Our State of Mind

by Quentin Beresford

  Court proceedings were open to abuse. Aboriginal parents were represented in some instances by welfare officers, usually the female, from the Department of Native Welfare. These officers were apparently employed to act in a more sympathetic manner with Aboriginal people. But, however well meaning individual officers may have been, the conflict of interest involved in the Department both prosecuting and supposedly defending Aboriginal parents creates an obvious denial of natural justice. It is extremely doubtful Aboriginal parents felt they possessed either the power or the knowledge to intervene effectively on behalf of their children. Aboriginal people had been subjected to the tyrannical power of the Native Welfare Department for more than half a century. In this time, a ‘departmental culture’ had taken firm root. Native Welfare officers typically talked down to Aborigines and treated them as inferior and subservient. None of this is surprising given the power that legislation conferred over the lives of these people, but such an imbalance of power undermined the ability of individual parents to defend their right to retain their children.

  There are few records on the operation of the Child Welfare legislation which can throw more light on the operation of this law. Records are in the form of personal files and are inaccessible to the general public. However, the Commissioner of Native Welfare during the 1960s, Frank Gare, explained to us in interview the practices during his time.

  A child could be charged with being neglected if its moral or physical welfare was in jeopardy. Well we forgot about the moral business. This just meant that they were behaving in their Aboriginal culture. And we said if a child’s life is in jeopardy we would have to take action—but no less—their life had to be in jeopardy. And this meant that the cases brought before court were very few … The patrol officers of the Department got feedback all the time from the police who always knew everything going on in a country town. And if two parents were spending all their time in a pub they know that the kids are neglected. They see kids hanging around pubs for hours on end waiting for their parents to come out. They know that back home there is a baby waiting for Mum—that would be brought to our attention, if we hadn’t picked it up ourselves. We would then start watching that family. Judgements were made about children’s poor living conditions but not in isolation. There would have to be some other factor, usually associated with alcohol. I can’t recall a case that we took to court just because the camp conditions were poor. It wasn’t enough and it was too prevalent; they practically all lived in those conditions.

  These may be important qualifications as to how the scheme operated in the mid to late 1960s when an evolving awareness about the removal of children began to become apparent. The extent to which Gare’s explanations applied during the 1950s is harder to establish. In any event, court processes which rendered children as being neglected in his period were still subject to potential flaws. The case of Rosalie Fraser outlined in Chapter Three suggests court proceedings left much to be desired. Moreover, there is evidence—discussed in Chapter Six—that some magistrates openly held prejudicial views about Aborigines as late as the 1960s.

  Assimilation as practised amounted to legal discrimination against Aboriginal people. The foundations of the policy lay in racial theories and the policy itself was little more than a mask to perpetuate the ongoing desire among most whites for segregation. Officials, like the community at large, had convinced themselves of the inferiority of Aborigines and of the self-inflicted nature of their poverty. They rationalised that children could only benefit from being separated from their families and sent to isolated missions to be brought up as whites. It occurred only to a very few to challenge this set of racial beliefs.

  3

  Life On The Inside

  Acts of extreme violence began and ended for Phillip Prosser in the nine years he spent in Roelands Mission outside Collie in the 1940s and early 1950s. Rosalie Fraser suffered daily emotional and physical abuse throughout the childhood she spent with a foster-mother and her financially struggling family during the 1960s. The mission and the nuclear family were the two institutions given responsibility for caring for Aboriginal children taken away from their families. There are similarities in their aims and operations. Both played a deliberate role in the cultural transformation of these children. They were both conveyors of white values and barriers to reconnection with the past Aboriginal culture. In both settings many Aboriginal children suffered horrific abuse. The sources of this abuse had similar origins. With probably rare exceptions, neither ‘respectable’ white families nor ‘saintly’ missionaries valued much about Aboriginal culture. Both regarded the Aboriginal child as a potential convert to christianity and white culture.

  Phillip Prosser is easily established as typical of the children who went through the missions: there is a significant volume of documentary material revealing life in these institutions. By contrast, the private arrangements underpinning fostering left little documentary evidence outside of individual files which are inaccessible to the general public. Rosalie’s abuse, as we show, may have been extreme, but it was certainly not isolated.

  Roelands was one of twenty-seven missions run under the auspices of the Native Welfare Department in the 1950s and 60s. Missions had had an uneasy relationship with government over the years. Under Neville their activities were barely tolerated because of his fears over lack of control of their activities. Under Middleton it became government policy to subsidise an expanding number of missions to house the increasing numbers of children taken from their families. Missions spanned the length and breadth of Western Australia. Most sizeable country towns supported a mission on its outskirts where Aboriginal families, dispossessed of their land, were fed, clothed and evangelised. However, it was in the southwestern region of the State where the purpose-run missions for children were mostly located.

  Roelands was one of these missions. Three months after Phillip Prosser arrived as a five year old, he received a flogging from the Acting Superintendent of such severity its callousness can now be barely imagined.

