Nomads in No-Man's-Land

by T. G. H. Strehlow, M. A.

Ghost Gum, Heavitree Gap c. 1955

Albert Namatjira

“Nomads in No-Man’s-Land” was originally delivered, on 20th January, 1960, as an address at the Ninth Summer School organized by the Adult Education Department, University of Adelaide.

Nomads in No-Man’s-Land

On the evening of 8th August, 1959, there died in Alice Springs Hospital the first full-blood Aranda man who had achieved world fame. In spite of the reputation he had so justly earned for himself, he died, in the words of an Australian newspaper, as “a controversial and tragic figure”; and when he was laid to rest on the following day, all those who had known him were keenly and depressingly conscious of the fact that even Albert Namatjira, with all his oft-acclaimed talents, had been unable to achieve successfully simultaneous citizenship in both of the worlds to which he felt that he belonged—the dark man’s world into which he had been born and the white man’s world into which his talents and achievements had thrust him so magnificently.

He had been granted full white citizenship in the Northern Territory only a few years before his death. At the time of the Royal Tour of 1954 he had been famous enough to be invited at Government expense to meet Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in Canberra. In his last active year he had earned more than £7,000 from his paintings, thereby bringing his gross earnings to an estimated total of perhaps £50,000 since the end of World War II. When he died, even the London Times, which is by no means uncritical in the notice it takes of white Australian citizens or extravagant in the space it devotes to Australian affairs, printed an obituary of nearly two hundred words on the aboriginal artist. Yet Namatjira died, leaving behind him little wealth to bequeath to his family, his pride deeply humiliated by a prison sentence, a broken man, disillusioned with himself and with the people about him. Today the shadow of his failure still lies heavily on those of us who knew him and who loved him.

Albert Namatjira, like myself, had been born at Hermannsburg; and my first recollection of him is as a boy in his teens, rather older than myself, waiting for the approach of his tribal initiation rites. When the time finally arrived, he vanished from the Hermannsburg school “into the bush” for some months. We all knew that, when he returned, he would be regarded officially as a young man, who would be precluded from taking further part in any boyish activities. Some years after his initiation he was married, according to tribal rules to a young Kukatja woman called Ilkalita, the daughter of Wapiti, who was the respected ceremonial chief of the Kukatja yam centre of Merini. Soon after this event I came down south for my own education. When I returned to Central Australia, Albert was about to start learning the technique of water colour painting, thus taking the first steps on his long road to both artistic success and personal tragedy. I need not set down his further career. Most of its major events are well known, though an authoritative biography still remains to be written. In any case, I am here, not to talk about Albert Namatjira but about the major difficulties besetting the policy of assimilation—assimilation being the current official Australian term for the process of changing the ways of dark Australians into those of white Australians. I have begun my talk with the biographical remarks on Albert Namatjira merely because he has been the most eminent of the dark Australians who have tried to become full members of our white Australian society, and who, in the end, have had to admit their failure.

 I want to make it clear from the very outset that my analysis of some of the reasons for Namatjira’s magnificent failure should not be regarded as a criticism of either Albert himself or of any of the other people who were involved in bringing about the final tragedy. Nor do I make any claims to absolute authority for any of my own views on the whole difficult problem of assimilation. I well realize that many experienced administrators and teachers of aboriginals, also many missionaries ate in strong disagreement with some of my views; and only the putting into practice of social welfare measures can prove beyond doubt the soundness of the theories on which they have been based. My sole object is to put before an interested and intelligent audience the immense difficulties which confront all Australian aboriginals who attempt, like Albert, to make their way into white Australian society, and to acquire the cultural values, the ideals, and the forms of social conduct and behaviour found in white Australian society.

A wealth of treatises and dissertations has already been written about these difficulties, and my own pamphlet Dark and White Australians has discussed a number of these; but today I shall try to confine myself to what I consider to be the heart of the assimilation problem as far as the aboriginals themselves are concerned. The fatal enigma seems to be: how can an aboriginal be accepted today, or even within the next generation, as a full member of our white society without agreeing to give up every part of his aboriginal culture? And even if he did agree to give up every element of his aboriginal culture, would he be accepted without any reservations by white Australian everywhere while any trace remained of his aboriginal identity? By the last-named term I mean anything at all in his behaviour, beliefs, or physical appearance that reminded those white persons who came into contact with him of the fact that he was in some way linked socially, culturally, or genetically with the original dark inhabitants of the Australian continent. Part-aboriginals who have lost all knowledge of the languages, the customs, and the traditions of their full-blood forefathers, tend to retain some of the physical aboriginal characteristics even when their skin colour has grown lighter than that of some of the swarthier Southern European types. And it is a fact that any slight physical or cultural trait of this kind which marks out its possessors as being in some way not fully European, subjects the actions of these people to a very critical scrutiny.

It is easy to prove that many, if not all of the prejudices felt by white Australians against persons of full or partial aboriginal identity are scientifically quite untenable. In the words of Beals and Hoijer —

It is evident, then, that features of race, language, culture, and nationality have no necessary connection. Racial features are in large part genetically determined and biologically transmitted. Features of language and culture are learned and transmitted by the processes of training and education. Nationality is acquired by the fact of birth in a certain locality or by legal processes set up by a nation for the determination of citizenship. We may share the racial type of our parents and grandparents by virtue of our genealogical relationship to them but we share their language, their culture, and their nationality only if we have been subjected to the same training, education, and citizenship requirements. (An Introduction to Anthropology, p. 188).

                But although these remarks are perfectly true, it is equally certain that until these truths have been disseminated through the whole of white Australian society by teaching in our schools and by adult educational instruction, these so-called racial prejudices will not be cast out of the white Australian community, even though race prejudice is, again in the words of Beals and Hoijer —

…merely a set of stereotyped opinions and attitudes, wholly false and irrational, held by one group of people about another group. The opinions and attitudes making up this prejudice are learned by the individual as a result of his education and training in the group to which he belongs. Very young children have no prejudices of this kind; if they acquire them later it is because they have been taught them by their parents, teachers, and associates. (Ibid, p. 199).

                These prejudices are not merely throwing up difficulties in the present relations between white and dark Australians. They have also, at various times in the brief history of our continent, led to friction between various groups of white Australians[i]. Though these frictions have generally been kept in bounds through common social and economic interests of the various white groups, Australian historians and sociologists are unable to disregard them in their writings, where references to such things as the German, Italian, Irish, or other European elements of the Australian population are of common occurrence. Individuals who belong to these groups, or who have come from Australian areas where these groups are numerically important, are generally expected to reveal some of the real or supposed “national” or “racial” characteristics of these groups. In other words, it is as true in Australia as elsewhere in the world that the social and cultural status of any member of a large human community is determined to a greater or lesser degree not merely by his own ability, behaviour, or efforts as an individual, but also by the social and cultural status of the group to which he belongs or from which he has come into the larger community. If that group is also marked off from the rest of the community by physical (“racial”) characteristics, then the social and cultural status of all members of the group will be influenced to some extent by any racial prejudices held by the larger community.

            All aboriginals and part-aboriginals are marked off by some physical characteristics from the white Australian community which determines their social status; and hence the social status of even the most gifted aboriginal or part-aboriginal is inevitably affected in some degree by the attitudes entertained by the white Australian public towards aboriginals in general.

            Man, being a social animal, cannot, like a spider, live on a web all by himself. He must live in an organized society. Where this organized society is a numerically large and socially complex unit, such as the modern white Australian community, any individual human being living in it must be, if he wishes to achieve full scope for the development of his inborn abilities, a member of some definable and functional group which, together with all the other definable and functional groups, constitutes the total complex society. In short, the status of every individual is always derived in some way from his membership in some functional social group.

            Albert Namatjira’s own life history affords clear illustrations of this fact. Any assessment of Albert Namatjira as a human being as an artist, or as an Australian citizen, was inevitably linked in some way with the social status possessed by the Australian aboriginals in the estimation of his white Australian admirers or critics. He was always referred to as an aboriginal or Aranda artist. He was praised by his admirers for having mastered the European art of water colour painting, and having thereby shown that “the Australian aborigines are capable of great things if given anything like a chance”. He was blamed by his critics for having abandoned the artistic traditions of his own folk and become a cheap imitator of European water colour painters. Towards the end of his life he was severely reprimanded in many quarters for having “brought ridicule upon himself and his tribe by becoming and alcoholic”. Admirers and critics, in short, tended to judge Albert Namatjira to the very end as an aboriginal newcomer into white society; and when he was finally laid to rest, Paster Albrecht said these words at his graveside:

On many occasions it has been shown how Albert was, and remained, a member of the Aranda tribe in Central Australia. This is true, and from our side he had received every encouragement in this direction. One cattle man who knew him well, once remarked: “He is the only Native I know who is proud to be one.” Although he had been taught English at school and could read and write in English, he retained a deep love for his mother tongue, Aranda. In this way he remained deeply rooted in his own soil, as it were—a fact which was very helpful to him when he began to concentrate on his real life’s work as an artist.

                Albert Namatjira’s social status in aboriginal society, of which he was an outstanding member, derived from the fact that he was a fully-initiated member of the Hermannsburg section of the Aranda tribe. As I have stated earlier, he had left the Mission as a youth in order to undergo the physical operations that were then the indispensable gateway into manhood among the Central Australia tribes. Only after passing through these painful initiation rites were the Aranda youths able to achieve the full social status of initiated men; and only initiated men were permitted to marry and to be introduced into the aboriginal spiritual world of myth and sacred tradition. These were the high rewards, whose prospect emboldened the aboriginal youths to face up to the grim ordeals of their manhood rites; and all boys deliberately trained themselves to bear pain with composure for years before the time came for them to undergo their initiation rites. When I was still a boy at Hermannsburg, one of the favourite pastimes for children of both sexes from the age of about eight till the years of puberty consisted in picking up small live coals from the camp fires and placing them on their own bare arms or legs. They were left on the bare skin till they had lost their glow; and courage was assessed according to the child’s ability to bear this self-inflicted torture without flinching, and sometimes even with seemingly unconcerned laughter. The proudest child at the camp fire would be the child who had endured the biggest burn from the largest live coal picked out of the fire. In this way all children learnt that there are limits even to pain — that a point is reached beyond which pain cannot go, and that it is possible, in many cases, for a trained person to come close to this limit of pain without disgracing himself by crying out aloud.

            This element of pain was a vital ingredient of the initiation ritual. For in addition to providing a gateway to marriage and an introduction to the spiritual world, the manhood rites had the important social purposes of inculcating respect for the authority of the elders of each local group, and of ensuring the dutiful submission of all men to the traditional social controls and to those norms of conduct which have been popularly termed “tribal laws”.

            Until the age of puberty the aboriginal child did not receive any formal training from teachers and was never chastised for any misbehaviours by its own parents. It used to be a common sight in the native camps to see children screaming in uncontrolled rage at their parents, or even pelting them with sticks or stones, because the latter had not gratified immediately some whim or demand of their offspring. A special Aranda word — arankalelama — existed to describe this phenomenon. The term literally means “to cause to scream at the top of one’s voice”, and can be translated in a general way as “to vex (one’s parents) beyond endurance”. The goaded parent might in the end yell out in exasperation at the infant, but would not think of striking it. On the contrary, the child would be picked up and soothed, and its whim would be gratified if possible. Amazed white bystanders would be told by way of explanation — “Children are always like that, and one must not hit a child”.

