Missionary Context

Written records associated with the objects indicate that they are fabric samples sent to the Board for Protection of Aborigines from prospective suppliers during 1916-1918.

The written records also point to the living standards and material conditions of Aboriginal people living on reserves and missions, or supplied via local guardians and depots. From the Board's correspondence, budgets, surveys and lists of foods, clothes and other everyday items, a picture emerges not only of the day to day material conditions of Aboriginal people in Victoria, but the extent to which the Board sought to control this.

Coranderrk c1918, Lanky Manton kneeling in front

Correspondence indicates that the Board was seeking to rationalise its supply of clothing to Aboriginal people at the time, as well as seek best value for money. Ensuring value for money was a strong motivation, and appears to have determined a decision to purchase tweed rather than denim suits in 1918 due to poor fabric quality. [1] However there were also moralistic and paternalistic motivations. The manager at Lake Condah applauded the decision to stop annual distribution of clothes as 'a means of... making them more thrifty, as the majority of the natives do not understand the value of anything in the way of clothing'. [2] It was also intended to instil the virtue of 'carefulness'. [3] The intention of the decision to set Aboriginal women and girls to sewing their own undergarments was to 'provide suitable employment for the women and girls' and 'increase the usefulness of the women'. [4]

The Board agreed that supplying a set of ready-made clothes to each Aboriginal person every year 'encourage[d] laziness' and lack of care. [5] From 1916 therefore, managers were directed to make 'personal enquiries' as to the items 'essential for immediate requirements' of each man and woman and submit them to the Board, which would agree to provision of clothing only in the case of proof of an individual need. [6] Management favoured this new form of intervention as it provided a way of gaining greater control over Aboriginal people; they thought it 'should prove a powerful factor in maintaining discipline'. [7] Specifically, managers could use the policy to withhold clothes from individuals who were not conforming to directions to work. [8] This would allow the Board to 'stir up "the slackers,"' [9] presumably inspiring them to earn their keep and submit to performing unpaid labour on reserves.

Issue of clothing and food to Aboriginal people was represented as a philanthropic practice, but this obscured other intentions. [10] A letter from C. A. Robarts, the manager at Coranderrk, contained evidence of missionary fears about their failure to eradicate Aboriginal culture. It also hints at some specific ways in which Aboriginal people resisted, maintaining their cultural integrity under the oppressive reserve regime. Wrote Robarts:

'... no blankets were ordered last year, as I found by looking into each family's supply they had sufficient. Out of habit and custom, the natives asked for the blankets, had they been presented, they would either have been given to outside families or exchanged for some inferior article, or even... for erecting shelters when camping by the river.' [11]

Evidently, the new policy of providing clothes and blankets on an individual basis was used by Robarts to try to curtail practices such as communal sharing of resources and to reduce the availability of materials Aboriginal people apparently used for shelter on river sorties that were disapproved. [12] Management sought to intervene in the ways Aboriginal people chose to interact with the objects and clothes granted them. Trading of goods for more money or for more useful, desirable, or non-uniform products was frowned upon. Robarts was irritated by the way some women 'exchange the good footwear for a light cheap class of shoe'. However, he was pleased to report that 'men's suits and women's dresses are made good use of'. Robarts also revealed that he concerned himself with the personal hygiene habits of the reserve inmates, stating that 'underclothing and men's underwear are a necessity to cleanliness and health'. [13]

Missionaries needed to demonstrate their effectiveness in order to attract funding; they used clothing and other outward signs to advertise progress in their transformation of Aboriginal people. [14] As part of the 'civilising' process, the missionaries tried to impart to Aboriginal people the gendered norms of European society. This was attempted by fostering a division of labour on reserves which accorded to European norms, and can also be read from the lists of objects and clothing allocated to men and women. [15]

The contradiction between the civilising, Christianising urge of the missionaries and the degrading treatment they meted out is encompassed concisely in the following quote from a letter written by Mr Robert Kinnear to the Board in 1916: 'I was disappointed to see that we never got the suit of clothes for Sundays as we sometimes go to Church we can't very well go with these clothes.' [16]

Robert Kinnear, his wife and granddaughter, Betty Marks.

