EPISODE 3

A STUDY GUIDE by Robert Lewis

http://www.metromagazine.com.au

http://www.theeducationshop.com.au OVERVIEW OF THE SERIES chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world’s greatest empire. Over seven episodes, First Australians depicts the true stories of individuals – both black and white – caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia’s most transformative period of history. The story begins in 1788 in , with the friendship between an Englishman (Governor Phillip) and a warrior () and ends in 1993 with Koiki Mabo’s legal challenge to the foundation of Australia. First Australians chronicles the collision of two worlds and the genesis of a new nation.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that the programs may contain images and voices of deceased persons.

SCREEN EDUCATION 2 The seven episodes in the series cover key events, people and places throughout all Australia:

Episode 1: ‘They Have Come To Stay’ Sydney and (1788– 1824)

The first Australians and the British, the most powerful Empire in history, come face to face in Sydney on 26 January 1788. Their differences are immense but Episode 4: ‘There is No Other Law’ Australians are governed by ‘protective apprehension quickly turns to curiosity. Central Australia (1878–1897) legislation’ which binds them to Friendships form, some between reserves, controls their wages, powerful men such as Governor Arthur Throughout the history of white residency, ability to marry and travel. Phillip and the Aboriginal Bennelong. settlement, individual white men, good man William Cooper forms But by the time this pair leave for and bad, have significantly affected the Australian Aborigines League in London three years later, relations the first Australians. Supported by 1933 to continue his life-long campaign between the two races have soured. pastoralists keen to make their fortune, for equality. His nephew also becomes The bloodshed worsens as settlers the homicidal police officer Constable a political animal; Doug Nichols, a spread out across the land. Willshire, brings mayhem to the Church of Christ pastor who becomes Arrernte nation in Central Australia. Episode 2: ‘Her Will to Survive’ a champion for those affected by the With the authorities turning a blind eye, (1803–1880) Maralinga nuclear bomb tests in the the telegraph operator Frank Gillen 1950s. The land grab moves south to stops him. Gillen’s other legacy is Tasmania. In an effort to protect the real comprehensive records of the Arrernte Episode 7: ‘We are No Longer estate prices, it is decided to remove people’s way of life. Shadows’ and the Torres the Tasmanian Aboriginal people from Strait Islands (1967–1993) Episode 5: ‘Unhealthy Government the island. The Government enlists Experiment’ (1897– Eddie Koiki Mabo fights for Australian an Englishman for the job, who is 1937) law to recognize that his people own helped by a young Aboriginal woman, Murray Island, where they have lived . Jandamurra is born on a cattle station for generations. In 1992, six months in the Kimberley in the 1870s. His Episode 3: ‘Freedom For Our Lifetime’ after his death and a decade after the hybrid life takes a bloody turn when he (1860–1890) statement of claim was first lodged in trades in his status as a police tracker Queensland, the highest court in the The threat of extinction hovers over the for his own people. Gladys Gilligan is land decides in Mabo’s favour. The first Australians of Victoria at the time one of more than 50,000 half-caste outcome overturns the notion of terra clan leader children plucked from her family and nullius, that is, the notion that the land seeks land from the authorities. He sent to a mission. The Chief Protector of belonged to no-one at the time of white soon gives up and leads his people to Aborigines, A.O. Neville, institutionalizes settlement. the banks of the Yarra River, claiming her first son, orders her to be arrested, a parcel of land, . With and denies her the right to marry three The series provides rich information, the help of a Scottish preacher, and times, but she remains resolutely and raises controversial and inspired by the farming practices of the independent. challenging issues and ideas about settlers, the community prospers – until Australia’s past, present and possible Episode 6: ‘A Fair Go for a Dark Race’ the authorities step in and resist self- futures. South-Eastern Australia (1937–1967) determination. Across the continent, the first

SCREEN EDUCATION 3 CURRICULUM APPLICABILITY

First Australians is suitable for middle and senior secondary students studying:

• Australian History

• Society and Environment / Human Society and its Environment / Social Education THINKING ABOUT • How did the reserves function? • Indigenous Studies. THE PERIOD • What was life like for people on the Introduction to the guide reserves? This episode covers the period 1860 to This study guide provides discussion • In what ways were they successful 1890 in Victoria, and in particular the points, additional material and and/or failures? policy of the creation and running of classroom activities to help teachers Government Aboriginal Reserves. • What happened to the reserves? and students develop understanding of Australia’s past and the experiences Some focus questions that • What impacts did the reserves have of Indigenous and non-indigenous any study of that period on the Aboriginal people involved? would try to answer Australians through these rich You will be asked after watching resources. • What attitudes existed towards the episode to decide how this film The ‘Exploring the story’ section is Aboriginal people at this time? contributes to your knowledge and understanding of, and your empathy designed to help middle secondary • Why were Aboriginal reserves with, the people who were part of this students follow the narrative. created? historical time. The ‘Exploring the series as a • Why were they considered necessary representation of history’ section is to and appropriate? enable senior students to apply critical analysis to the series as a historical • How did the Government manage source. these reserves?

The ‘Exploring issues and ideas’ and the ‘Telling the story’ sections can be used at the teacher’s discretion with both middle and senior secondary students.

It is recommended that teachers show each episode in segments rather than in a single sitting, particularly for middle secondary students. The study guide suggests suitable breaks or pause points. EPISODE 3: ‘Freedom For Our Lifetime’

The threat of extinction hovers over the first Australians of Victoria at the time Wurundjeri clan leader Simon Wonga seeks land from the authorities. He soon gives up and leads his people to the banks of the Yarra River, claiming a parcel of land, Coranderrk. With the help of a Scottish preacher, and inspired by the farming practices of the settlers, the community prospers – until the authorities step in and resist self- determination.

SCREEN EDUCATION 4 EXPLORING THE STORY

The story progresses through several stages. Students should be able to pause the film at the suggested stages to reflect on the stages of the story being told.

Stage Approximate Aspects of the story to consider time

1 00:00 – 03:20 1. Summarize the situation of the First Australians in Victoria at the start of this episode.

2. The First Australians of Victoria had been overwhelmed by European settlement in the thirty years between 1835 and 1865. Why had this happened?

2 03:20 – 08:10 3. What were the impacts of European settlement on the life of the First Australians?

4. What different ideas about (and attitudes to) the First Australians existed among policy makers and influential people? What general beliefs or attitudes did the Europeans have towards the expected fate of the First Australians?

5. Why did Wonga want a special area of land for his people?

3 08:10 – 19:20 6. Why did the Government adopt a policy of creating Reserves for the First Australians?

7. How and why was Coranderrk chosen?

8. What was the role of missionaries such as John Green and Friedrich Hagenaeur in the lives of the First Australians at this time?

9. How was religion a ‘double edged sword’?

10. Describe the qualities and role of Simon Wonga and in this period.

11. Why was Coranderrk initially so successful?

4 19:20 – 46:30 12. Why did the Government want to close Coranderrk down?

13. How did the Government undermine its success?

14. What strategies did Barak use to resist this pressure?

15. How did the 1886 decision destroy the community?

5 46:30 – end 16. What final legacy did Barak leave?

17. Most of the images used in this episode show First Australians in European clothing. How was this ‘accommodation’ part of the First Australians’ strategy to survive?

18. What were the benefits and costs of this policy to the First Australians?

1. After watching the episode, decide how it has helped you gain knowledge and understanding of, and empathy with, the people of this period.

2. Imagine that a television guide has asked you to summarize the story of Freedom For Our Lifetime in a few sentences. How will you describe it?

SCREEN EDUCATION 5 3. The television guide wants you to explain the message of the episode in a few sentences. What do you think is the message in this film about the impact of government policies on the nature of First Australians’ lives?

4. The television guide also wants you to write a short comment or evaluation of the episode. Write your assessment piece.