            While the aboriginal parents’ method of dealing with a child’s tantrums would no doubt be regarded with high favour by many white psychologists, it obviously could not be allowed to continue by aboriginal society after the child had reached the years of puberty. Until the age of puberty the child had been merely a part of its own family unit. Its parents did not have to curb any of its destructive tendencies, since no houses or costly articles of personal property existed which were capable of being damaged by uncontrolled children. But at puberty the young men and the mature girls had to assume the cultural status of adults in the community to which they belonged, and learn the traditional social roles they had to play in it. The youths had to be taught to respect their elders, to obey the traditional norms of conduct, to take their parts in the entertainments and sacred ceremonies of their group, and, above all, to become the main food gatherers of their local group. The girls were normally married off soon after puberty; and subjection to the wills of their husbands and to the older women of their husband’s family group, together with the physical hardships of child-bearing and child-rearing, soon taught them the traditional responsibilities that resulted from the attainment of full womanhood. The youths were subjected to much sterner treatment. It was believed that, after puberty, any uninhibited youth would turn into a vicious criminal or arintja — the Aranda word arintja means “a man-eating monster” in this context — and that it was hence necessary for him to be subjected to the full rigours of the initiation rites. To undergo these the youth was normally sent to a tribal sub-group area different from his own, there to be initiated by men who would not be deterred by any personal kinship feelings from shaping him into an acceptable member of the adult aboriginal community. At the same time, the men who carried out the actual operations were, of course, responsible for returning him safe and sound to his group after he had passed through all of his ordeals. It is further interesting to note that the painful manhood operations were often carried out by the youth’s future father-in-law. Much of the somewhat fearful respect towards their fathers-in-law that characterized the older aboriginal men in Central Australia had undoubtedly been engendered by the operations they had experienced at their hands; but this very real respect also helped to win a considerable measure of protection for the aboriginal women after their marriage. If ill-treated by their husband beyond all reason, a married woman could, and sometimes did, run away for protection to her father’s area; and the husband was then under the necessity of facing her father and her brothers (according to blood or classificatory kinship), when he came to take her back.

            The social and cultural implications of the traditional initiation rites cannot be overemphasized; for, in their totality, they undoubtedly provided the whole base of authority for all aboriginal socialization processes. Without them no aboriginal society could have evolved or maintained any real system of law and order, or enforced the economic kinship obligations among refractory individuals. Neither could any sacred traditions or organized ceremonial rites have survived for long: their transmission and performance were possible only because all men had been assigned definite roles as actors in particular ceremonies and as transmitters of definite portions of the total traditions owned by a local group. Albert Namatjira had learned on the initiation ground a number of Aranda sacred songs, and some portions of certain Aranda myths. Although his Christian upbringing prevented him from seriously accepting the religious beliefs of his Aranda forefathers, he nevertheless treasured that relatively small part of his aboriginal heritage to which he had been able to gain access without attending any full-scale ceremonial festivals. His delight in producing painting upon painting of such scenes as Mt. Sonder, Mt. Giles, Mt. Zeil, the Finke Gorge at Japalpa, and Mt Hermannsburg, was undoubtedly based not merely on the natural beauty of these landscape features, but also on their mythological significance in the Western Aranda traditions. Similarly the bold peaks of Haast’s Bluff, and the serrated ridge of Merini, were prominent points in the totemic landscape of the territory of his father-in-law Wapiti. Wapiti was one of the most knowledgeable and respected of the Kukatja ceremonial chiefs; and until the last few years of his life Albert Namatjira showed a deep fondness for the Haast’s Bluff area and its Kukatja-speaking inhabitants. That Namatjira knew a few aboriginal myths in almost faultless detail is proved by his version of The Eagle-men of Alkutnama, which he related to Roland Robinson in 1954[ii]. He loved the Aranda language, in which he had a fine range of vocabulary, approaching that of the older Hermannsburg men who had been fully trained in the Western Aranda traditions. Albert Namatjira also spoke the Kukatja dialect fluently, as a result of his long periods of sojourn in the Haast’s Bluff area.

             In his love for the traditions and the language of his forefathers Albert Namatjira resembled the fine aboriginal elders once possessed by the Hermannsburg congregation. Even “old blind Moses”, the best known of these men, about the deep sincerity of whose Christian beliefs there could be no doubt, always remained intensely proud of his status as an initiated Aranda man, of his full mastery of the Western Aranda language, and of his encyclopaedic knowledge of the pedigrees of most of the Aranda families living in the Hermannsburg area.

            The most important of the social virtues inculcated into the young men at the time of their initiation ceremonies were, firstly, co-operation between all men who were bound together by ties of kinship or totemic association, and, secondly, the sharing of all material possessions and of all forms of food according to strict traditional rules. I have illustrated these points in some detail in my pamphlet The Sustaining Ideals of Australian Aboriginal Societies, and shall not repeat my arguments here. It should be noted that the fulfilment of these social obligations was not left to the uncertain whims or fitful fancies of any individual. They were obligations from which no tribesman could escape, no matter how important he might be. A successful hunter on his return to camp had to share the game he had brought back with him not only with his own family, but with all those who had traditionally-regulated claims upon his efforts. Nor was it for him to determine how much meat or what part of an animal’s carcass he might be prepared to hand over. Those who had claims upon him could, and did, demand their portions as a matter of right, not as a favour. They could have taken these from a greedy man by force if he should have been foolhardy enough to refuse; and public opinion would have been without fail on the side of the attackers. Sometimes the successful hunter was even left with less to eat than some of the older rightful claimants. From the time of initiation till the time of marriage — between the ages of about fifteen and twenty-five years — the young men had to hand over all game to the old men for distribution. Co-operation between all members of a group, whether based on kinship or on totemic consideration, accordingly overrode the narrow and selfish interests of the individual, no matter how strong physically or gifted intellectually the latter might be; and in a country where, in the absence of domesticated animals and crops suitable for agriculture, no food would be stored against famines and droughts, co-operation and food sharing of this order were absolutely necessary for the survival of every man, woman, and child.

            While these ultra-communistic attitudes undoubtedly acted as a strong brake on the progress and personal success of gifted individuals, they nevertheless gave to all members of an aboriginal group a feeling of security that has probably never been approached in the so-called civilized white countries until the rise of socialism and the political emergence of the Welfare State. In aboriginal society, the sick, the aged, and the infirm, always knew that they had to be looked after. Even the mentally sick had to be cared for; and those of them who were inclined to be violent were never maltreated or beaten, but were regarded as being “very ill in the head”, and therefore not to be held responsible for their actions. Psychologists have remarked on the striking fact that stuttering and stammering were unknown in aboriginal society outside the ranks of the few who were mentally deranged. All in all, it must be stressed that although our aboriginals had never passed beyond a very low level in their material culture and could consequently exercise little effective control upon their environment, they were sustained by a feeling of almost complete security throughout their lives because of the ideals upon which their social and political organizations were based. Even times of drought were made less terrible for them because of the community of suffering which linked together all members of local groups living in the affected area. Similar remarks may, of course, be made about the attitudes of white groups under similar conditions, for instance, about a band of explorers braving the hazards of a desert march or about a unit of soldiers experiencing the glow of comradeship in a long drawn-out and particularly tough campaign. Mateship can be a wonderful thing in civil life also. Among white Australians the much-publicized “national” quality of mateship is probably to be found much more readily in the loneliness of the outback and among groups of workers held together by special circumstances (such as coal miners or shearers) than among the office workers of a big city, even if they work in the same building. It is, however, a feeling that is probably never experienced by a group of modern hard-headed and successful businessmen who they are fighting a tough battle against each other’s interests in the arena of cut-throat business competition. Of course, the complete absence of individualistic economic rivalry of this kind meant that there could never be any rich men in our sense of the work in aboriginal society. On the other hand, no cases of suicides have ever occurred in any of the Australian aboriginal societies, as far as we are aware.

            The Australian initiation ceremonies were, as we have seen, the foundation of all those things that made up the old aboriginal culture. Upon them rested the knowledge and love for the old traditions, pride in the aboriginal heritage, obedience to tribal authority, respect for the norms of social behaviour, and a feeling of security in times of drought, periods of sickness, and the declining years of old age. As a result, most of our aboriginal folk, before they had come into contact with the white people, radiated in their mature years and in their old age an air of personal pride and natural dignity which has often been commented upon by various impartial observers. Avoiding citations from the obvious authorities, I shall quote here some comments from Capt. S. A. White, who travelled through the Musgrave and Everard Ranges in the far north-west of South Australia in 1914. Capt. White concludes his description of his meetings with “these most interesting and grand people”, who had up to that time escaped “civilization”, by comparing them with the detribalized natives, who had been absorbed into station work:

             I am compelled to add that it will be one of the greatest regrets of my life to think that these picturesque and grand Everard Ranges with their trustful and fine People, cannot be saved from ruin at the hands of the white man who is gradually creeping towards them. One has only to compare the degraded, self-conscious, poor black wretches, hanging round the outposts of so-called civilization, and who are clad in a few filthy rags, with the unabashed naked manly and womanly forms, who have not seen the settlement of the white race, which is the means of their extermination.

             Every time I think of those simple people it makes me shudder, for fearful examples show one how soon they will be stricken down by the white man’s vices. It would be far more humane to round the lot up and give them a swift but honourable death than to condemn them to a living death too awful to dwell upon. We are told time after time, “Oh, they are only niggers,” or that “They don’t count, for they have not the same feelings as the whites.” This is only a cowardly cloak, only a paltry excuse for the wrongs done to the blacks. They have the same feelings, the same affections for one another as we have; many of their laws are better than our ones, but their not having grown up in an atmosphere of evil makes them fall an easy victim to the degrading habits and lust of the white man. (In the Far North-West: An Expedition to the Musgrave and Everard Ranges, pp. 147-8).

                It should be noted that the most respected and upright of the converts on the early mission stations generally seem to have been persons who had been brought up in the old traditions — men who tried to preserve their old social organization as far as possible, and who consciously sought to retain their pride in their native heritage wherever it could be harmonized in any way with their new Christian beliefs. Unfortunately these aboriginal men and women have in most parts of Australia fought a losing battle in their efforts to combine elements of the new European culture with elements of their own aboriginal culture[iii].

            But there have been some understanding Australian missionaries; and some mission stations, like Ernabella, have been started by men who has a high respect for aboriginal culture[iv].

            The Australian initiation ceremonies were, of course, never “popular” with any of the raw youths that still had to undergo them. But even in white Australian society the exercise of parental authority is often felt to be irksome by the children, and going to school is not the most popular pastime of the young. Again, because the initiation ceremonies obviously helped to perpetuate the traditional authority of the native leaders against the new authority of their white successors, the latter were often only too willing to back up aboriginal youths, who had reached the age of puberty without any parental constraints, in their attempts to evade the traditional manhood rites. Many of the older missionaries saw eye to eye in this matter with those station owners and government official who wished to “protect” the young generation against being “terrorized” into the cruel initiation ceremonies and the observance of “heathen” tribal laws. Some of the most docile stockmen on the cattle stations were young men who had defied the tribal authority of their elders in contracting what had been considered by the latter to be “wrong”, even “incestuous”, marriages, and who now clung to their white employers in order to be protected from the wrath of their own families and elders.

