CJ,

May I suggest you use your Sand Bucket - it's barely half-full and doesn't look like ever getting any fuller. Perhaps Barnaby could lend you the necessary.

So, on the face of it, Dr Raynes can produce, say, a dozen authentic cases of children taken into care illegally. But also, on the face of it - in the absence of the full records - that's it. We can't check out either side of the story satisfactorily while the records aren't available. A dozen children taken into care illegally, in one hundred years. Not exactly a generation.

But perhaps a word for the Defendants, in absentia: South (and Neville in WA) faced a dilemma that had faced bureaucrats ever since 1836 in SA: bureaucrats usually had no trouble giving out rations to people of the full descent, but what about people who were, after all, as they saw it, half-white ? Three-quarters white ? They did not understand, as we do now, that identity was social and historical, not 'racial' or cultural (which is often treated as the same thing by racists) and one could say now that it was none of their business anyway.

But, in the distribution of rations, it did become their business: 'should people who are three-quarters or even seven-eighths white, people as white as South or Neville, get rations ?' After all, technically, that little girl taken from Nilpena had three white grandparents and presumably so did the children of Andrew Allan, at least as many. Should such children come under the authority of the Protector, to be restricted and monitored Under the Act ? At what point, from their perspective, their 'knowledge' - seven-eighths white, fifteen-sixteenths white - does a person cease to be an Aboriginal person for the restrictive and control purposes of the Aborigines' Act and become 'white', freed from the restrictions of the Act?

[TBC]

[continued]

In taking such children from camps and stations, South and Neville after him may have thought they were acting in the best interests of these 'near-white' children, as they saw them. Of course, their racism comes into play when they didn't even consider the welfare of children, young girls of the full descent, who were surely just as vulnerable to the depredations of white blow-ins at remote stations.

This dilemma may explain the desire of bureaucrats to segregate 'half-castes' from whites by extending the definition of 'Aboriginal' in the 1939 Act, and to certainly discourage, wherever they could, interaction between whites and women of the full descent. In SA, under the Acts of 1911 and 1939, there were no restrictions on interaction between 'half-castes' and 'full-bloods', but there were between whites and Blacks generally. Racists of today, white and Black, would frown on such interaction, even though it has been legal for fifty-odd years, Aka. Whether it's an issue even today is not for me to say.

BTW, in the nineteenth century, [according to the Protector's letters, in GRG 52/1] 'rations' here in SA included, not just a bit of flour and a blanket once a year, but: a 12' by 12' tent every seven years, a 15' 'canoe' every seven years, a rifle or shotgun [yes ! when the Rev. Taplin was scouting around Lake Alexandrina for a mission site, he gave shotguns to a couple of Aboriginal guys he found and asked them to get him some ducks. He describes it in his Journal [available from me by email] - this surprised me as much as it does you] every seven years - all repaired free - as well as fishhooks and fishing line every year. And access to all pastoral and crown land for all Aboriginal people. True.

In the 1880s, at Point McLeay, people received free bread, free meat, free firewood and free milk, and were paid standard wages. True.

Sorry about the unwelcome information. I came as a shock to me, too. :)

Jo

years of academic research
CJ Morgan,
Apologies for the late reply but I've been out of the 100% Telstra coverage.
Apologies for being "heavy" but nevertheless I now understand thanks due to your explanation above. I'll leave it at that.