NEWS WEEKLY, FEBRUARY 24, 1996
COVER STORY
The Federal Government continues to claim that its policies have brought about a dramatic improvement in the welfare of Aboriginal Australians.
Mabo -- despite the heat it generated -- has delivered all but nothing. Aboriginal health remains a disgrace. Aboriginals continue to die in custody.
Expensive inquiries, contentious legislation and buckets of money have been employed to no avail.
It is difficult to identify where Government policies have had any effect except on the members of the Aboriginal “industry” who have done very well from all the attention and largesse.
Of all the Federal Government’s actions, perhaps none is more scandalous than its handling of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair.
As GEOFFREY PARTINGTON explains, in this it had plenty of willing allies -- foremost among them representatives of the Christian churches.
Doreen Kartinyeri, a Ngarrindjeri woman employed at the time as an Aboriginal genealogist at the South Australian Museum, was at the heart of claims and controversies in 1994 about ‘women’s business’ on Hindmarsh Island. In June 1994 she claimed she was the custodian of a secret tradition of ‘women’s business’ which forbade the building of a bridge between Goolwa and Hindmarsh. She alleged she was the sole custodian among relatively young women of this knowledge.
This was difficult to reconcile with other claims she made, such as that these beliefs had been passed down to women, from mother to daughter, for the last 40,000 years. The three women she claimed had imparted knowledge to her of ‘women’s business’ were her grandmother, Sally Kartinyeri, her aunt, Rose Cropinyery, and Laura Kartinyeri, the daughter of Pinkie Mack, a midwife of the interwar years looked upon with veneration by all present Ngarrindjeri women.
Of these three, only Laura Kartinyeri was still alive in June 1994. The other two women had died some years earlier.
After Laura Kartinyeri, by then 89 years-old and the “eldest woman of the Ngarrindjeri nation”, learned of Doreen Kartinyeri’s claims, she wrote a letter to Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Tickner, on March 17, 1995, stating that she knew nothing of any ‘women’s business’ and had not passed it on to Doreen Kartinyeri.
The letter was tabled in the South Australian Parliament on March 23, 1995. Subsequently this old lady was threatened by women from the Aboriginal Land Rights Movement that she would be sent to gaol if she said anything more about Hindmarsh Island.
Evidence that Laura Kartinyeri and other senior ‘dissident’ Ngarrindjeri women rejected Doreen Kartinyeri’s claims about ‘women’s business’ led to the establishment by the South Australian government of a Royal Commission headed by Judge Iris Stevens.
One reason advanced by Doreen Kartinyeri, in Who magazine among other outlets, as to why other women had not been included in the handing down of ‘women’s business’ from mother to daughter, was that they were Christians. One difficulty with this claim was that the three women she named as her informants were all Christians. Furthermore, if the knowledge were passed from mother to daughter at puberty, as she also claimed on several occasions, it would make little difference what theological views were held by the teenage girls. If knowledge had been passed on in that way, there would have no need for Doreen Kartinyeri or anyone else to be chosen as its special custodian.
“DISSIDENT WOMEN”
The ‘dissident’ Ngarrindjeri women who gave testimony to the Royal Commission are all Christian, mostly belonging to the Uniting Church, successor to the Methodist Church which established a mission at Port McLeay, the focal centre of the Ngarrindjeri during the 19th century. 74 years-old Mrs Bertha Gollan, first of the dissident women to appear and a Ngarrindjeri, testified that all the women at Port McLeay were Christian and that Sally Kartinyeri was a very Christian woman, as did 56 year old Audrey Dix, who lived next door to Sally Kartinyeri for many years. Bertha Gollan and Audrey Dix had never previously heard of the ‘women’s business’ raised by Doreen Kartinyeri in June 1994. Bertha Gollan received threats that she would be sung to death if she gave evidence to the Royal Commission. Her reply was “If I die tomorrow, I die with a clear conscience”.
Dulcie Wilson, a 63 year old Ngarrindjeri woman, has been for many years a prominent member of the Salvation Army. In 1957 she was chosen as South Australian delegate to a Salvation Army conference in London and ten years ago was honoured in Millicent as “Citizen of the Year”. She was not invited to attend the meeting with Professor Cheryl Saunders in June 1994. Dulcie Wilson had never heard of any ‘women’s business’ relating to Hindmarsh Island. When living at the Port McLeay Mission she and her friends never heard that Hindmarsh Island was in any way a special place for Ngarrindjeri people. She rejected the notion she was not told women’s business because she was a Christian, since so were all the other Ngarrindjeri women.