            It has generally been taken for granted that since Australia as a whole has become a white man’s country, all planning for the future status of the aboriginals in this country should be done by white experts, without any assistance in point of ideas or in regard to the proposed methods of change from any native leaders. Again, it has almost always been accepted as inevitable that integration into white society would necessarily mean the complete abandonment of the whole of the old aboriginal culture by the new aboriginal citizens of the future. Consequently it has seemed desirable to many people that all traces of the old traditional forms of authority should be eradicated as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. And the traditional initiation ceremonies have been among the obvious points of attack. They have been subjected to ridicule and to angry censure in many quarters. The tribal laws have been hooted down even for full-blood aboriginals in most areas that had come under any semblance of white control, and the elders of tribal sub-groups have been declared by many enthusiastic white reformers to be foolish, superstitious, and cruel old men, and denigrated as the natural enemies of progress. Tribal killings and troubles connected with the refusal of youths to undergo initiation ceremonies have been publicized to such a degree that many people today are aware only of the cruel aspects of aboriginal culture, and have led some to believe that the tribal elders used to exercise their powers only in a rule of murderous terror fortified by the blackest superstitions.

            Those of us who have quietly advocated that the venerated elders of tribal sub-groups should have an advisory share in determining the future of their own people if they were residing in areas remote from white towns and cities, have generally been told that our views were impossible of realization, and that true progress could be achieved only by pulling up all the foundations of the old social order and by replacing the outmoded aboriginal culture with the European type of culture found in the white Australian community. It has been admitted that these drastic measures would lead to the catastrophic fragmentation of the old aboriginal groupings; but the claim has been advanced that the resultant multifarious splinters would be ready for quick absorption by the white Australian community.

            But discontented and shiftless native communities in many parts of Australia show that it is easier to dynamite into fragments the traditional foundations of a human society than to provide new ones, also that it is impossible to build up strong and lasting social structures on the shifting sands of illusive materialistic progress without the cementing influences of common ideals and concepts. It is the latter which have the strength to tie the members of human groups together into living, thinking, articulate units. It is impossible to use purely negative attitudes (such as the negation by young aboriginals of all the values of their own traditional order) to inculcate respect for the values and norms of white society. Human beings do not like adopting the culture of a strange people in toto and without any modifications. Culture, as Beals and Hoijer state (op. cit. p. 226), “consists not only of learned ways of behaving; it is a body of learned ways of behaving accumulated by many men over many generations”.

            Albert Namatjira’s personal tragedy was, I feel, an inevitable result of our failure to realize that no man can stand successfully on his very own, as an individual divorced from the group to which he belongs by race, culture, and inclination. He can play his part in life successfully only through the group (or groups) of which he is merely one member. Namatjira, as an initiated member of the Hermannsburg aboriginal group, could have been (and was for a considerable time) one of the leaders of the Hermannsburg native community. But his successful artistic career pushed him into white Australian society as well; and here he was always an aboriginal splinter in a society that would not accept his wife, his family, his relatives, or his fellow tribesman as social equals. What white groups of people would have accepted as friends and equals not only Albert himself but also his family, his father (who died only in March, 1956), and his full-blood relatives and friends from Hermannsburg? What kind of status could his father-in-law Wapiti, the Kukatja ceremonial chief of Merini, have hoped to enjoy in the artistic homes of those white Australian city folk who were prepared to issue invitations to Albert Namatjira? His relatives and his fellow tribesmen were always included in that group of people who were commonly labelled “Albert’s degraded hangers-on”,— people from whom he was urged to separate himself completely so that he could live in the manner of a civilized and successful white man. The gap between these two cultures, the dark and the white, was too great to be bridged by any of Namatjira’s relatives and fellows; and he well realized that most of the white folk who welcomed him did so because they regarded him as a man who had risen far above the low and degraded level of his own countrymen.

            Here was a human problem that could not be solved by any legislation. Each group in a human society lays down its own rules of social acceptance; and the various white groups who accepted Albert Namatjira in any sense as an equal were not prepared to extend their welcome to his dark relatives, friends, and countrymen. He was welcome only if he came on his own, free from the contaminating influences of Aranda society, as a man in whom European artistic achievements had obliterated the old stains of Aranda culture.

            The resulting tragic conflicts in Albert Namatjira’s own mind and heart grew more intense and bitter as his income soared higher and higher. Until his formal admittance to white citizenship status, however, Albert remained intensely loyal to his family, his relatives, and his fellow Aranda tribesmen. In the general white Australian view he remained a foolish squanderer of the generous income that his fame was bringing to him. Probably most of the high sums that he earned were given away by him persons who had “tribal claims” to his generosity. For this wastefulness Albert Namatjira has been strongly criticized by most of his white acquaintances, and even by some of his best white friends. But we should remember that in our own white society too, both banknotes and the figures written in bank books and on share certificates are more or less meaningless except in terms of the more tangible forms of wealth that can be purchased through money. For white Australians a high income means the chance to possess a house, a car, a refrigerator, furniture of all kinds, elaborate foods, and so on. It means the possibility of overseas trips, security in times of sickness, and a guarantee against the loneliness and the destitution of old age. It ensures a high social status for its possessors even in the eyes of those citizens who have no hope of ever having a personal share in this wealth. These practical uses of money are the reasons why successful men in our white society find it necessary to accumulate, multiply, and hoard their wealth for their own personal use. It is even regarded as a mark of high intelligence and shrewd business acumen for men to live frugal lives in spite of enjoying an income that could buy for them all the luxuries of life, and to leave behind at death a large unspent fortune for the benefit of their fortunate personal heirs.

            Traditionally organized aboriginal society, as we have seen, has never shared these culturally-acquired white sentiments. The natives achieved their feeling of security not through individual hoarding of wealth but through group sharing of wealth; and hunters of more than usual skill achieved a high reputation for themselves by being able to distribute gifts of game more liberally than those who fell short of them in stalking ability. Even the ceremonial chiefs of the major totemic centres regarded it as a deadly insult to be told by men from other totemic groups that they had been mean or niggardly when making their counter presents of sacred objects to their visitors. Albert Namatjira’s social status in the only community where he enjoyed the full respect of all the other members depended in fact upon the generosity with which he shared his wealth; and because of his aboriginal upbringing he did not feel that he was being “exploited” by the people whom his white friends often referred to as “shiftless, lazy hangers-on”. Surely the greatest privilege attached to wealth in any community is the right which it confers upon its possessor both to do with it what he wants to do and to bask in the admiration and approval of his own community by putting some of it to the use that his own fellows value most highly. In our own individualistic society the hoarding of private wealth is still regarded with much favour, though even here modern Governments are now taking an ever increasing proportion of income from those citizens whose means are most ample in order to supply some of the needs of the less favoured members of the community. But in aboriginal society niggardliness was regarded as an unforgivable offence. A mean or greedy man immediately became the object of general contempt and abuse, and was even liable to be beaten up for being a person of anti-social habits. Had Albert Namatjira hoarded his wealth in the manner suggested by many of his white friends, his native fellows would have treated him with ridicule and contempt and vented their venom on him for being a miser who was trying to be mean and selfish “in the manner of white men”. There were undoubtedly moments when Albert Namatjira felt that some of his tribal retainers were pushing their demands upon his generosity unduly high. But these would have been exceptional moments. On the whole Namatjira derived great personal happiness from the high esteem which his unfailing generosity had procured for him in his own society. For full personal happiness cannot be achieved outside the praise and esteem of one’s fellows[v].

            Only towards the late nineteen-fifties, after Albert Namatjira had made his tours to Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, and the Barossa Valley, did his behaviour undergo a marked change in certain ways. He had been lionized by many white people on his southern tours; and he was no longer quite as friendly to some of the older native folk in the Centre. Some of the old Aranda men remarked to me sadly during my visit to Alice Springs in 1955 that “Albert was getting proud”, and that his riches were starting to turn his head. Haast’s Bluff and Hermannsburg began to loom less large in his affections; and the possession of a house in Alice Springs had become his most pressing new aim. There was, of course, nothing wrong with Albert Namatjira’s frequently expressed desire for a house. But many people felt that he wanted it mainly in order to show off his new importance in white society, and not as a sheltering home for himself and his family. He began to cultivate a number of new friendships, largely with town aboriginals who were regarded with disfavour by their fellow tribesmen as drunks and tribal renegades. Finally, after he had been officially granted white Australian citizenship, Albert Namatjira celebrated his full legal emancipation by becoming openly addicted to liquor.

            There was nothing surprising in Albert’s rapidly increasing fondness for alcohol. Central Australia has always been a thirsty land in more ways than one; and the old white pioneers loved their grog, and consumed it with zest, vigour, and wholehearted abandon whenever they got the chance. During the pioneer era, in the years before the railway was extended to Alice Springs (i.e. before 1929), the white settlers, most of whom were males anyway, used to congregate each Christmas at the inland hotels, such as Oodnadatta, Horseshoe Bend, or Alice Springs, in order to “do in their pay cheques” while going on “glorious sprees”. If wine, women, and song once formed the three main delights of European males, then booze, kwiais, and snake yarns were their equivalent among the old bush pioneers of the Centre. Since all liquor in the inland hotels was very expensive on account of the primitive communications, few annual pay cheques (or stock sale cheques) survived for more than a few weeks of drinking during these guzzling bust-ups; and while the sprees lasted, sharing of wealth in the form of “shouted” drinks to all persons standing, sitting, or lounging in the bar room was an accepted social duty that had to be performed by all those lucky men who still had any money left in their pockets. In the pioneer days no man could drink on his own in a Central Australian pub without arousing the ridicule, even the anger, of the other hotel customers; and “shouting” was an inescapable obligation for all men who laid any claims to the honourable appellation of “bushman”. Men boasted about the vast sums of money (often exaggerated) that they had spent on liquor within a matter of days, and about the huge quantities of alcohol (mainly spirits) that they had consumed before collapsing from complete inebriation. When such a spree had finally come to an end because of empty pockets all round, the inland revellers would sober up at last, roll their swags, saddle their horses, and head back to their station properties, prepared to put up with another long term of unflinching slogging in a land where only the hardiest outback types could survive for long. For Central Australia was, without a doubt, a tough country in the pioneering days. Yet, in spite of their hard-drinking bouts, the few white settlers who lived in this tough land were, in the main, hard-working and fundamentally decent folk, who had their own accepted standards of social conduct.

            If this pioneer-honoured method of extracting the maximum amount of alcoholic fun out of hard-won earnings is borne in mind, it will be easier for residents of the Australian coastal towns and cities to understand why alcohol acquired such a superlative importance in the thoughts of the aboriginals and part-aboriginals who had been watching their white employers “having a good time” at the inland hotels. In the nineteen-thirties, when the Northern Territory half-castes still had to be exempted from the Aboriginals Ordinance before they could legitimately consume liquor, many of the applications for exemption that came before me officially mentioned as the main ground (and sometimes as the only ground) for exemption that the applicant wanted to live as a white man and “go for a drink to a pub same as any white man”. Since the granting of full citizenship rights to all part-aboriginals living in the Northern Territory, some of these new citizens have taken up with extraordinary zest the task of breaking the alcoholic consumption records of the old white bush pioneers, in order to flaunt in this way their emancipation from their former inferior social status.

