ISSUE 32 ISSUE AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION SCREEN AUSTRALIAN 1 STUDYGUIDE ROBERT LEWIS MEETING DAISY BATES CURRICULUM SIGNPOST married a , Jack Bates, in 1885 and they had a son in 1886. MAGINE THAT THE WOMAN IN This film will be useful in: centre photograph on the right was In the early 1890s she left her family and Icoming to talk to your class. HISTORY travelled to England. She acquired skills that enabled her to work as a journalist. First, write down any impressions you • critically analysing important people have of her – such as what she was like, and events in the past She returned to at the turn of what she did, where, who she worked • exploring our culture and identity the century and was briefly re-united with, how she felt about her work, why • analysing representations of people with her husband and son. She left them she did it, when she was active. and issues soon after to travel to the Kimberley • understanding aspects of Aboriginal area of Western Australia to investigate Then list some of the questions you culture and identity claims of European atrocities against would want to ask her. Aboriginal people. Her report was a ENGLISH ‘whitewash’ but she became passion- Some questions I would like to ask her ately interested in Aboriginal languages are: ______• creating a biography and culture. ______To do this we need to study at least ______five different sets of information In 1904 Daisy Bates was appointed by ______about a person: the Western Australian government to ______1 The basic facts about the per- study the languages and customs of ______son Western Australian Aborigines. She 2 The person’s view of herself, who spent 6 years, travelling extensively The woman you have just wondered she was, what she did and what around the vast Western Australian about is Daisy Bates, who worked it meant to her frontier and prepared a manuscript for among Aboriginal people from the early 3 How others saw her publication entitled: The Native Tribes 1900s to her death in 1951. 4 The times in which she lived of Western Australia. (The manuscript 5 Our values and attitudes today, was rejected for publication and was • ‘Strait-laced do-gooder.’ and how these shape our judge- not published until 1985, 35 years after • ‘Pioneer anthropologist.’ ment of a person her death). • ‘True friend to the Aborigines.’ • ‘Eccentric recluse.’ In doing this for Daisy Bates we will In 1910, Daisy fled white society and she • ‘Spreader of untruths about Aborigi- look at both what the film says about set up a camp at Eucla, on the edge of nal life.’ her, and what other sources exist to the . Here, she continued help us gather information and make her ethnographic investigation of the These are some of the contradic- judgements. life and customs of Western Australian tory judgements that have been made Aborigines. Around this time Daisy Bates about her. Obviously, she was, and still WATCHING THE FILM also became a welfare worker and cared is, a controversial person in Australian KABBARLI for the Aboriginal people who were suf- history. fering cultural and physical dislocation ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 Watch the film Kabbarli, and discuss it as a result of the European colonisation So what do we make of this person? using this guide to help you summarise of their land. She moved to Ooldea in AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION some of the key information and ideas 1919, where she stayed for the next The film Kabbarli presents a view of in the film, and the short biographical sixteen years – and where we are first Daisy Bates that we can explore to help sketch of Bates to help you understand introduced to her in the film. This was understand the various judgements of the context. the period when the transcontinental her, but even more importantly, to see railway had been built, exposing many how biographies can be constructed. BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE OF DAISY Aboriginal people to Europeans for the You can then apply this structure to BATES first time. any other biography, and to any that you write yourself. Daisy Bates was a young Irishwoman Ernestine Hill, the well-known journalist 2 who came to Australia in 1883. She and writer, came to see her in 1932, and 3 ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION

2 3 in 1935 Hill helped Bates with the writ- you need to see a variety of other infor- from white hands, then they are nothing ing of her autobiography, serialised in mation and ideas. more than derelicts, rubbish, that will soon newspapers as ‘My natives and I’, and be pushed to one side and removed. My edited into The Passing of the Aborigi- A: WHO WAS DAISY BATES? poor people, how will they manage once nes in 1938. Her work with the Aborigi- kabbarli has gone? nal people of the area was recognised (see chart 02) with her appointed as a Commander of ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ the British Empire in 1934. B: SOME EXTRACTS FROM DAISY BATES’ WRITINGS My sole desire now is to live among my She was paid by the Commonwealth black friends . . . I have not a particle of Government to prepare her Western My People. When you see them walking na- personal ambition or self-seeking beyond Australian manuscripts for transfer to ked out of the desert they appear like kings my desire to impress upon the native race the National Library, completing that and queens, princes and princesses, but that there is one woman who is absolutely in 1940. standing barefoot on the edge of the railway their friend, without thought of self-ad- track, dressed in stiff and stinking clothes, vancement. She moved back to the Ooldea region black hands held out to receive charity in 1941, but was now in failing health. She returned to in 1945, and died there in 1951.