All the other Ngarrindjeri women who appeared before the Royal Commission confirmed that in their knowledge over many years of the three women named by Doreen Kartinyeri as her informants, no mention was made of any ‘women’s business’.
THE SEALED ENVELOPES
Doreen Kartinyeri’s claims led to the appointment by Mr Tickner of Professor Cheryl Saunders to inquire into this ‘women’s business’. Professor Saunders was persuaded of its authenticity by Doreen Kartinyeri, and her friend and colleague Dr Fergie, a lecturer in anthropology in the University of Adelaide, who was appointed on June 17, 1994, by the Aboriginal Land Rights Movement (ALRM) as a ‘facilitator’ for the Ngarrindjeri women in their presentations to Professor Saunders.
What was alleged to be the most secret and sacred parts of the ‘women’s business’ were placed in sealed envelopes at the suggestion of Dr Fergie, even though she has admitted that “Ngarrindjeri culture does not have sacred-secret women’s knowledge, practice or (to use the colloquial expression) ‘business’ like that observed in the Western or Central Desert region”.
Not all women, not even all Ngarrindjeri women, have been allowed sight of the contents of the sealed envelopes, but only reliable supporters of Doreen Kartinyeri, including non-Aborigines.
Among Ngarrindjeri women refused access were Dorothy Wilson, Dulcie Wilson and Bertha Gollan.
Ms R. Layton, counsel for Doreen Kartinyeri, advised the Royal Commission on July 27, 1995, that “there had been a decision” that these Ngarrindjeri women and others could not read the contents of these envelopes.
The sealed envelopes have had an eventful history. On March 10, 1995, Ian McLachlan resigned as Shadow Minister of Aboriginal Affairs after it became known that their contents, sent inadvertently, so Mr Tickner’s Canberra office claimed, to the Opposition, had been photocopied within Mr McLachlan’s office.
Although the outside world does not know what precisely are the contents of the sealed envelopes in which the alleged ‘women’s business’ was placed, it is, as Judge Stevens observed, easy to infer their general character, since they had been discussed by several people in May and June, 1994, and those discussions were widely reported. No one has ever challenged that the ‘women’s business included claims that:
1. Hindmarsh Island had been used during the nineteenth century by Ngarrindjeri women as a place for aborting foetuses.
2. The Lower Murray was shaped like a woman’s internal sexual organs and had been regarded as sacred to women.
3. Building a bridge, as distinct from barrages or ferry ramps, between Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island would interrupt the “meeting of the waters” and destroy the fertility and perhaps the entire existence of the Ngarrindjeri people.
None of these beliefs was ever heard of in connection with Hindmarsh Island before May 1993, either in the extensive anthropological literature of from any statement ever publicly recorded.
Had these alleged beliefs been held in the past, there would have been some general public knowledge of them, if only to ensure that proper ritual avoidance procedures were observed.
There is a clear distinction between claiming that the content of particular knowledge is secret and that its very existence is secret. Whatever restrictions there were on any details of ‘women’s business’ which might have existed, these were no more and no less in 1994 than in earlier years.
Judge Stevens found that these beliefs had been concocted in 1994 in order to persuade the Federal Government to intervene to ban the building of the Hindmarsh Island bridge. She found that there had been no Aboriginal opposition to the bridge between its proposal in 1988 and October 1993.
She also found that between October 1993, when the Lower Murray Aboriginal Heritage Committee was persuaded by conservationist opponents of the bridge and the marina, and the last week of May 1994, there was no mention by any opponents of the bridge of any ‘women’s business’.
Even if there had been an ancient Ngarrindjeri belief that the building of a bridge between Hindmarsh Island and Goolwa would destroy Aboriginal fertility, affecting somehow all mothers past and future, as well as present, it might well be thought that the Christian churches would seek to dispel such foolish superstitions. The Christian message has been that the love of Christ casts out fear, including fear of pylons in river beds, as well as pointing the bone and singing to death.
Since the ‘dissident’ women at the Royal Commission were Christian and were subjected to threats of sorcery even in the courtroom, it might be supposed that Australia’s Christian churches might be sympathetic to them. The reality was utterly different.