            It should not then be wondered at that Albert Namatjira fell into the mistake of thinking that, as a fully-fledged new citizen of the Northern Territory, he too should copy the well-established drinking habits of the Northern Territory pioneers. It was a mistake because Namatjira forgot that his skin colour automatically precluded him from safe indulgence in this aping of traditional white bush behaviour. In the Territory the sight of a drunken white man had never been an uncommon phenomenon; and once a drunk had sobered up, no one had thought any the worse of him because of his intoxication. A drunken half-caste did not have quite the same indulgence extended to him, though he might not be censured too severely if his skin colour happened to be very light. But no white man could stomach “a drunken nigger”.

            Albert Namatjira generally contented himself with having liquor brought out by taxi to his camp at Morris Soak, a secluded place in the hills a few miles west of Alice Springs. Here not only his sons and some other male relatives gathered around him but also a considerable number of natives who had police records for drunkenness and various petty offences. At Morris Soak wines were consumed by the flagon, and spirits by the bottle.

            Namatjira went downhill rapidly. Soon he appeared to be a confirmed alcoholic. Although Namatjira himself took no part in them, drunken brawls became common among his hangers-on at Morris Soak. Namatjira paid for all the alcohol consumed in his camp, but possessed no powers of restraint, tribal or otherwise, over the motley crew of wasters who were now regularly cadging food and liquor from him. In 1958 a young aboriginal woman was murdered at Morris Soak during a drunken orgy. Her Pitjantjara husband was suspected of having killed her while he was drunk, but in the general intoxicated uproar nobody had been fully aware of what was going on. At the husband’s trial Namatjira was warned that, as the illegal supplier of the intoxicating liquor, he was morally implicated in the murder. Soon afterwards he was caught sharing some liquor with a fellow aboriginal artist. But for the murder that had occurred at his camp some time earlier, Namatjira might never have been brought before a court on what was on the face of it only a minor technical offence. But the authorities were intent on putting a stop to the drunken orgies at Morris Soak. Namatjira was found guilty of illegally supplying liquor to an aboriginal ward. Though the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory halved his sentence, the High Court of Australia dismissed his subsequent appeal. Through the courtesy of the Minister for Territories, however, Namatjira was allowed to serve his three months’ sentence not in the Alice Springs gaol, but on the Haast’s Bluff Native Reserve.

            When Namatjira came out from his confinement, he was a broken man. His dreams of full white equality had vanished. He went back to Hermannsburg, and voluntarily gave up his degraded associates in Alice Springs. He began to seek new strength in his childhood environment, and became reconciled to his old mission relatives and friends. When the Lord Mayor of Sydney paid him a visit at Hermannsburg and passed on to him messages from some of his white friends, Namatjira listened to him politely, but showed no inclination to take up again the broken strands of his former interests.

            No one knows whether Albert Namatjira could have successfully taken up full-time painting once more. Death came to him with unexpected suddenness in the Alice Springs hospital, after he had fallen ill at Hermannsburg. Pastor Albrecht and Namatjira’s wife visited him shortly before he died, and his funeral was attended by many of the Alice Springs aboriginals and local white folk. Deep regrets about Namatjira’s final tragedy were expressed in all the major Australian newspapers after his death, for many people felt that his final disgrace had been a social tragedy for Australia as well: Australia’s best-known and most gifted aboriginal son had not been able to bridge successfully the gulf that had always remained between himself and the white Australian community.

            The regrets that may be felt today about Albert Namatjira’s personal tragedy will not be of any help to the dead artist. Nor will they assist any of his fellow aboriginals unless we grasp the true core of the assimilation problem, and begin to realize that individuals can be assimilated into a human society only through their membership in one or the other of the many small groups which in their totality constitute this society.

            All of us are members of small groups from which modern white Australian society is constituted as a totality. A professional man is a part of a large group of men practising his particular profession. If he is a doctor, he must be examined by a Medical Board before he is allowed to practise, and he is bound by the decisions of the Board if any query arises as to whether he should be permitted to continue to practise. If a barrister, he must be admitted to the Bar in his own State, and he remains subject to the discipline exercised by the legal association of which he is a member. If he is a University staff member, then his professional status derives not only from the degree which he has won by his own hard studies, but from the department of which he is a member and from the standing of the University in which he lectures. Similarly farmers and graziers have their groups and their organizations, and wage-earners their trade unions. Professing Christians are normally members not only of definite Christian denominations, but of localized congregations as well. If we wish to play tennis, golf, football, or any other games, we generally find it necessary to join the appropriate sports clubs.

            The influence of these groups on our social behaviour is very great indeed. We are keenly sensitive to the group sentiments of our fellow members, and find it necessary to conform in all vital aspects to the norms of social behaviour customarily observed by each group. When we look for marriage partners, these too come from the groups to which we belong. For instance, the parents of the two people may have belonged to the same group, or the two people may have met one another at some function arranged by a new group that both of them have joined. In other words, a young man looking for a wife in Adelaide would not stand at the Beehive Corner and accost any unknown attractive girls that happened to be passing by: such a course would be liable to land him before a magistrate rather than in front of the marriage altar! He is much more likely to meet his future wife at a church function, at a school dance, in an office or factory where both he and she are working, or at some other place to which both he and she have gone as members of a common group. Our social behaviour, our manners, our norms, our standards of hygiene, and many other things, are influenced by the social behaviour, the manners, the norms, the standards of hygiene, and so on, of the groups to which we belong; and we have become integral parts of the totality of white Australian society through membership in these groups. Gifted individuals may eventually become the leaders of the small groups to which they belong; they may break their old associations with some of these groups and join new groups; but they will always be members of some existing groups from which the community in which they live has been constituted.

            Moreover, even people who have changed from one group to another are still affected to a not inconsiderable degree by the opinions which their new acquaintances hold about the groups to which they formerly belonged. A labourer’s son who rises to be a Cabinet Minister is always likely to have his progress assessed in some way by the opinions held by his admirers or detractors about labourers in general. In times of war even white Australians of the third and fourth generations are liable to be looked upon with disfavour as being of “enemy origin” if their forefathers have come from countries with which Australia has been officially declared to be at war. The term “aboriginal” is not only an anthropological term, but also a group label: its popular use generally indicates that certain modes of thought and behaviour have come to be accepted as being common to all persons who are of dark Australian origin.

            If we bear in mind the various factors which determine social status and social behaviour in the white Australian community, we shall be in a much better position to appreciate one of the biggest difficulties blocking or retarding our present assimilation plans for our dark fellow Australians: the striking dearth of groups having a mixed membership of dark and white Australians on a basis of full equality, — that is, of mixed groups in which relative social status is determined purely by merit and not by skin colour.

            Before the advent of the whites our aboriginal tribes had their own groupings, which safeguarded the social status of the individual and prescribed norms of behaviour for him. One of the main tragedies of white culture contact has been the smashing of these groupings and the consequent gradual reduction of most dark Australian communities to a status euphemistically defined as “detribalized communities” — that is, of aboriginal communities in which all forms of native leadership have disappeared. Even in those “semi-detribalized” communities, where there are white-appointed aboriginal foremen and leaders (such as head stockboys on some of the cattle stations or native elders and evangelists on certain of the mission stations), these men must far too often be prepared to have their opinions overruled not only by experienced white superiors, but by any inexperienced white new chum who may just have been appointed to take charge of a station or of a settlement. This destruction of all aboriginal authority (and consequently of aboriginal pride), tends to lead to the alienation of aboriginal sympathy even from the efforts of those sympathetic white administrators who are genuinely seeking to gain for the indigenous dark population a more honourable and respected place in the white Australian community of the twentieth century.

            From these considerations it may be gauged how important are the roles which the various white Australian groups at present in contact with the aboriginals will have to play if the latter are to receive much fairer treatment than they have in the past. A Government sympathetic to full citizenship rights for the Australian aboriginals can pass laws giving to them opportunities of social and economic advancement equal to those possessed by the white citizens; but only the latter can admit the new aboriginal members on terms of equality into the various groups that make up the totality of organized white Australian society. If any Government attempted to throw full membership of these groups open to aboriginal citizens by legislation, the success of such a move could easily be frustrated through the ostracism of the new dark members by their unwilling white senior partners. And yet full membership in these mixed groups is essential for the new dark citizens, if their true assimilation is to be brought about. To invite the aboriginal members to come into these joint groups on inferior terms will merely cause deep offence in their minds[vi]. They cannot merely be accepted as temporarily tolerated guests, who can be cast out at any time according to the whims of their white fellow members. Albert Namatjira, who was accepted as a respected guest by many white groups on his journeys to the white cities, knew that the welcome extended to him was only a limited and a temporary one. If our aboriginals are to be fully assimilated into the white community, they must know that their membership in mixed groups of dark and white Australians is of a permanent character, and that no white members of these groups will ever hold their racial origin against them. In a church group, for instance, the aboriginal clergy and laymen would have to be on equal terms with the white clergy and laymen; in a kindergarten teachers’ or school teachers’ group the dark staff would have to enjoy equal privileges with their white counterparts; in a station workers’ group the dark and the white station workers would have to be on terms of equality with one another in all things — even if it meant that an experienced aboriginal head stockboy could give instructions to a white newchum[vii]. Moreover, these groups would have to be pervaded by a spirit of true mateship, so that the dark members would feel that they were not merely being tolerated but liked as human beings. Aboriginals quickly sense whether the white people who come into contact with them actually like them or are merely friendly towards them in a patronizing way. Unless relations of mateship are established, the white man’s groups will always be regarded by the dark members as associations formed to protect the privileges of men who belong to a different race. No dark man is going to work hard or to study hard in order to acquire new skills if he is convinced that he is going to occupy a socially second or third rate status at the conclusion of his endeavours[viii]. But how many white Australians who glibly advocate assimilation or integration have seriously thought about the full implications of what admission of the aboriginals to full white citizenship must eventually entail?

            In any discussions of full citizenship rights for the aboriginals and of their equal membership rights in these hypothetical mixed dark and white groups, the problem of the consumption of alcoholic liquor by aboriginals and part-aboriginals must be honestly faced. This is a problem bedevilled by our national drinking habits[ix]. Everywhere in the world people drink alcohol not merely for their own private pleasure but as a traditional expression of social enjoyment. The pre-closing-time bar swill between five and six o’clock in the afternoon is a national institution in Australia — one of the most striking facets of our indigenous culture, cynics might say. On most of our important public social occasions, such as State banquets, commemorative dinners, and major gatherings of every kind, alcohol serves to promote an agreeable spirit of friendliness and sociability in the initial thawing-out stages, when many of the guests present are seeking to strike up conversations with newly-introduced strangers. Only strong teetotallers object to the use of alcohol on such occasions; for alcohol is a pleasant stimulant in initiating an easy flow of conversation among strangers. The amount of liquor consumed both individually and collectively on these social occasions does, however, depend considerably on the standards of drinking commonly accepted by the whole group of guests who have come together. Consequently the degree of exhilaration experienced is likely to vary very much among different groups of drinkers; and it is thus possible to talk about “civilized drinking” at some parties on the one hand and about wild, drunken orgies on the other.

