We do not currently have any photographs linked to this entry. If you know of any additional photographs, please contact us. Some people may find content on this website distressing. Nevertheless, the difficulties of permanently distancing mixed descent children from their Indigenous families was a matter of constant concern to government officials.
Clearly they recognised the strength of the family bonds they were trying to break. Unlike white children who came into the state's control, far greater care was taken to ensure that [Aboriginal children] never saw their parents or families again. They were often given new names, and the greater distances involved in rural areas made it easier to prevent parents and children on separate missions from tracing each other van Krieken page As Brisbane's Telegraph newspaper reported in May ,.
Mr Neville [the Chief Protector of WA] holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population. Sixty years ago, he said, there were over 60, full-blooded natives in Western Australia. Today there are only 20, In time there would be none.
Perhaps it would take one hundred years, perhaps longer, but the race was dying. The pure blooded Aboriginal was not a quick breeder. On the other hand the half-caste was. In Western Australia there were half-caste families of twenty and upwards.
That showed the magnitude of the problem quoted by Buti on page In Neville's 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. Assuming the theory to be correct, argument in government circles centred around the optimum age for forced removal.
That way government officials acting under the authority of the Chief Protector or the Board could simply order the removal of an Indigenous child without having to establish to a court's satisfaction that the child was neglected. In Queensland and Western Australia the Chief Protector used his removal and guardianship powers to force all Indigenous people onto large, highly regulated government settlements and missions, to remove children from their mothers at about the age of four years and place them in dormitories away from their families and to send them off the missions and settlements at about 14 to work.
Indigenous girls who became pregnant were sent back to the mission or dormitory to have their child. The removal process then repeated itself. However the notion that people forced off the reserves would merge with the non-Indigenous population took no account of the discrimination they faced. In South Australia, where there was an uneasy relationship between the government and missionaries in relation to the care of Indigenous children, government officials sent Indigenous children to institutions catering for non-Indigenous children while missionaries took in Indigenous children and operated their own schools.
Apart from satisfying a demand for cheap servants, work increasingly eschewed by non-Indigenous females, it was thought that the long hours and exhausting work would curb the sexual promiscuity attributed to them by non-Indigenous people. A common feature of the settlements, missions and institutions for Indigenous families and children was that they received minimal funding. In the jurisdictions with the largest Indigenous populations - the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland - spent the least per capita on Indigenous people.
The Commonwealth's spending of [sterling]1 per person per annum compared to [sterling] The lack of funding for settlements, missions and institutions meant that people forced to move to these places were constantly hungry, denied basic facilities and medical treatment and as a result were likely to die prematurely. By contrast to this degree of intervention in the lives of Indigenous people, Indigenous families living on and near Cape Barren Island in Tasmania were left relatively undisturbed until the s.
From then on, however, the general child welfare legislation was used to remove Indigenous children from the Islands. These children were sent to non-Indigenous institutions and later non-Indigenous foster families on the ground that they were neglected.
Alternatively, Indigenous families were threatened with the removal of their children if they did not consent to the removal of their children. This interest in removing Indigenous children from their families followed growing concern on the part of the Tasmanian Government in the s and s that the Islanders were refusing to adopt a self-sufficient agricultural lifestyle and would become permanently dependent upon government support.
Each of them presented his own theory, developed over a long period in office, of how people of mixed descent would eventually blend into the non-Indigenous population.
Although Neville's model of absorption had been a biological one, assimilation was a socio-cultural model. Implicit in the assimilation policy was the idea current among non-Indigenous people that there was nothing of value in Indigenous culture. Nobody who knows anything about these groups can deny that their members are socially and culturally deprived.
What has to be recognized is that the integration of these groups differs in no way from that of the highly integrated groups of economically depressed Europeans found in the slums of any city and in certain rural areas of New South Wales. State legislation prohibiting access to alcohol for Aborigines was repealed and in most jurisdictions Aborigines became entitled to full award wages.
In the Constitution was amended by referendum so that Aborigines would in future be counted in the Census, [28] and to authorise the Commonwealth Parliament to pass laws specifically for the benefit of Aboriginal people.
While these developments were taking place, the general notion of assimilation was itself increasingly being questioned. That policy took no account of the value or resilience of Aboriginal culture, nor did it allow that Aborigines might seek to maintain their own languages and traditions. The paternalism, and arrogance, of such assumptions was discredited. There was also a greater awareness of Aboriginal problems by non-Aboriginal Australians.
The initial emphasis was on increased funding and improved programs in areas such as health, education and employment, to try to ensure that formal equality was accompanied by real social and economic advances.
But measures were also adopted to in crease funding for Aboriginal community development projects, and the first steps were taken towards the granting of land rights. In a separate federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs was established, and in the Woodward Commission was appointed to investigate how land rights for Aborigines could be implemented.
Self-Management or Self-Determination. This approach, variously described as a policy of self-management or self-determination, has been accompanied by government support programs managed by Aboriginal organisations. For example the Aboriginal Development Commission was established in [32] to help further the economic and social development of Aboriginal people, to promote their development and self-management and to provide a base for Aboriginal economic self-sufficiency.
The functions of the Aboriginal Development Commission are to assist Aboriginal people to acquire land, to engage in business enterprises and to obtain finance for housing and other personal needs. During the s, the pace of removals increased rapidly. An immediate result of this was severe overcrowding in places already in poor condition. The proposal was declined because it threatened the availability of cheap domestic labour from the Compound.
Instead, in , a new building was occupied next door for the girls and younger boys. It was known as the Half-Caste Home. Within four years, the Half-Caste Home had also reached critical overcrowding levels, with 76 inmates living in a house large enough for one family. In , the boys were moved south to Pine Creek. Meanwhile, at The Bungalow, 50 children and 10 adults were living in three exposed sheds.
Referring to conditions at The Bungalow, a newspaper gave the following report in At the Alice Springs bungalow the appearance of everybody and everything convicts the Home and Territories Department of the progressive destruction of 50 young promising lives and souls. When conditions there reached crisis point in , the children were moved to a temporary home at Jay Creek.
This 'home' consisted of a corrugated iron shed and two tents for staff. The children suffered from a severe water shortage, extreme cold in the winter and lack of protection from the rain when it came.
In , the Commonwealth Government set up an inquiry into Indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory. The inquiry was led by J. Bleakley, the Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines. In his report, Bleakley estimated the Territory's Indigenous population to be 21 , of which 8 were 'half-castes'. He also found that many Indigenous people were not being paid wages, living conditions were appalling and that government-run institutions 'were badly situated, inadequately financed and insufficiently supervised'.
Bleakley recommended that missions be given responsibility for Indigenous children. By the early s, there were seven missions operating in the Northern Territory, mostly in the north. The brutality experienced by Indigenous people meant that the missions were often the only place of safety.
Even so, the missions were in poor condition, and disease was widespread. At the Hermannsburg Mission, many children died from whooping cough in the late s. At a mission on Groote Eylandt, almost 50 percent of one generation of mixed-descent children suffered from leprosy.
The government provided little financial support to the missions to overcome these conditions. When Dr Cecil Cook was appointed Chief Protector in , he was wholly unsupportive of the missions. This was partly because of the poor conditions.
Cook supported biological assimilation. Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian aborigine are eradicated.
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