Journalist Chris Kenny of Channel Ten Adelaide, who interviewed all associated with ‘women’s business’ willing to be interviewed, commented:
“Sadly, it is the Christian churches who have been pivotal in stifling sensitive debate here. They have worked against the Commission, fuelling racial divisions, and argued that we should turn a blind eye rather than seek the truth.”
The very setting up of a Royal Commission was attacked by the South Australian Council of Churches on the grounds that “using such legal machinery may risk undermining religious belief”.
“Kumarangk Coalition spokeswoman”, Ms Katrina Powe, apparently unaware that claims relating to the miraculous are meticulously tested by the Roman Catholic Church, compared the Royal Commission to “the staging of an investigation into the Christian belief in the ‘Virgin Mary’”.
Sister Janet Mead wrote to Chris Kenny to tell him, “I never watch Channel 10 [but] I was horrified to hear of your views regarding the Ngarrindjeri women and the persecution of them and their beliefs which you seem to be promoting”.
At a meeting in Maughan Church In July, 1995, sponsored by the Uniting Aboriginal Christian Congress and its Synod’s Social Justice Unit, Vi Deuschle, an ally of Doreen Kartinyeri among the Ngarrindjeri women, claimed:
“This has never been done before since the Inquisition. We’re calling this Brown’s Inquisition..... These judges won’t have full knowledge of the beliefs across cultural boundaries. They have no knowledge of the Aboriginal world view. So how can they make judgement about our beliefs?”
This assumes that Aborigines are able to understand Western beliefs, but that people of Western culture cannot understand Aboriginal beliefs. Vi Deuschle had no qualms about passing judgement on the Brown Government, or the Royal Commission, well before it reported.
Although no representative of the dissident women or the developers was invited, and despite her claim that Christian women had been excluded from knowledge of ‘women’s business’, Doreen Kartinyeri was at this gathering and declared:
“If the people of South Australia and people of Australia go along with this Royal Commission, there will never be reconciliation for me and I’m sure most of my Ngarrindjeri people will feel the same.”
The SA Council of Churches alleged:
“It appears that racism has been increased and the Government’s own credibility has been damaged by its failure to understand the divisive nature of its actions.”
Banning the bridge, of course, was not divisive at all. Nor were the chicaneries employed in the attempt to impose newly invented ‘women’s business’ on the gullible. Sir Ronald Wilson, President of Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a former President of the Uniting Church Assembly maintained:
“The Church must be involved because it follows the way of Jesus in showing solidarity with the marginalised. There’s never been a clearer case.... Such judicial examination of people’s religious beliefs is a nonsense and its attempt constitutes a breach of all people’s [sic] right to freedom of thought and religion.”
A Joint Statement by the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress and the Uniting Church’s Solidarity and Justice Unit proclaimed:
“We strongly condemn the Royal Commission into Ngarrindjeri women’s spiritual beliefs.... We are committed to a relationship of support and solidarity with the Ngarrindjeri people.... because some in the Ngarrindjeri community choose to hold divergent views, and some have succumbed to the pressure which has been applied, their opponents claim the traditional beliefs are lies.... Many Aboriginal people see the Royal Commission as a power play by Mr Brown who is seeking to intimidate Aboriginal people into submission...
“Australian society was founded on a fabrication which allowed indigenous people to be denied and dispossessed. White Australia’s history is one of colonisation, of imposing Western culture and world view on to Aboriginal people.... We seek to follow Jesus. Jesus himself suffered the full force of political and religious persecution. In our tradition there have been times when political leaders have sought to wield control over spiritual belief. It is not their right. It is not their place. We will stand against any government of any persuasion which seeks to do it.”
These claims about pressure and intimidation were directed against the wrong targets, whilst the systematic harassment of the Ngarrindjeri Christian women who testified to the Royal Commission never received a word of public censure from the churches of South Australia. Greg Mead in SA Catholic repeated the patently ridiculous claim about the SA Liberal Government:
“The only conclusion open is that the Royal Commission is a political stunt by the Brown Government aimed at embarrassing, dividing and discrediting Aboriginal people and using them as scapegoats for the losses of public money the whole bridge issue has occasioned.”
Not only did the Brown Liberal Government merely continue with the policy relating to the bridge developed by the Bannon ALP Government, but the Liberals initially opposed the bridge proposal and would have been pleased enough had the issue never been raised.
