Our State of Mind

by Quentin Beresford

  Bateman certainly echoed the stereotypes about ‘half-castes’ which had been circulating for half a century. ‘The average half-caste in the towns’, he reported

  is an undesirable type, idle, unreliable, fond of drinking and gambling and generally useless. In liquor they are noisy, obscene, disorderly and often violent. In the majority of instances they move from town to town, never remaining settled in one spot for very long and living on the various native reserves adjacent to the towns.69

  There were 1500 ‘half-castes’ in the south of the State at this time and when Bateman, like others before him, projected his understanding of their current problems into the near future, he found a ‘definite menace’, requiring an urgent resolution. The appalling conditions endured by most Aborigines in the southern part of the State, where most lived on ramshackle reserves on the outskirts of towns, compelled Bateman to consider the fate of the children. He firmly believed an unbridgeable gulf separated Aboriginal family life from whites. Any attempt to raise the status of the children in such circumstances was ‘absolutely hopeless’ and would only ‘prolong the native problem for generations.’ The key difficulty, as Bateman saw it, was that any good done during the day at school was immediately reversed the moment the child returned home to its parents:

  How possibly can children progress when after the day’s schooling is over they are forced to return to the disgraceful verminous conditions of native camps, where six or seven children together with their parents and perhaps an adult relation or two and more often than not a dog, occupy on a communal basis a shack, inadequate in size and constructed of old kerosene tins and bags.70

  Not only were the physical conditions of Aborigines threatening their children’s future, but Aboriginal culture was widely seen by white officials as frustrating children’s ‘sense of responsibility’ and stimulating ‘that urge to ignore moral standards as laid down by us’, leading them ‘to yield to those pleasurable impulses the flesh is heir to.’71 The belief in white superiority which lay behind such views underpinned a disdainful attitude towards Aboriginal culture generally and in particular to the perceived lack of any culture whatsoever among the ‘half-castes’. Some of the most florid examples of this outlook can be found among the letters and diaries of Department of Native Affairs inspectors and patrol officers who wrote regular memos to the various commissioners. One such memo written in 1952 glorifies ‘we whites’ who are ‘controlled by hundreds of years of Christian background.’ It mattered not to the author that ‘we do not believe or accept a word’ of this background; it ‘still acts as a guide or control of our living.’ ‘Half-castes’, brought up ‘by their mothers with the Aboriginal background’ have lost these restraints ‘in their contact with civilisation’.72

  A O Neville, in his book published in 1947, provides some additional insights into the way in which the concept of race was used to construct the ‘problem’ of Aboriginal children in this post-war period. The children growing up on the reserves, he argued, acquired ‘a warped outlook difficult to eradicate’. This, he believed, was the fault of their ‘coloured’ parents: ‘The bad habits of the grandparents and parents are bequeathed to the children … The elders are indifferent to the lack of improvement in the children. What was good enough for them is good enough for the children.’73 Thus, ‘the children are still the main problem.’ Neville’s solution was unchanged, but it is important to highlight his reasoning. On the reserves, he wrote, ‘you will find a bright spot due to the fact that some mother has worked at one time in a white employer’s house and has there learnt the rudiments of cleanliness of person, care of children, and the protection of foodstuffs.’74

  In canvassing solutions to these perceived problems of ‘half-castes’, Bateman rejected an obvious answer: to improve the living conditions on the reserves. ‘Even if the present economic condition was such to make this possible’, he reasoned, ‘there is considerable doubt as to whether this would bring about a satisfactory solution.’ In these, and later comments, Bateman reflected the prevailing community views on race. Describing all the adults as ‘beyond redemption’, he believed that ‘these types if provided with a new home would have it as filthy as a native camp in a matter of weeks.’ Such thinking made drastic solutions appear reasonable. Henceforth, Aborigines should be

  subject to our own law regarding neglected children. If white parents neglected their children the children are removed from their control. The same action should be adopted in respect to the native children. The welfare of the children is the only thing which should be considered and the fact that the parents are likely to be heart-broken for a few weeks should not influence the administration any more than the fact that white parents in similar circumstances suffer grief. Those native parents who will not make any effort to improve their conditions and help their children are not fit to retain them. I feel sure that the fear of losing their children would be a tremendous spur for those borderline cases … and compel them to do something for themselves and their children.75

  The filth and lethargy which they allegedly tolerated were, in his mind, all of their own making. Moreover, they were disinterested in their children’s schooling and wandered carelessly from town to town, ‘exposing them to all kinds of harm.’ Such children were ‘neglected a thousand fold more than any white child deemed to be neglected under the Child Welfare Act.’ Their perceived absence of worth as people is revealed in his assessment of parents; any grief at losing their children would only last ‘for a few weeks.’ Bateman’s proposed solution had a familiar ring: segregate the children in institutions and fit them to take their place in white civilisation. So pleased was he with his conceptualisation of the problem and his diagnosis of the remedy, he relished its potential to do good: ‘I feel that it would be advantageous for all native children to spend some time at these children’s institutions’. In outlining his scheme, Bateman was reflecting current practice within the Department of Native Affairs. Neville’s successor as Commissioner of Native Affairs, F I Bray, was convinced that ‘no substantial progress is possible unless children are separated from their parents and cared for in dormitories.’76 Here was the longstanding and entrenched view of whites—reformulated for a new era.

