Our State of Mind

by Quentin Beresford

  A variant of the ‘for their own good’ theme is the attempt by opponents of the HREOC Report to support the motivations of those who were involved. If these can be judged as well-intentioned, as the following correspondent indicated, then the policy itself is not at fault. The correspondent recalls having had:

  long conversations with a white married couple in the 1940s at Huskisson, near Nowra. They had been in charge of a Government institution for fostering; I was absolutely convinced of their genuine concern for the children and their conviction that the children were being given a better start in life than their parents could offer.365

  These attempts to uphold the merits of assimilation as justification for not apologising to the stolen generations, reveal a mixture of ignorance and cultural superiority. Common to all these commentators is classic assimilationist thinking: Aborigines had to be integrated into white society because of the inferiority of their family and/or cultural background and this attested to the noble motives behind the policy. Moreover, those involved in the policy were known to be compassionate people. By implication, therefore, no apology is necessary. As this book has tried to show, the facts are more complex and unpalatable. The motivation of assimilationists may have been presented as compassionate concern, but beneath this lay deeper hostilities to Aborigines as a race. As to providing opportunities for Aboriginal children, thereby ‘saving’ them from their impoverished backgrounds, there is too much evidence of the obverse being the case. It was the policy of segregation, with the sanction of the community at large in States like Western Australia—which found expression in the reserve system, in opposition to Aboriginal children attending school, in discrimination in employment, and in the refusal to grant citizenship and social security—which represented the real origins of the endemic poverty among Aboriginal people and especially those who, because of dispossession, were forced to live on the fringes of white society.

  The intentions of those involved in the policy of assimilation, and the pre-war policy of absorption, were not always so high minded as some now attempt to portray. The widespread abuse of Aboriginal children in missions and foster homes and the coercive power which the State exercised over their lives amply demonstrates the racial hostility which continued to drive this policy at all levels in the community, if not by all individuals. In any event, the very notion of ‘good intentions’ implies a value judgement. It so very frequently meant ‘good’ according to a white perspective. To ‘save’ these children from poverty was a ‘good’ intention; to offer them a white culture was judged equally ‘good’. However, no similar moral worth was attached to the need to end their poverty, to value their culture and to let them exist in their own way. Claims that these judgements reflected the different standards of the time is to confirm that the standards were racial. This may be unpalatable to those who lived through the assimilationist era and who now claim today’s standards should not be applied to that earlier generation. However, it is important to recognise the conscious choice behind Aboriginal policy in the decades covered in this book. Segregation, discrimination and removal of children may have represented majority opinion, but there were contrary views voiced which were ignored. Moreover, in the post-war period, evidence suggests that many people who held unsympathetic views towards Aborigines were aware of the moral wrong involved.

  Opposition to the HREOC Report was also evoked by the framework of human rights in which it was presented. The Commission called for reparations, including acknowledgment and apology; guarantees against repetition; measures of restitution; measures of rehabilitation; and monetary compensation. This framework conflicts with the views of many people who remain hostile to Aboriginal ‘special rights’. Greatly compounding hostility to the Report was the finding of genocide implicit in the policy. Political attempts to undermine the Report on this basis were spearheaded by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs who told ABC radio:

  I don’t believe we ever attempted genocide … Do the Australian people as a whole believe that our forebears committed genocide? I don’t believe the Australian people support that either … This practice could not be described as genocide as it did not involve an intentional elimination of a race.366

  From correspondence to newspapers the Minister appeared to be correct in his assumption that many people would disagree with this finding. One wrote to the West Australian:

  The comparison with the Holocaust is an intemperate slander. The worst that can be attributed to white settlement is that of neglect and of assuming too easily that a Stone-age culture could be shed after having led a hunter-gather existence for thousands of years.367

  Another wrote:

  I must protest about the use of the word ‘genocide’ by Sir Ronald Wilson and his ilk to describe what happened to the stolen Aboriginal children. In recent history this word has rightly been used to describe events such as the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s regime and the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. All these were times of unspeakable cruelty, perpetrated by grossly evil men and women. What happened in Australia was, without doubt, paternalism of the worst kind … There was never an intention to destroy the Aboriginal race and any attempt to equate this policy with the events listed above, by using the word ‘genocide’ is historically, intellectually and morally dishonest.368

  Taking as benchmarks the Holocaust and Pol Pot’s regime to define the term ‘genocide’ is understandable enough. However, the resistance to incorporating forced removal of Aboriginal children as genocide shows an unwillingness to grapple with the notion of genocide in international law. It is, in effect, an attempt at denial of the racist past. As the HREOC Report carefully documents, Australia was a member of the United Nations when the General Assembly declared genocide to be a crime against humanity in 1946, and that Australia also supported the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

