Debunking Aboriginal Myths (By Rebecca Walker)

I was recently lent a copy of All-About: The Story of a Black Community on Argyle Station, Kimberley by Mary and Elizabeth Durack. It is a children’s book published in 1935 which went through five reprints up until 1944. Even just looking at the cover, it is immediately distressing, as it emblazoned with a picture of an Aboriginal man who looks like a demonic ape. It purports to tell the story of a white family living on a station in Kimberly, with many aboriginal workers. The Sunday Times in Perth wrote of it that “The book is, indeed, a happy book for Christmas, full of good cheer, excellent fun, and a splendid tale of station life in the vast Nor’-West”.

Mary Durack went on to write many other children’s books about aboriginals up until 1964. If we assume that the books were probably in circulation at least until the 1970s, it gives us an insight into the kinds of myths about Aboriginals which have informed the understanding of many Australians growing up between 1935 and the mid 1970s, which has been passed on either consciously or subconsciously to later generations of Australians. Again just before we get started, it should be emphasised that this content is from a children’s book!

Myth #1 – Aboriginals are Inferior
From the opening lines in the dedication of All-About, the tone of white superiority is distinct. “You will never read this, for to learning you have no pretensions. You cannot sue us for libel, though we have exposed your characters, your secrets and your private lives. Forgive us! Our protection lies in your unworldliness”. So basically, Aboriginals are too dumb to realise what the Durack sisters are saying about them. This of course, means that it is completely morally acceptable to say malicious things about the Aboriginals. The fact that the Duracks felt that the Aboriginals might sue them for libel if they understood indicates that they were aware that what they were saying was, at a minimum unkind, if not outright slanderous!

This tone of superiority continues throughout the book, another awful example appears on page 17: “We have long ago had to face the fact that our more cultured mode of speech is equally intelligible to the blacks as is the pidgin form. The latter we use in evidence of the superiority which they so unreasonably refuse to recognise. Our darkies have none of the docile inferiority complex which makes such excellent servants of their brothers of other lands”.

This almost does not need commentary, it is so disgustingly prideful. To know that aboriginal people can understand the so-called “cultured mode of speech”, yet to insist on using pidgin when speaking with them as “evidence of the superiority [of the whites] which they so unreasonably refuse to recognise” is oppressive, racist and mean-spirited. It is appalling that on top of this assumption of superiority, they go further to censure the Aboriginals for not agreeing with that racist assumption. It is disgusting that in a book that is supposedly “the happiest book of the year”, the Durack sisters actually criticise the Aboriginals for not having the “docile inferiority complex which makes such excellent servants of their brothers of other lands”! Here the evil intent of the superiority/inferiority divide is made clear: it is to legitimise the enslavement of the “inferior” human beings.

Myth #2 – Aboriginals are Promiscuous
Probably the strongest theme in the book is that Aboriginals, particularly the women, are promiscuous. The book is full of sly gibes about Aboriginals sleeping around, and needing white people to point them towards marriage. This is rather hypocritical given the number of children many Aboriginal women had to white fathers. Clearly, the white men were not following their own advice on sexual morality. And that is without mentioning the numbers of Aboriginal women who were raped by white people. To accuse Aboriginals of promiscuity, in the moralising tone the Durack sisters use, is hypocrisy in the extreme.

All of the Aboriginal women at one point or another are accused in the book of promiscuity; of sleeping with both Aboriginal and white men. One particular example is the character Polly. On page 10, Polly explains Aboriginal sexual ethics, if an aboriginal woman leaves her man and runs away with someone else, then her tribe will kill the man she ran away with. If she even looks at a white man, then her tea and meat will be poisoned so that she dies. The next page goes on to describe how she tricked her husband regarding one of her sons, “He caused her no worry after she managed to convince a somewhat dubious husband that her son’s extraordinary lightness of colour was due to a shortage in the charcoal supply at the time of his arrival. ‘S’posin’ me got plenty charcoal put ‘longa this piccaninny, ‘im go black then like ‘nother kids; only too late now”. So not only is Polly promiscuous, she is also hypocritical.

Myth #3 – Removal of Aboriginal Children is Good
Another theme of the book is that Aboriginals are bad parents and that the good of the children demands that the government remove the children from their families. Page 11 describes how Polly’s daughter was removed by the government. It starts by talking about how Polly hid Daffodil so that she would not be taken. “The ‘Government’ brought torches to seek her out, and old Polly fought for her young like a tigress at bay... But the white men had right on their side and were fired with the spirit of purpose. Daffodil must learn to read and write and sew fine seams with her slim brown fingers and learn the godlessness of her mother’s people. Later, if she wished, she could go back again, provided she kept away from the blacks’ camp and as much as possible from the old black mother who had fought so hard for her ignorance”. You almost cannot caricature the obscenity of this viewpoint!

What is the Truth?
The bible is clear in its teaching that all people are created by God in his image and so are of incredible value. When we feel or are taught that we are less than loved and valuable, it comes not from God but from the Devil. Obviously we are all fallen, and all fall short of the glory of God. However, this does not diminish our value. This is a state that is shared by all humans; there is no racial grouping that are more/less sinners than others. Jesus taught that we should be more worried about the plank in our own eye than the speck in our brothers. Yet the interface between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures in this country has been based on the unjust oppression of Aboriginal people, supported by the notion of white superiority.

The social basis of the kingdom of God is of a harmonious people brought together from disparate cultures around the one King Jesus Christ. This is displayed in the very throne room of God, “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb… And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’" (Rev 7:9-10). What then should the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people look like? We are brothers and sisters, and one day we will join in one voice to worship our Lord and our God as one holy, equal and diverse people. This is how we should be beginning to live now.