The question of Aboriginal reserves was a contentious issue among anthropologists in the late 1930s, and this is reflected in the contradictory advice offered to policy makers. The debate revolved around conflicting conceptualisations of purpose and access, and reflected very different theories about the future of Aboriginal people as a distinct race, and the likely prospect of successful assimilation.
The notion of creating large “inviolable” reserves had originally been suggested for the Northern Territory by Baldwin Spencer, following earlier proposals made by Meston and Roth in Queensland and Western Australia. The idea was also supported by anthropologists such as Norman Tindale and JB Cleland on the basis that this would allow “primitive” remnant tribes to live “unmolested”, with
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the expectation that the race would eventually disappear, and that nothing more could be done for them (Stanner 2010a, 198-9; McGregor 2011, 9-10). Other views were more optimistic about the viability of Aboriginal culture but just as pessimistic about the potential for assimilation. Anthropologists such as Donald Thomson and Olive Pink, for example, were convinced that Aboriginal culture could survive, and be maintained, with appropriate safeguards, within designated reserves where the traditional lifestyles, social and economic practices could flourish without undue interference from missions (Holland 2005; Thomson 2003).
Thomson was an active advocate for policy change around reserves, though little regarded by the government he sought to advise at the time (Peterson 2003). He urged administrators and missionaries to accept, rather than seek to stifle, nomadic behaviour, and to stop removing children from their families and preventing them from learning their own culture (Thomson 2003, 118), observing that there was no real prospect of social equality for those Aboriginal people who gave up their culture to become “black white men” (Thomson 2003, 186). Thomson’s expeditions to Arnhem Land in 1935-37 convinced him that Aboriginal culture was already threatened and corrupted by contact with outsiders, such as pastoralists, doggers, railway construction labourers, and especially fishing fleets, and he noted grimly that “at every point where [the Australian Aboriginal] has come into prolonged contact with a European or Asiatic population, his culture has commenced to decay, and degradation and racial extinction have followed” (Thomson 2003, 114). Thomson fervently recommended that governments do more to protect their culture and social structure “in toto”, by implementing “absolute segregation”, with missions serving as buffer zones on the boundaries, and regular patrols to prevent unwelcome access and exploitation (Thomson 2003, 118-119; see also Rowley 1970, 314). This view allowed little agency for the Aboriginal people themselves, however, and restricting access to the reserves from outsiders did not take into consideration the choices made by Aboriginal people to seek contact with others outside their communities and traditions, with the associated material and social benefits as well as risks (Rowley 1970, 317). Thomson’s recommendations were not adopted by the government, and he described his despair in his own record of the period, saying “I felt I had failed utterly” (Thomson 2003, 193).
Other experts noted the apparently irreversible “drift” of Aboriginal people off reserves into white settled areas, suggesting that Aboriginal culture and traditional lifestyles were already compromised as Aboriginal people chose to move closer to white settlements, in search of steady food supplies and stimulants such as tobacco or tea (Stanner and Barwick 1979, 44). Elkin similarly observed the inevitable attraction of a secure supply of water and food for those Aboriginal people living in the harshest arid regions of Central Australia, and remarked “the lure of the white man is great and effective. Reserves without institutions to keep the aborigines on them will not avail much” (Elkin
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1933, 33). Elkin believed reserves should serve as places where the transition to assimilation could be encouraged safely, and under government and mission supervision: “The reserves must be part of a positive policy of giving the natives new interests and training in stock-work, agriculture and various crafts”, with “wages paid in money or kind to natives employed, the provisions of subsistence rations for the aged and medicine for the sick, and in some cases, punishment of white men for consorting with native women” (Elkin 1933, 33). Assimilation may have been inevitable but it was not to be rushed.
