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Aboriginal Law Bulletin (ALB)
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Kremmer, Jennifer --- "Books Review - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in Commonwealth Records: A Guide to the ACT Regional Office of the Australian Archives" [1994] AboriginalLawB 7; (1994) 3(66) Aboriginal Law Bulletin


Books Review -

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People in Commonwealth Records:
A Guide to the ACT Regional Office of the Australian Archives

Compiled by Ros Fraser

Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra 1993

And

My Heart is Breaking:
A Joint Guide to Research about Aboriginal People in the Public Record Office of Victoria and the Australian Archives, Victorian Regional Office

Compiled by Ian MacFarlane and Myrna Deverall

Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra 1993

Reviewed by Jennifer Kremmer

The author states as his thesis that "the basis of the various forms of human rights abuse which occur in the context of Aboriginal involvement with the criminal justice system, and with the agencies of government regulation more generally, is the historical and continuing reality that the dominant 'system' (encompassing procedural, substantive and other social/political factors) is an imposed system of domination and control which is essentially inappropriate for, and in practice, discriminatory towards Australia's Aboriginal population"(p2).

These two substantial publications track the records of Commonwealth and Victorian Governments pertaining to Aboriginal peoples from the time of invasion up until the early 1960s (more recent records are not yet available through Australian Archives). From 1860, the records for Victoria are kept with the Commonwealth, so prospective researchers on Victoria will probably use both books.

The publications are responses to Recomendation 53 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which asks that records about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be made more accessible. Specifically, it states:

"That Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments provide access to all government archival records pertaining to the family and community histories of Aboriginal people so as to assist... Aboriginal people to re-establish community and family links with those people from whom they were separated as a result of past policies of government."

The Commonwealth publication gives a brief history of each of the Government agencies involved in its records. A second section lists holdings along with notes on how or why they were obtained and what interest they might have for a researcher. For example, "Miscellaneous security files inherited by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization ..." relate to subjects such as individual people representing political persuasions, church and religious groups. Other information may be useful to people trying to trace families and communities that were fragmented by various policies of governments; however the book is certainly not specific to this requirement.

The Victorian publication, despite being smaller, provides more commentary on the records as well as excerpts from the records themselves. In amassing material pertaining to Aboriginal peoples under the various policies of the Victorian governments, the compilers of My Heart is Breaking make the following point:

"A difficulty with presenting official documents is that they can foster an impression of passivity among the Aboriginal people: that things were done to them, rather than by them." (p 51)

It is an important note to a book that, if taken as a guide to history, tends to reinforce this impression. Another and related qualm might be that My Heart is Breaking exemplifies the voice of the Aborigine as one of lament. This is perhaps unavoidable given the sheer documentary evidence of lamentable government policy aimed at or abetting genocide. The title quotation is from an Aboriginal Resident of Ebenezer Station in 1884, and it goes:

"Please would you allow me to have my two daughters with me here [another] one of them died and I have not seen her before she died and I should like the other two, to be with me and comfort me.
Please do not disappoint me for my heart is breaking to have them with me. Please to send them up here as I cannot leave this station..."

Casual readers of My Heart is Breaking might do well to keep in mind that the language supposedly of the heart - i.e. that used by the relatively few Aborigines able to be documented here - is not only not their language; it is also one adopted to deal with bureaucracy. This contrasts with the European voice available to users of official archives, which, as exemplified by this book, is often well-intentioned, benevolent, humanist, etc. as well as racist and paternalistic. Researchers looking for an authentic and diverse Aboriginal 'voice from the past' might be disappointed.

The Victorian guide abounds with ironies that are most obvious with hindsight, and given the opportunity to juxtapose material. From the discovery that most of the letters from the Port Phillip District Protectorate Department (established to "Watch Over the Interests of" the Victorian Aborigines) to the Sydney Government after 1843 had never been opened (p53), to the negotiations between the Board for the Protection of Aborigines and an entrepreneurial type by the name of James Thomson to allow the exhibition of two boys from that "fast dying race" in London (p59), the correspondences reincarnate moments in a bleak and, indeed, heartbreaking history.


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