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Journal of The Pacific Societ,y / October 1998 / No. 80 - 81 (Vol. 21, No. 3 - 4 ) ( 3 ) - 182 - BY Queensland Unirrersjty of Technology A ban on the importation into Australia of inden- spoke out. tured labourers from the nearby Solomon Islands, Their call for recognition drew attention to tlie dis- Vanuatu and other Pacific Islands was one of the earliest crimination and disadvantage suffered as a black Acts of the parlialncnt af the newly federated Common- labouring class minority and highlighted the racism wealth of Australia. underpinning the social, economic and cultural position- The Act of 1902 declared that those Islanders al- ing of both immigrant and indigenous Australians as ready in Australia would be sent home. Between 1906 Australia shifted from an anglo-celtic majority to tlie and 1908, 7068 “Kanaltas”, also known mistakenly as multicultural or plural society of the present era. “Polynesians”, were deported and another 194 left The life histories of 19th and 20th century immi- voluntarily, leaving behind about around 2500 who were grants presented in the two recent histories of this small able to claim long residence, property ownership in lslander community, Patricia Mercer’s White Australia Australia, personal danger should they return lo their defied and Carol Gistitin’s Quite a colony, resonate with home island; or who went “bush” and hid until the the experiences of other immigrant communities in Aus- deportation campaign quietened down. tralia. Those deported and those remaining werc the rem- South Sea Islanders, as Mercer notes, suffered mis- nants of an indenture era between 1863 and 1903 when carriages, died in accidents, lobbied Prime Ministers, just over 50,000 Pacific Islander labourers came on three submitted petitions, played in racially segregated “All- year work contracts to the colonies and later states of Black” teams, served in the World War I1 Civil Con- Queensland and New South Wales. struction corps and were involved in other equally Australian South Sea Islanders, as they prefer to be rewarding, tragic or discriminatory experiences. (Mer- known today, trace their life histories back to perhaps cer 1995) a hundred families and a larger number of single me11 Experiences like these suggest that their lives may who later married and had families.“) not have been different from inany other isolated, mrd, In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, conscious of immigrant or indigenous Australians who remained attempts being made by state and federal governments alienated from and unacknowledged by the dominant to incorporate indigenous and immigrant ethnicity in a culturally constituted nation and the politically con- nationing process, this small immigrant community structed state. (4) -1181- Henry Reynold’s analysis of the status of Australia’s already been directed at Chinese and Japanese labourers two indigenous communities, Australian Aborigines and who were imported or came voluntarily to Australia and Torres Strait Islanders, may be tentatively applied to the new work-place and immigration regulations of the ,Australian South Sea Islanders (Reynolds 1996 155-186) so-called “White Australia Policy” were iiianifestations Following his argument, Australian South Sea Island- of the popular belief that Australia was a nat.ioi1 for ers, in relation to the state, were also beyond the pale, “whites”. ignored and voiceless in the apparatus of state and polity. Although South Sea Islanders failed in their attempl Although not a nation within the nation, as Aborigi- to rescind the deportation regulations they were able nal Australians proclaimed, the South Sea Islander im- to achieve more huniane treatment and to influence some migrant community sought incorporation on the basis government policy in their favour. of a similar record of marginality. Clive Moore suggests that these achievements were far more reniarlcable than those of the 1970s and 1990s Their call in the 1970s for recognition as a disad- pressure groups and suggests that “to organise and speak vantaged ethnic immigrant minority was overlooked as out for an ethnic minority while policics and opinion European and Asian immigrant communities demanded were dominated by ‘White Australia’ fervour were acknowledgment and South Sea Islanders remained in achievements indeed. At the t.ime the wider public would the background as Aboriginal Australians and Torres never have imagined that ‘coloured’ or ‘black’ people Strait Islanders campaigned for reconciliation, land could get organised and speak at the highest level of rights, regional autonomy and federal and state a government”.(2’ tance. It was truly a remarkable turn around, after a gen- After the deportation era, the remaining small South eration of rebuttal in the late 1970s, that the Australian Sea Islander community disappeared from the anglo- government in 1994 formally recognised Australian Celtic historical record for sixty years living as fringe- South Sea Islanders as a discrete immigrant minority dwellers, marginalised from mainstream society, mar- and introduced a series of financial packages to alle- rying into Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Is- viate many of the educat.iona1, employment, cultural and lander extended families and dispersing along the eastern social disadvantages which Australian South Sea Island- Australian coast looking for a home and work. ers faced. They remained a fragmenled community. Small clus- ters were spread as they had been during the nineteenth The following discussion falls into three parts; an century indentured labour period, across a variety of introductory survey of the period from the deportalion rural industries and d0niest.k service stretching from era, which left a small residue Islander community Cairns in Queensland’s far north, to the agricultural ambiguously placed in rural Queensland, a brief account district of the northern New South Wales coast, two of the lobbying canipaigns of the 1970s and the suc- thousand kilometres to the south. cessful call for recognition in the 199Os, and finally these During this period, a trickle of government assis- e.vents are examined in the context of constructions of tance was directed towards Australia’s two indigenous ethnicity and the nation being contested in Australia. communities, and many South Sea Islanders were forced 3: ili ,I: * :i: to rely on support available through these Aboriginal .4ustralian and Torres Strait Islander social security, In the 1901-1908 period, “Kanakas” lobbied Parlia- education, community and other assistance programs. ments and Prime Ministers, addressed Royal Commis- sions, travelled south to distant Melbourne and formed Faith Bandler, a well known act.ivist for Ahorigine and later Islander rights, lamented that her fellow associations in cities along the Queensland and New Islanders accepted being identified Aborigines in order South wales coast to coordinate a campaign against de- as portation. to obtain government benefits. This was an era in which anglo-Celtic hegemony was “1 was saddened by that and I feared they would unquestioned. Discriminatory colonial legislation had lose thek identity,” (Moore, Quanchi, Bennett, 1997, 57) Journal of The Pacific Society / October 1998 / NO. 80 - 81. (Vol. 21, No. 3 - 4 ) ( 5 ) - 180 - Choosing to be identified as an Aboriginal Australian coming out of the campaign for Aboriginal Australian in order to receive scholarships and housing loans was citizenship, had a chance meeting with newly elected a denigrating rejection of their own Pacific Islander Labour Party Prime Minister Gough Whillam at an elec- identity. torate meeting in northern New South Wales. She pointed out that the fuzzy haired supporters at the back South Sea Islanders like Faith Bandler were active of the Labour Party meeting “were all my mob” and contributors to a rising black consciousness in Austra- that they had several grievances particular to their lia, but eventually Islanders was realised they had to I>8~uth Sea Islander community. distance themselves from Aboriginal Australian and Faith tells the story that Whitlam replied by throw- Torres Strait Islander programs if they were to gain ing a question back to her-”Why don’t you form an recognition