“…Bennett argued as far back as 1930 that the removal of Aboriginal women and children from their communities was ‘akin to slavery’ (cited in Holland, ). Reynolds (, p. 169) describes how this ‘slavery’ benefited Europeans: The greatest advantage of young Aboriginal servants was that they came cheap and were never paid beyond the provision of food and clothing.…”
Section: Giving An Accountmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Bennett argued as far back as 1930 that the removal of Aboriginal women and children from their communities was 'akin to slavery' (cited in Holland, 1995). Reynolds (1990, p. 169) describes how this 'slavery' benefited Europeans:…”
When the Western Australian government announced in 2010 that Indigenous people would be compensated for unpaid wages, a Yindjibarndi woman named Bigali Hanlon submitted an application to access her government files so that she could lodge a claim. At the age of four, Bigali was taken from her home in Mulga Downs, Western Australia to live in a church‐run hostel for ‘fair‐skinned’ Indigenous children until she was sent into indentured domestic service as a teenager. Three large files document her history. These files, combined with in‐depth interviews, and a film about Bigali and other Indigenous Australian people, Walking Tracks Back Home, form the basis of this article. In reflecting on the issues raised by Bigali's story, we draw on feminist writing on the costs associated with being called to give an account of oneself, considering how listening might form the basis of an ethics of recognition in feminist praxis.
“…Bennett argued as far back as 1930 that the removal of Aboriginal women and children from their communities was ‘akin to slavery’ (cited in Holland, ). Reynolds (, p. 169) describes how this ‘slavery’ benefited Europeans: The greatest advantage of young Aboriginal servants was that they came cheap and were never paid beyond the provision of food and clothing.…”
Section: Giving An Accountmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Bennett argued as far back as 1930 that the removal of Aboriginal women and children from their communities was 'akin to slavery' (cited in Holland, 1995). Reynolds (1990, p. 169) describes how this 'slavery' benefited Europeans:…”
When the Western Australian government announced in 2010 that Indigenous people would be compensated for unpaid wages, a Yindjibarndi woman named Bigali Hanlon submitted an application to access her government files so that she could lodge a claim. At the age of four, Bigali was taken from her home in Mulga Downs, Western Australia to live in a church‐run hostel for ‘fair‐skinned’ Indigenous children until she was sent into indentured domestic service as a teenager. Three large files document her history. These files, combined with in‐depth interviews, and a film about Bigali and other Indigenous Australian people, Walking Tracks Back Home, form the basis of this article. In reflecting on the issues raised by Bigali's story, we draw on feminist writing on the costs associated with being called to give an account of oneself, considering how listening might form the basis of an ethics of recognition in feminist praxis.
“…In African American newspapers, “White Australia” referred to labor management as well as to immigration policy, and when writers looked to Australia, they saw conditions for non‐white workers that looked strikingly similar to those in the Jim Crow South. Historians (Evans & Scott, ; Gray, , ; Holland, ; Kidd, ; McGrath, ; Paisley, ; Walden, ) have called attention to debates at the time and since as to whether the exploitation of Indigenous Australians was slavery or not, but certainly Aboriginal people often received no wages. Black newspapers pulled no punches.…”
Section: Australian Labor In the African American Pressmentioning
African American newspapers frequently ran reports and stories about Indigenous Australians and Australia's racial governance between 1919 and 1948, except for the years during World War II when thousands of African American servicemen were stationed in Australia. The black American press was extremely critical of “White Australia.” African American newspaper writers used the phrase “White Australia” to refer both to the famed or notorious Australian immigration laws and to prevailing race relations in labor management. When they reported on Indigenous Australians, they took careful note of conditions that were akin to American slavery and its aftermath and remarked upon the similar regimes of racial governance. As far as the black American press was concerned, Indigenous Australians were one of the many nodes that comprised a worldwide alliance of colonized people; black internationalism included them, too. From 1942 to 1944, however, the press placed that alliance on hold. Newspapers instead focused on the surprisingly benign treatment they said black American troops received from white Australians. As it became clear that the Allies were likely to triumph, black American newspapers returned to criticism of “White Australia” and to an abstract bond with Aboriginal Australians, as they pressed forward with claims to universal human rights and with agitation to end all colonization as part of the worldwide return to peace.
“…Seeking to counter notions of degeneracy, animality or incapacity, she described a fine race whose very sensitivity and inherent morality made it infinitely susceptible to the worst that British 'civilizing' had to offer. 37 That she read in Fernando an expression of the ultimate tragedy of the Aboriginal situation, something he was himself prepared to emphasise if it would produce international action, should not surprise us. From my reading, however, we should emphasise also Fernando's agency in mobilising this tragic narrative and his own life story as a form of global political agency.…”
This article reflects on the limits of the archives in the recovery of indigenous lives. An Australian Aboriginal activist and traveller in interwar Britain and Europe, Anthony Martin Fernando was an outspoken protestor of Aboriginal conditions while in Australia but mostly from overseas. He demonstrated outside Australia House in the 1920s, planned to approach the League of Nations, and was an advocate of a form of direct international mandate over land reserved for Aboriginal occupation in Australia. Much is still unknown about his life, but new information shows that he was also, among other things, a labourer in Trieste, Vienna, and Rome, a manservant in London, a civilian internee in Austria during the First World War, an interviewee of the Swiss progressive press in the interwar years, and a speaker at Hyde Park Corner. Information about his life story has been gained through wide‐ranging archival research, and, perhaps most remarkably, recent contact with two families that employed him in England. More than a life shaped by tragedy, yet it was the tragic nature of colonisation and its genocidal effects that drove his life's work.
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