            The grave danger in the immediate indiscriminate granting of liquor consumption licences to all persons of aboriginal blood is that they are likely to adopt the worst swilling habits of the whites belonging to those groups with which they are coming into most intimate contact. Few aboriginals or part-aboriginals have seen liquor consumed in a refined drawing room atmosphere. Most of them have seen, however, blaspheming, brawling white drunks disturbing the peace of the local community or lying in inebriated stupor on hotel verandahs. This is, unfortunately, the kind of white conduct they tend to copy; and in swearing and brawling they soon succeed in proving themselves apt pupils of their deplorable white teachers. Only police restraint or the moderating influence of group disapproval can check the drinking habits of anti-social individuals. But aboriginal and part-aboriginal drinkers generally congregate in places remote from effective police restraint; and here no traditional tribal controls operate to check the orgies of uninhibited swillers. During my visit to the Centre in 1955 it was a most depressing experience for me to return from a native ceremonial camp where elderly full-blood men had been singing their traditional songs to a parking ground on the outskirts of Alice Springs, where I was disturbed night after night by the swearing and shouting of part-aboriginals, who rarely finished their nocturnal drunken parties without quarrels and brawls. Full citizenship rights had not been an unmixed blessing for these people, nor were their drinking habits assisting them in their progress towards assimilation by the white community. For many members of this roaring group of inebriated dark revellers the licence to drink had long since become a licence to get drunk whenever they had the money for purchasing the necessary quantity of liquor. It was a depressing thought that the majority of these people would, unless their drinking habits improved, eventually form a new slum-type community in a soak-suburb or shanty town of their own, where their drunken exploits would furnish further material to conceited white critics for attacks on the “low mentality” of the Australian aboriginal.

            It is unfortunately easier to set forth the problems posed by the consumption of liquor than to suggest solutions for them. It is impossible to keep separating the aboriginals from the part-aboriginals indefinitely in the matter of liquor consumption licences. The part-aboriginals in the Northern Territory, who may purchase liquor without restraint, have many full-blood relatives and friends who are officially precluded from consuming liquor; but these full-bloods are already obtaining alcohol illegally from their part-aboriginal relatives and friends. Again, Albert Namatjira’s camp at Morris Soak has demonstrated that a full-blood aboriginal with full Australian citizenship rights will act as a generous source of supply for the unexempted dark folk around him. Total prohibition merely increases the prestige of liquor; and for most dark Australians liquor has already become the symbol of emancipation, of equality with the white man, and of full Australian citizenship.

            Permission to consume liquor will have to be granted sooner or later to all aboriginals and part-aboriginals who live in or close to white towns and cities[x]. The only hope for better drinking habits here lies in the provision of a greater variety of entertainment centres, so that the consumption of liquor no longer remains one of the three main ways of spending the leisure hours — the other two being gambling and the uninhibited pursuit of the opposite sex.

            In these white areas mixed entertainment groups of coloured people and sympathetic whites could perform a wonderful service for the dark Australian community. In the old aboriginal society folk dancing, the singing of ceremonial songs, and the acting of sacred ceremonies filled in most of the evening leisure hours. The collapse of the old order has already led to discontinuation of these forms of entertainment over a large part of the continent, and the young aboriginal men and women of today are dropping them in most of the remaining areas in response to constant pressure and persuasion from missionary and governmental agencies. But it is impossible for people to spend their leisure hours day after day, month after month, year after year, in a complete mental vacuum. People need to be amused in their leisure hours. Many folk feel lost and discontented unless organized forms of entertainment are available to them. Thus in the white communities throughout the world there are many indications that the break-down of discipline in many homes and the boredom of young people who have never learnt civilized ways of enjoyment during their hours of leisure tend to produce persons with anti-social tendencies, more widely known under such diverse names as bodgies, widgies, roughnecks, Teddy boys, larrikins, hipsters, beatniks, hooligans, teenage hoodlums, and plain juvenile delinquents[xi]. While repression by police will keep the criminal elements in check to some extent, the community clearly needs some positive reformatory plans as well so that youthful spirit of adventure and the abundant vigour that characterizes teenagers can be turned into channels that will benefit society as a whole. These young people should be given ample opportunities to play sports and provided with enjoyable entertainments that are more wholesome than some of the practices now indulged in by many of them.

            Where there are large communities of full-bloods still living on mission or native reserves at considerable distances from any white towns, it would seem to be a wise plan that the licence to consume liquor indiscriminately should be withheld for the time being from the aboriginal residents. On these reserves pride in the best elements of the old aboriginal heritage should be encouraged and any remaining traces of authority held by aboriginal leaders built up afresh and strengthened. The aboriginals and part-aboriginals on these settlements will become far better citizens of the future Australia if they are no longer made to feel ashamed of the imaginary stain of their dark ancestry. If controlled drinking of liquor is eventually introduced here, then it would be best to place strict limits on the amounts consumed. It might even be wise to insist that the liquor be consumed in the company of friendly white staff members who are themselves moderate and civilized drinkers. The last proviso is an important one: on stations established for the benefit of aboriginals, white staff members who find difficulty in moderating their drinking habits are by no means unknown. In this way it may perhaps be possible to build up better drinking customs among the aboriginals during the transition period.

            It must be remembered also that drunkenness and immoderate drinking habits are perhaps more widespread in the white nations, and in the coloured communities existing within these white nations, than elsewhere. The Islamic world, for instance, officially prohibits the consumption of liquor, and India did likewise after the departure of the white colonial administrators.

            Again, some native leaders in New Guinea have recently informed the Australian Minister for Territories that they desired to see “a complete ban on alcohol throughout New Guinea”[xii].

            My suggestion for delay in licensing the drinking of liquor on native reserves is, in part, prompted by the hope that in the near future aboriginal or part-aboriginal leaders will emerge, who will be in a much better position to assist their own fellows on the road to social change than we can hope to do. It is quite possible that some of the future aboriginal leaders will be just as hostile to the liquor issue as the native New Guinea leaders who demanded a complete ban on alcohol; and these New Guinea leaders represented 50,000 Rabaul district natives.

            Native drinking habits in Australia are influenced strongly by group-held attitudes which vary to some degree in different localities. The extent to which these attitudes may vary even in on State may be gauged from a perusal of the article Making Black White, contributed by Mr. Peter Coleman to The Observer (Sydney) issue of June 13, 1959. While this article sets out mainly the assimilation problems and achievements in New South Wales, many of Coleman’s descriptions would apply to aboriginal and part-aboriginal communities in other parts of Australia as well; and the article is worth careful perusal by all people interested in native welfare. It is Coleman’s belief that even the so-called “assimilated aborigines” who live in country towns in the north-west of New South Wales and who have adopted the European way of living[xiii], are still “insecure, reserved, self-conscious” persons, and that “they are often snubbed and daily come up against irritating petty prejudices”. He claims that they carry on as they do only because of their belief “that the road they have chosen is the only possible one”, and in the hope “that life will be easier for their children”. Coleman’s own fear is that they may be mistaken in both: “It may indeed turn out that the North-west of N.S.W. will become like America’s Deep South”. Coleman’s main conclusion about the aims and the inevitable results of the assimilation policy make very depressing reading to people like myself who have known, respected, and admired many of those older aboriginals, who had still been brought up in their ancient culture and were proud of their traditions. Coleman maintains that:

             Despite official claims our policy towards the aborigines has in one fundamental respect never changed. Once the idea was to kill them off; then the more humane programme was to let them die out peacefully and meanwhile to smooth their dying pillow; now the policy is to assimilate them. But as far as the aborigines themselves are concerned the result in each case is the same. Assimilation ultimately means absorption and that means extinction. As a “nation” with its own way of life and even as a race the aborigines are still destined to disappear. (p. 361).

Whatever is done socially and legally — and what can be done the various Welfare Department officials will certainly do — the problem will be with us for generations yet. The number who graduate from the Stations or camps to the towns is small, and those who make it do not look back to help the others who are left behind. Their own struggles exhaust what resources they have. Besides, they are looking to the future, to the only possible future, the extinction of their race.

It is one of the ironies of our history that the only recompense we seem able to give this race for what we have done to it is to help it disappear. (p. 363).

Coleman’s remarks about the unsatisfactory position of the “assimilated aborigines” of New South Wales indicate that the policy of deliberately attempting to change dark Australians into white Australians is doomed to failure unless the white Australian community is prepared to welcome these dark folk as full fellow citizens[xiv].

I have already hinted at one of the ways in which I think full integration into our community could be achieved, namely by the formation of groups with mixed dark and white memberships. That is necessarily a slow process, and there is probably not very much that any Government can do about it. If any real progress is to be made in this matter, the general white Australian community must first undergo a change of heart in its set attitudes towards aboriginals in general.

But there are two practical ways in which the integration of both full-blood and part-aboriginal Australians into the white Australian community could be facilitated, and racial tensions lessened in those Australian areas where they undoubtedly exist.

The first suggestion may sound completely paradoxical. I have already voiced my belief that action should be taken to strengthen and to build up rather than to destroy the remains of aboriginal authority and aboriginal pride on the more isolated aboriginal settlements, such as those which are to be found in the interior and along the northern edges of our continent. I have also alluded to the old initiation ceremonies, and their effect of inculcating the social virtues and establishing a firm respect for law and order among the young aboriginals. On many mission stations and Government settlements the essential portions of these initiation rites are still being carried out, even though the stations or settlements have sometimes been established two or three generations ago. My own feeling is that the responsible authorities should ease off their attacks on these rites and cease undermining the last traces of aboriginal authority. Once the latter has gone completely, the white authorities will have to expect much lawless, even criminal behaviour on their settlements, coupled with complete shiftlessness and a general apathy towards all schemes of social progress. There is no need for me to enlarge on this unsavoury subject. Many long-established aboriginal settlements are furnishing much sad evidence about the aberrations of individuals who have become aimless pieces of driftwood.

How effective the old aboriginal system of social control could be, I had many opportunities of seeing for myself during the early nineteen-thirties, when I travelled extensively for thousands of miles on camel back through areas situated in the south-western part of the Northern Territory which were then still under tribal authority. Travelling only with native guides, I always enjoyed a complete feeling of safety as far as the aboriginal inhabitants were concerned, even though I was sometimes away for many weeks in areas hundreds of miles removed from the furthest precincts of the so-called settled districts. Later on, when as the Commonwealth Government’s first Patrol Officer I had my headquarters on the Jay Creek Native Reserve, twenty-eight miles west of Alice Springs, my official task of maintaining law and order among the aboriginal population living in the southern half of the Northern Territory was made possible only by the lingering reverence which the majority of the Northern Territory aboriginals still felt for their own ancient culture and traditional norms of behaviour. I frequently had to go out, sometimes on my own, sometimes accompanied by a doctor or a police officer, to investigate reports of the ill-treatment of aboriginals by whites, serious outbreaks of sicknesses in distant bush areas, and murders in which aboriginals were involved either as perpetrators or as victims. Some of the places from which these troubles had been reported might be three and even four hundred miles away; and most of them could be reached only by means of crude tracks which called for expert “bush driving” on the part of road users. I was consequently often absent from Jay Creek for four or five days (or even longer), at a stretch. During my frequent absences the native population, which fluctuated around the hundred and fifty mark, would be left on their own, with my wife to look after the sick, if occasion should arise. The position was complicated still further by the fact that the Jay Creek Reserve was used also as a holding compound for aboriginal Crown witnesses in criminal cases. The latter included aboriginal men who had committed tribal murders and who consequently found themselves in serious trouble in their own areas. At least two of these men, Nikutjilpi and Minu, both belonging to the Pitjantjara tribe, were dreaded even by their own people. These detention cases were “confined” merely in the sense that they had to remain within the twenty-five square miles of the Jay Creek Reserve until they had shown by their behaviour that they could safely be permitted to return to their home areas again. Twice a week they had to present themselves for their rations; but otherwise they were free to roam about on the reserve in order to hunt or gather bush foods, for the Jay Creek Reserve had been established in country where bush foods were still plentiful. During the six years that I spent at Jay Creek no serious crimes, such as murder or rape, were committed on the reserve. As was inevitable, there were a number of fights among the residents, but I was able to quell all of these by walking into the various camps completely unarmed. I would not, of course, have enjoyed greater safety had I found it necessary to carry a weapon. My own authority rested largely upon my knowledge of the tribal laws and the sacred traditions of the people who had been placed in my care. I possessed the respect of the tribal elders, who had taken me to their sacred sites and revealed to me their sacred ceremonies. As long as I possessed this respect, and as long as I tried to justify my orders wherever possible by references to tribal norms rather than to the white man’s law, I could be certain that Jay Creek would be a place where the aboriginal population could live in safety during all of my long absences.

