Civilising Spaces: Government, Missionaries and Land in Education in Western Australia

Swartz, Rebecca

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_3

Rebecca Swartz⁴

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the processes of ‘protecting’ and ‘civilising’ Indigenous people through education, using the case of Western Australia. Education was related to particular ideas about the use of colonised space. Indigenous adults and children alike needed to be educated into the correct relationship to land. Part of this could happen through situating schools in particular places—urban or rural—that would lead to children’s civilisation. In spite of the imperial government’s call for local legislatures to provide funding for education, this was hardly ever achieved, and if it was, this was done hesitantly, as local legislatures were concerned about spending on education. In the settler colonies, the humanitarian ideas that allowed for the development of education in the West Indies were substantially challenged by settler colonialism.

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Notes

1.
See Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British settlements); with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index, HC 425 (1837), 79.
2.
Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 90.
3.
Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines, 79.
4.
John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, Volume 1 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 71.
5.
Ibid., 75.
6.
Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 20.
7.
Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 8 (2006), 387–409, 395.
8.
See Elizabeth Elbourne, ‘The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 4 (2003), n.p.
9.
Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 15–16.
10.
Megan Watkins, ‘Teachers’ Tears and the Affective Geography of the Classroom’, Emotion, Space and Society, 4 (2011), 137–143, 137.
11.
Ibid., 138.
12.
Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonisation and the Colonies: Delivered before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, and 1841 (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman’s, 1842), Lecture XVII, 179.
13.
Ibid., 180.
14.
Damon Ieremia Salesa, Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 27.
15.
Ibid., 31.
16.
John Milloy, ‘A National Crime’: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986 (Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press, 2000), 13; James Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 133.
17.
Salesa, Racial Crossings, 122–132.
18.
Irwin to Earl Grey, 23.12.1847, The National Archives at Kew, CO 18/45, No. 62. Hereafter all CO correspondence is from this source.
19.
Merivale to Hawes, 28.04.1847, note on ibid.
20.
Bain Attwood, ‘Returning to the Past: The South Australian Colonisation Commission, the Colonial Office and Aboriginal Title’, The Journal of Legal History, 34 (2013), 50–82, 54.
21.
Mark Hickford, Lords of the Land: Indigenous Property Rights and the Jurisprudence of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 62–63.
22.
Salesa, Racial Crossings, 29.
23.
Penelope Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children as a Potential Labour Force in Swan River Colony, 1829–1850’, Journal of Australian Studies, 16 (1992), 41–55, 41.
24.
Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants & Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2002), 101. The 1848 census listed 548 aborigines as employed, with only 6530 white settlers present in the colony. Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 47.
25.
Shirleene Robinson, ‘Resistance and Race: Aboriginal Child Workers in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Australia’, in Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World, ed. by Shirleene Robinson and Simon Sleight (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 129–143, 130.
26.
Instructions to Governor Hutt, State Records Office, Western Australia [Hereafter WASRO], Con.621/1.
27.
The exact numbers of injuries and deaths are debated, as the figures that Stirling reported, of twenty Aboriginal deaths, include only Aboriginal men. See John Harris, ‘Hiding the Bodies: The Myth of the Humane Colonisation of Australia’, Aboriginal History, 27 (2003), 79–104, 86.
28.
Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies). Return to an address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 5 August 1844;—for, copies or extracts from the despatches of the governors of the Australian colonies, with the reports of the protectors of aborigines, and any other correspondence to illustrate the condition of the aboriginal population of the said colonies, from the date of the last papers laid before Parliament on the subject, (papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 August 1839, no. 526), [Hereafter Aborigines (Australian Colonies)], HC 627 (1844), No. 34, 381.
29.