  Those who were quick to denigrate the Report and its findings clearly have little working knowledge of the origins of assimilation. Neither have they examined the details of the United Nations conventions or even the analysis on them provided in the HREOC Report. The latter would have made clear that the United Nations’ adoption of the conventions on genocide was based on the work of Raphael Lemkin who, even before the full horrors of the Nazi regime were made apparent, defined genocide as ‘the coordinated and planned destruction of a national, religious, racial, or ethnic group by different actions through the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of the group with the aim of annihilating it physically or culturally.’369 In its definition, the United Nations included the criteria that genocide amounted to a policy based on planning and intent to destroy an ethnic group. The following actions were covered: (a) killing members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

  What is the evidence that assimilation amounted to genocide, according to this convention? As stated in Chapter One, Neville’s clear intention was to wipe out the Aboriginal race. As he informed the 1937 Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities, his long-range plan would make it possible to ‘eventually forget that there were ever any Aborigines in Australia.’ The dovetailing of this long-range plan with the establishment of Sister Kate’s to exert control over the marriage of inmates constitutes, in total, a clear breach of sections (b), (c) and (d) of the Convention.

  The post-war transformation of the policy shared several components in common with its earlier version. Bateman, the architect of the post-war policy, envisaged the large-scale removal of Aboriginal children because their parents, as well as their living conditions, were perceived to be deficient. ‘It is abundantly clear in my mind’, he wrote in his report to the St
ate Government, ‘that the only chance of successfully training the children is to segregate them from the adults.’ Further, ‘education must be made to fit these people into our own economic and social structure. They must be changed from a nomadic, idle and discontented race to a settled, industrious, contented section of the community.’370 These statements confirm that the foundation of post-war assimilation, at least as it was practiced in Western Australia, was based on the clear intent to remove large numbers of children from their ‘inferior’ environment to a more ‘civilised’ white one. In this, it breached the United Nations Convention on genocide. While in the popular imagination, the idea of genocide remains fixed on the episodes of mass killing of ethnic groups, those who drafted the Genocide Convention ‘understood that the destruction of culture and a people need not be so crude.’371

  Given the finding on genocide, it is not surprising Aborigines regard this issue as a litmus test for reconciliation. In its broadest definition, reconciliation involves building closer relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. Since 1991, when the Council for Reconciliation was formed, this objective has been pursued through identifying eight key issues around which to build better relationships. These include greater recognition of land and culture; greater awareness of the causes of Aboriginal disadvantage; a sense of shared Australian ownership of history; and greater opportunities for Aboriginal people to control their own destinies. The issue of the stolen children relates to many of these objectives. Out of the tragedy of these people’s lives could come a positive focus on reconciliation, and especially developing a richer understanding of our past and the role that racial ideas have played in it. Yet, the signs of this taking place are not encouraging. Since the election of the Coalition Government relationships between it and Aborigines have deteriorated markedly.

  The battleground for this change has been a struggle over Australian history and the efforts by some conservative thinkers to endorse what John Howard has labelled as the ‘black armband’ view of Australia’s history. According to this conservative view, Australia’s history is being portrayed ‘as little more than a disgraceful record of imperialism, exploitation and racism.’372 It is an attempt to assert a counter view of Australian history as an essentially heroic struggle marked by impressive achievements in which ‘blemishes’ are acknowledged but do not intrude on the larger story. Its effect is to downplay injustices to Aborigines. The Prime Minister, for example, is reported to have informed Lois O’Donoghue, (at the time, the Chairperson of ATSIC) that: ‘while non-Aboriginal Australians are more than willing to do their bit to bring about reconciliation, they do not want to dwell on the past and are simply unwilling to take upon themselves the burden of previous generations’ supposed wrongdoings.’373 Thus, any extended opportunity for Australians to reflect on this policy and its impact on victims, runs a grave risk of being ignored by government.

  On another front, the legal fight for justice by the stolen generations has received a set-back. Only two months after the release of the HREOC Report, the High Court handed down a decision that the 1918 Northern Territory Ordinance, which facilitated the removal of Aboriginal children, was not constitutionally invalid. Commenting on the decision, Matthew Storey, from the Northern Territory Aboriginal Legal Service, argued that the Court’s decision ‘means that the legislative basis to the program of genocide was not unconstitutional.’ The Legal Service had argued that the legislation which authorised the removal of children violated certain implied freedoms in the constitution, including freedom of movement, association and religion. A Bill of Rights, it is argued by Aboriginal groups, ‘would ensure that the sort of program that led to the Stolen Generations could never happen again.’374

  Contrary to some opinion, the High Court decision does not prohibit future court action to obtain compensation for the survivors. Aboriginal legal opinion interprets the High Court decision as having said ‘there will be no compensation for the violation of Constitutional Law. They haven’t said that there will be no compensation in other Common Law rights.’375 In other words, the Court was not asked to rule on the effects of the policy of removal on those subjected to it. In consequence of this interpretation, Aboriginal Legal Services around Australia have already, or are about to, file hundreds of cases for compensation. It is hoped that this move will force the Commonwealth Government to come to a country-wide agreement on compensation.376

