Herbert Basedow and the Removal of Aboriginal Children of Mixed Descent from their Families

Abstract

The Adelaide geologist, doctor and anthropologist Herbert Basedow (1881–1933) twice played a decisive, if unwitting, role in the development of policies for the removal of part‐Aboriginal children from their families. He first became involved in Aboriginal politics in 1911 when he was appointed Chief Protector of the Northern Territory and he suggested the collection of ‘half‐caste’ children in Darwin. By his early resignation he lost control over the execution or extent of the later program and certainly did not approve of what was done in the name of ‘protection’. While in Germany between 1907 and 1910 to advance his studies in anthropological anatomy and under the influence of Professor Hermann Klaatsch of Breslau University, Basedow further developed theories which linked the racial origin of the Indigenous Australian to the Neanderthal Man. He popularised the theory in his 1925 book The Australian Aboriginal where he suggested that progressive cross‐breeding of Aborigines with Europeans would quickly eliminate all Aboriginal racial characteristics. The idea was avidly picked up by A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of Western Australia between 1914 and 1940, and led to the largest experiment in biological engineering ever undertaken in Australia.

Notes

* Some of the material used in this article was collected during two years of collaboration with Professor Robert Manne on a project funded by the Australian Research Council on the separation of part‐Aboriginal children from their parents. I am grateful to Professor Manne for his patience, his criticism, his constant support and the leads he gave me. I also owe gratitude to Alex Tyrrell, Richard Broome and Graham Holton for their advice and to two anonymous referees for their constructive criticism. My special thanks go to Dr Emilio Quevedo, an expert in tropical diseases at the Wellcome Institute in Oxford, who first pointed out the effect of malnutrition and hookworm on the hair of dark‐skinned children.