Salesa shows that the New Zealand Company constructed New Zealand as ‘exceptional’: the perfect place for settlers to live and with the ‘best “natives”’. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 49–50.
30.
Sir George Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery, Vol. 2 (London: T. and W. Boone, 1841), 365.
31.
Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 381.
32.
Ibid., 382.
33.
Ibid., 383.
34.
Grey, Journals, 382–384.
35.
Ibid.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Colonial Secretary’s notice, 23.06.1841, Western Australia Government Gazette (Perth: Government Printer, 1841) [Hereafter WAGG], 25.06.1841.
38.
Ibid.; Hutt to Russell, 21.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 15, 394.
39.
Peter Barrow was appointed as Native Protector in the York district, and Charles Symmons was based in Perth. Both travelled from London to take up these positions. Barrow served for less than two years. Symmons served in that position, and other government positions, including as the Assistant Police Magistrate, Immigration Agent, Acting-Sheriff and Assistant Superintendent of Police, until he retired in 1873. Paul Hasluck, Black Australians: A Survey of Native Policy in Western Australia, 2nd edn (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1970), 72–73. See also Hutt to Marquis of Normanby, 11.02.1840, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 7, 371.
40.
On Aboriginal Protectors, see Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, ‘Trajectories of Protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in Early 19th century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’, New Zealand Geographer, 64 (2008), 205–220 and Colonization.
41.
Quarterly Report of Native Protector, Charles Symmons, 12.04.1844, WAGG.
42.
Symmons Report, 09.07.1841, WAGG.
43.
Symmons to Brown (Colonial Secretary), 31.12.1840, Encl. 4 in Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, No. 11, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), 389.
44.
Jessie Mitchell, In Good Faith? Governing Indigenous Australia through God, Charity and Empire 1825–1855 (Canberra: ANU EPress, 2011), 103.
45.
Tiffany Shellam, Shaking Hands on the Fringe: Negotiating the Aboriginal World at King George’s Sound (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2009), 178.
46.
Hutt to Russell, 10.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 45, 394.
47.
Hutt to Stanley, 08.04.1842, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 18, 412.
48.
Robert Kenny, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathaniel Pepper and the Ruptured World (Carlton, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 2010), 72.
49.
Glenelg to Gipps, 31.01.1838, No. 72, Historical Records of Australia [Hereafter HRA] 1, Series 19, 255.
50.
Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 115.
51.
Dianne Reilly Drury, La Trobe, the Making of a Governor (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2006), 135.
52.
Ibid., 191.
53.
Jane Lydon, Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission (Plymouth: AltiaMira Press, 2009), 89; Robert Kenny, ‘La Trobe, Lake Boga and the “Enemy of Souls”: The First Moravian Mission in Australia’, La Trobe Journal, 71 (2003), 96–113, 100.
54.
GS Airey to CJ La Trobe, 24.12.1842, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), Encl. in No. 64, 260.
55.
Stanley to Gipps, 20 Dec 1842, HRA I, Series 12, 438.
56.
See Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) on the spatial location of imperial power.
57.
Hutt to Russell, 10.07.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 45, 392.
58.
Symmons’ Report, 13.01.1843, WAGG.
59.
Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841 Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 382.
60.
Hutt to Stanley, 21.01.1843, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 23, 416.
61.
The position of Native Protector was created in 1839, and replaced the previous title of Native Interpreter. Mitchell, In Good Faith?, 181.
62.
Neville Green, Broken Spears: Aboriginals and Europeans in the Southwest of Australia (Cottesloe: Focus Education Services, 1984), 138. See also Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 47.
63.
Missionary Louis Giustiniani had opened a small school in Guildford in 1836, but by this stage, it had closed, making the Wesleyan school the only Aboriginal school in the colony until George King opened an SPG school in Fremantle in 1842.
64.
The position of Native Interpreter was created in 1834. Francis Armstrong’s role was act as an intermediary between the Aboriginal and settler population.
65.
Smithies to the WMMS, 08.10.1840, FBN 1, Australia Correspondence, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) WMMS Archive. On the Wesleyan school see John Harris, One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope (Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1994), 269–278; Mitchell, In Good Faith?; William McNair and Hilary Rumney, Pioneer Aboriginal Mission: The Work of Wesleyan Missionary John Smithies in the Swan River Colony 1840–1855 (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1981).