  I had my first flogging three months after I arrived in the Home by a man that stood around six feet five inches. I was accused of something I hadn’t done along with three or four other lads. It was a cold winter’s morning and we were flogged with a sewing machine strap. I was given six across my arms, turned around and flogged from my shoulders down to my legs. To get rid of the pain we rolled around on the icy ground.132

  Phillip Prosser left in 1953 following a raging confrontation with another of the Home’s hierarchy. It was summer and he and two other boys had been called up to the compound about a missing piece of iron. They knew who had taken it but all three refused to ‘lag’ on their mates. For punishment, they were told to dig out a sun-dried claypan which was so hard the pick bounced back with every blow. Phillip revolted. He was told to get back to work, but he refused. The supervisor went off to get a cane and Phillip used the opportunity to arm himself with a copper stick which he hid behind his back. When the supervisor returned Phillip pulled out his weapon and an uneasy stand-off between child and adult occurred. To defuse the situation, each agreed to put down their implement. However, as Phillip went to place his copper stick on the ground, he was struck behind the ear with a painful blow of the cane:

  For the first time in my life I retaliated. I latched onto his ear lobe to bite it off. I punched into him. He dug his metal tipped boots into my feet and peeled back my skin. I just went berserk but he laid into me with a split cane.

  Phillip subsequently informed an area officer for the Department of Native Affairs about the incident, who managed to have him released from the Home. However, as far as he could tell, there were no repercussions for Roelands or its staff. Phillip claims documentary evidence from Native Affairs shows the incident was covered up.

  It was not uncommon for ‘closed’ institutions such as Roelands to successfully maintain an ‘official’ version of their activities which conflicted with the
‘private’ experience of them. The incident involving Phillip Prosser and, clearly, a number of others like it, could never be gauged from the information received by the public about Roelands’ operations. In 1952, for example, the Superintendent, Mr K C Cross, wrote of his young charges:

  Excellent reports continue to be received from employers of the young people who have left the Mission. During the year one boy entered into an apprenticeship agreement with an electrical engineer. One of the older girls has passed her entrance examination set by the Nurses’ Association … For the young people who have completed their training and are away working in various parts of the State, a Convention and a reunion was arranged during January of this year. I am pleased to report that this reunion and also the holiday periods spent by the folk at the Mission, which they call Home, proved an inspiration and a sense of accomplishment to the Mission staff as they again met the young people and noted the manner in which they have, in most cases, maintained the Mission training standard, and to some extent improved their acceptance in the community.133

  From such a glowing account no one would ever have known such disturbing incidents of the sort experienced by Phillip Prosser ever occurred. However, a closer reading of Cross’ account of the preceding year might suggest that all was not as indicated. There is a lack of specific details and a clear message that young Aborigines were being driven to meet some ‘standard’ imposed by the mission. The reunions about which Cross expressed such enthusiasm appear not quite so overwhelmingly attended as he indicated. In 1950, a decade after its establishment, a press report on Roelands claimed that ‘as many as 14 old farm children return to see their friends’.134 This represents only a small fraction of those who, by that time, had gone through the place. A reunion of ex-Roelands children was organised by Aborigines in 1996. The atmosphere had a highly charged undercurrent to it. ‘You could feel the hate, the bitterness that was oozing out of the things that happened to those kids in Roelands.’135

  It is the clash of these rival perspectives—Aborigines with memories of cruelty and missionaries executing God’s work—which makes any assessment of places like Roelands so very difficult. It is more than likely some Aborigines received positive opportunities due to their time in the institution. The standard of primary school teaching is remembered by Phillip Prosser to have been high and he believes children with talent were given some encouragement. But equally, there is a dark side to the work of Roelands which continues to affect many of those who spent time there. It would be surprising if this was not the case in light of the backgrounds and motivations of those who established and operated the place.

  Controversy still surrounds the exact origins of Roelands Home. It was founded as an experiment by dairy farmer and prominent Church of Christ member, Albany Bell, in the late 1930s to help Aborigines grow food while living on his property. For reasons unknown, this arrangement did not work out. However, later on the Department of Native Affairs struck up an arrangement with Bell for the farm to be used to look after Aboriginal children removed from their families. The Department had a clear vision of its place in the network of institutions opening up to cater for these children. In 1947 Middleton noted to one of his officers about to inspect a family with children earmarked for removal: ‘I would personally require to see all the children involved, and doubtless they could be placed at Roelands Mission Farm if they were considered to be too dark in colour to be successfully absorbed ultimately as whites.’136

  The limited expectations held for these children because of the colour of their skin probably underscored the harsh discipline used by some of the staff. At the same time, the staff were deeply motivated by their Christian faith and their commitment to the Church of Christ. Roelands Home was administered by a committee composed mainly of active members of the Church of Christ, although the present hierarchy of the Church claims it was organisationally separate from the main body of the Church. There are no documents available which shed further light on the links between the Home and the Church and, indeed, between the Home and the State Government. It appears to have been an unstated and loose arrangement between all three parties.

