Missions, reserves and stations

“We pay our respects and dedicate the Unsettled exhibition to the people and other Beings who keep the law of this land; to the Elders and Traditional Owners of all the knowledges, places, and stories in this exhibition; and to the Ancestors and Old People for their resilience and guidance.

We advise that there are some confronting topics addressed in this exhibition, including massacres and genocide. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be advised that there may be images of people who have passed away.”

Laura McBride and Dr Mariko Smith, 2021.

There is a long history of government control over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives. States had Aborigines Protection/Welfare Boards, established through race-based government legislation, which oversaw policies of segregation including the forced physical relocations of First Nations peoples onto designated parcels of land separate to the Australian population. There are known as missions and reserves.

Missions were operated by missionaries and churches, while reserves were usually government-run. Stations were places where people were put to work, often for little or no pay.^[1]

The Boards were also responsible for child removal and the assimilation of Aboriginal peoples into white society through ensuring the restriction of culture, language, relationships and freedoms.^[2]

Data sourced from the University of Newcastle, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), University of New England, Australian National University, and University of Sydney research.

This map shows the locations of missions, reserves and some stations in New South Wales. Not all locations are recorded.

Fringe camps, missions and reserves were often built on unused government-owned or free land near towns; out of sight and out of mind. People were resourceful and creative; they engineered housing that suited their environment and circumstances, often only with found materials.

These glass bottles came from Tin Town Reserve in Coonamble. This Aboriginal reserve was built on an old site like many other New South Wales reserves of the 1900s. The tin wall display recreates the inside of a home lived in by the maker who was born in a fringe camp named Montkeila Bend near Walgett in 1957.

Australia’s prosperity is believed to be due to a pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, much of Australia’s early economic growth was built off the backs of forced, unpaid or low-paid labour. ^[3] This disproportionately involved exploiting First Nations peoples in unsafe conditions, to work on land stolen from them.^[4]

Many Aboriginal people were promised the payment of wages, often a pittance, to be banked into trust accounts held by governments on their behalf.^[5] These were rarely paid out, and today people are still fighting to recover their stolen wages.^[6] Aboriginal people are now often stereotyped as lazy, especially since they stopped working for free.

This wooden chain, hand-carved with a pen knife entirely from a single solid piece of wood, was collected by the Brungle mission manager John Hubbard. Less is known about the Aboriginal maker, who was recorded simply as a “full-blooded Aboriginal.”

Chains of this style, typically made of heavy metal, would have been a familiar sight to the maker; neck chains and other restraints were a common form of punishment and control for Aboriginal People. They were often chained when made to work on roads, railway lines and when clearing land for colonisers. Chains were not phased out until the 1940s but were still recorded in use until the 1960s.^[7]

Slavery existed in Australia.^[8] It may be different to the well-known example of the Atlantic slave trade, but in Australia Indigenous and Pacific peoples were forced to work hard for little or no money in dehumanising conditions because of their race. In this way, the treatment of First Nations peoples falls within contemporary definitions of slavery.^[9]

During the 1800s and 1900s, many First Nations children were removed from families and trained in institutions or homes in preparation for work as servants and labourers for white families.^[10] They were forced to work for strangers, and many suffered terrible physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse. For Aboriginal women put into domestic services, their servitude sometimes extended beyond employment in the home to being married or forced into relationships with non-Indigenous people.

(a.k.a. Hung, strung and quartered)

Hold a thought
for the woman
who hid in the long grass
longing to be invisible

With no make-up
to cover the scars
as rivers of grog flowed
she spills an ocean of blood

A workhorse by day
and endless dark nights
an animal for the taking
some called it “assimilation”

There was warmth
on occasion
glimpses of kindness
confusion of lust for love

Babies to kiss
until the eyes turn
his fists flew
the bottle was empty

No flowers
no silk scarves
sinking into deep grooves of grief
Houdini would find it hard to escape

One may have a paddle
occasionally a boat
yet the water still smells
up Shit Creek

Straining her heart
bruising her cheeks
wounding her
knowing “until death do us part”

- Karla Dickens, 2016

Aboriginal material cultures and creative expressions have adapted over time, in response to available resources and social circumstances. The basic rations given to Aboriginal people as part of paternalistic government policy of the 1800s and 1900s came in hessian bags. Aboriginal people used these hessian bags to make objects like blankets, pillows and insulations for homes.

The creation of these djujuma (dilly bags) pays respects to the resilience of the Old People whose ingenuity and will to survive ensure our bloodlines and cultural knowledges survived despite concerted attempts to erase them.