Haunted by ‘Miscegenation’: Gender, the White Australia Policy and the Construction of Indisch Family Narratives

Abstract

This paper traces complex negotiations of multiraciality in the context of transgenerational genealogy work in the wake of historical violence, genocide and colonialism. Basing the analysis on detailed ethnographic material about Indonesian-Dutch (Indisch) genealogy and memory work, I explore how the regulation of ‘races’ [sic] during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies and under the White Australia Policy employed genealogical charts to determine freedom from imprisonment and/or rights to full citizenship for Indisch individuals, and how these feature in the genealogy work of the children and grandchildren of those subjected to racial regulatory norms. Centring the analysis on a specific family history writing project, I demonstrate how such a project is haunted by the ghostly figures of historical ‘miscegenation’ – the Indonesian foremother, and the white woman who crosses lines of respectable white femininity by marrying an Indisch man. The paper explores how narrative strategies of exclusion are used differently across generations as a way of dealing with feelings of shame, guilt and secrecy produced by institutionalised racism, historical violence and imperialism. The paper argues that genealogy work operates not only as a vehicle for self-exploration and belonging for transnational families of historical diaspora, but is also central for the collective identity formation and the production of Indisch peoplehood.

Keywords:

• Multiracial
• Genealogy
• Racism
• Colonialism
• White Australia Policy
• Indisch People

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Erin Pugh for her insightful comments about the White Australia Policy and Dunja Cvjeticanin for editorial assistance.

Notes

[1] I use the terms ‘repatriates’, ‘children and grandchildren of repatriates’ and ‘repatriates’ descendants' for several reasons. The term repatriates is a problematic one as it refers to persons who return to their country of origin, and while the Indisch people whom I refer to as ‘repatriates’ were Dutch citizens before moving to the Netherlands, some of them had never been to the Netherlands before, and for many, the Dutch East Indies were their home. However, this term is more appropriate than ‘migrants’ or ‘refugees’ not only because the Indisch people were Dutch citizens, but also because of their Dutch heritage. It is not enough that the collective Indisch experiences have commonalities with migrant populations and refugees expelled from their places of origin, as they are not migrants or refugees in the legal sense. Furthermore, terms such as ‘repatriates’ and ‘children and grandchildren of repatriates’ avoid the problems that terms such as ‘first- second- or third-generation’ encounter; these are imprecise terms and make accurate reference difficult, as people often do not neatly fit into such categories.

[2] I do not provide details of their published work in order to retain the confidentiality of my interlocutors.

[3] Throughout this paper I have used pseudonyms in order to protect the privacy of my interlocutors.

[4] An offensive slang word, variously believed to originate from ‘Golliwogg’ to denote a blackface doll, or from the acronym of ‘(W)orthy (O)riental (G)entleman’ in the nineteenth century. It is commonly used to refer to non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans living in the West, especially, in Australia, to migrants from southern or eastern Europe (Greece, Italy, the Balkans, or other Slavic countries). It has been largely reclaimed by non-Anglo-Celtic European-Australians and sometimes accompanied by stereotypical associations between ethnicity and certain practices, such as in ‘frog wog’ for a person of French background or a ‘clog wog’ for those of Dutch origin.

[5] In 1855 (prior to Federation), the colony of Victoria was the first to implement anti-Chinese legislation followed two years later by South Australia and then by New South Wales in 1861. All pieces of legislation were aimed at incoming Chinese labourers who were arriving by the thousands, their numbers more than doubling from year to year to work on the gold fields. Queensland also implemented a Restriction Act, but its focus was on South Sea Islanders. All pieces of legislation were at one time repealed and then reintroduced over the period of the late 1800s (see, Jupp 2002).

[6] Hamilton documents that in 1947 and 1948, two people were denied entry to Australia: a teenage girl of Japanese French ancestry even though she travelled with a French passport and had relatives in Australia; and a Portuguese national engaged to an Australian man, denied entry because she was of partially Japanese descent (Hamilton 2012, p. 8).