  However, there is an extraordinary shallowness about Bateman’s approach to defining the problem of Aboriginal child poverty. He, and countless others like him, were unwilling to properly confront the reality of Aboriginal life, and to acknowledge the role governments and ordinary people had played over the years in creating and sustaining the very poverty about which they now moralised. Most Aboriginal people—and especially those in the south of Western Australia—did live in abject poverty and this poverty did, very frequently, restrict the life chances of their children. However, Bateman not only failed to acknowledge the causes of Aboriginal poverty, he overlooked the abiding strength of the family in Aboriginal culture, despite the impact of severe material deprivation. Moreover, he chose to ignore the real desire—against impossible odds—of many Aboriginal people to improve their life circumstances and the chances for their children. These were rarely listened to, and certainly not by Bateman. His legacy was to further extend the use of race as a political means to control and oppress Aboriginal people, but this time under the guise of humanitarian concern.

  Neville and Bateman reflected the views of the wider community. Erected around them was a framework of logic which justified drastic action. They neutralised the inhumanity of removing these children by claiming a higher moral concern: ‘half-castes’ were inferior parents; their children were being damaged; only by taking them into the ‘superior’ care of white society would their future be guaranteed. Solid as this framework of logic appeared to them it was held together by a fabricated theory on race. The justification for removal—that these children were wilfully neglected—was a facade. When the circumstances of Aboriginal poverty are carefully examined, it is clear that this was a deliberate imposition by
government, widely supported by the community. Contrary to the moralizing, Aboriginal children in the post-war era were taken from their families for reasons over which they had no direct control.

  Indigenous people everywhere who are dispossessed of land are prone to social and economic marginalisation. Such a process occurs from the beginnings of colonisation. In the twentieth century, the descent of Western Australian Aborigines into poverty was entrenched by the passage of the 1905 Aborigines Act, the impact of which has been well documented elsewhere.77 Briefly, and in respect of the Act’s effect on the future living conditions of Aborigines, any Aborigine who was not in lawful employment could be removed to a reserve or expelled from any town or municipality which had been declared a prohibited area. Reserves expanded in number from the 1930s, and well into the 1960s, existing on the outskirts of many country towns.

  Usually, the outcry from locals protesting the ‘nuisance’ from natives compelled local authorities to establish a reserve, which only ever offered temporary control of land to Aborigines. In these reserves, also known as camps, Aborigines congregated in family groups as dispossessed and displaced people, effectively denied any opportunity to enter the mainstream economic life. Governments spent virtually nothing on establishing or maintaining these reserves, a fact that was reflected in the low levels of spending on Aboriginal affairs. Western Australia had the lowest spending of all the States: in 1935, the government spent little more than one pound per head on Aborigines; New South Wales spent £5.5.3; Victoria—£13.4.4; Queensland and South Australia—£5.10.10.78

  Few white people had bothered to become acquainted with these poorly serviced reserves and to understand the lifestyle and the problems of the people who lived on them. West Australian journalist, Paul Hasluck, was one of the few who had and his detailed portrait, while not free of the racial biases of the time, offers a most comprehensive portrait of these communities. His work, originally published as a series of newspaper articles was subsequently bound as a small book, Our Southern Half-caste Native and their Conditions.79 Hasluck’s richly informed observations help to expose Bateman’s later report as the product of cultural blindness and racial stereotyping.

  Hasluck did not mince words in describing the appalling living conditions on the reserves. ‘Most half-castes,’ he wrote, ‘live in habitations rather worse than the poorer class of suburban fowlhouse.’ He identified three types of living quarters. The most basic were the mia-mias, traditional dwellings which, in the camps Hasluck visited, were built with five or six poles erected to make a pyramid. Around the windward side of the structure were strewn old bags, blankets or bushes. Inside, a whole family slept on the ground. A step higher were ‘rude tent-shaped huts’ made of bags and kerosene tins which had been flattened and opened out. In wet weather a cooking fire was made inside. Thirdly, the ‘superior sort of hut’ was made more substantial by the addition of old timber and galvanised iron. These had a chimney ‘of sorts’, a door and two or three compartments separated by hanging bags.

  Hasluck tried hard to see through the prevailing myths and stereotypes about these people. He observed that families living in the more substantial huts went to considerable lengths to keep their places clean and tidy. He also noted that the status of Aborigines in the white community as a ‘bad lot’ was far from accurate:

  Farmers who had employed half-castes for many seasons, the police, the local protectors and a few school-masters who had anything to do with their children—that is, people who were in constant touch with them—gave them a much higher character than did the people who ‘would not tolerate them anywhere about the place’ and who presumably seldom met.

  As well, Hasluck encountered communities founded on the strength of the family unit. Although legal marriages scarcely existed, ‘most unions so simply made in the camps seem to be lasting’ and these couples were ‘devoted to their children’ for whom they had strong aspirations: ‘most of them were very eager for their children to go to school.’