  Controversy also surrounds the qualities of the staff and its long-serving Superintendent, K G Cross. There are indications that Cross believed himself to be motivated by human compassion for the ‘half-castes’; he saw them as outcasts in both races and believed no one cared for them. It is also claimed some Aboriginal parents urged him to take their children because they wanted them to receive an education and to be given an opportunity in white society. Other children were brought to the Home from the courts having been charged with offences. Administering to this diverse group of children required a selfless, even saintly, outlook, according to one view.

  Some of the staff worked for 20-25 years because they could not stand seeing neglected and disadvantaged children, children who were not accepted in their own society. Being Christian they had a responsibility to help the disadvantaged. Who today would work in such an isolated place, look after so many children and be paid virtually nothing? People worked for 20-25 years and walked away with nothing.137

  However well-intentioned the work, as experienced by the children it was quite different. Part of the problem of assessing Roelands—and other missions like it—is the need to challenge the Christian ideology which drove such people to believe they could do ‘good work’ with children taken from their families. Cross certainly had lofty, but limited ideals, for the Home. He wrote that the purpose of the mission was ‘to provide training in the Christian life as revealed in the Message of the Gospel of Jesus.’138 In other words, his first priority was conversion. In implementing this evangelical approach, some staff held a dogmatic, intolerant and even hostile attitude towards their charges. To the children this was often expressed as righteousness and cruelty. Competing with Christianity in driving this attitude was disdain for the children’s Aboriginality. At times they were treated as less than human. The practice of making examples of senior boys (thirteen to fourteen years) who had not fed or tended the animals to the satisfaction of the staff demonstrates this. These boys were sat in the dining room and humiliated in front of the other children. Each received two rusty tin plates, the smaller containing a slice of dry bread while on the larger was placed dried bracken fern and dried bran. The message was not lost on younger boys forced to watch such humiliation. Phillip Prosser explains: ‘if you don’t feed the animals properly, you’re not fit to eat either. We’ll treat you no better than the animals.’

  Phillip Prosser vividly remembers that Cross and his staff viewed Aboriginal culture as pagan. He also has a clear recollection of these officers’ self-appointed role in life: ‘they were sent on a mission by God to train us into Christian society.’ This ‘training’ meant prayers morning and night and church every Sunday. Their attitude was ‘tunnel vision; they were right and we were wrong’.

  Every little thing you did in their eyes was a sin and you were punished and that involved corporal punishment. They used any utensil they could get hold of. I’ve seen boys flogged with a garden hose. Another young boy nearly had his eye knocked out because he was belted with a thick belt with a huge metal buckle on it and the buckle cut him across the eye.

  The staff saw physical discipline as the way to resocialise these children’s behaviour. In the early 1950s the Home housed over seventy children. The mission was built around a 1,500 acre farm which produced dairy goods, vegetables and fruit. The children’s labour was an integral part of the farm economy. It not only sustained the Home, it provided salaries for the staff. In the 1940s and 50s, government subsidies paid to missions such as Roelands were so low that, at Roelands, it is estimated they covered barely one-third of the operating costs.

  It is possible to look upon the involvement of the children in the labour of the farm as part of their training and part of normal childhood chores. After all, these children were being prepared for future occ
upations on the land. However, the picture is more complex and disturbing. From the recollections of those who spent their childhoods in Roelands work was all-consuming. ‘In the Mission we were literally little slaves. Just work and religion’, remembers one ex-inmate. The daily routine seems to bear out the comment: up at 6 am; beds made and prayers at 6.30; chores before breakfast; breakfast at 7.30; religious teaching after breakfast; attendance at school on the Mission; chores all over again after school. Saturday morning involved still more work: filling up the wood boxes, cleaning out the pigsties and the chicken pens: ‘we were a labour force for the Mission, for nothing’, argues Phillip Prosser. He has clear memories of making up to five hundred fruit cases a day at the ages of ten and eleven while, at the same time, girls were spending all day grading fruit. This labour serviced the Mission’s export fruit business.

  This work routine raises some important questions about the claim that these institutions were training grounds for children’s future occupations. In reality, these children were an unpaid labour force; they were, in effect, unwilling servants in their own institutionalisation. Their work provided the funds to enable missionaries to conduct their self-appointed roles of resocialising them. To sanction the removal of these children from their families is one part of the injustice they suffered; forcing them to work for the upkeep of the institution they were sent to, as was the case at Roelands, is little short of an outrage. On leaving the Mission most of the boys from Roelands found little more than low-paid labouring jobs, mostly on farms where it was not uncommon for them to have to sleep in a shed. However, the meticulous regime of early rising and work did perform an essential part of the cultural shift being inculcated in these children. Work, and the discipline which often accompanied it, were to be the means by which these children would abandon the ways of the ‘native’ and take up an industrious life in white society. They first had to be shown how this was done.