It is clear that even those natives who are living on the best-conducted aboriginal reserves cannot avoid social change indefinitely. But, in my opinion, the effects of social change are least harmful when the new order is embraced by a whole group, and not merely by individuals. Rather than splintering up an aboriginal group and attempting to withdraw from a detribalized community its most gifted members and potential leaders, our aim should be to raise the whole group to as high a level as possible, and to find an honourable place for it in the total Australian community. Again, to effect social change of a far-reaching nature, considerable pressures are always needed; and these can best be applied by progressive leaders who have the confidence of their own group – in this case by gifted aboriginals and part-aboriginals. For no matter how talented the white administrators may be, they will always be regarded in some way as foreigners and intruders; and no human being likes being pushed around by intruding foreigners. Our aim should therefore be to encourage the forces of cohesion within the remaining native groups until native-born leaders can arise who are able to lead their people into fuller integration with the white community.

Co-operative schemes, such as co-operative enterprises for raising cattle, or mining, or growing agricultural produce, should be encouraged on these settlements, in order to provide a sound economic basis for the new order. To ensure the economic success of these co-operative enterprises it may well be necessary to split over-large aboriginal communities into several smaller ones, which will then compete with one another within the precincts of a large settlement. The mission settlement at Hermannsburg, for instance, with its present population of over four hundred persons all centred in a single spot, is far too large a unit economically. There are, unfortunately, in this country other aboriginal settlements which are even larger than Hermannsburg. In the old days the effective aboriginal group-units were all fairly small. The Western Aranda for instance — the Hermannsburg area’s original population — were spread out over the whole of the present mission area in localized groups never larger than about fifty. Here individual ability could still flourish; and every man had a responsible place in his own local group. The co-operative enterprises I have mentioned would be founded on group ownership, not on individual ownership; and group ownership would be much more in line with the traditional aboriginal ways of social behaviour. Examples of aboriginal co-operative enterprises may be found in the Point Pearce Co-operative Store (S.A.), the pearl shell fishing enterprise at Lockhardt (Cape York Peninsula), and the Pindan Co-operative Pty. camps (W.A.)[xv].

In an earlier talk, Dark and White Australians, I have given a brief outline of the kind of educational facilities that should be provided on the aboriginal reserves; and I shall not repeat these remarks here[xvi]. I wish to emphasize once more, however, that if any real progress is to be expected on these aboriginal settlements, then the aboriginals themselves must feel that they have citizenship rights in all areas that have been declared to be their own country. They should have the right to use and preserve their own languages, and to live, if they wish, according to their laws in so far as these do not conflict seriously with our own. They should, for instance, be permitted to keep up their initiation rites for the time being, and to punish persons who reveal the tribal secrets, though no longer to the extent of inflicting capital punishment on the offenders. In recent years far too much publicity has been given to isolated cases of “bone-pointing” and to the tribal executions of offenders who have revealed secret rites to the uninitiated. These cases used to occur fairly rarely in the past, when tribal authority was firmer than it is now. During the critical first forty or fifty years of missionary endeavour at Hermannsburg, for instance, not a single youth ever refused to submit himself to the initiation rites, which the authorities wisely refused to ban although they were personally not in favour of them. Much of the trouble which occurs today in connection with the initiation rites and the revelation of secret ritual is caused directly by a small number of white missionaries, station men, and government officials, who encourage youths to challenge the authority of the tribal elders. Later they are appalled by the resulting inevitable tragedies. Some of the undue rigours of the initiation ceremonies can be made to disappear with persuasion given to the tribal elders — many unnecessary rigours have, in fact, already disappeared even without white persuasion in many parts of Central Australia. The dark folk living on the outlying native reserves should feel that they possess the same rights as white people in having a voice in the education of their children and in the discipline they are allowed to exercise over their young folk. They should be encouraged to pass on their magnificent bushcraft to their descendants. The bushcraft and the tracking skill of the older aboriginals were of an amazing order, and could still be turned into a national asset in all pioneering areas of Australia. But all this knowledge is rapidly being lost even on the native settlements; and most of the native youths who have been trained by white teachers are just as pathetically useless out bush as the city-bred white Australian population. Again, all sacred caves should be declared to be inviolable places, irrespective of where they happen to be. No white person, not even the Superintendent of a Reserve, should be permitted to take any white visitors to such sites where they are known: this should be the privilege only of the ceremonial chiefs of these places. In short, on these native reserves every aboriginal should know that he possessed the full rights of a dark Australian, and that the white persons present resided on the reserve only in order to help him, not in order to rule over him as petty tyrants and so-called “pannikin bosses”. These reforms would demand a considerable change in heart in many reserve officials and mission workers; but the aboriginal leaders themselves would be much more willing to co-operate with white schemes for educational and social changes if they were not always being made to feel that the white folk were scheming to bring about the complete loss of all aboriginal identity even on settlements allegedly established for the sole use and benefit of the aboriginal inhabitants. Aboriginal citizenship[xvii] of the kind outlined here, if given to all dark people in the outlying areas, would foster a strong “national pride” in them. This pride would help the gifted dark men and women who came from these reserves to deport themselves with dignity in their new surrounding if they later on became members of those mixed groups of dark and white citizens that I have outlined earlier. I feel that it would be better for dark men to sing proudly their fine traditional songs at night than to howl and brawl like drunken animals in a vain attempt to demonstrate in this fashion their equality with the worst-behaved elements of the white population. Let us remember that Albert Namatjira was at his finest as a man and as an Australian while he remained conscious of his standing as a full member of the aboriginal community. He lost his grip on his principles of behaviour only during those last few tragic years when he was attempting to drink and guzzle his way into white society.

We should remember at all times that, no matter how much assistance is given to any human being, only that human being can take the final steps necessary for his own rehabilitation[xviii]. All that other men can do is to help his efforts by example, by precept, and by financial assistance. But the use made of this help depends on the response of the individual to whom it is given[xix].

The second practical way in which the integration of both the full-blood and the part-aboriginal Australians into the white community can be facilitated is by educating the white Australians to respect the separate “identity” of our aboriginals and the pride that many of them still feel, and all of them should feel, in elements of their own ancient heritage.

A great deal could be done both in our schools and by means of adult education talks to raise the esteem of the white population for the aboriginal inhabitants of this country. Instead of always harping on the primitive material possessions of the natives, and the crudities of their traditional way of life, the finer elements of their culture and the many sterling qualities of their “national character”, if I may use the latter expression, could well be brought to the notice of all white Australians; for many of the latter are almost completely ignorant about these things. Some of the more interesting myths and songs could well be studied in translations in our schools, and school children could at least be informed about the well-developed systems of social organization possessed by the Australian tribes. In our history books full credit should be given to the many aboriginals whose loyalty and bushcraft enabled most parties of our white explorers to cross the difficult Australian continent in safety. Again, it should be stressed that in the pioneering days white settlement in the interior was made possible only by the dark men and women who provided the labour force. Nor did these dark folk provide merely the labour force for these white pioneers: probably every white child born in the outback will remember with gratitude the extraordinary kindness of its native “mothers” and dark playmates — unless these feelings of gratitude were later on stifled by the jeers of white adults who were cynically exploiting the dark people.

Once the white Australians have learned to appreciate the good qualities in the aboriginal character and to respect the finer elements of traditional culture, the mutual relations between both parties will be put on a much sounder basis — and on a basis that is more honourable for both. When that happens, prominent aboriginal men like Albert Namatjira will no longer have to feel a sense of inferiority or shame in white company because of their dark skins; and even the “assimilated natives” who live in our southern and eastern Australian towns and cities will no longer be made to feel that the aboriginal blood which flows in their veins constitutes a stain on their character as citizens.

To me “assimilation” means a process of education which will enable the aboriginals and part-aboriginals of this country to acquire those skills and those ways of behaviour which will equip them to take their place with dignity and on a basis of full equality in mixed groups of dark and white Australian citizens. As I have said in an earlier talk—

The native people and the white Australians have a common destiny, and must come to regard each other as fellow citizens sharing a common future. But such a development must come gradually, and it must be based on common trust, understanding, and an appreciation that both parties have something special to contribute towards the common good. (Dark and White Australians, p. 27).

But I find it impossible to advocate an “assimilation” concept which involves the complete cultural and physical annihilation of the original inhabitants of Australia. Just as the koala, the possum, the platypus, the kangaroo, and the emu, deserve to be protected so that they can continue to exist in their own original habitat, so too the Australian aboriginal deserves to be given a chance to work out his destiny within the general framework of Australian society without being forced to give up completely every element of his cultural and racial identity[xx]. In all our arguments about the relative merits of Old and New Australians let us remember that the aboriginal is, after all, the only real and true Australian in every sense of this term: the rest of us are still, in most ways, lately-arrived Europeans who have only recently taken up residence on the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Moreover, we are only a tiny outpost of white settlement in a portion of the globe where we shall soon have two thousand million non-white peoples as our immediate neighbours. The experience which we could gain from devising ways and means for our dark Australian citizens to co-exist on terms of equality with ourselves on one continent could well help us to devise ways and means of integrating our economy and some of our institutions with those of our northern neighbours in a way that will permit us to co-exist peacefully with them in that near future when their numbers will have gone up by a further thousand million people.

Albert Namatjira’s tragedy was that to the end of his days he remained a wanderer in the wasteland between two worlds, the aboriginal and the European, which he sought to bridge in vain by his individual efforts. Whatever fate the distant future may hold for the descendants of the present aboriginal population, we owe it to the memory of men like Namatjira and the many dark people who have helped our pioneering forebears in establishing themselves in this continent, to find an honourable place in our society for the dark Australians whose status and whose happiness already depend on our present actions and decrees.

            There is no need for all Australians to have the same faces and physical features, the same skin colour, the same ideas, or the same attitudes towards all things. Within certain limits, diversity is more interesting and stimulating than a monotonous, characterless uniformity. The only thing that matters is that all groups constituting the totality of Australian society should work together for the welfare and advancement of that society. Few of us can be the major administrators, but all of us are members of groups. If we begin forming social groups in which white men and dark men can meet and associate on terms of equality and mutual respect, I believe that we can gradually bring about a new social order, in which the aboriginals and the part-aboriginals of this country can become integrated into our economy and into our society without the complete loss of their racial and cultural identity. The policy of assimilation will then become a road to collaboration and friendly co-existence for both dark and white Australians. Otherwise, our best-intentioned efforts may fail in the end, and result merely in turning out a new race of nomads — Nomads in No-Man’s Land.