  Response to the HREOC Report reveals much about current social attitudes towards Aborigines. The available data show that a significant section—perhaps up to one half—of Australians are prepared to respond sympathetically to the stolen generations’ claims for justice and recognition. Overwhelmingly these are younger and politically progressive Australians. Another large group remains hostile to Aboriginal claims for so-called ‘special privileges’ and acknowledgment of rights. The politicisation of the Report in a right-wing fashion ensured the views of the latter prevailed. In addition to being predominantly older Australians, this group is overwhelmingly politically conservative. In Prime Minister John Howard they found a receptive voice; someone who sees little value in delving too deeply into whether the racial beliefs of the past continue to find some voice in the present. Sadly, the available evidence suggests the attitude of many whites continues to be driven by racial mythology.

  Conclusion

  The Stolen Generations And Racism

  Today, explanations of the three-decade long policy of removing children are commonly couched in one of two ways. The first seeks to dismiss any connection with racial thought by claiming removal was in the best interests of the children, as perceived by the authorities at the time. The second seeks to diminish any potential connection with racism by excusing the policy as being based on a different set of standards from today. In other words, it may have been misguided, but only because people of the day thought about the problems of Aboriginal disadvantage in ways that are no longer accepted. Both of these popular explanations are inadequate for understanding the origins of the policy and the ways in which it was sustained through more than three decades.

  In this book we have shown how the policy of assimilation affected Sandra Hill, Trish Hill-Keddie, Rosalie Fraser, Phillip Prosser, and many other people like them. We have argued that the policy which stipulated the removal of such children was an outcome of a set of racial ideas about Aborigines and their place in the broader community. The highly discriminatory ways in which they were removed, the limited expectations held for Aborigines and the treatment they received in many of the missions and foster homes illustrate the operation of this set of racial ideas. It remains to explore the nature of this racism in more detail. What was it about the power of racial ideas, as they were manifest in Australia from the 1930s to the 1970s, that could sustain such a fundamental abuse of human rights? Moreover, what light is shed on the character of this racism from the implementation of the removal policy? These questions are fundamental to our account.

  Racism operated as official government policy for the first seventy years of Australian nationhood. In the case of the Immigration Restriction Act, the racial intent was explicit, as were the attempts by national governments to defend it. As is well known, the intention of the nation’s immigration laws was to keep out of Australia people from cultures perceived to be alien and whose presence would threaten the desire to create in Australia a culture of British civilisation. Writers such as Andrew Markus have characterised this policy as representing the attempt at creating an ‘Anglo-Australian superiority’.377 It was shaped around the idea of a mono-culture with its attendant intention that no ‘pure’ non-European could be granted permanent residence in Australia.

  Invariably, this racially motivated attempt at nation-building had to overcome the problem of indigenous, black Australians. How were they to fit into white Australia? The removal of Aboriginal children was their answer. A O Neville’s absorptionist scheme in the 1930s held out the promise that the rac
e could be genetically bred out of existence. When this later became officially unacceptable, assimilation proposed that Aborigines could, and should, be encouraged to enter the mainstream of Australian life, but only on the basis that they renounced their Aboriginal culture. In all the rhetoric about assimilation and its so-called generous offerings of Aboriginal access to the trappings of ‘civilised’ life, it is perfectly clear that assimilation was a vehicle for cultural genocide: to make Aborigines lose their culture and become more acceptable to white Australia. Those, like anthropologist Ronald Berndt, who could see through the cant, knew this to be the case. His 1958 remark, that assimilation represented unequivocal opposition to Aboriginal cultural and social life is a more realistic appraisal of community attitudes than is the attempt to couch the policy in humanitarian terms.378

  The removal of children was the key instrument of this drive for cultural destruction. As the Commissioner for Native Welfare explained in his 1958 Annual Report: ‘The social development of any race lies in its children and it is through them that the Department hopes chiefly to guide and direct the cultural change taking place among Aborigines.’379 What else explains why Aboriginal children were denied access to their culture and to their families? Once separated from their Aboriginal culture every effort was made to ensure that they were not to be reconnected with it. The implementation of this policy came with the power to exercise cultural control over Aboriginal communities. ‘I know of many cases where the parents have asked for their children to be returned to their care,’ wrote a District Officer of the Department of Native Affairs in 1958: ‘In some instances’, he continued, ‘I have refused outright, but mostly the parents were told that if they provided the child or children with a decent home, etc, I would favourably consider obtaining permission of the Commissioner for the child’s discharge from the Mission.’380 In other words, the white standards of decency acted as a form of cultural control; when ‘they’ became more like ‘us’, they could be trusted with their children.