A letter written by Dulcie Wilson ought to have made painful reading to South Australian Christians:
“May I through your paper say how disappointed and disillusioned I have been over recent months to see several major churches come out in support of one group of Ngarrindjeri people who have been involved in the Hindmarsh Island dispute.
“The so-called dissident women were never consulted by any of these churches. I see this a blatant act of discrimination against another group of Ngarrindjeri people. As a descendant of that race and a committed Christian, who was christened at Point McLeay Mission Church during the long association of the then Methodist Church, I am therefore appalled to think that some of these churches could honestly take sides with one group against another....
“It was my understanding that the Christian missionaries’ main purpose was to bring the gospel message of Christ’s love and salvation to the Aborigines. I am therefore bewildered as to why some churches have come out in favour of so-called Aboriginal spirituality.”
None of the churches come out well from the Hindmarsh Bridge affair. Those concerned with charismatic powers seem to have ignored completely the anti-Christian doctrines that iron and wood construction could adversely affect childbirth among distant women.
Fear of being politically incorrect has paralysed the moral sensitivities of many Anglicans and Roman Catholics. The worst part has certainly been played by the Uniting Church of South Australia, which has more Aborigine members than the other churches, including most of the ‘dissident women’.
Rev Alan Jones, a retired Uniting Church Minister who resides at Goolwa and was until recently a member of the Goolwa District Council, made offers to the successive Moderators of the Uniting Church of South Australia to introduce them, or their representatives, to some of the ‘dissident women’, such as Dulcie Wilson, Dorothy Wilson and Jenny Grace.
The Moderators were reluctant to meet them and at the time of writing had not done so. Neither Moderator was willing to meet the Chapmans either, even though Wendy Chapman is a Uniting Church Christian and has sought such a meeting.
Few thoughts were further than evangelism from the minds of the British politicians and officials who decided in the 1780’s to establish a colony in New South Wales. The First Fleet did not contain enough clergy to minister to the spiritual needs of the convicts, let alone preach to the Aborigines.
Significant missionary activity in Australia was first attempted by the Wesleyans, forerunners of the Uniting Church, at Blacktown in 1821 and by 1839 they had five mission stations stretching from Port Phillip to Moreton Bay. The task facing missionaries to the Aborigines was a daunting one and many missions came to an ignominious end. One obvious barrier to Aboriginal understanding of Christianity was that so few of the whites they met seemed touched by its teaching. Another was the animist beliefs held so long by Aborigines.
Yet, despite massive obstacles, the missionaries achieved much success. Census figures show that well over half of Australian Aborigines professed the Christian religion by the end of the century. The Spanish Benedictines in Western Australia and the Lutherans at Hermannsburg in South Australia were among the most successful missionaries. Among British missionaries one of the most outstanding was Rev. George Taplin, the founder of the Methodist Mission to the Ngarrindjeri at Point McLeay.
Until very recently the mainstream Christian Churches of Australia regarded the conversion of the Aborigines as wonderful achievement and venerated the memories of their missionary forebears. Australian Christians felt pride, not shame, that missions had succeeded in transforming the world view held by so many Aborigines.
They could also point out that, overall, professing Christians avoided various pitfalls in life, achieved domestic felicity and engaged in public life more than did non-Christian Aborigines. It remains the case that Aboriginal Christians are better off by any secular measurements.
In the Hindmarsh Island dispute Mr Tickner and the Commonwealth Government are encouraging idle superstitions that do not even possess any claims to veneration because of their ancient origins, but were devised in 1994. They, with Doreen Kartinyeri and her allies, have done Aborigines a deep disservice, although not so grievous an injury as they have inflicted upon the Chapmans.
TESTING CLAIMS
More widely, there is in South Australia’s Aboriginal Heritage Act, as in comparable legislation federally and in other states, a serious failure to distinguish between intrusion into religious beliefs when these are merely a personal matter and the testing of claims that are forwarded in order to shape or change public policy.
When the interests of others are at stake, then Aborigines and every other people, Christians, Moslems and all religions, should be required to explain and justify publicly the grounds on which they seek to affect public policy.
Judge Stevens’ exposure of the ‘women’s business’ concocted at Hindmarsh Island in 1994 should be the signal for a thorough reconsideration of all heritage legislation throughout Australia.
--Dr Geoffrey Partington is a South Australian-based academic and writer.