5. In this episode of First Australians, who cared about what happened Wayne Atkinson actually says: to the First Australians, have been asks why the story of It had genocidal intentions. The prepared to implement such policies? Coranderrk is not taught in schools. assumption was that the older She suggests a reason. Discuss that 4. How well do you think the episode members who were still living on the reason, and any other possible ones brings out these themes? reserve would eventually sort of die you can think of. Do you think the Genocide out. And the end result would be that story ought to be taught? the Indigenous race would become 6. Go back to the focus questions listed One of the historians in the episode, absorbed into the mainstream in the ‘Thinking about the Period’ Wayne Atkinson, says of the Board that population. implemented the reserve policy: ‘It had section. Which of these questions 4. How does Atkinson reflect the 1948 genocidal intentions.’ do you think this episode of First definition? Australians has helped you answer? 1. What do you understand when you 5. Do you agree that the policies of hear the word genocide, what do the Victorian Government towards EXPLORING you think it means if someone were First Australians as implemented in committing or trying to commit ISSUES AND IDEAS the reserves policy at Coranderrk genocide? Human Rights and other reserves can be called Genocide was not identified as a crime ‘genocidal’? The period of government reserves until after World War Two. A legal in Victoria have been described by definition in the 1948 United Nations EXPLORING THE historian Richard Broome in Aboriginal Convention defines it in this way: Victorians (Allen & Unwin, 2005) as a SERIES AS A ‘black mark’ on Australia’s human rights Genocide means any of the following REPRESENTATION history. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, OF HISTORY He has identified the policy, especially ethnical, racial or religious group, as First Australians is a representation as implemented after 1886 when ‘half such: castes’ aged between fourteen and of history. This means that it is thirty-four had to leave the reserves, as (a) Killing members of the group; somebody’s version of what happened. Every secondary account of history having four major impacts: (b) Causing serious bodily or mental is a representation. The creator of the harm to members of the group; • it limited the freedoms of Aboriginal version has chosen what to include and people. (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group what to exclude from all the possible • it forced people from their homes and conditions of life calculated to bring elements and sources, and has chosen families on the reserve. about its physical destruction in the sequence in which they will be whole or in part; presented. In the case of film, the • it broke up families by the removal of creator, the writers, director and editor, children from their parents. (d) Imposing measures intended to have also chosen the sound, lighting, prevent births within the group; • it undermined the reserves. expert commentators, images and (e) Forcibly transferring children of the other filmic elements that constitute 1. Discuss why each of these would group to another group. the final product. be harmful to First Australians at the time. 2. If you accept this definition, does it If senior students are to use this film change your answer to the question as a source of information and ideas 2. How might these effects have above? in their study they must be prepared continued into following generations? 3. Do you think this is a good definition to critically analyse and evaluate it 3. Why do you think people in power, to use? as a historical source. many of whom were good people

SCREEN EDUCATION 6 The use of expert commentators

One of the features of First Australians is the use of commentators. We need to consider who they are, how they present information, and how the filmmaker uses them in the overall representation.

1. Think back to the commentators. What was their role? 2. How did you respond to them? 3. Why do you think the filmmaker chose them? 4. Why do you think they are used in the film?

Now look at this brief biographical information on each of them and answer the questions that follow.

Professor Marcia Langton Professor Janet McCalman Wayne Atkinson

A leading Indigenous scholar, A historian specializing in the history commentator and activist, Professor of health and medicine, Australian of Australian Indigenous Studies at and British social and political history, the University of . urban history and history of women, children and the family. She has collaborated on the demographic and medical history of the Aboriginal people of Victoria, 1800–2000.

Margaret Gardiner Liz Reed Joy Murphy

Richard Broome Carolyn Briggs

National award-winning author, has worked as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, farm fence contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archeological site worker and book editor. Author of The Convincing Ground, a history of Aboriginal massacres in Victoria.

Jim Berg

Information to come

SCREEN EDUCATION 7 5. Comment on why each might have been chosen to be part of this episode.

6. Do you think they are appropriate and believable experts?

For most viewers, Freedom For Our Lifetime will be their only source of information and ideas about the Reserve system that was established in Victoria.

A main accessible source about the Coranderrk experience is to be found in Richard Broome’s (Allen & Unwin, 2005). Broome is one of the authoritative figures interviewed in the episode. His book provides a similar story to the film about the struggle by the First Australians against attempts to close the Coranderrk reserve.

Broome’s book provides detail about aspects of Coranderrk that are covered in the film.

7. Compare these comments from Broome with those made in the film. Discuss the similarities and differences, and where there are differences, suggest why these might exist.

