|
The Aborigines Department in Adelaide, in removing Aboriginal children from their families during the 1940s and 1950s, may not have acted within the law. This is the way evidence is pointing as a the result of my extensive research into the correspondence of the Aborigines Department in Adelaide under William Richard Penhall, the last Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia and head of the department from 1939 to 1953.
His correspondence reveals Penhall colluded with authorities at Umeewarra, Koonibba and Gerard missions, and with the Colebrook Home, to systematically deny Aboriginal parents the right to raise their own children.
In 1951, Penhall wrote: “The Aborigines Protection Board has no power or authority to remove children from their mothers, and in fact have never done so. Whenever children of aboriginal descent in South Australia are neglected or ill-treated, action is always taken by the Children’s Welfare Department in the same way as that department deals with neglected white children. A number of children are placed in special institutions by the Board for training, but this is only done with the consent of the parents.”
The contradiction between what Penhall did and what he said is startling.
Under the Aborigines Act 1939, the Aborigines Protection Board (APB), of which Penhall was secretary, was the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children under 21. Specific provisions of the Act related to the custody of Aboriginal children, under which the board could arrange for the direct transfer of control of a child from its guardianship to the Children’s Welfare and Public Relief Board (CWPRB). Alternatively, the APB could refer a case to the CWPRB, to use its general procedure – as used for the white population – to commit a child to an institution against the wishes of its parents.
In many cases where Aboriginal parents were refused the custody of their children, neither of these procedures was used.
Penhall’s favourite tactic was to bluff Aboriginal parents into relinquishing their custody. When Mrs Thomas, of Port Germein, requested that her daughter be released from the Umeewarra Mission Children’s Home, Penhall wrote: “You have entered into an agreement with Mrs Wyld to allow Denise to remain in the Home at Port Augusta until she is 16 years of age, and the agreement must be carried out.”
Penhall was aware that the “agreement” she had entered into had no legal standing, which he deliberately refused to communicate to Mrs Thomas and to other Aboriginal people who found themselves in similar positions. To Mrs Wyld, the wife of the missionary at Umeewarra, he confided: “I doubt very much whether the agreement has any legal value. However, I will advise Mrs Thomas that, as she has entered into an agreement to allow Denise to remain until she is 16 years of age, I cannot agree to her being released.”
In such ways, Penhall used his “actual”, as opposed to his “legal” authority, to remove or keep Aboriginal children from their parents. Penhall was prepared to ignore the letter of the law in dealing with Aboriginal people.
In November 1939, he confided to Chinnery, the Director of Native Affairs in Darwin: “At Point Pearce, the Superintendent inflicts punishment on working natives guilty of minor offences, by fining them small sums. This practice has no regulation to support it.”
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a number of Aboriginal parents attempted to remove their children from missions. Most were unsuccessful. The Wylds’ successor at the Port Augusta Umeewarra Mission, Miss Simmons, was especially active in having Aboriginal children, in particular young Aboriginal girls, confined to her children’s home. In October 1947, Welfare Officer McKenzie reported: “Miss Simmons is also hostile about children being taken out of the home. She says that they put in a lot of hard work and see no results.”
Penhall reassured Simmons: “I cannot agree to the removal of any of the children from the Home without the consent of the Board. After all you[r] work and trouble with little children, it is not fair to you or to them that parents incapable of caring for them in infancy should have them later on and discount all the good work done. I suggest therefore that all applications for the release of children from the Home be made to you by parents in writing and referred to me with any comments you desire to make.”
Simmons’ letters are full of appeals for her and Miss Cantle, her long-term companion and co-missionary, to be given custody of various children. In December 1947, she wrote: “How do we stand in regard to Mrs Belinda Duncan’s children? They are such a bright, intelligent little pair, & coming along so nicely. We would gladly keep them altogether. Is that your intention? Belinda Duncan is at present either at Iron Knob or Whyalla. It was reported to me that she went to Whyalla with a certain white man. She does not appear to be a suitable person to have the care of children . . About Fran Wilkinson’s children, would it be possible to take them from her? We do not want them in our Home, unless necessary. I think they would be better right away.”
On January 2, 1948, Penhall instructed the Wilkinson boys’ guardian, Mrs Dickson, to place the boys in the Children’s Home immediately, she having “resisted all [such] previous instructions”. She likewise ignored this latest directive and it was left to McKenzie, using bluff and threat to effect a result: “Interviewed Mrs Dickson on arrival re placing Mitchell & Sydney Wilkinson in the Home. She was not in favour of this but, when told that the State Children’s Dept would take them if we did not, she agreed.”
In April 1949, the case of Andrea Grant came before Penhall. Southwell, the missioner-in-charge of Gerard Mission, submitted a report to him in which he alleged that she was having an adulterous relationship. Southwell suggested: “The difficulty is to know what punishment to give her [for adultery]. She has, up to date, desired to keep her child Susan. If it would be a punishment to her, I would say put Susan in an Institution for she is very dirty and neglected.”
That same day, Penhall agreed to remove Grant’s daughter, though he was careful enough to change the reasoning behind the move, from the punishment of Grant to the “protection” of her daughter: “I have come to the conclusion that, for the welfare of the child, Susan, she should be taken into the Home at Gerard. I shall be obliged if you will endeavour to arrange this, and report if the mother is unwilling.
… I should like to know also whether there are any other children in Mrs Grant’s custody.”
In the next month, Penhall asked for advice from the Crown Solicitor as to whether he could use parts of the Act, other than that allowing a transfer of control from his Board to the CWPRB’s, to remove Aboriginal children from their parents.
Hannan, the Crown Solicitor, suggested that certain sections of the Act could be used in tandem to confine any Aboriginal person, child or otherwise, to a reserve or Aboriginal institution. But, he added: “I do not think the Board has any powers in the matter”.
The Aborigines Department had effectively been put on notice that much of what they had been doing in relation to the removal of Aboriginal children was of questionable legality, as the quote at the beginning of this article suggests: “The Aborigines Protection Board has no power or authority to remove children from their mothers, and in fact have never done so”. But, before the opinion of the Crown Solicitor reached him, Penhall advised Southwell to remove Susan Grant from her mother.
Not giving Aboriginal people a frank and honest account of their legal rights was a key part of Penhall’s strategy, repeated often. It can be argued that his failure to act in the interests of the legal rights of Aboriginal people constitutes a violation of his Board’s role. Under section 7(g) of the Act, the Board had a duty “to exercise a general supervision and care over all matters affecting the welfare of the aborigines, and to protect them against injustice, imposition and fraud”. It appears that Penhall did not consider that this part of the Act applied to the board itself.
It is clear that the Koonibba Mission and the UAM (United Aborigines Mission) benefited financially from their illegal holding of Aboriginal children. As well as receiving a departmental subsidy and child endowment for each child in their homes, the UAM insisted on taking 80 per cent of their wages when they were sent out to work.
Why did Penhall acquiesce in this? As an occasional lay Methodist preacher, Penhall believed that Christian missionary involvement benefited Aboriginal children: “The children rescued from camp life and placed in institutions respond remarkably well to kindness, good food, and general supervision by Christian Missionaries, and it seems to me that this method of dealing with the aboriginal race offers the best prospect of success. So long as the children continue to grow up in the old environment, there cannot be any radical change in the character of the people.”
The extent to which Aboriginal “camp life” was an unsuitable place for children is also the extent to which Penhall, and his board, failed to discharge their duties.
In all of the annual reports he submitted during his 15 years as the head of the Aborigines Department, Penhall never admitted to the coerced, let alone the forced, removal of Aboriginal children – which effectively quarantined the SA public from this aspect of the public service.
|
