The interwar and post-World War 2 periods were notable for the development of a more scientific source of expert policy advice in Aboriginal affairs, with the emergence of a new academic field of anthropology in Australia at this time. The origins of the academic study of anthropology have received extensive scholarly attention within the discipline itself (eg Cowlishaw 1990, 2010; Peterson 1990; Mulvaney 1993; Altman and Rowse 2005). From the very beginning, the relationship between evidence derived from anthropological research and policy decision making in Aboriginal affairs was far from straightforward (Cowlishaw 1990; Finlayson 2001) – and this relationship continues to be intensely examined and questioned today (Hinkson 2010; Peterson 2010; Austin-Broos 2011). Anthropologists were at times included in the inner circle of policy makers, directly advising and contributing to policy decision making (such as Professor AP Elkin and McEwan’s “New Deal” policy in 1939, or Professor WEH Stanner and his role in the Council for Aboriginal Affairs in the late 1960s and early 1970s); at other times anthropologists have been influential in shaping public debate, advocating alongside activists and interests; and over time, anthropologists have helped to change societal attitudes and values more indirectly. All three of these aspects are in evidence in this period.
Anthropological expertise was relatively slow to develop in Australia. Governments in the Protection era had commissioned reports from a range of individuals with some particular knowledge of Aboriginal people in remote areas, as we saw in the previous chapter. Many of these experts possessed some ethnographic skills, often alongside other scientific training (including medical practitioner WF Roth and biologist Baldwin Spencer). There was no formal academic study of
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anthropology in Australian universities at this time, however, unlike in England and the United States, and the field “remained the preserve of a few amateurs, particularly public servants, clergymen and pastoralists” (Mulvaney 1993, 114).
In Australia the discipline only became “professional” in the 1920s (Peterson 1990), with the appointment of the first Professor of Anthropology, AR Radcliffe-Brown, at the University of Sydney in 1925. Funded in the initial stages through the Depression by the Rockefeller Foundation, and later by the Carnegie Corporation and the Nuffield Foundation, the discipline was slow to develop research independence, and was tightly controlled through to the 1960s by a small number of individuals, particularly Professor AP Elkin, who succeeded Radcliffe-Brown in 1933 and continued his distinctive approach to the subject matter (Mulvaney 1993; Wise 1985). Radcliffe-Brown came to Sydney from England via Cape Town, and was known for his functionalist, applied approach to anthropology. Much of the research work begun under his supervision was intended to improve knowledge of disappearing cultures in order to inform and provide training for administrators and policy makers (Peterson 1990; Mulvaney 1993). The focus of this research was on Papua New Guinea, rather than on Aboriginal people in Australia, as the latter were considered to be already too compromised culturally to be managed as “independent functioning societies” (Peterson 1990, 12; Mulvaney 1993, 111). As Silverstein notes, Radcliffe-Brown’s conception of the Aboriginal “horde” or “tribe” as the “social organism” which should be the target of policy intervention was critically important in shaping the policy around reserves, where tribes were to be left to govern themselves under distant supervision, rather than active intervention by the state (Silverstein 2011, 21).
Elkin was especially dominant in the early crafting of the new policy approach of assimilation from the 1930s onwards, beginning with advising on the formulation of the early Commonwealth government articulation of assimilation, the “New Deal” for the Northern Territory in 1939 (Stanner and Barwick 1979, 37). He maintained a remarkable authority over the policy area for several decades, even indirectly, having educated many of the policy makers at the University of Sydney (Wise 1985). McGregor describes Elkin’s approach to policy advocacy thus: “A prim and proper professor, Elkin preferred to work with, rather than against, the established authorities, imagining that reform could be effected through reasoned argument and positive proposals” (McGregor 2005, 183). Elkin was frequently disappointed, however, at the policy directions chosen by the government, particularly following the appointment of Paul Hasluck as Minister for Territories in 1951 (Wise 1985). Elkin was not welcomed into the inner circle of the new minister, and he was forced to exert influence by less overt means, through academic and general publications, speeches and private correspondence (Haebich 2008; Wise 1985).
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Elkin developed an “anthropologically informed model of assimilation” (McGregor 2005, 170), which contrasted with the biological approach to assimilation and its assumptions of “breeding the colour out” over time, an approach which was enthusiastically followed by administrators such as AO Neville in Western Australia and Cecil Cook in the Northern Territory. Drawing on anthropological studies of Aboriginal communities in remote parts of the continent, Elkin presented a more optimistic view of the future of Indigenous people than one of “absorption”, and gradual disappearance (Haebich 2008). He was convinced that social change was inevitable for Aboriginal people, as European settlers encroached on the few remaining areas of the continent where Aboriginal people lived undisturbed. This did not mean that Aboriginal people would vanish: as Elkin explained it, assimilation “had no reference to miscegenation or absorption and loss of racial identity. It meant that Aborigines should be similar to other members of the Australian community, with regard to all the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship” (Elkin 1940, cited in McGregor 2011, 16).
Elkin advocated a gradual assimilation, at a pace chosen by the Aboriginal people, not by government, allowing for “cultural blending” and “bridge building” as Aboriginal people retained significant aspects of their culture and identity while moving towards modernity and civilisation as enjoyed by the white population. A key element for Elkin was the need to preserve Aboriginal autonomy with respect to the pace at which they managed the necessary transition, and adjusted to the “rapidly changing conditions” (Rowley 1970, 308). Elkin’s version of assimilation was thus more of a synthesis of two cultures than a complete replacement of one by the other (McGregor 2005). McGregor observes that while Elkin is often criticised as the author of the later deplored assimilation policy, his insistence on the slow pace and blending rather than annihilation of Aboriginal culture meant that later critics of assimilation in the 1960s were in fact adopting arguments he had foreshadowed at the outset (McGregor 2005).