  However, Hasluck found that Aborigines faced an impossible task in realising these ambitions. By the late 1930s, Aborigines living on the reserves had been reduced to a marginalised workforce of odd job labourers. A common means to earn money was the picking of ‘dead wool’ which involved wandering around the paddocks until a dead sheep was found and then, squatting beside the carcass, plucking the wool from it by hand. Snaring foxes and rabbits for their skins occupied some, while a few were hired as a semi-permanent casual labour force on the farms, contracted to perform seasonal work at hay carting and shearing times. However, the money earnt from these varied odd jobs was never sufficient to make Aborigines independent of government rations.

  Hasluck reserved his harshest criticisms for the failure of governments to ameliorate the hardship and privation endured by the reserve dwellers. ‘It is impossible to find evidence’, he wrote,

  that in recent years the Government has taken any positive action to better the conditions of the people living on the reserves … They have given no education to the children, no encouragement to the families to do better, and have offered no means of improving their living conditions.

  Virtually none of the reserves were connected to town water or sewerage systems making it difficult to encourage cleanliness. It was clear that government intended these people to be marginalised and impoverished.

  Conditions for some Aborigines brightened considerably during the Second World War, demonstrating a crucial point which contemporaries mostly chose to overlook. With access to regular employment at award wages, Aborigines could avoid the poverty which led officials to justify the removal of their children. Nevertheless, it was never the intention of government to allow Aborigines into the economic mainstream. However, labour shortages, due to the war effort, created unprecedented employment and high rates of wages for many Aborigines. The Annual Report from the Department of Native Affairs for 1945 noted that the ‘detribalised native people are now in better economic circumstances’. They had plentiful employment, higher earnings than in previous years and, ‘as they are drawing Child Endowment as well, many of them are trying to improve their social conditions.’80

  The upward trend in favourable circumstances faltered after the war ended. In the southern part of the State, many Aborigines continued to receive award wages but most could only find part-time employment.81 The operation of the work permit system for employing Aborigines was a further impediment to obtaining regular work. This system required any employer to take out a permit with the Department of Native Affairs to hire any Aborigine of ‘more than quarter caste’, and for any period of more than one month, except those who held citizenship. It absolved employers from the provisions of the Workers Compensation Act, enabling medical expenses incurred while working to be met by the Department. However, the main purpose was to exert control over the lives of Aborigines. Employers were expected to lodge a proportion of Aboriginal wages with the Department for banking in a Trust Account. The permit system had two detrimental effects on the employment of Aborigines. Firstly, it was a bureaucratic inconvenience to farmers wishing to employ Aborigines on a casual basis. ‘It is extremely annoying,’ wrote one Beverley farmer to the local Native Affairs District Officer in the early 1950s,

  to have to keep on applying for permits for natives casually employed. There are many occasions when a native could be employed for a few days but farmers don’t give them the job because they have to go to the trouble of getting a permit.

  Secondly, in a labour market being opened up to migrants, permits created an unnecessary additional cost to farmers, making Aboriginal labour unviable. This was acknowledged by a Bunbury Patrol Officer for the Department of Native Affairs in 1951 when he wrote:

  Just about every employer of labour has Compensation Insurance covering two or three men. He pays his premium each year … I don’t think that after he has paid that premium he is going to employ a native and pay another twenty five
shillings for a permit.82

  The permit system not only acted to restrict Aboriginal employment, for some it operated as a form of bondage, a fact acknowledged by the Commissioner for Native Affairs who, writing in his 1953 Annual Report, acknowledged: ‘Under current legislation a native is under the supervision of a police officer or Protector and may not absent himself from his service or quit his work without reasonable cause. Thus he is not permitted to barter his service or change his place of employment.’ Apart from receipt of a small wage, there is not much difference between this system and slavery.

  Downward pressure on wages paid to Aborigines followed a 1947 Arbitration Court decision on farmworkers employed in the South West Land Division. Clause 13 of the Award made provision for ‘the less efficient class of native worker’ and, in consequence, a reduced wage. A memo from the Secretary of Labour to the Commissioner for Native Affairs preceding the decision provided the justification for the new discriminatory measure. ‘Natives are generally less efficient’, he wrote, and belong to the ‘sub-economic group’ compared with ‘white men’. Therefore, they ‘must be dealt with more generally as less efficient workers’.83 In his 1954 Annual Report, the Commissioner of Native Affairs acknowledged that: ‘By and large natives are still a sub-economic unit of our community, living in sub-standard conditions, dressed in the raiments of civilisation, but mere caricatures of the white man’.84 In other words, all Aborigines were ascribed a characteristic based on their race.

  Racial attitudes were, at times, quite explicit in the post-war drive to reduce Aboriginal wages. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Bateman’s report. After castigating the ‘half-castes’ in one breath for their failure to uphold white standards and care for their children he went on to justify the necessity to lower their wages. The contortions of his reasoning are worth examining. Rejecting the rationale for Aborigines to receive the same wages where they clearly performed equal work, Bateman explained: