Photography and the Recognition of Indigenous Australians: Framing Aboriginal Prisoners

Abstract

This article explores the role of photography in the recognition of the oppression of Indigenous Australians in the interwar years. Today, photographs of conflict and suffering are crucial evidence that make these phenomena real to us, but the interpretive frameworks that determine photographic meaning offer profound challenges to historians attempting to understand past visual cultures. During the 1920s and 1930s, images of Indigenous ill-treatment were framed by narratives of injustice, facilitated by photographic images that allowed events in remote places to be witnessed by mass audiences across the British Empire. I argue that while such imagery popularised reform and mobilised international support, recognition of Indigenous suffering was also heavily conditional upon its representation within conventional interpretive frameworks, as popular moral sensibilities allowed certain images, scandalous but familiar, to become the visual battleground of injustice.

Notes

^*Many thanks to Sari Braithwaite for assistance with archival research and her thoughtful comments on this paper. I also thank Isobel Crombie, Penny Edmonds, two anonymous referees and Richard Broome for their advice. I am very grateful to Daryl Smith, former Chairperson of the Oombulgurri Association and Lumbia's grandson, for his permission to reproduce Lumbia's photograph, and his interest in this research.

¹Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 3–4.

²For a few examples drawn from this substantial literature, see James Dawes, That the World May Know (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); David Campbell, ‘Salgado and the Sahel: Documentary Photography and the Imaging of Famine’ in Rituals of Mediation: International Politics and Social Meaning, eds. François Debrix and Cynthia Weber (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 69–83; Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, ‘The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in our Times’, Daedalus 125 (1996).

³Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others.

⁴Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 75, 80.

⁵K. Williams, ‘The Light at the End of the Tunnel: The Mass Media, Public Opinion and the Vietnam War’ in Getting the Message: News, Truth and Power, ed. John Eric Thomas Eldridge (Glasgow University Media Group, Routledge), 278–97; Michael Mandelbaum, ‘Vietnam: The Television War,’ Daedalus 111, no. 4 (Fall, 1982): 157–69; Michael J. Arlen, The Living Room War (Syracuse University Press, 1997 [1968]).

⁶Jane Lydon, ‘‘Behold the Tears’: Photography as Colonial Witness', History of Photography 34, no. 3 (August 2010): 234–50.

⁷Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), 81. For discussion of the political effects of recognition of minority groups see especially Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and The Politics of Recognition: An Essay by Charles Taylor (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992; Nancy Fraser, ‘Rethinking Recognition’, New Left Review 3 (May–June, 2000).

⁸Dora Apel, Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 2–3. See also Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Strouss and Giroux, 2003), 104.

⁹See for example Jennifer Deger, Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

¹⁰Guides to ethical research in this field include Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), ‘Audiovisual Archive. Collections Management Policy Manual. 10.0 Code of Ethics’, accessed 26 October, 2010, http://193.5.93.80/export/sites/www/tk/en/folklore/creative_heritage/docs/aiatsis_policy_ethics.pdf; Terri Janke, Our Culture, Our Future. Report on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, 1998), 30–2.

¹¹Anne-Marie Willis, Picturing Australia: a history of photography (North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1988); Gael Newton Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839–1988 (Canberra: Australian National Gallery/Collins Australia, 1988); Helen Ennis Photography and Australia (London, Reaktion Books, 2007).

¹²See for example Nicolas Peterson, ‘The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics’, in Photography's Other Histories, eds. C. Pinney and N. Peterson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 119–45; Catherine de Lorenzo, Ethnophotography: Photographic images of Aboriginal Australians, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 1993.

¹³But see Lynette Russell, ‘Wellnigh Impossible to Describe’: Dioramas, Displays and Representations of Australian Aborigines’, Australian Aboriginal Studies 2, 1999: 25–34; Mitchell Rolls, 2010 'Reading Walkabout in the 1930s’, Australian Studies 2: 1–16; Michael Aird, Portraits of Our Elders, Brisbane: Queensland Museum, 1993).

¹⁵‘The Aborigines: Conditions in the North’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1927, 131.

¹⁴For discussion of the effects of Forrest River, Coniston and Caledon Bay affairs, see Henry Reynolds, This Whispering In Our Hearts (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 178–244; Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). Jane Lydon, 2012, ‘Bullets, Teeth and Photographs: Recognising Indigenous Australians Between the Wars,’ History of Photograph, July.

¹⁷James Ferrier, ‘Abolish those Chains. To the Editor of the Herald’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 1927, 11.

¹⁶‘The Aborigines: Conditions in the North’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1927, 131.

¹⁸As Scott McQuire argues, new camera technologies enabled ‘snap-shot’ photo-journalism, and a new expectation of seeing events in train rather than their aftermath: Scott McQuire, Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera (London: Sage, 1998), 137. See also Vicki Goldberg, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (New York: Abbeville Publishing Group, 1993), 191–215.

¹⁹Turnbull, Clive, ‘Journalism’ in Australia, ed. C. H. Grattan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947) Victor Isaacs and Rod Kirkpatrick, Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers: A Short History (North Richmond, NSW: Rural Press, 2003), 13.

²⁰David Carter, ‘“Esprit de Nation” and Popular Modernity: Aussie Magazine 1920–1931’, History Australia 5(3): 74.1–22.

²¹Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America (London: Routledge, 2000), 19, 23.

²²John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007), especially 93–103. Voice of the North, July 11, 1927; Voice of the North, 10 August, 1927; Daylight, 31 August, 1927.

²³Reynolds, This Whispering In Our Hearts, 191–200; Peter Read and Jay Read, Long Time Olden Time: Aboriginal Accounts of Northern Territory History (Alice Springs, NT: Institute for Aboriginal Development Publications, 1993).

²⁴‘Supreme Court. Alleged Murder. Wednesday before His Honor Mr Justice Mallam’, Northern Territory Times, 9 November 1928, 5; ‘Blacks Shot. 17 Killed. By Police Patrol’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 1928, 12.

²⁵Markus, Governing Savages, 163. ‘Justified. Shooting of Natives in Central Australia. Inquiry Board's Report’, The Canberra Times, 31 January 1929, 4; ‘Bias Alleged. Killing of Blacks. Inquiry Commission Attacked’, The Brisbane Courier, 12 April 1929, 11.

²⁶Fiona Paisley, Loving Protection?: Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Rights 1919–1939 (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2000), 12; Alison Holland, ‘Wives and Mothers Like Ourselves?: Exploring White Women's Intervention in the Politics of Race, 1920s–1940s’, Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 117 (2001): 292–310, 296; Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of White Australian Feminism (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1999).

²⁷Mary Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930), 79, 108–11. Although she cited and discussed this image on page 79 her book did not include images.

²⁸Mary Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930), 79, 108–11. Although she cited and discussed this image on page 79 her book did not include images., 79, note 1; ‘Aborigine Prisoners at the Alice Spring Gaol’, Melbourne Herald, 18 November 1929.

²⁹ British Commonwealth League Conference Report (Fawcett Library, 1933), 44–5; The Mail (London), 17 June 1933, 2; Sydney Morning Herald, 18 June 1933, 1, cited in Fiona Paisley, ‘Race and Remembrance: Contesting Aboriginal Child Removal in the Inter-War Years’, Australian Humanities Review (November 1997–January 2008): 1–9.

³⁰Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being, 82.

³¹C. D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books Australia, 1972), 257.

³²Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990); and see Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: Black Response to White Dominance, 1788–1980 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin 1982): 163–6.

³³W. Sprague Holden, Australia Goes to Press (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1961). Victor Isaacs and Rod Kirkpatrick, Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers: A Short History (North Richmond: Rural Press, 2003). Roger Osborne, ‘A National Interest in an International Market: The Circulation of Magazines in Australia During the 1920s’, History Australia 5, no. 3 (2008): 75.1–16; David Carter, ‘Magazine Culture: Notes Towards a History of Australian Periodical Publication 1920–1970’, in Australian Literature and the Public Sphere, eds. Alison Bartlett, Robert Dixon and Christopher Lee, Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Toowoomba (1999), 69–79.

³⁴Russell McGregor, ‘Protest and Progress: Aboriginal Activism in the 1930s’, Australian Historical Studies 25, no. 101 (1993): 555–68; Markus, Governing Savages; Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom. Bain Attwood, Rights for Aborigines (Allen and Unwin, 2004).

³⁵The Covenant of the League of Nations: Article 23, 28 June 1919.

³⁶Alison Holland, ‘Wives and Mothers Like Ourselves?: Exploring White Women's Intervention in the Politics of Race, 1920s–1940s’, Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 117 (2001): 292–310, 296. Lake, Getting Equal, 116.

³⁹‘Editorial’, Adelaide Register, 19 March 1929.

³⁷See for example Ernestine Hill, ‘Murray – The Scourge of the Myalls. Man Whose Gun Keeps White Men Safe In The Wilds’, Sydney Sunday Sun, 5 February 1933, 19.

³⁸NAA: Department of Home and Territories, Central Office: A1 28/10743, 14 November 1916–10 December 1928. Some have been published in Markus, Governing Savages.

⁴⁰‘Black Picture of Black Men’ Adelaide Register, 19 March 1929, 6.

⁴¹NAA: Australian News and Information Bureau, Canberra: A263 ALBUM, ‘Album of Anthropological Photographs in connection with the Aboriginal enquiry Central and North Australia’, 1 January 1928–31 December 1928.

⁴³NAA Series A1, Item 1928/10743, p. 59: ‘Illustrations. Accompanying Report on Aborigines by Dr. W. D. Walker’, p. 16; NAA: Australian News and Information Bureau, Canberra: A263 ALBUM, ‘Album of Anthropological Photographs in connection with the Aboriginal enquiry Central and North Australia’, 1 January 1928–31 December 1928.

⁴²Bleakley, p. 56.

⁴⁴Bulletin 14 August 1929, clipping in NAA series A1 Item 1928/ 10743 p. 83.

⁴⁵Philip Jones 2011 Images of the Interior: Seven Central Australian Photographers, Wakefield Press, South Australian Museum, p. 121.

