Jan Cowan, Perth
How far have we come to PM John Howard's "National Day of Healing"? Looking at the "Sea of Hands" only adds contrast to the three homeless men sitting metres away on the park bench, discreetly saluting the event from their brown paper bag. For Aboriginal people, the "Sorry Days" have endured for a century.
2005 is a significant year for Western Australians. It is the 100th anniversary of the 1905 Aborigines Act and more than 60 years since the Citizenship Act was legislated in WA.
The 1905 Act was created to "make provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western Australia".
The act also created the Aborigines Department and a Chief Protector of Aborigines, "charged with the duty of promoting the welfare of the aborigines, providing them with food, clothing, medicine and medical attendance, when they would otherwise be destitute, providing for the education of aboriginal children, and generally assisting in the preservation and well-being of the aborigines".
Protectors, who were more often than not police officers, supported the chief protector in the field. Aboriginal people were ruled by a police state.
Aboriginal people could be moved from the district or be confined and held in a reserve. The chief protector was, in law, the "legal guardian of every Aboriginal and half-caste child until such child attained the age of 16 years".
Irrespective of the parents' wishes, the Chief Protector could remove children from their mothers — and children often were, held in institutions away from their families in very distant places.
At the Moore River Native Settlement, the location of the movie Rabbit Proof Fence, hundreds of children were held at the pleasure of Chief Protector A.O. Neville. Under the supervision of religious interests, they were trained in the fine arts of domesticity and servitude to provide a cheap labour force for the outside world.
Aboriginal people were contracted to work by agreements between government and employer and paid little more than "keep", which was, in reality, little more than slavery. Police officers, not the Aboriginal workers, were involved in organising the contracts and setting conditions.
People had to obtain written permission before marriage; cohabitation was an offence against the act unless legally married. People could not drink alcohol, own a gun or other property "whether real or personal", or choose or appoint any person to act as their agent.
The act was amended in 1936 and finally repealed in 1963.
The 1944 Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act did not grant Indigenous people the right to vote — instead it was more a case of being "granted" citizenship. In order to be granted citizenship under this "Dog Act", a person had to apply to a board.
A person had to declare that "he has dissolved tribal and native association except with respect to lineal descendants or native relation of the first degree". In addition, a person had to satisfy the board that they were a "civilised" person of "industrious habits ... of good behaviour and reputation".
Furthermore, the applicant had to be able to speak and understand English and had to be free from particular diseases.
The hardship for most Aboriginal people came from Section 7(a), where a person could have their citizenship suspended or cancelled if they were "not adopting the manner and habits of civilized life". This split up families by separating the Aboriginal "citizens" from their relatives who did not have citizenship.
Some people were quite proud that they never surrendered to what was deemed little more than a "dog licence". However, the turmoil meant that some could not participate in family or cultural activities and often had to sneak around to visit others, with the spectre of the act following them.
WA Aborigines were included in the census with all other Australian Aborigines following the 1967 referendum. Only shortly before that did whipping of Aborigines stop being legal in WA.
Aboriginal people did not receive a pension and Aboriginal mothers could not receive maternity allowance until 1942, long after non-Indigenous people received theirs.
Sometimes workers would get a few shillings to go to the movies, but nothing more than that. Workers would receive shillings and pence as pocket money while a pound a week of their earnings was paid into a government trust fund.
Aboriginal workers would have to write to the chief protector requesting access to funds for such things as items of clothing, and they were dependant upon his approval in order to receive such necessities.
On May 1, 1946, Aboriginal workers in the Pilbara went on strike for better wages. Aboriginal workers walked off around 25 pastoral stations. Some 800 people were involved, including 66 men who were jailed during 1947.
Don McLeod, a whitefella assisting with the strike, wrote in his 1984 book How the West was Lost: "By 1949, many of the strikers had tasted jail life and the ringleaders had been in and out of jail like clockwork. No doubt it was hoped that the stereotype Blackfellow ... would by then have been dragooned back in to the official service of giving labour in order that certain people might become richer still. Nothing that either the state or the police did could shake their solidarity.
"Over 60 of our strikers filled the jails from Roebourne to Port Hedland. A further 13 were being held without bail in Marble Bar for their action in persuading the workers to walk off Noreena Downs Station ... [this made] 19th century Alabama plantation seem progressive by comparison."
So it was during this time that some strikers won better wages and conditions on Mt Edgar and Limestone stations, which then become the standard for the Pilbara.
McLeod notes that the Seamen's Union at the time had declared Pilbara wool "black" and said they would refuse to handle it. The wool was carried by state ships with the taxpayers subsidising the squatters in this fashion.
During the strike years, Aboriginal people supported themselves on kangaroo and seasonal bush tucker. The strike went on for some years and some people say they are still on strike today — that they will never return to the stations to live and work under the squatters.
The efforts of people like McLeod and groups like the Seamen's Union and the Communist Party, who supported the Aboriginal people, aided in the success of the strike.
The century of oppressive laws that began with the Aborigines Act of 1905 meant that people were transported as children to be incarcerated in missions where they received training as a cheap labour work force until their release to toil for the benefit of white pastoralists and farmers. These efforts increased the numbers of the Stolen Generations.
They were only paid a fraction for their efforts, if at all. When will these Australians enjoy all the true benefits from any of their labour?
[Jan Cowan is a member of the Perth branch of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 1, 2005.
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