SCREEN EDUCATION 8 Aboriginal Victorians on Coranderrk Freedom For Our Lifetime on Coranderrk

Composed of liberal-minded men, the Board (referred to in the film as the Protection Board) was initially very supportive as Aboriginal people lobbied for reserve lands on sites meaningful to them. (p.125)

Reserves are best understood in the light of prevailing attitudes of paternalism: a subtle two-way form of power … [P]aternalism was a hierarchical relationship of ruling, guiding and helping from above with deference from below in return for protection. (p.128)

Many Aboriginal people acquiesced in this paternal relationship in the hard post-frontier colonial world, where protection and help was needed, especially by children and the elderly. Such a reciprocal hierarchical relationship came naturally to people who traditionally had elders to mentor, guide and protect them. (p.129)

The reserves were not ‘concentration camps’ as some have termed them, but places of refashioned community and identity: places that became ‘home’, complete with oppressions and opportunities like any home. (p.129)

Within this paternalism, Aborigines developed a powerful moral view of the world. It claimed that Aborigines were a free people like other British subjects and that Queen Victoria, her government and settlers owed Aborigines a living because whites had occupied Aboriginal land and because Aboriginal people had agreed to ‘settle down’ under the Queen on reserves. (p.129)

[In 1869 the Parliament passed] an act for ‘the Protection and Management of the Aboriginal Natives of Victoria’. … This ‘management’ Act … became a black mark in Aboriginal affairs and the history of human rights in Australia. It enabled regulations to be passed to prescribe where Aboriginal people should reside; what work contracts could be made with European employers …; how their earnings might be apportioned and how the ‘care, custody, and education of their children’ might be managed. (pp.130–131)

[John] Green was a benign and consultative manager who treated the Coranderrk people as ‘free and independent men and women’, while ‘remembering that they are but children in knowledge’. … Even [Ramahyuck Reserve’s] residents held Hagenauer in affection and publicly defended him, although he ruled like a patriarch. (p.133)

SCREEN EDUCATION 9 The removal [of children] policy existed in the name of protection. Until 1874 it was practised fairly benignly by John Green, as he usually respected the wishes of Aboriginal parents, whom he saw as a ‘free people’ … However, the Commissioners argued that ‘no false sentimentality’ should prevent the gathering in of children. ‘It might be urged that they are happy where they are, and that it were better to leave them alone; but it must not be forgotten that leaving them alone is, in fact, abandoning them to lower and lower stages of degradation’. (p.134)

The Board resolved to … direct [Coranderrk residents] to work on penalty of exclusion from the reserve for a specified period. It was, of course, reasonable that they be asked to work. Barak and other elders would have wanted that, for work was the only way to be ‘self-supporting’. But work on reserves under managers was not a free type of work. It was a directive, and wages paid by the Board were infrequent and indeterminate, depending on produce sales. (p.188)

Around 1900 [Coranderrk’s] population was over 80, including 13 children who still attended the Badger Creek School … The farm and hop gardens were productive, cows were milked to supplement rations, and supplemented the meat ration. Visitors came to view the Aborigines and the residents compensated for these gazes by selling and crafts. (p.207)

But age and the Act took its toll on Coranderrk. Barak died in 1904 aged about 84, and one of his ‘speakers’, Robert Wandin, died in 1908 from heart disease at 54. Wandin’s son Joseph, a pupil teacher in 1902, was by 1908 a qualified teacher at [a Melbourne] Stat School – a potential leader lost to the reserve. By 1910 hop production declined as the plants needed renewal, but there was insufficient labour to replant. (p.207)

By 1921 there were only … 52 [residents] at Coranderrk … The Board began transferring residents from all remaining reserves to Lake Tyers … Many of the [remaining] residents were moved in 1923 … The twelve remaining residents protested by letter and after a … ministerial visit in January 1924, a compassionate Cabinet allowed them to remain at Coranderrk for the rest of their lives. (pp.208–9)

Conclusion

8. What do you think are the main strengths and the main weaknesses of this episode of First Australians as a representation of history?

SCREEN EDUCATION 10 TELLING THE STORY (FILM STUDY)

First Australians uses a variety of elements to tell the story.

1. What are the main problems that you think face a filmmaker in creating a documentary about the earliest contacts between First Australians and the ?