66.
Richard B. Roy, ‘A Reappraisal of Wesleyan Methodist Mission in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, as Viewed through the Ministry of the Rev. John Smithies (1802–1872)’ (PhD thesis, Edith Cowan University, 2006).
67.
It is worth pointing out the parallel with the schools for Aboriginal Canadians here, as they used this method of settling Aboriginal children in white homes, known as ‘planting out’. Milloy, A National Crime, 28.
68.
Symmons Annual Report, 8.01.1841, WAGG. Emphasis in original.
69.
Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, 382.
70.
George Fletcher Moore, ‘On the Aboriginal Race of Western Australia’, Perth Gazette, 20.02.1841, 3.
71.
‘Regulations and Arrangements relative to the Native Children who may be provided with situations in the houses of the settlers and who attend the Wesleyan Methodist School at Perth, commenced September 1840’, Encl. 3 in Hutt to Russell, 15.05.1841, Aborigines (Australian Colonies), No. 11, 388.
72.
Symmons Annual Report, 31.12.1842, Encl. 1 in Hutt to Stanley, 21.01.1843, 419.
73.
‘Regulations and arrangements relative to the Native Children’, 387.
74.
This is interesting, especially in light of attempts to ‘civilise’ Aboriginal people at the time. The need for them to represent ‘savage’ culture to the colonists on this public occasion implies their lack of ability to adapt to the settler society. This incident is also discussed by Mitchell, In Good Faith?, 65.
75.
The Journal of Francis Tuckfield MS1134, Box 655, letter to [illeg.] 31.06.1840, from Buntingdale, Geelong, Port Phillip, State Library Victoria.
76.
Smithies to WMMS, 20.09.1841, FBN 1, WMMS SOAS.
77.
‘Amusements of the week’, Perth Gazette, 5.06.1841, 2.
78.
Inquirer, 9.06.1841.
79.
Letter from Smithies to the Editor of the Perth Gazette, 19.06.1841.
80.
From the editor, The Inquirer, 23.06.1841.
81.
Lester and Dussart, ‘Trajectories of Protection’, 213.
82.
Executive Council Meeting 24.11.1840, WASRO, 1058/3.
83.
Ibid.
84.
‘Examination of the Native Children’, Perth Gazette, 19.11.1842, 2.
85.
Smithies to WMMS, 01.05.1842, Thea Shipley Collection, ACC7158A/15, State Library Western Australia.
86.
Symmons Report, 21.01.1842, WAGG.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Joanna Cruickshank, ‘“To Exercise a Beneficial Influence Over a Man”: Marriage, Gender and the Native Institutions in Early Colonial Australia’, in Evangelists of Empire?: Missionaries in Colonial History, ed. by Amanda Barry, Joanna Cruickshank, Andrew Brown-May and Peatricia Grimshaw (Melbourne: University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre, 2008), 115–124, 118.
89.
Ibid.
90.
I have touched on Aboriginal marriages in Australian schools in Rebecca Swartz, ‘Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 18 (2017), n.p.
91.
‘An Act to prevent the enticing away the Girls of the Aboriginal Race from School, or from any Service in which they are employed’, Act 6, 1844, Western Australia.
92.
Hetherington, ‘Aboriginal Children’, 52.
93.
Symmons report, 12.04.1844, WAGG.
94.
Smithies to WMMS, 25.10.1843, FBN 2 SOAS.
95.
Ibid.
96.
Symmons report, 22.01.1847, WAGG.
97.
Neville Green, ‘Access, Equality and Opportunity? The Education of Aboriginal Children in Western Australia, 1840–1978’ (PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2004), 85.
98.
Ibid., 86.
99.
John Brown, ‘Policies in Aboriginal Education in Western Australia, 1829–1897’ (M.Ed thesis, University of Western Australia, 1979), 88.
100.
Louis Tilbrook, Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses of Aborigines of South-Western Australia 1829–1914 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 1983), 20.
101.
Symmons report, 03.02.1852, WAGG.
102.
Cowan to Colonial Secretary 11.07.1852, CSO 231, WASRO.
103.
Ibid.
104.
Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 03.03.1852, CSR 230, WASRO. The introduction of convicts to the area, and their proximity to the school, was also seen as a bad influence on the children, and Smithies asked the Governor to ensure that the depot for the ticket of leave men was moved.
105.
Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 09.04.1855, CSO 317, WASRO.
106.
Cowan Report, 20.02.1855, WAGG.
107.
Cowan to Colonial Secretary, 21.01.1856, CSO 348, WASRO.
108.
Cowan Report, 20.02.1856, vol. 348, WASRO.
109.
See Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003).
110.
Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology (London: Cassell, 1999), 173.
111.
Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 5.
112.
Lester and Dussart, Colonization, 1.

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Department of History, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Rebecca Swartz

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Swartz, R. (2019). Civilising Spaces: Government, Missionaries and Land in Education in Western Australia. In: Education and Empire. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95909-2_3
Published: 10 January 2019
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