Mary turns to Jessica. ‘Like Polly.’ She looks at the barrister. ‘Polly, she the colour of yellawood honey.’
Jessica frowns, looking at Richard Runche. ‘I don’t understand. What’s this genetics got to do with taking Mary’s kids?’
‘Well the idea is to take part-Aboriginal children from their mothers — Mary’s yellowwood-honey child is a perfect example. She’ll be able to assimilate and her children will be even lighter skinned.’ He pauses before continuing. ‘By the way, eight out of every ten children removed are female. They’re taken from their families and made wards of the State.’
‘That explains what they done!’ Mary cries suddenly.
‘They neve
r took no boys from the camp. Just me four kids.’ Mary looks at him and explains. ‘All me kids, they girls.’
‘Well, there you have it, my dear. The usual procedure is to place the girls into institutions if foster homes cannot be found. The idea is that they will be taught and reared as if they were white children. At age fourteen, they are required to leave the institution and are placed as servants in white homes, where, alas, it is not unusual for them to become pregnant.’
Mary gives a bitter little smile, no more than a twist to her full mouth. ‘To a whitefella. The boss or his son, most likely, it happens all the time — but they don’t want their son to marry her, no way, mate. Don’t marry the nigger, no bloody chance o’ that happenin’!’
‘Well now, whether that’s the official idea, I can’t say,’ he ventures, a little disturbed by Mary’s outburst. ‘But it is certainly the government’s intention that they mix in the white community with, I dare say, every chance that they will find a white male in or out of wedlock. Hence, I suspect, the preponderance of females removed from their families.’
‘And soon there’s no black women left in the tribe!’ Mary exclaims. She turns to Jessica. ‘The gubberment wants to make me kids white and miserable.’ Tears begin to run down her dark cheeks and she sniffs, swallowing hard. She tries to wipe her tears away using the ball of her thumb, smudging them all over her pretty face.
Jessica brings her arms about her. ‘Mary, we’re gunna get your kids back.’ She looks up fiercely at him.
‘Mr Runche is gunna get them back, ain’t ya, Mr Runche?’
He clears his throat. ‘Well, my dears, it could be awkward, most awkward. What is being attempted by the government amounts to killing the Aborigines off, and the powers that be don’t take kindly to being reminded of this.’
‘What, all the blacks?’ Jessica now asks. She’s still holding her arms about Mary, who is sobbing and again attempting to brush away her tears, comforted by her friend’s attention and love.
‘Well, you could be excused for thinking that they’re trying to eliminate a race of people,’ Richard Runche says. ‘The idea is to push all the children born of mixed race — the half-castes, the quadroons and octoroons off the reserves, marginalise them as well as remove their children from their families so they cannot grow up to be Aborigines. The half-castes will be kicked out and the full-bloods will then be pushed onto marginal land, the general consensus being that they are dying out anyway. A nudge is as good as a push, if you know what I mean?’
He leans back and spreads his hands wide. ‘In this way the existing native people’s reserves can be resumed for soldier settlements. So you see, my dears, with the mixed-blood adults pushed to the edges of the towns to live in beaten tin, plank and sacking humpies, generally under the most extreme living conditions, and with few or no opportunities for employment, they become totally dependent on government rations.’
Mary nods her head in agreement. ‘That’s us fair dinkum, we can’t get no jobs and it’s rations what keeps us alive.’
Richard Runche KC brings up his hands in a gesture of futility. ‘When a people lose their self-esteem, their pride, when they come to depend on government handouts, they are apt to become drunks and layabouts.’ He gives a little self-deprecating laugh. ‘Not that drunkenness is a peculiar condition of the Aboriginal people. But, as happened with my own health, soon enough these people become prone to tuberculosis and bronchial infections or, for that matter, any epidemic which may be about. Moreover, as soon as they have children the government pounces, announcing that the children are neglected or in danger of moral corruption, etcetera, and so they remove them.’
