Cummeragunja Stir

Considering the Cummeragunja Walk-Off as a Child Protection Stratgey

In February 1939 prominent Aboriginal leader Jack Patten visited the Cummeragunja Aboriginal Reserve in New South Wales, investigating the harsh conditions experienced by Aboriginals living there.  In the hours following his address to about 300 residents, seventy people left the Reserve to cross the Murray River and enter Victoria. Patten was arrested and charged with inciting the Aboriginals to leave. Up to 170 people would cross the river to camp at Barmah. What could Jack Patten have said or done to prompt such an exodus? Newspaper reports of the day, witness statements and contemporary oral histories indicate that a threat to the welfare of their children – real or otherwise – was the final insult in a growing list of abuses. By the time of the Cummeragunja Walk-off, as it became known, Aboriginal people were familiar with being forcibly separated from their children; likewise they were well acquainted with the futility of attempting reunions through official bureaucratic channels. It is therefore unsurprising that the residents of Cummeragunja resorted to dramatic acts of civil disobedience in order to protect – and keep – their children.

By 1939 the threat of Aboriginal children being removed from their parents at Cummeragunja was very plausible.  Families regularly moved across state borders to avoid “half-caste” legislation that forced family break-ups, such as those who “crossed the Murray to prevent the New South Wales Board from apprenticing their children as servants in distant localities”. As Broome notes “evidence about child removal is scant, secretive and locked away...” However, the letters of two Aboriginal women show a pattern of government removal of children and subsequent refusal of reunions.

Louisa Briggs lived on the Coranderrk Reserve near Melbourne from 1871. By 1876 she was “an expert midwife and practical nurse [and] matron of the orphans’ dormitory” but by the end of that decade Louisa Briggs’s campaigning for improved conditions at Coranderrk had led to her banishment. The forced separation from her family was used by authorities as punishment for Louisa Briggs’s outspokenness and her letters pleading to be permitted to see her children “as you promised that I could go down to be with her [daughter] at her confinement” were routinely rejected or simply ignored. Louisa Briggs’s experiences were not unique. In 1908 at Lake Tyers Emily Steven became a “thorn in the side of the Board, the government and [station manager] Captain Howe” as she constantly sought and was refused access to her son – who had been removed from her because he was “half-caste”. Emily also resisted her 11 year old daughter being forced to live with Howe and was threatened with starvation if she did not obey. Just as Louisa Briggs had been, Emily’s resistance was punished with banishment and separation from her children.

By the time of Louisa Briggs’s death at Cummergunja in 1925, it is likely that the residents were aware of the struggle of such agitators to keep their children, if they had not experienced it themselves. Similarly they would have been aware of the consequences of becoming too vocal, and the futility of politely written requests. Such things would not have been lightly forgotten fourteen years later when Jack Patten arrived to inspect the Reserve, in his role as president of the Aborigines’ Progressive Association. Jack Patten was visiting Reserves around the country to “secure concrete evidence of actual conditions on Government reservations.” But residents were despondent and felt that the likelihood of a fair process was limited: “What is the use of reporting the matter to the Board? . . . no-one takes the word of an Aboriginal.”

Who was it that actually told the residents that their children would be taken away? Was it Jack Patten, who “warned them that children were being taken away”? Or was it the Reserve manager A.J. McQuiggan, who had already warned parents that “he would enforce the Board’s long-standing policy of removing children...”? A careful reading of the account of Jack Patten’s hearing, held in Moama a month later, suggests it was the latter. The arresting officer stated that he told Jack Patten that McQuiggan had complained about “aborigines being persuaded to leave the station” and that Jack Patten had told residents “their children and their money would be taken from them.” Nevertheless, he also confirmed that Jack Patten consistently claimed the residents were being victimised and starved.

Similar versions were presented by McQuiggan and two white nurses, all claiming that Jack Patten told residents their children would be taken. However the evidence given by two Cummeragunja residents differs substantially. Both corroborated Jack Patten’s claim that he hadn’t told anyone their children would be taken away, but rather that he had simply read extracts from evidence to a 1937 inquiry. Jack Patten seemed to base his defence on the difference between telling residents their children would be removed and reporting on old evidence that other people had suggested that they should be. The magistrate decided against Jack Patten, convicted him and laid upon him a five pound, three month good behaviour bond.

The residents of Cummeragunja, on learning of a threat, real or otherwise, to the custody of their children, acted. Previous experience had shown them that once lost, the chances of being reunited with their children were slim. Life off the Reserve was by no means easy – off the Reserve families were able to remain together but their links to Aboriginal culture were damaged:

“Daniel and June Atkinson moved off Cummeragunja…to avoid the risk of their children being removed…Life in the mainstream made it difficult to maintain Aboriginal traditions.”

Whether it was actually the intent of the government to remove Aboriginal children from their parents at that time is not in question. What is important is that the residents absolutely believed the welfare of their children was under threat and they took immediate action to prevent harm and separation, regardless of the consequences. Certainly it must have seemed that in this case, prevention was eminently preferable to having to seek permission for a cure.

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