Oh 771/2 Douglas Walker

STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION OH 771/2 Full transcript of an interview with DOUGLAS WALKER on 17 November 2004 by Dr Sally Stephenson for the OODNADATTA MUSEUM ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Recording available on CD Access for research: Unrestricted Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library OH 771/2 DOUGLAS WALKER NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT This transcript was created by the J. D. Somerville Oral History Collection of the State Library. It conforms to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription which are explained below. Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge. It is the Somerville Collection's policy to produce a transcript that is, so far as possible, a verbatim transcript that preserves the interviewee's manner of speaking and the conversational style of the interview. Certain conventions of transcription have been applied (ie. the omission of meaningless noises, false starts and a percentage of the interviewee's crutch words). Where the interviewee has had the opportunity to read the transcript, their suggested alterations have been incorporated in the text (see below). On the whole, the document can be regarded as a raw transcript. Abbreviations: The interviewee’s alterations may be identified by their initials in insertions in the transcript. Punctuation: Square bracket [ ] indicate material in the transcript that does not occur on the original tape recording. This is usually words, phrases or sentences which the interviewee has inserted to clarify or correct meaning. These are not necessarily differentiated from insertions the interviewer or by Somerville Collection staff which are either minor (a linking word for clarification) or clearly editorial. Relatively insignificant word substitutions or additions by the interviewee as well as minor deletions of words or phrases are often not indicated in the interest of readability. Extensive additional material supplied by the interviewee is usually placed in footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page rather than in square brackets within the text. A series of dots, .... .... .... .... indicates an untranscribable word or phrase. Sentences that were left unfinished in the normal manner of conversation are shown ending in three dashes, - - -. Spelling: Wherever possible the spelling of proper names and unusual terms has been verified. A parenthesised question mark (?) indicates a word that it has not been possible to verify to date. Typeface: The interviewer's questions are shown in bold print. Discrepancies between transcript and tape: This proofread transcript represents the authoritative version of this oral history interview. Researchers using the original tape recording of this interview are cautioned to check this transcript for corrections, additions or deletions which have been made by the interviewer or the interviewee but which will not occur on the tape. See the Punctuation section above.) Minor discrepancies of grammar and sentence structure made in the interest of readability can be ignored but significant changes such as deletion of information or correction of fact should be, respectively, duplicated or acknowledged when the tape recorded version of this interview is used for broadcast or any other form of audio publication. 2 J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 771/2 Interview with Douglas Walker recorded by Sally Stephenson at Oodnadatta, South Australia, on 17th November 2004 for the State Library of South Australia’s Oodnadatta Museum Oral History Project. TAPE 1 SIDE A This is Sally Stephenson interviewing Douglas Walker at the Dunjibar Community Council office in Oodnadatta on the 17th November 2004 for the Oodnadatta Museum Redevelopment Project. The interview focuses on Douglas’s life in Oodnadatta and in the Northern Territory. Douglas, can you tell me your full name, please? My name’s Douglas Walker, but I’ve actually got a cultural traditional name that identifies me as a Western ....., from the Western MacDonald Range areas of Alice Springs, so I’ve got a skin name which is Jabardani[?]. And I’ve got my sons and daughters, of course, along that cultural traditional names in the system for a female is Napanangka[?], like my daughter Valerie, and my sons Andrew and Douglas are for males Jabanungas[?]. So you were born in the Northern Territory – where exactly were you born? I was born, at that time was a place called the Native Ward, somewhere within the Alice Springs Hospital complex at that time. It was a ward where we were separated from the other people and of course with the name ‘Native Ward’ you don’t have to explain much, it was where most of our Aboriginal people were kept in this hospital, called the Native Ward. And when were you born? ..... ..... for about thirty-odd years when I came down to South Australia, and after living thirty-odd years in South Australia I went back to Alice Springs and I had to check my date of birth again and I was just sort of in the process of going to the hospital and had a phone call from the secretary or the registrar, somebody in the Alice Springs Hospital at that time, and said, ‘Can we make an appointment, Mr Walker? We’d just like to clarify your date of birth.’ And so I said, ‘Okay, look, I’ll see you some time tomorrow.’ So I went along and enquired about why all of a sudden I had three date of births, and it didn’t take me long to work that out: it was part of the assimilation policies at that time where, once they’d taken children away in the Stolen Generation, to confuse them and to leave them with no identity, they 3 gave children someone else’s name and date of birth or confused them with two or three dates of birth and that sort of thing. So it took me a long time to sort of – I had to go back to my elder sisters and my brothers at that time because my parents were deceased for a long time and with the last remnants of my family, my mother’s and my father’s, just to find out how old I was, because I had three dates of birth, which was very confusing. But after I talked to my eldest sister and my eldest brother and my aunties and that sort of thing we confirmed that yes, I was born round about 30th of the first 1953. And so what were your parents’ names? My father’s name was ..... He was born somewhere in Oodnadatta, I think, on his birth certificate. And my mother, she was a Western ....., from a place called ..... about two hundred and something-odd kilometres west, on the Western MacDonnell Ranges, west of Alice Springs. Her name was Emma. She was a ....., and so that’s my mother’s skin name; and my father’s skin name was, strangely enough, the same skin name as my sons, Jabanunga. And you mentioned that you’ve got some brothers and sisters: what are their names? I’ve got a sister buried in Adelaide. She was part of the Stolen Generation. She’s buried in Adelaide, down the Centennial Park Cemetery at Pasadena in Adelaide. My other sister, the only sister that I’ve got alive, is Martha. She’s about eighty- something, ninety, and she’s blind. She’s at Alice Springs. And my living brothers: Patrick, he’s in Port Augusta; Sandy, he’s in Darwin; and Mickey lives in Milikapiti on Snake Bay Island. And I’ve got a brother buried in Darwin – Sidney, named after my father; and one of my elder sisters, Joy, she’s buried in Darwin; and I’ve got three eldest brothers buried in Alice Springs – Dickie, Charlie and Ivan – and of course with Mum and Dad in the old cemetery. Also a sister that I never knew that passed away before I was born. And my niece and a whole lot of my family that are still alive today and sadly a lot that have passed away are buried in Alice Springs Cemetery. So if we come now to your childhood, you mentioned you were born in the Northern Territory and you were with your family for some years, weren’t you. Can you describe your early childhood with your parents and brothers and sisters? It was a childhood that was marked by alcoholism played a very big part at that time, sadly enough, even though the law of the day did not permit dark-coloured people to attend pubs and buy alcohol and liquor. But sadly alcoholism was still straight into 4 the town camps and in the homes of a lot of Aboriginal people at that time, and so alcoholism played a big part. I was with my family at that time – me and my young brother and my mother and my father and my eldest brother and sisters and their wives and husbands and their children – and we actually did not live in the actual Alice Springs town boundary at that time. We had camps outside of the town boundaries, because in those days the policy of the day and the law of the day was if you could speak good English you were deemed suitable enough to live in a house and if you showed that you could live properly in a house and make use of the house and the things that are meant to keep the house tidy and all that sort of thing you were deemed ‘educated’ so you would move into a government housing commission.

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