‘That what the policeman said. He said I weren’t able to take care of me kids ‘cause I was Aboriginal,’ Mary says.
‘The idea that the Aboriginal people are irresponsible and can’t take care of their children is, of course, now a self-fulfilling prophecy. The black people are reduced to extreme poverty and the cycle of turning black into white has begun. The children are brought up to white man’s ways. Their languages and traditions are not passed on and eventually die out.’
Sensing that his listeners may not fully understand the line of his argument, he pauses to give an example. ‘We white people are who we are as a result of thousands of years of language and tradition, which make us behave in unique and intimate ways between ourselves. When we destroy a language we effectively undermine the culture it belongs to. Language is the very soul of a culture. A people’s collective imagination, their myths and stories, their place on earth, their continuity, that thing which gives them a soul and makes them different and wonderful, comes from their language. Make no mistake, my dears, what this government is doing to the Aboriginal people is a policy which clearly amounts to an attempt at wiping them out. It is a deliberate and planned attempt to destroy a race.’
Mary looks up. ‘Me grandma told me they tried it before, I mean gettin’ rid o’ us. She said it didn’t work too good, but still lots of blackfellas died. In her time the white folk give the blacks poison in their flour and also they poison the drinkin’ water and shot blacks down like we was dingoes. She tol’ me the whitefella, they called it “goin’ duck shootin’’’. That’s what she said, “duck shootin’’’. There was men who put notches on their guns, “duck notches” she says they called them—blackfella don’t duck so they becomes a notch on a gun!’ Jessica looks at the barrister, whose face is pale and drawn, and she can see that he too is upset. ‘Don’t Mary’s people have any rights?’ she asks sadly.
‘When it comes to removing children from their mothers, very few, my dear. Mind you, there was a time when black people could resort to the courts for justice.
But in 1915 the Aborigines’ Protection Board complained to the parliament that the courts were obstructing the work of the Board.’ He brings his hand to his brow. ‘Let me see if I can remember the honourable gentleman’s words. I recall memorising them at the time because they were a measure of the arrogance and disregard for the love and care of a parent for a child that can only be described as breathtakingly callous.’ He looks up, remembering. ‘Oh yes, what he said went somewhat like this: “ ... it is very difficult to prove neglect; if the Aboriginal child happens to be decently clad or apparently looked after, it is very difficult to show that the half-caste or Aboriginal child is actually in a neglected condition, and therefore it is impossible to succeed in the court.” Those were the words of the minister at the time — I’m sure I have it almost exactly,’ he says, pleased with himself.
Mary claps her hands excitedly. ‘Me kids are the same as what you just said — they’s dressed good and is healthy and I loves them. Like that bloke, that minister, say, them on the Abo Board, they can’t prove nothin’. The court gunna give me back me kids!’
Jessica looks across at Richard Runche hopefully, but the barrister shakes his head sadly. ‘Perfidy, my dear—there is no greater example than a government determined to have its own way. In the same year — that is, 1915 — the government passed the Aborigines’ Protection Amendment Act which gave the Board total power to separate children from their families without having to establish in court that they may be neglected.’ He lifts his finger to emphasise his point. ‘Now anyone — the manager of an Aboriginal station, any employee of the Board, or a policeman of. ordinary rank — need only write m the committal notice, as the reason to take control of a child, the simple words, “For being Aboriginal”. The parent has no further say in the matter, and the Board henceforth has absolute power and discretion over the child or children. In effect, they become the prisoners or even the slaves of the State, of the government.’
‘Does that mean Mary can’t do nothing about her kids?’ Jessica cries in alarm.
‘No, not quite. The government must be seen to have a conscience, my dear. Mary can still appeal to the court as a parent, but she must actually sue the Board for the return
of her children. She can’t stop them being taken and she must sue for their return, where she might or might not win.’
‘Has any Aborigine done it and won?’ Jessica now asks.