2. Comment on the role that each of these elements plays in the film:

• Narrator • Experts • Archival images • Voices reading documents • Impressionistic modern film elements • Sound effects • Music • Editing • Camera movement over static images • Narrative structure – focus on individuals

Freedom For Our Lifetime chooses to focus on the political struggle over Coranderrk, seen through the prism of the Aboriginal leaders William Barak and Simon Wonga. It contains other material, but the emphasis is on this aspect.

It could have chosen to focus on other aspects or themes, such as the experience of life at Coranderrk.

On page 13 is some information from Richard Broome’s Aboriginal Victorians about aspects of everyday life.

3. Prepare a new scene for the film in which you would incorporate this information. Try to follow the style of the episode. Use the columns on page 12 to help you summarize your presentation of the scene. For example, you might decide to use a photograph of girls in the dormitory where that aspect is included, as well as current film of the foundation stones of the dormitory, and possibly a reading from a letter of a resident.

SCREEN EDUCATION 11 Aspect of Images Readings Experts Current film Other the story

SCREEN EDUCATION 12 Coranderrk … had up to 40 children in its boarding house, all of whom were closely watched and kept under lock and key at night and during matron Halliday’s absence. However, the matron’s own teenage daughters were educated in the 1870s with the orphan girls and slept in the dormitory as well. (p.136)

The dormitory girls, mostly of ‘mixed descent’, were educated, reared The reserve system was also to teach [The medical inspector] recommended and trained in European household time and labour discipline. When extensive redesign and rebuilding of the management and were free of arranged Aboriginal people felt they were free settlement, and the provision of toilets, marriage controls. The anthropologist and properly consulted, as in Green’s better drainage, a new kitchen, dining Diane Barwick has argued: time as manager at Coranderrk, they room and school room, a hospital, They could support themselves by worked with a will … Under more higher meat rations and monthly visits working as assistant teachers or authoritarian management the people by a local medical practitioner. Three dormitory matrons at stations or in were disinclined to work and were years later he reported angrily that little domestic service elsewhere, and threatened with withdrawal of rations … had been done by the Board. (p.143) However, this clashed with the ideas of could marry as they pleased. These One of the frightening things about Aboriginal people, who expected to be completely emancipated girls became illnesses for the people at Coranderrk rationed in exchange for dispossession, in turn exemplars as they and their were their trips to Melbourne for and expected to be paid for their work husbands were given charge of the treatment … In 1881 William Barak, just like free people. (p.141) dormitories’. Thus even the dormitory … who had just lost his wife through that separated families in a most In the mid 1870s all the reserves were consumption, brought his son David terrible way had some opportune struck by epidemics, exacerbated by to Melbourne for treatment for chest outcomes. (p.136) poor diet and housing conditions … disease. David was so terrified that he While the boarding house and school [A medical survey in 1876] found that fought to leave the hospital with his aimed to ‘civilise’ the people, the the Aboriginal death rate was eleven father, biting the arm of a staff member. church building and its rituals sought times that of the general population. William Barak was asked not to return to Christianise them … Despite the His critical survey of Coranderrk found because of the commotion, and David claim by historian Michael Christie that the houses there were poorly died alone in the Melbourne hospital a that Aboriginal people found their constructed … while their earthen floors few days later, leaving Barak childless. ‘fundamentalist version of the gospel were so poorly drained that the water (p.145) rose to the surface when it rained … unpalatable’, many of the younger and 4. Do you think the filmmakers have Toilets were constructed over mere a few of the older people embraced achieved a good result? this instrument of change, and at times, holes in the ground … enthusiastically … Christianity and its rituals … fulfilled a cultural vacuum and provided new ways of creating social interaction and a feeling of community. (pp.138–9) Coranderrk 1870

SCREEN EDUCATION 13 FURTHER INFORMATION

Curriculum Corporation resources – details to be provided.

Women of the Sun, Episode 2 (Ronin Films, 1981) and study guide at http://www.roninfilms.com.au/get/ files/2425828147.pdf

Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005.

Mission Voices http://www.abc.net.au/missionvoices/ coranderrk/default.htm

Museum Victoria http://museumvictoria.com.au/ encounters/coranderrk/

This study guide was produced by ATOM.

© ATOM 2008 [email protected]

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SCREEN EDUCATION 14