following the killing of a white pastoralist a heavily armed punitive party comprising two policemen, four other whites and seven Aborigines went on a killing spree. While some Aborigines were shot, it seems that a number of women and children were clubbed to death. The bodies were burned at four separate sites in what become known as the Forrest River massacre. A royal commission reported that at least eleven Aborigines had been killed; the Reverend E. R. Gribble, the missionary responsible for bringing the incident to public notice, put the death toll at 30. According to Aboriginal tradition, however, a much higher number of people were murdered.⁴ The two policemen who led the party were put on trial, to the outrage of the local white population which set up a fund to meet their legal costs. The police were acquitted and promoted out of the district. In 1928 a similar episode in central Australia sparked a much greater public outcry. Following the killing of a white dogger and an attack on a local pastoralist, a party led by Constable W. Murray launched a series of raids on the drought-stricken population in the Coniston region, north-west of Alice Springs. Murray admitted that his party had killed 31 Aborigines; estimates by missionaries who worked in the area were in the range of 70 to 100.⁵

In the short term, news of the killings focused greater attention on the treatment of Aborigines. The Adelaide Advertiser commented in an editorial that the Forrest River massacre had:

shocked all humane people in the Commonwealth, and created an irresistible demand for public action to save the remnant of the black population from extinction … Enough has become known regarding the horrible treatment of the aborigines on the outskirts of civilisation to make it imperative that measures should be taken for their better protection against cruelty and neglect, and to give them at least a chance of survival. It is a disgrace not merely to the Western State, but to Australia as a whole, that the responsibility of the white man to the original occupants of this continent should have been so shamefully evaded.⁶

With the onset of the Depression, the little interest that had been generated was diverted to issues of immediate significance to white Australians. A rough guide to the changing importance attached to Aboriginal issues is provided by indexes to major daily newspapers of the period, the Melbourne Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald. Table 1.1 lists items dealing with Aborigines at two yearly intervals.

TABLE 1.1: Content analysis of the Melbourne Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald: Items relating to Aborigines

Source: Indexes of the respective newspapers, subject entries for Aborigines, anthropology, murder, Northern Territory.

While attention was diverted from Aboriginal issues in the early 1930s, the lack of interest which had characterised much of the first three decades of the century was not to return. A major pressure group, the Association for the Protection of Native Races, was re-activated as a result of the events of 1926–29 and the press was coming to regard the treatment of Aborigines in the north as a newsworthy subject.

In 1933 and 1934 national attention was again directed to northern methods of dealing with those Aborigines who dared to raise their hands against their superiors. A plan to send a punitive party into Arnhem Land following the killing of a policeman was aborted on instructions from Canberra and several Aborigines were persuaded by missionaries to travel to Darwin to explain their actions to the authorities. The arrest of one of their number and the apparent bias evident in the handling of their cases by Judge Wells of the Northern Territory Supreme Court led to widespread protest in the south, which is reflected in the marked increase in newspaper coverage of Aboriginal issues in 1934 (Table 1.1). While allegations of mistreatment continued to attract the press, a movement for a radical shift in policy, led by Professor A. P. Elkin of the University of Sydney, gathered support. Elkin argued that it was time to replace a negative approach, which only directed itself to the physical needs of Aborigines, with a ‘positive policy’ aimed at adapting the Aborigines to a new life. The government, concerned with Australia’s reputation abroad, was increasingly placed on the defensive and the political agenda was gradually reshaped. New issues were emerging. Could a different system of dealing with tribal Aborigines charged with criminal offences be instituted? Were there any prospects that ‘half-castes’, and perhaps even ‘full-blood’ Aborigines, could be educated and absorbed into the world of white Australians? Was the extinction of Aborigines inevitable?

Numbers and distribution

There was no reliable census of Aborigines in northern Australia in the first decades of the century. In 1911 the best estimates available to governments indicated that the largest Aboriginal populations were in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, with the estimates for each in the range of 20 000 to 25 000; some two-thirds of the surviving Aboriginal population was believed to be in northern Australia. In 1924 what was described as the first ‘census’ of the Aboriginal population merely served to confirm earlier figures: the combined Aboriginal and ‘half-caste’ population of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland was in excess of 60 000. Of the remaining states, New South Wales had a population of 7000, South Australia 5000, and Victoria 500. Tasmania recognised no Aborigines within its borders.

The general expectation that the Aborigines would soon become extinct was supported by figures for those classed as ‘full-blood’, although even at the end of the 1930s there were still no reliable figures for much of the north. It was estimated in 1925 that the total ‘full-blood’ population was just over 62 000; by 1939 it had declined to under 52 000, the lower figure partly being the result of a significant revision of estimates in 1933. While the ‘full-blood’ population seemed to be declining as expected, governments were having to confront a problem unforseen at the turn of the century: the rapid increase in the population of mixed descent. The ‘half-caste’ population, as it was termed by contemporaries, was 10 000 in 1911; by 1939 it had increased to over 25 000, and was growing at a rate consistently in excess of the white population; in 1939 there were 10 000 people of mixed descent in New South Wales, 6800 in Queensland and 4700 in Western Australia. The combined Aboriginal population comprised about 1 per cent of the Australian total.