The battered copy from which the above text was transcribed.

Endnotes

[i] Since intermarriage is an index of the process of “assimilation”, anyone interested in the future of the various racial, national, and religious groupings that are to be found among present-day Australians is advised to consult People Who Intermarry by Milton L. Barron (Syracuse University Press, 1946). In this book, which quotes detailed U.S.A. statistics for intermarriage (with special reference to the New England industrial community of Derby in 1929-1930 and 1940), the author arrives at the conclusion that “it is still in the mores of most locales in American society to inmarry racially, religiously and ethnically (p. xi).” Intermarriages (defined on p. 5 by Barron as unions in which “the groom and bride differ in race, religious faith, or ethnic derivation, or any combination of these three characteristics”) are subject to so many controls that, far from the U.S.A. having any hope of ever becoming a vast racial, cultural, and religious melting pot for its constituent groups of citizens, it seems likely that there will be “the following future realignments of in-groups in this country” (pp. 343-4):

“Racially, the continued existence of the two large racial in-groups, the Negroes and the Whites, seems likely. There is the strong possibility of the emergence in certain regions of a third, the American Mongoloid race, composed of the numerically small but still separately identifiable Chinese, Japanese, American Indians and Filipinos.”

                “Religiously, the continuation of the three large religious in-groups, the Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, and the absorption of the other two minor groups, the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, into the Roman Catholic and Protestant groups seems most likely.”

                “The high degree of similarity in the economic and educational status of both those who in — and intermarry suggests the possibility of the emergence of new in-groups along these lines… Accordingly, sociologists in their future intermarriage studies may well consider the revision of the three classical in-groups of race, religion and nationality in their methodology by dropping the latter and adding two other equally valid groupings, the economic and the educational, i.e. class.”

[ii] It is quoted in The Feathered Serpent by Roland Robinson, pp. 73-5.

[iii] Christian Missions especially have often been criticized — in some cases with good reason — for attempting to break down tribal ties and relationships. A rather different approach has been described for New Guinea in Dr. Peter Lawrence’s article Lutheran Mission Influence on Madang Societies (Oceania, vol. XXVII, No. 2, December 1956). Dr. Lawrence — on the whole a fairly strong critic of missionary endeavours — has this to say about the methods introduced into the New Guinea Lutheran Mission field by the Rev. Christian Keysser, who was at Sattelberg from 1899 to 1920:

                “This extremely far-sighted man realized that the old method of concentrating on the individual and singling him out from his community was useless. To do so was to reckon without the forces of the indigenous society, which the individual convert was powerless to combat. Torn from his own culture and its patterns of relationships — which were inextricably interwoven with religious beliefs and observance — such a man, far from having any influence on his pagan brethren, would lead a life of complete spiritual and social isolation, or — what was more likely because of that isolation — drift back to the beliefs and customs of his ancestors. This, indeed, is what had so far actually happened.

                Keysser saw only one remedy for this situation: In order to ensure the steadfastness of the individual, it was first necessary to create a Christian society of which he could be an integral and functioning part. This would involve bringing Christianity to the group at large — that is, by preparing all its members for baptism at the same time — and the remoulding of native societies so that they would emerge as Christian congregations of the same general kind and fulfilling roughly the same functions as their counterparts in European countries. Christianity must be built into the new native society and become its established religion, so that it would give practical direction to all aspects of daily life. Furthermore, it would be essential for native Christians to play a full part in the new organization; they would have time to assume responsibility for the everyday management of congregational affairs, and, in large measure, for the work of the evangelization.”

                The Rev. Keysser, it may be added, was the first Lutheran missionary in the Australian sphere of influence who realized the need for a sympathetic approach towards the indigenous culture of a mission area. In one of his letters he has written:

                “In the year 1910 I had a conversation with a German research worker in New Guinea. The latter claimed that with a few plugs of tobacco he could loosen people’s tongues everywhere and induce them to entrust to him all their secrets. He was considerably taken aback when I felt it necessary to tell him that he was greatly mistaken: a stranger could learn none of their secrets: he would first have to gain their friendship. The Papuans in New Guinea distinguish between two kinds of friendships. Trading friendship or Siri could be gained easily and rapidly, particularly on account of our metal tools, which were of great value to these Stone Age people. But tribal friendship or Ago was a very different matter. This was hard to gain. I do not know any missionary apart from myself who endeavoured to gain it, nor another who like me successfully gained it. The Mission Board used to reproach me for giving encouragement to heathen behaviour through my participation at various feasts and festivals.”

[iv] See The Central Aborigines Reserve by Charles Duguid, (Presidential Address, 21st October, 1957, Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia, Incorporated).

[v] It may be remarked that in Anglo-Saxon times one of a king’s chief virtues was considered to be his generosity towards his followers and retainers. Similarly, the English term “lord” is the contraction of a compound which originally meant “loaf-ward” or “guardian of the bread”, i.e. a man who provided his retainers with their food. So constantly was liberality extolled as one of the noblest characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon kings, that it is not surprising to find the English chronicler responsible for the character sketch of William the Conqueror in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler dwelling with grave disapproval on the mean greed of the usurping foreigner. For William the Conqueror…

…Took from his subjects many a mark of gold, and more hundred pounds of silver… by right and with great unright of his people, for little need. He was fallen into covetousness, and he loved greediness above all. (Entry for A.D. 1087). …So exceedingly narrowly did he cause the investigation to be made, that there was not one single hide, nor one yard of land, nay moreover — it is a disgrace to recount it, but he considered it no disgrace to do it, — neither and ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, which was not written down in his record. (Entry for A.D. 1085). The modern institution of income taxation and its methods of assessment would clearly not have been regarded as a proper exercise of governmental authority by an early Anglo-Saxon community!

[vi] In the words of the Minister for Territories (The Hon. Paul Hasluck):

It is not enough for an aboriginal person just to know that he will be better fed and better clothed in association with other Australians than he would be if he stayed in the bush. It is necessary for him to feel that he “belongs” to something greater than himself, that he is accepted by and has his place among his fellows and that he can help in some way or other to shape society.

(From The Future of the Australian Aborigines, a paper read at the A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress in Adelaide on 22nd August, 1958, p. 4).

[vii] In the Report of the Aborigines Welfare Board of Victoria for the year ended 30th June, 1958, the following recommendations were made for the establishment of groups of this nature in Victoria:

The Board aims to encourage the establishment of local committees under Section 8 of the Act in those districts where aborigines live for the purpose of sponsoring, advising, and encouraging aboriginal families to advance, to gain social contacts, and to maintain liaison between the Board and the people. The good work which has already been done in this direction by committees at Warrnambool, Mooroopna, and Shepparton might well be matched by others in the future.

The Board looks to the churches to seek out the aborigines and to encourage them to become full and active members of their congregations. The various churches have a missionary outlook and support the work of their overseas missions, but here is a missionary problem which faces the churches on their home territory.

The Board appeals to voluntary bodies such as rotary, Apex, and other community service clubs — Country Women’s Association, Scouts and Guides, Youth Clubs, etc. — to devote some attention to the aboriginal question and where necessary seek aboriginal members of their groups. (p. 9 of Report).

[viii] In the words of Report of the Aborigines Welfare Board of Victoria referred to above —

                Towards puberty the aboriginal child become self-conscious and aware of differences in colour and background; he is not invited into the homes of the white pupils and he fails to see any advantage in education. Feeling that education will not help him to get a job he loses interest and, as might be expected, he does not progress educationally. (page 8).

[ix] Liquor Troubles Are As Old As Australia was the title of an interesting article in the Sunday Herald (Sydney) of 30th November, 1952 - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18517682 . This article reviewed liquor troubles in New South Wales from the days of the “Rum Corps” of Governor Hunter to the Rum Mutiny of 1844, and its writer reached the conclusion that “Most of us are apt to think of our liquor troubles as of comparatively recent origin; in fact, the records show that N.S.W. has had an almost permanent alcoholic migraine since the days when the colony was founded.”

                The most complete recent document on white Australian drinking habits is the Report of the Royal Commission (the Hon. Mr. Justice Maxwell) on Liquor Laws in New South Wales (1954). Mr. Justice Maxwell acted as the Commissioner from 23rd July, 1951, the 25th March, 1954, and produced an official report of over 100 pages. The Commission sat in public for 140 days and examined 411 witnesses. In addition, 109 printed schedules and 147 exhibits were tendered in evidence. The Report sets out also the views of Church and temperance bodies on liquor, together with evidence on police methods used to control abuses.

[x] Official liquor licences for aboriginals and part-aboriginals living in or near white settlements will not introduce these persons to alcohol for the first time. Records of police prosecutions reveal that many or even most of these coloured people are already consuming alcohol in alarming quantities despite the official bans on liquor.

[xi] A short but interesting account of the “Beat” Generation is to be found in the Current Affairs Bulletin (Sydney) issue of December 7, 1959.

[xii] Rabaul, Sunday.—New Britain Tolai native leaders yesterday told the Minister for Territories (Mr. Paul Hasluck) that they wanted a complete ban on alcohol throughout New Guinea.

The natives also strongly opposed the entrance of any more missions to the territory, because, they said, they were confusing the natives…

Well-educated Tolai, Stanis Boralimit, a member of a native Local Government Council (this was a meeting of the combined five councils) said that liquor laws for natives were “too weak.”

He claimed that the six months’ gaol penalty for drinking was not enough and recommended extending the penalty to 12 months.

Then Mr. Hasluck interrupted Stanis and said the main problem was to stop the selling of liquor to natives.

Stanis answered quickly: “That’s something bilong the administration. We are only interested in the native who is a menace to the community.”

The discussion was then thrown open to the meeting during which the gathering of 40 councillors present agreed in general that the liquor laws should be tightened, that the majority of New Britain natives did not want to drink, and that the only way to stop drinking was to ban all import of liquor and make New Guinea a dry territory. (The Age, Melbourne, 7th December, 1959).

The spokesman on the mission issue was locally born Stanis Boralimit, who spoke through an interpreter.

Stanis said: “We do not deny the missions have done much for us. They have helped us when we were sick, helped educate our children, and are a big force for good.

But there are too many of them.

The mind of the ordinary native is confused.

He hears the missions say they are all Christians and yet they differ from each other.

Because of their record in the community we are happy to have the present mission stay.

But we don’t want any more coming here from Australia, and we ask you to keep them out.

If any more come the confusion will be great and we will be troubled.” (Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 6th December, 1959).

[xiii] “Usually mixed-bloods, they want above all to be accepted in the white community and they imitate the Europeans’ formalities in all possible ways. They live in houses, buy furniture, and pay the rent. They try to be clean, sober, and moral. They have steady jobs, bank accounts, and go freely to doctors and solicitors.” (p. 361).

These “assimilated aborigines” form only a small portion of the (part-) aboriginal population of N.S.W., most of whom Coleman classifies as “Station and river aborigines.” The latter form a kind of “depressed outcast class.”

[xiv] The assimilation aims of the Welfare Department of the Northern Territory, and the problems encountered by the Commonwealth Welfare officials on their aboriginal settlements, are set out in detail in two booklets called Progress towards Assimilation (1958) and Fringe Dwellers (1959) respectively. Both booklets are well illustrated, and contain a great amount of most useful statistical information. They are worth careful study by all persons interested in social welfare schemes for the aboriginals and part-aboriginals of this country.

