A REVELATION FROM THE ARCHIVES
The first time I met Vince, in September 2016, he told me that when he was little, his mum had to hide him from the welfare people or they would have taken him away. He also mentioned that his mum had been granted an exemption certificate. While I’d vaguely heard of these certificates, I had no idea what they were. The more I found out, the more chilling I realised the policies and practices behind them were.
During the first half of the 1900s, different Australian states had a set of laws known as the ‘Aboriginal Protection Act’ (or variations on that title). These laws controlled and restricted the movement of Aboriginal people – where they could live, what work they could do, who they could associate with, and more. Some states also added what was called an exemption clause. This gave government officials the power to declare some Aboriginal people exempt from the Act – in effect making them ‘honorary whites’. South Australia’s clause was introduced in 1939, three years after Vince was born.
In chapter three of The Wonder of Little Things, Vince shares how the protection laws affected his mum and other people. When someone was issued with an exemption, they could finally leave the mission without having to get permission from government officials.
But often in practice what the exemptions meant was Aboriginal people had to abide by different restrictions and discrimination. For example, while those with exemptions could leave the mission and live and work in other places, they weren’t allowed to return and stay overnight with family members who still lived there. That’s how a campsite called Hollywood, just outside the boundaries of the Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission, came about. See pp 22–24 adult edition; pp 29–31 young readers.
Vince’s mum Katie [Copley family collection]
As I learnt about the exemptions policies, I could begin to imagine how it might have been for Vince’s mum – having to shoulder the indignity of an exemption certificate in order to survive and raise her children. In his memoir, Vince speaks movingly of her strength.
When Vince and I first started working on the book, he gave me written authorisation to access archival information about his family. Realising it would be useful to include a copy of an exemption certificate in the book, I contacted South Australia’s State Records office to see if they had a blank one we could use. When I sent through this enquiry, the officer helping me, Bec O’Reilly, was super helpful and said she’d scan a blank certificate for me.
Then she quietly got busy and found something even better – a duplicate copy of Katie’s exemption certificate from the 1946 record book that the South Australian government officials used when issuing certificates. When Bec’s email came through, I was shocked to read Katie’s name there alongside the grim official words.
Later, I learned that governments of the day were tweaking the policies. In Katie’s time, one of the changes meant she and her children were once again able to stay overnight with family at Point Pearce.
But achieving each of these ‘tweaks’ to the laws came only after enormous struggle and anguish for Aboriginal people. Many, like Vince’s legendary aunty Gladys Elphick, spent much of their precious personal and family time advocating for change.
Reading the timeline of history at the back of the The Wonder of Little Things (adult edition) or online here, will give you a sense of how these laws were changing in South Australia and other states.
Here are some of the most significant Acts and reforms, alongside when they took place in Vince’s family’s lives.·
Vince’s parents, Fred Warrior and Katie Edwards, are four years old and living at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission.
Fred and Katie are sixteen years old.
Two years before Vince is born.
Vince is two years old, his dad Fred has recently died from tuberculosis, and his mum Katie has five children to raise.
The 1939 Act was finally abolished in 1962, when Vince was 25, and ten years after his mum died. Vince’s people no longer had legal restrictions on their freedom. But of course, the day-to-day discrimination continued. See p 23 adult edition; p 29 young readers.
Australia’s first law to make any form of racial discrimination illegal didn’t come in until 1975. Meanwhile the so called ‘protection’ laws restricting Aboriginal people had been in place for many decades. They harmed generations of Aboriginal people. The effects still ripple in our time.
© 2024 This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Acknowledgement: Vince’s continuing legacy has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.