The letter of the law

In the nineteenth century the dispossession of Aborigines was achieved by naked force. In most parts of the country little was done by governments for the surviving populations, beyond the distribution of rations and blankets to some of the indigent and elderly. A new approach became the standard by the first decades of the twentieth century: the right of full citizenship was formally withdrawn on the justification that Aborigines were unable to manage their own affairs and governments assumed responsibility for their ‘preservation and protection’. Their legal status was to be analogous to that of children or the insane. One of leading administrators of the inter-war period, J. W. Bleakley, outlined the conclusions to be drawn from 30 years of work amongst the Aborigines of Queensland:

1. The aborigines are a child race, requiring parental control and protection.

2. Without protection they are peculiarly susceptible to the contaminating influences of civilisation.

3. They respond gratifyingly to benevolent training and up-lifting environment… ⁷

Most states adopted legislation dealing with detribalised Aborigines between 1897 and 1915, although there was a degree of variation in its stringency: the controls that could be imposed on Aborigines were most far reaching in Queensland and Western Australia, the least restrictive in Victoria.

The first major feature of the legislation was the power to restrict freedom of movement. In most states the law could compel Aborigines, either singly or in groups, to move from a town, the environs of a town or a municipal district. Officials could compel Aborigines to reside in a specific location such as a government reserve, and in Western Australia in a designated region. Typical of such legislation were the powers granted to the Chief Protector of the Northern Territory to:

cause any aboriginal or half-caste to be kept within the boundaries of any reserve or aboriginal institution or to be removed to and kept within the boundaries of any reserve or aboriginal institution, or to be removed from one reserve or aboriginal institution to another reserve or aboriginal institution, and to be kept therein … If at any time he thinks it necessary to do so, a Protector may order and cause any aboriginals or half-castes who are camped, or are about to camp, within the limits of or near any municipality, town, township, public house, or wine and spirit store, to remove their camp or proposed camp to such distance from such municipality, town, township, public house or wine and spirit store, as he directs.⁸

In Queensland, the responsible minister could order an ‘uncontrollable’ Aborigine to be placed in prison indefinitely, without appeal.⁹

On reserves administrators could legally attempt to obliterate Aboriginal culture, and take all necessary measures to maintain ‘discipline and good order’, including interfering with domestic and private correspondence and imposing short terms of imprisonment. It was an offence for an Aborigine to enter or leave a reserve without permission.

The second characteristic of ‘protectionist’ legislation was the removal of the right to act as a free agent, with an official being placed in the position of guardian over the lives of Aborigines. The Northern Territory Chief Protector was ‘to exercise a general supervision and care over all matters affecting the welfare of the Aboriginals, and to protect them against immorality, injustice, imposition, and fraud’.¹⁰ In most states a permit, generally obtained from a protector, was required before Aborigines could enter into employment. The more demanding permits stipulated the nature of employment, a length of service of up to one year, and the remuneration. Except in Queensland, it was unusual for Aborigines working in the rural districts of northern Australia to be paid cash. Northern Territory legislation prescribed a minimum wage of five shillings a week, but an employer in a country district was exempted if he fed the dependants of a worker. The employer of Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory had to undertake:

To pay wages at the rate of 5s. per week for each aboriginal every four weeks to the Chief Protector of Aboriginals to be held in trust for the aboriginal (unless exempted by the Chief Protector of Aboriginals from the payment of wages) and to provide food, clothing, and tobacco to the aboriginals specified …, [and]

To observe the provisions of the Ordinance and Regulations in regard to the employment of aboriginals, and especially —

– To keep a record of my native labour employed, nature of employment, and wages paid: Such record to be open for inspection by a Protector at any time;

– To employ no children under 12 years of age;

– To set aside a portion of the land occupied as a Native Camp; and

– To supply shelter for the aboriginals I employ.¹¹

Where Aborigines were paid in cash they received only part of their earnings. The rest went to an official, supposedly for safekeeping. Officials could legally control the financial affairs of all Aborigines: the South Australian Chief Protector, for example, could ‘take possession of, retain, sell, or dispose of any … property, whether real or personal’.¹²

Association between Aborigines and other Australians could be legally restricted. It was an offence to persuade an Aborigine to leave a reserve or place of employment, or to ‘remove’ an Aborigine from one state to another. It was an offence for Europeans to enter an Aboriginal camp or reserve, in New South Wales to ‘lodge or wander in company with any aborigine’, and in Victoria to ‘harbour an aboriginal’ unless he or she was exempted from the act or in lawful employment. In Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory it was an offence for a female Aborigine to marry without written permission of an authorised Protector. Except for lawfully married couples, ‘cohabitation’ with an Aboriginal woman was an offence. In all mainland states except Victoria the authorities had power to take any Aboriginal child from its parents. In the Northern Territory the Chief Protector was the legal guardian of every Aboriginal or ‘half-caste’ child under the age of eighteen years, notwithstanding that the child had a parent or other relative.¹³

In the inter-war period the powers of administrators were strengthened. Thus the category of people covered by the legislation was widened to formalise control over the increasing population of mixed descent. In 1934 Queensland redefined Aborigines as persons of full descent and ‘half-castes’, including ‘any person being the grandchild of grandparents one of whom is an aboriginal’, and any person of Aboriginal extraction who ‘in the opinion of the Chief Protector is in need of … control’. In 1936 Western Australia deleted reference to caste, and defined persons ranging from ‘full blood’ to certain classes of ‘quadroons’ or persons ‘only one-fourth of the original full blood’ as coming within the scope of the legislation. There was power to exempt people of mixed descent, but exemptions could be partial and were revocable.¹⁴

The reality of race relations

There were two major contradictions between legislation and the reality of life in northern Australia. The