Summarising scenes from the film (see chart 01) How we find out about people What the film shows 1 Basic facts of her life (e.g. date of birth, Having made your notes, discuss the marriage, family, etc.) following questions, referring to your 2 The person’s view of herself (e.g. what notes to support your ideas. she said about herself, her motivations, etc.) 1 How would you describe Daisy 3 How others saw her (e.g. the comments Bates’ life? of people who knew her, Ernestine Hill, 2 What would you consider to be her etc.) main character traits, both good and bad? 4 The times in which she lived (e.g. at- 3 What motivated Daisy Bates – why titudes, values, experiences, etc.) did she do what she did? 5 Applying our values today (e.g. our 4 What did Daisy Bates achieve? attitudes to race, Indigenous culture, 5 Discuss the different views or judge- colonisation, etc.) ments of her that are presented in the film. 6 What image or idea about Aboriginal TWO VERSIONS culture do you get from the film? Daisy Bates’ version of her background Biographer Julia Blackburn’s version of 7 Many of her critics judge her harshly and arrival in Australia her background and arrival in Australia by today’s standards. Look at what Daisy O’Dwyer Daisy Dwyer she did – are there any aspects that you might disapprove of today, but Born 1863 Born 1859 that might be acceptable in the so- To a wealthy Protestant Irish family To a poor Catholic Irish family ciety of 70 years ago? Orphaned at 5 Orphaned at a young age 8 How well does the film present the ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 Brought up by a loving grandmother Brought up in an orphanage complexity of Daisy Bates’ life, and the issues that her life raises? How At her grandmother’s death, adopted by an Became a governess to an English family AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION do the makers of the film use differ- aristocratic English family ent techniques to tell the story and Tubercular illness led her to move to Aus- Travelled to Australia after a personal scan- raise issues? tralia, travelling first class dal involving a young man in the family Arrived in Queensland in 1884 Arrived in Queensland in 1883 and married CONSIDERING OTHER Edwin Murrant (later ‘Breaker Morant’) EVIDENCE Out of a spirit of independence became a Left Murrant after he was arrested for theft governess in NSW one month after their marriage In answering these questions you have really only drawn ideas and information Married drover Jack Bates in 1885 Married drover Jack Bates without having 4 from the film. To answer them more fully divorced Murrant 5 TOP - BOTTOM: CHART 01; CHART 02. ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION

4 5 ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ (Richard Hall, Black Armband Days, Vintage, dispossessed of their land and cultural Sydney, 1998) continuities and decimated by white I have never made servants or attendants of diseases. She devoted nearly fifty years them. I have waited upon the sick and the ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ to nursing and feeding these people and old, and carried their burdens, fed the blind recording their lives and deaths . . . Onto and the babies, sewed for the women and The people she writes about are repre- the figure of Bates as sacrificial mother buried the dead – only in the quiet hours sented as barely human, and certainly could be displaced white Australian guilt gleaning, gathering, learning . . . knowing not as deserving any recognisable for the colonialist crimes of disposses- how soon it would be too late. rights, justice or citizenship, in their sion and genocide. Her martyrdom, own country, which Bates in her writ- then and now, precluded the need for My work, as always, was confined to at- ing claims for England and Empire. Yet apologies or reconciliations, or even tendance upon the sick and feeble, the while these concepts are distressingly acknowledgement of responsibility for very old, and the very young. For the full- absent, there is much in her writing more than a century of systematic, if of- grown healthy male natives I had neither which dwells on her own selflessness, ten unofficial, discrimination . . . The im- rations nor blankets. I encouraged their her sense of duty, and her devotion to ages of Aboriginal people [in her book] hunting-crafts and the subsistence upon the welfare of the Indigenous popula- as hopelessly dependent, ‘irredeemably their own foods, which were to the natives tion. (Page 52) primitive and moribund’, coupled with plentiful in good seasons, nourishing and the outrageously inaccurate but seduc- suitable. The tragedy is that [her] book sold tively sensationalist portrait of a race of well, overseas as well as in Australia, and cannibals . . . make up (Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines, and was accepted as an authoritative what one academic has called ‘the most John Murray, London, 1966) and accurate account of the state of destructive book written on Aborigines’. the Aborigines: that the race was dying, (Pages 1-2) C: SOME CRITICS OF DAISY that they were cannibals and baby kill- BATES ers, that those of mixed descent were a Rowena Mohr, ‘Neo-colonialist Hagiography horror who could not fit anywhere, and and the Making of an Australian Legend: Daisy Daisy Bates: [wrote] The Passing of the that those who were ‘fully Aboriginal’ Bates’, Lateral, Issue 2 1999 Aborigines, the title of which reflects her should be kept isolated and segregated conviction that the Aborigines were a to prevent any more products of mixed D: SOME MORE SYMPATHETIC dying race. It is this view (which led to unions, were all baseless and destruc- ASSESSMENTS her paternalistic and condescending tive assumptions promoted through behaviour towards Aboriginal communi- Bates’s book. (Page 58) I believe that in her writing about the ties) and her unsubstantiated accounts Aborigines of Western Australia she of cannibalism amongst indigenous With Daisy Bates, the more I have told the truth about her findings, though communities which have made her read of her work, the more I have read later in life, when she was living in South unpopular. about her, the stronger the antipathy I Australia, she sometimes exaggerated have felt. I have disliked her, and the in order to make her articles saleable (Extract from Frontier, www.abc.net.au/ image of herself that she promoted, so to the newspapers (thus earning money frontier/glossary.htm) much, I have felt that it might be better she badly needed for her own survival). not to work on her, she has, after all, Moreover she was untruthful about her ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ questioned as an anthropologist and own past life because she was con- exposed as a racist and a liar. There is sumed by ambition for upward mobility Her book, The Passing of the Aborigi- no need to write about her or to become in a world that had not been kind to her. nes, published in 1938, by its very title involved in the continued exposure of (Pages 47-48) was [seen as] evidence from someone her work; it might be better to let her who knew them that the race was fin- sink like a stone.’ (Page 59) She always regarded miscegenation ished. In more sinister ways the book [the mixing of the races] as unspeak- ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 implicitly conformed that no-one could Ann Standish, ‘Devoted Service to a Dying ably horrible and believed, as did many be blamed for this. (Page 148) Race’?: Daisy Bates and The Passing of the of her contemporaries, that ‘half-castes’ AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION Aborigines, in Joy Damousi and Katharine El- shared bad traits of both races and the A developed capacity for self-delusion linghaus (eds), Citizenship, Women and Social good traits of neither. She was not was her defence against the unbear- Justice, History Department, The University of afraid to say so, providing a reason able, whether it was the orphanage, the , 1999) for the dislike and disdain she inspired fact of being born to the wrong class, in those Aborigines who were forming or her husbands and her child . . . In ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ political organisations in the 1920s and her own way she loved the Aborigines, 1930s. There is no doubt that she had but she loved them when they served What [Daisy Bates] is remembered for the welfare of the full-descent people her needs and played the role she had . . . is her philanthropic dedication to at heart even though she advocated ill- 6 designed for them. (Page 169) various groups of tribal Aborigines considered measures that today sound 7 ISSUE 32 ISSUE 32 AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION

6 7 like fencing them into a sort of native tribal law to the white, playing with the belief that Aboriginal full-bloods would zoo. (Pages 55-56) children, caring for the sick, comforting become extinct unless segregated the dying. (Page 7) from Europeans was proved wrong by On the positive side [of the debate about the population statistics of the tears her abilities as an anthropologist] are her Sixty of her ninety years were spent in following the Passing. Nevertheless her genuine additions to knowledge about Australia, which became her own dearly widely read defeatist views helped prod the Aborigines of the west and her in- beloved country, her home ground. Even governments into action in medicine and novative methods of discovering this so, she was never typically Australian. child care. knowledge. (Page 65) She was obsessed with the Victorian vista of a boundless, deathless Empire R.V.S.Wright, Australian Dictionary of Biogra- Finally, the questions remain: why did on which the sun would never set. The phy, 1891-1939, Melbourne University Press, Daisy Bates choose a life of privation well-spring of all her sacrifice and devo- Melbourne and discomfort? Was it ambition to tion was to be found in the clichØs of make a name for herself? Was it genu- England’s greatness, in kind hearts and 1 What do the critics stress? Why ine liking and concern for the Aboriginal coronets, in the White Man’s Burden, do they find Bates such a hateful people? Was it an abiding curiosity to in her adoration of the divine right of figure? find out more about them? After spend- kings. Royal grace and favour were the 2 Do you think those criticisms are ing much of the last twelve years study- mainspring of her ideals, the one reward fair? ing her papers and everything written she wished for through the arid years. 3 What do the supporters stress? Why about her, and interviewing a few very (Pages 11-12) do they find Bates such an admira- old people who had met her, I have to ble figure? confess I cannot answer these ques- (Ernestine Hill, Kabbarli. A Personal Memoir of 4 Do you think that praise is fair? tions. I believe that it was a mixture of all Daisy Bates. Angus and Robertson, 1973) 5 Why is Daisy Bates such a contro- these suggested motives that kept her at versial figure in Australian History her self-imposed task. (Page 65) ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ now? 6 What is your opinion and evaluation (Isobel White, ‘Daisy Bates: Legend and Though applauded for the self-sacrifice of her? Reality’ in Julie Marcus ed, First In Their of her welfare work, Daisy Bates had no 7 Do you think the film Kabbarli is a Field. Women and , Melbourne illusion about her own motives, which good representation of her life, and University Press, Melbourne, 1993) she privately identified with those that of the controversy and divided opin- had previously impelled her to enjoy ion that surrounds her now? ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞ such sports as hockey, tennis and fox hunting. This study guide was produced by ATOM. She came to the Stone Age to learn, For more information about ATOM study giving in return. She was neither teacher, She wrote some 270 newspaper articles guides or The Speakers’ Bureau visit our missionary, nor nurse, but all three as about Aboriginal life, valuably sensitive web site: www.metromagazine.com.au the need arose . . . All she owned, her accounts of cultures customarily pre- or email: [email protected] personal income with all she could earn, sented in the press as unintelligibly bi- was given to meet the needs of her peo- zarre. However, her repeated, emphatic ple, to lighten their miseries, providing, assertions concerning Aboriginal canni- defending, crusading, advising, explain- balism aroused much controversy. She ing white man’s law to the primitive, strongly opposed miscegenation; her ISSUE 32 AUSTRALIAN SCREEN EDUCATION

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