Surveys of the clothing requirements of individuals submitted to the Board by reserve managers and local guardians provides an idea of the types of apparel which could be reasonably expected by Aboriginal people to be supplied by the Board. Photographs taken at the time, such as those reproduced on this page, provide a visual record of the types of clothes worn by Aboriginal people at certain moments. This can be compared to the clothing worn by station managers and their families, and to mainstream fashion trends at the time.

The period under study overlaps largely with the Great War, which probably explains why the period from 1914-1920 receives no commentary in Cedric Flower's Clothes in Australia: a Pictorial History. There are a few pictures from the early 1910s, showing the popularity of hats as well as long skirts, high collars and coats for women (see also image below for a glimpse of contemporary fashions). [17] That hats were an important part of women's costume of the day is suggested in the following quote from a letter to the Board by Mrs Esther Mcguinness:

'I recived my parcel and also never recived my hat and dress meterial and cotton to sew my dress . . . and never send my hat do you expect me to go bair head.' [18]

Demonstrating fire making for visitors in Governor Stanley's party

Living standards

As seen above, the Board saw coffee, cocoa, cornina, sago, and pearl barley as 'extras' and 'luxuries', allowed only to the sick. It sought suggestions from managers about ways to effect savings. However, it is hard to see how they justified such an attitude. Living conditions for Aboriginal people both on and off the reserves were deplorable; this was a time of poverty and desperation for many Aboriginal people in Victoria. The government's annual expenditure on the Aboriginal population between 1913 and 1917 averaged £4000, up to £700 of which was spent on wages for the three reserve managers. In 1907 H. B. Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, had set a minimum wage, based on the cost of living, to apply to all adult males working under Commonwealth awards.[19] However, this did little to improve the conditions for Aboriginal workers, or influence the amount of money allocated to their welfare.

In 1911 the Board report numbered the Aboriginal population 'maintained or partly provided for' during the year as 252. In 1921 this had risen to 331.[20] This meant the Board was spending at most an average of £15 per head annually for whole or partial maintenance of Aboriginal people during this time. Although this was relatively more than other states and territories, Victoria's smaller population meant it spent considerably less in total (excepting the Northern Territory, which had begun to exceed Victoria's spending by 1925 anyway).[21] The money spent on Aboriginal welfare by all Australian governments was totally inadequate to meeting the objective of 'benevolent protection' of Aboriginal people, and when compared to the amount spent per capita on mainstream welfare (for example old age pensions) was up to forty times less.[22]

The report from an inspection of the reserve and depot system throughout Victoria by a Mr Menzies in June 1917 is a frank indictment on the Board's practices. He stated that the 'management of the Aborigines and Half-Castes throughout the State of Victoria... could not be worse'.[23] He elaborated:

'At Coranderrk the appearance of the Cottages resembled slum tenements; in some cases lacking almost everything calculated to bring comfort to the occupants. These tenements were in some cases neither wind nor rain proof. In two cases W. C's were conspicuous by their absence and in others unduly conspicuous by their presence. The bedding was scant and wretched as almost any slum tenement I have visited.

'The local Management seemed calculated to breed inertia and palsy any individual enterprise by offering no special inducement to work... Whilst the interior of the tenements were bare enough of any common necessities, the outside in almost every case was equally unattractive. ...The mental, social and spiritual welfare of these poor people in my judgement could without much effort be vastly improved by well-directed common sense methods.'[24]

The lack of accountability regarding the treatment of the Aboriginal population by the Board from 1910 to 1920 is perhaps best illustrated by the absence of any reports to Parliament during much of the period. The Board had reported annually from its inception in the 1860s until 1912; from that date, the Board issued no reports until 1921.

The incompetent management practices of the Board were plain to see in their correspondence. There was a complete lack of consultation with Aboriginal people and only marginally better consultation with the reserve managers and local guardians. The Board would decide on a new policy and would then field many letters, written both by and on behalf of Aboriginal men and women in reaction expressing concern, dissatisfaction, indignation, disappointment and surprise. Management was not only high-handed in this way but often negligent. Several women received the material they were to sew their clothes with under the Board's new 1916 regime, but found no cotton had been included.[25]

"I got my dress material safe but no cotton to sow my dress . . . its about 3 weeks. I never got my hat yet." From Esther Mcguinness to the Board, 6 August 1916

Footnotes

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