The crux of the issue, then, was the fact that reserves were no longer the “hermetically sealed” form of protection that they were intended to be, and the purpose of the reserves policy was thus under threat. As Stanner wrote in 1938 in his recommendations to the government on behalf of his colleagues in London, “The provision of inviolable reserves is a cardinal point in all Australian native policies. In no case known to anthropologists, however, are the reserves inviolable or unviolated…[thus] the reserves may soon cease to be of any practical use” (cited in Stanner and Barwick 1979, 58). The Commonwealth government demonstrated an ambivalence about reserves as the era of protection came to an end, and policy was forced to catch up with shifting frames. The Commonwealth government was continuing to gazette Aboriginal reserves during this period, but was not prepared to deploy the resources necessary to prevent settler incursions on the reserved land (Rowley 1970, 309-311). There were pragmatic as well as ideological limits on what governments could do to control access to reserves. As Rowley remarks, “I think it is fair to say that generally governments have been more keen to keep the Aboriginal in the distant reserve than to keep the prospector, dogger, or other entrepreneur out” (Rowley 1970, 250).
Stanner observed with hindsight the paradox at the heart of the reserves policy during this period in his Boyer lectures, noting that “the effort to preserve the Aborigines within inviolable reserves was the last ditch of an older policy, and we were then beyond the last ditch. I do not recall that we asked ourselves at all clearly: what comes after a policy which by definition is one of last resort?” (Stanner 2010a, 191, emphasis in original). It was clear that the Aboriginal population could no longer be protected and isolated in remote sanctuaries, in an effort to “soothe the dying pillow”, but Stanner points out that the alternative of real social equality and integration was yet to be clearly articulated, or imagined. Famously describing the wilful and neglectful ignorance of Aboriginal Australia across government, academia and the public as the “great Australian silence”, he observed that policies for Aboriginal people at this time were “optimistic” and “positive” but they were made in ignorance and misunderstanding, and thus had little actual impact (Stanner 2010a).
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The policy challenge was becoming more evident to policy makers, nevertheless, as contrary to predictions, the population was not diminishing or dying out, but was in fact increasing (Rowley 1970, 311). Significantly, while the growth included a large portion of Aboriginal people of mixed descent, these people chose to stay in Aboriginal communities. Contributions to the war effort in World War 2 had also revealed to doubting policy makers that Aboriginal people had the capacity to work on an equal basis with non-Aboriginal soldiers, especially when treated on an egalitarian basis and given the same rations, sanitation, housing, medical care, law enforcement and responsibilities (Rowley 1970). For Rowley, the World War 2 experience was responsible for “accelerating the processes of social change” (Rowley 1970, 339). The old objectives of the reserves policy were no longer relevant, as the rationale for protection and segregation was being undermined, and societal values were changing. Governments were nevertheless slow to abandon them, and hesitant to consider alternatives.
The maintenance of large reserves in the Northern Territory allowed for the retention of an enormous social, political and economic potential for the future, though the government was unwilling to exploit it. Rowley (1970) analysed the government’s objectives in retaining large reserves in the Northern Territory in this period, and identified a number of conflicting purposes. Firstly, he notes that while American examples of large reserves were well understood by policy makers in Australia, they chose not to transfer the limited self-government within the tribal governance systems of the American Indians: indeed, they imposed such strict controls and lack of autonomy on the Aboriginal people living on the reserves that the policy achieved the opposite (Rowley 1970, 248). Secondly, Rowley notes that the large reserves had the capacity to “offer basic security to those whose ‘country’ it was” and yet the government gave no recognition of Aboriginal claims to ownership of the land, and retained full control of the permissive lease conditions of what was still defined as Crown land (Rowley 1970, 250). Moreover, the land which was granted in large reserves was believed to have little economic value, and when economic potential was occasionally identified, those sections of land were excised for the use of miners or pastoralists. While missions and government stations had long used Aboriginal labour to supplement government rations by cultivating food and herding stock, demonstrating clear economic value, the benefits were not understood as properly belonging to the Aboriginal people on whose land the mission or settlement was established, but rather were returned to the mission or the government, as the “legitimate” title holders of the land.
The frames applied to Aboriginal reserves were thus newly contested in this immediately before and after World War 2, as anthropologists responded to the government’s adoption of assimilation as official policy towards Aboriginal people. The reserves were seen as either a sanctuary where
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assimilation and even contact with white society could be avoided, or as a site for a controlled transition to social and economic integration. Access was contentious, as while the porous nature of reserve boundaries was acknowledged, there was a growing awareness of the choices being made by Aboriginal people to seek contact with white settlers on their own terms. The next section will examine the government’s response to this debate during the tenure of Paul Hasluck, who as Minister for Territories was the chief architect and champion of assimilation policy.