Day three of the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry Hearing involved three participants sharing different aspects of Aboriginal life during the protectionist era.
The first participant, Michael Aird, Director of the Anthropology Museum and the University of Queensland, shared how he has devoted much of his professional life to examining the experiences of First Nations’ people in Queensland through the medium of photography. This is known as ‘visual anthropology’.
Mr Aird spoke about how he's spent his career trying to document different experiences of Aboriginal families - trying to tell real stories about lived experiences.
Photos portray Queensland’s history
Mr Aird, who has been working with historical photos for over 40 years, shared several photos from the early 1900s onwards including images and articles published in a newspaper in 1904. He shared a typical press article from the time which denigrates an Aboriginal man, “They’re not talking about his successes... they are portraying him as a pathetic remnant of a dying culture and they call him the King of Shreds and Patches.”
“There would have been far fewer Aboriginal people living in Brisbane around 1900. So in a sense it would have been easier for society to look at them as the ‘other’...to be racist towards them and to not treat them like equal people...and the introduction of the 1897 legislation being introduced around that time reflects the government’s desire to control Aboriginal people’s lives and treat them differently,” he said.
He reflected on surveys conducted by Norman Tindale in 1938-39 which involved Tindale visiting communities, missions and government reserves. “The people they were studying were essentially incarcerated and did not have the option of saying ‘no’ to being studied scientifically.”
Mr Aird said researchers picked certain people of different racial background, they were categorising people with “racist scientific motivations of the expedition”, but went on to say, “but these photographs are incredibly wonderful”.
“I feel very fortunate that I have worked with so many good people and that I have been trusted with their stories as well is quite an honour.”
Testimony from stolen generation Aunty Flo Watson
Aunty Flo Watson, a Ghunghanghi / Kuku Yalanji woman, was the second participant to give evidence on day 3 of the hearing.
She and her mother were part of the stolen generation, with her mother taken in the 1930s, and Aunty Flo was separated from her family at about 13 years of age.
Aunty Flo recalled her mother was given the name Doris when she arrived at Yarrabah (an Aboriginal mission). She told the Inquiry that her mother’s mother was shot and killed trying to save her mother, and Aunty Flo’s mother was shot in the hip trying to save her little brother.
Aunty Flo believes her mother was about 4 at the time – they didn’t have birth certificates. They were taken away and sent to Cooktown and then family members were sent throughout Queensland. While her mum was sent to Yarrabah, other aunties and uncles were sent to Cherbourg, Hopevale, Palm Island and Mossman missions.
Aunty Flo said that they had to walk in chains from Maytown to Cooktown and many of them were bleeding.
Massacre injuries lasted a lifetime
Her mother carried lifelong injuries from the massacre which had claimed the life of her mother (Aunty Flo’s grandmother) and her brother, who was also shot and killed.
“She limped her whole life. I remember she used showed us the bullet wound ...they never took it out,” Aunty Flo said.
Aunty Flo said her mother that she never went back to her own country after what happened to her.
Restrictions of dormitory life in Yarrabah mission
Aunty Flo’s testimony moved from the transfer to the mission to dormitory life itself.
When in the dormitories they were told who they had to marry. They received little information of their family, sharing an example of her dad, who worked in the sawmill. One day he collapsed and was taken to hospital. They were not told he had died until 6 months later.
She spoke fondly of her granny, who didn’t have qualifications but was a great midwife and a great nurse. She looked after a lot of children and adopted a lot of children whose mothers died during childbirth. She’d take them and look after them. Her granny delivered a white baby – it was “the first time an Aboriginal woman in Yarrabah delivered a white baby”.
Unable to walk around unprotected or practice culture
Skipping, marbles and hopscotch were the main games played, as they weren’t allowed to do too much.
The missionaries played piano, which Aunty Flo was interested in learning.
“Every afternoon after school finished, one of the policemen came and got me, took me up to the fence and he waited there for me. She came down and got me, and I went up to her place and I learnt to play piano with her, and she took me back to the fence. He was waiting there for me and took me back to the camp. We weren’t allowed to walk around unprotected,” she said.
“They controlled everything, where we are, and what we were doing.”
“We weren’t allowed to dance or sing in our culture..., it all had to be missionaries and what they wanted us to sing and dance - their way,” she said.
She shared how people were removed from the mission for petty things – one called a missionary by their first name and was sent to Palm Island with his family – “that was his crime. He called someone by their first name. My granny never ever saw them ever again”.
Family separation as a teenager
Aunty Flo recalled her experience from 1965, when the government took over Yarrabah mission.
“We were the first students to go to the Yarrabah school, and then we went to high school.”
To get to high school, they had to go down to the police station, get on the tractor, go around the point, then get on the boat, and go into high school. “But I only went for a week.” As the government then removed her from her mother.
“I was screaming, crying... and my mum said to me it’s what the government wants. You have to go, you have to be educated and you will make a difference,” Aunty Flo said. She said found some “horrible things” in her family records, including letters her mum wrote that she didn’t know existed.
Evidence from Jackie Huggins about removals and mission life
Bidjara / Birra Gubba Juru woman and renowned author Jackie Huggins AM, was the final participant and gave her evidence via pre-recorded video.
She reflected on how her family was moved to Cherbourg.
"My mother was rounded up and put on the back of a cattle truck in the 1920s from Springsure area and taken with her four siblings at that stage, mother and father and grandparents to Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission.
"However, on the wa there, they dropped the full blood people, the so-called full blood people, off to Woorabinda Aboriginal settlement and they took those with, with fairer skins and obviously white fathers and grandfathers to, to Cherbourg. Now this was of course to try to separate and assimilate those people becaues in those days, it was said that, and thought, that those with fairer skins would be more able to assimilate into white culture, wherease the very dark, or the so-called full blood people, would be a lot harder. So they separated them on the whim of their skin colour and took them to Woorabinda or to Cherbourg."
Family members separated in different missions
“And I remember my mother telling me that my grandmother, who got dropped off in Woorabinda, chased after the truck and she sang out “don’t take my gundu burries, don’t take my gundu burries” and it was like a scene out of Rabbit Proof Fence where the mother chased the patrol car down the road and saw her children disappear from, from view,” she said.
She continued stating, "My mother as I recall and her word to me, was that they were very cold in the truck. They were huddled together and mostly everyone was crying about where they were going to. They saw, they saw the troopers who, who'd picked them up. Not explain anything to them but said you're coming with us so what could they do. They couldn't do anything, they were powerless, you know I remember my grandfather, mother telling me about my grandfather's angst about how as the provider and the, the man in his clan, he was hopeless to do anything. So they followed stui and proceeded to, to Cherbourg after my Granny was dropped off in Woorabinda."
A government exemption meant she could live with freedom
She also recalled her mother receiving an exemption from the government, and their move to Brisbane, one of the first Aboriginal families in Inala about 65 years ago.
"The exemption means that she was now free, you know, she wasn't tied to any Act, or legistlation or restrictions from the mission. She could be a person. Yeah she could be a persona nd live the freedom as white people did.
"But, you know by then the damage had been done. You were tarred, you were, you know, relegated to the status of a second class citizen in the wa back then in the 1940's.
“But you know, she could seek employment here in in Brisbane, which she did.”
“We came down to Brisbane and made a lot of friends,” she recalled.
“I saw the racism that my mother would get. She’d go into the shops... people could be so cruel and just because she was an Aboriginal woman” she said.
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