[xv] For further details about these co-operative enterprises and for interesting information on the aboriginal settlements and native policies of W.A., N.T., and S.A. by a keen-sighted, independent observer, see the Report on Aborigines in Australia, May/June, 1957, by Lady Jessie Street.

 The Melbourne Herald (27th October, 1959) printed the following comments on the Point Pearce co-operative store:

Aboriginals at South Australia’s Point Pearce Aboriginal Station had become more education-minded since their consumers’ co-operative store was established there three years ago, Mr. Bob Wanganeen said today.

Parents were showing greater interest in high school education for their children, he said…

“We want to show all Australians that, given the opportunity, aboriginals can make a success of such a venture,” Mr. Wanganeen said.

Between 40 and 50 aboriginal families held shares in the Point Pearce co-operative store.

Dividends were paid to shareholders according to the money they spent at the store.

The co-operative’s turnover for the last financial year was more that £12,000.

Profits remaining when dividends were paid were put back into the store.

The co-operative was run entirely by aboriginals.

Groceries and other lines were brought wholesale by the co-operative, which retailed them at city prices.

[xvi] A thought-provoking assessment of the quality of the work at present being done in the Northern Territory schools is given by Emeritus Professor A. P. Elkin in his article Schools for Aborigines In Northern Territory (printed in South Pacific, the official organ of the Australian School of Pacific Administration, vol. 9, No. 13, for July-August, 1958). Professor Elkin, after visiting the N.T. aboriginal schools, among other interesting comments, points out that the European type of education offered in these aboriginal schools has insufficient bearing on the kind of life that most of the aboriginal pupils will lead after passing through them.

“In their minds, school work and learning have no bearing on the camp life to which they return in the afternoon; nor is school (plus dormitory as on some Missions) related to their destined married life in huts or simple houses on the periphery of the white man’s social order…

No attempt is made to express indigenous ideas and values in English, i.e. to think in English. Hence, the children fail to follow a teacher’s efforts to transmit civilised ideas and values in English. These remain external, to which a superficial, meaningless adjustment is temporarily made…

Moreover, the effort we demand is very great; reading and arithmetic and all the rest in a foreign language; even washing, drawing and playing are in English. Except at Hermannsburg Mission School, the children do not sing in school in their own language, and then only hymns. Nowhere do they sing any of their own songs in school, and in one place, when asked, would not do so. Like the Hebrews in captivity, they would not sing “the songs of Zion in a strange land.”

Professor Elkin ends by posing the pertinent question: “For what are we educating and training the Aborigines? The goal is assimilation. True! But “there’s the rub.” For assimilation implies a reasonably sure place in the economic system, but is this more than a pious hope?...

Unless a solution is found, teachers and superintendents, that is to say, the Welfare Branch, will be “left out on a limb,” and much Aboriginal discontent will be inevitable. Their “last state will be worse than the first.”

That the Welfare Branch of the N.T. Administration is aware of these problems and is seeking to find practical solutions for some of them, is evident for its Annual Report for 1958/59, which is worth careful study.

[xvii] The term “aboriginal citizenship” has been used here for a special purpose. There is wide diversity of opinion among the authorities engaged in aboriginal welfare work about the question whether full white Australian citizenship rights should be given by legislation to all aboriginal and part-aboriginal folk in Australia, or only to those who are already living as “assimilated aboriginals” in or near white centres. The term “aboriginal citizenship” is intended to indicate that there are certain human rights that should be granted to all full-blood aboriginals whether or not they have bothered to take any steps to discard any elements of their aboriginal culture. These rights are not identical in all respects with those that the white Australian citizens wish to have. The unsophisticated tribesman is not interested in liquor, for instance, but the inviolability of his sacred caves is of the utmost importance to him.

                A detailed discussion of the problems involved in granting white citizenship status to all persons classifiable in any way as “aboriginals” is to be found in Dr. R. M. Berndt’s article Native Welfare in Western Australia since the “Warburton Controversy” of 1957 (See The Australian Quarterly, September 1959). This article sets out the various conflicting views held by different individuals and groups in W.A. on the future course to be followed in legislative measures designed to give fuller citizenship rights to persons of aboriginal blood.

                My own tentative view is that those aboriginals and part-aboriginals who are already living in white centres should be carefully and speedily trained for admission into our society, so that they may be granted the same citizenship rights as the white residents with as little delay as possible. Those living on the outlying settlements should be granted immediate “aboriginal citizenship,” — a status that entitled them to the educational and economic benefits of the white community, while preserving for them for the time being the right to retain “their own customs and institutions where these are not incompatible with the national legal system or the objectives of integration programmes.” The last sentence has been taken from paragraph 2 of Article 7 of Convention 107 of the International Labour Conference (1957). This Convention relates to the “protection and integration of indigenous and other tribal and semi-tribal populations in independent countries.” (Extracts from Convention 107 which have particular relevance to the subject matter of my talk have been set down as an Appendix to this talk).

                Practically all the full-blood aboriginals whom I have known have wished to be regarded as dark Australians, and have been proud of the land of their birth and of many elements of their own ancient culture. They have desired a type of citizenship that would, while gaining for them certain material benefits enjoyed by all white Australians, preserve for them the right to keep what they valued as the best elements of their own old culture — for instance, their non-individualistic approach to all community matters and social problems. Similarly the finest “assimilated” part-aboriginals that I have known have been those men and women who were proud of their double cultural heritage.

[xviii] Mrs. Olga fudge, an Adelaide woman born at Point McLeay Mission in South Australia, who in spite of her own full white citizenship is still proud of her part-aboriginal origin, has some pertinent remarks to make on this subject:

“The well-meaning efforts of Governments and missions over the years have resulted in the aborigines becoming quite dependent on them,” Mrs. Fudge said.

“They no longer have any faith in their own capabilities or judgement. When faced with a decision, they automatically look for some white official, missionary, or friend to make it for them.”

“This is no generalisation,” Mrs. Fudge said. “I am talking from experience of actual cases. My own relatives and friends come to me for advice on quite simple things. But they won’t make a move until they’ve first consulted some white official.”

After claiming that the crying need for aborigines was for education not only in the standard “3 r’s”, but in the assumption of responsibility, through which would come new standards of self-respect, Mrs. Fudge continued:

“When an outstanding aboriginal is brought to town he is paraded like some star exhibit in a circus…

“He is interviewed by the Press, with his white sponsors standing by to do all the talking. He speaks at meetings, but very briefly. His sponsors talk at length.”

“No one encourages these people to speak up for themselves, to think for themselves, or to act for themselves. Everything is arranged for them. They are treated like children and, as a long-term result, act like children for the most part.”

“The sad case of Albert Namatjira is a typical outcome of years of pampering. No one took the trouble to educate him in his new responsibilities, to bridge the gap between being a State ward and a full citizen.”

In the same interview Mrs. Fudge declared that aborigines visiting Adelaide found it virtually impossible to obtain normal accommodation. Hotels did not want them because for the most part they lacked social education. Those who had relatives invaded them and slept on floors and couches. It was nothing for some city relatives to get ten overnight visitors.

Her final conclusion was, “Education in the acceptance of responsibility, in self-respect, and healthy independence would transform this situation in a very few years.” (The News, Adelaide, 8th October, 1958).

[xix] In a paper read at the A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress in Melbourne in 1935, Mr. I. L. G. Sutherland, of Victoria University College, Wellington, N.Z., made some interesting statements relating to the change that came over the Maoris around the turn of the century:

“In 1856 Dr. I. L. Featherston, who was much concerned in New Zealand affairs of that period, declared—

‘The Maoris are dying out, and nothing can save them. Our plain duty, as good compassionate colonists, is to smooth down their dying pillow. Then history will have nothing to reproach us with.’

“In 1881 Dr. A. K. Newman made the same prediction, but did not apparently fear any reproach, rather the contrary.

‘Taking all things into consideration,’ he wrote, ‘the disappearance of the race is scarcely a subject for much regret. They are dying out in a quick easy way and are being supplanted by a superior race.’

“In 1907 Archdeacon Walsh was more sympathetic, but no less sure of the end. Concluding a very careful survey of the causes of the decline of the race, he wrote—

‘The Maori has lost heart and abandoned hope. The race is sick unto death, and is already potentially dead.’

“But the Maori people, when we had done and said our worst, and were, admittedly, doing better, survived, though their number probably fell as low as 40,000.”

“If now we turn to the present day we find an astonishing change. The Maori population is now 73,000. Probably no more than half of this number is of pure Maori blood; but the Maori community is increasing rapidly, its rate of increase being in fact more rapid than that of the white population of New Zealand. The mingling of the two races is likely to proceed, but very gradually. The Maoris will not be rapidly absorbed or assimilated as is often stated. Much evidence could be brought to show that the Maori people is likely to be an integral and distinct if minor factor in the life of New Zealand for many generations to come. Further, there has been in recent years a considerable regeneration and renewal of many features of Maori life. There is observable among the Maori people today a marked growth of racial consciousness, of racial pride, and of interest in themselves as Maoris. They are vigorous, comparatively healthy, becoming more and more aware of themselves, and even a little confident again…”

“In general the change has come from within. The Maori has saved himself, and one knows of no other instance of a native people, so largely dispossessed and destroyed, setting to work to regenerate itself and adjust itself to new demands. There has, of course, been European assistance, especially in the way of education and health services; but the actual renewal of Maori life proves on analysis to have been the result of Maori leadership. Maori leadership in a new form to meet new conditions re-emerged in the nineties of last century.”

(Maori and European, from the official Report of the 1935 A.N.Z.A.A.S. Meeting, p. 190).

[xx] Whether or not the aboriginals will eventually — after many generations perhaps — become both physically and culturally absorbed by the white Australian population is at present, I feel, a question of purely academic interest. It is a question which can be decided only by the descendants of the present dark and white citizens of this country. I am inclined to believe that some elements of aboriginal identity will survive even after many generations; but I admit that a number of other authorities disagree with me on this point. The Minister for Territories (The Hon. P. Hasluck), for instance, has stated his views on this issue in these terms (in the paper, already quoted, which he read at the A.N.Z.A.A.S. Congress in 1958):

“A policy of assimilation means that, if it is successful, the person of aboriginal origin will be the same as any other resident of Australia in the eyes of the law, will go to the same schools, do the same jobs at the same wages, live in the same sort of houses, lead the same sort of life and join in the same recreations and observances as anyone else in the Australian community. Because of our basic Australian ideas he will do this by his own will as the life he would naturally lead.”

“In the long run I think myself that he will also be biologically assimilated and become part of the general infusion that makes up the Australian of the future…”

“There is… a need for the transition to be slow and need to take care that they do not lose one source of vitality before they are sure of another, but this is not necessarily the same as saying that the transition can never be completed.”

“My own observation, recorded tentatively, is that the loss of any valid and distinctive aboriginal culture is certain in the course of time. The ancient pride can remain — and in fact may grow…”

“I look to the future when a person whose great grandfather was an Australian aboriginal will be as proud of the fact as a Scot is rightly proud of his barbaric ancestry.”

“My final word is that while we accept assimilation as the goal, we do not think of assimilation as suppression, nor do we ignore the reality that the transition should be slow — the slower it can be the better — and should be made so as to leave behind it no sense of shame in ancestry. These are great dreams. How can we realize them?”