⁴⁶See especially A. Lattas, ‘Essentialism, Memory and Resistance: Aboriginality and the Politics of Authenticity’ Oceania 63, no. 3 (1993): 240–68; Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

⁴⁷Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition, 5–6.

⁴⁸ The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 May 1934, 5.

⁴⁹Henrika Kuklick, ‘“Humanity in the Chrysalis Stage”: Indigenous Australians in the Anthropological Imagination, 1899–1926’, British Journal of the Historical Society 39, no. 4 (2006): 535–68. Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1997).

⁵⁰See for example Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Arunta: A Study of a Stone Age People (London: Macmillan, 1927).

⁵¹Geoffrey Gray, A Cautious Silence: The Politics of Australian Anthropology (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007), 102–13; The World, 14 January 1932, 7.

⁵²‘Aborigines. ‘Missionary's Allegation. Atrocities by Whites’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1933, 9.

⁵³See NAA: A1, 1933/7639, ‘Appeal for Justice: Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda’, Melbourne Herald, 14 August 1933, 116, cited in Peter Read, ‘Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda’ in Uncommon Lives, http://uncommonlives.naa.gov.au/dhakiyarr-wirrpanda/index.aspx. Accessed 15 January 2011.

⁵⁴‘Appeal for Justice: Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda’; NAA: A431, 1947/1434, High Commissioner's Office to the Prime Minister's Department, 4 September, 1933, 181; NAA: Al, 193317639: The Times extracted in Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 1933, 50; Peter Read, ‘Murder, Revenge and Reconciliation on the North Eastern Frontier’, History Australia 4, no. 1 (2007): 1–15.

⁵⁵‘Pitiful Scenes’, Melbourne Herald, 11 April 1934 in NAA: A1, 1936/4022 Part 1, 196.

⁵⁶Read, ‘Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda’.

⁵⁷E.g., ‘No More Manacles’, The Argus, 4 January 1934, 7; ‘Neck Chains Banned: Native Prisoners,’ The Courier-Mail, 6 January 1934, 11; ‘Transporting Prisoners Territory Dilemma: Chains or Handcuffs?’, Cairns Post, 6 January 1934, 4; ‘Avoiding the Evil. Adequate Reserves Advocated’, The West Australian, 16 January 1934, 10; ‘Aboriginal Prisoners. Ban on Use of Neck Chains Criticised’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 January 1934, 10; ‘Aboriginal Prisoners use of Neck Chains. Handcuffs A Disability’, The Mercury, 23 January 1934, 10.

⁵⁸‘Humane Justice Needed. Unnecessary Use of Irons’, The Courier-Mail, 14 April 1934, 13.

⁵⁹‘Police in Far North. Missionary's Startling Allegations’, The Argus, 21 June 1934, 3.

⁶²Henry Doyle Moseley, Report of the Royal Commissioner Appointed to Investigate, Report, and Advise upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines (Perth: Fred. Wm. Simpson, 1935), 22–3.

⁶⁰Henry Doyle Moseley, Report of the Royal Commissioner Appointed to Investigate, Report, and Advise upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines (Perth: Fred. Wm. Simpson, 1935), 22.

⁶¹Henry Doyle Moseley, Report of the Royal Commissioner Appointed to Investigate, Report, and Advise upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines (Perth: Fred. Wm. Simpson, 1935), 22.

⁶³Henry Doyle Moseley, Report of the Royal Commissioner Appointed to Investigate, Report, and Advise upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines (Perth: Fred. Wm. Simpson, 1935), 23.

⁶⁴Henry Doyle Moseley, Report of the Royal Commissioner Appointed to Investigate, Report, and Advise upon Matters in Relation to the Condition and Treatment of Aborigines (Perth: Fred. Wm. Simpson, 1935), 9.

⁶⁵‘Aborigines. Chains for Prisoners to be used instead of Handcuffs‘, The Sydney Morning Herald, July 11 1935, 11.

⁶⁶A review of newspaper references to neck-chains between 1890 and 1960 shows that this concern was surpassed only by responses to the Roth report of 1905, when thirty-six articles appeared in February 1905 (and fifty-eight during 1905). However, quantification is of only limited value in understanding the cultural attitudes that determined visual meanings. This search was conducted using the National Library of Australia's search engine Trove, and included thirty-eight digitised Australian newspapers.

⁶⁷Aboriginal Welfare: Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities held at Canberra, 21–23 April, 1937 (Canberra: L. F. Johnston, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1937), 31–2.

⁶⁸‘Lowest Type of Human Being Known,’ Weekly Illustrated, November 13, 1937, 6–7. Duguid recounted this incident in his autobiography, Doctor and the Aborigines, 112–3; see also Rani Kerin, ‘Doctor Do-Good’? Charles Duguid and Aboriginal Politics, 1930s–1970s. PhD thesis, History Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 2004.

⁶⁹Douglas Lockwood in Melbourne Herald, 19 March 1958 and reply by WA Commissioner of Police, 20 March 1958, cited in Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, 199.