Volume 37, 2008 'h, AUSTRALIAN of INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL in

HISTORICAL CONTEXTGRACE SARRASchool of Education, Queensland University ofTechnology, PO Box 1376, Caboolture, Queensland,4510, Australia

Abstracl

Mein Flugel ist zum Schwung bereit,Ich kehrte gem zuruck,Denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit,Ich hatte wenig Gluck(Gerherd Scholem, "Gruss vom Angelus")

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My wing is ready for flight,I would like to turn back.If I stayed timeless time,I would have little luck.

A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" showsan angel looking as though he is about to moveaway from something he is fixedly contemplating.His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wingsare spread. This is how one pictures the angelof history. His face is turned toward the past."Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees onesingle catastrophe which keeps piling wreckageand hurls it in front of his feet. The angel wouldlike to stay, awaken the dead, and make wholewhat has been smashed. But a storm is blowingin from Paradise; it has got caught in his wingswith such a violence that the angel can no longerclose them. The storm irresistibly propels himinto the future to which his back is turned, whilethe pile of debris before him growls skyward.This storm is what we call progress (Benjamin,1979, p. 259).

In this paper, I consider the historical, political,social and cultural context around the creation ofCherbourg State School. I approach this task as anAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman. ChrisSarra and Mudrooroo Narogin note the importance oflocating such a task within the confines of academicrigour, but not at the expense of Indigenous andholistic approaches to the literature (Narogin, 1990,p. 170; Sarra, 2005, p. 2). Accordingly it is necessary toprovide the reader with my personal context to enablethe entire stOlY I present to be located in its context.Born in Townsville, I am of Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander heritage and the eldest of five children.My mother is ofAboriginal (Birrigubba) and South SeaIslander descent; my grandmother was an Aboriginal(Kalkadoon) and South Sea Islander woman andmy grandfather was an Aboriginal man (Birrigubba).

. My father is of Torres Islander heritage fromCopyright limited (CAL) licensed copy.Further copl;lngandcommunication, prohibitedexcept on paYtnent of fee peratld otherwise: in accordance with the license [roIn CAL to A:'CER.For mOreinformation CAL oh C02} or

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--_._.._---Cherbourg State Schoot is some 300 kilometresnorthwest of Brisbane. It is situated in an Aboriginalcommuniry at Cherbourg with approximately 250students, all of whom are Indigenous Australianchildren. Cherbourg State School aims to generate goodacademic outcomes for its students from kindergartento Year 7 and nurture a strong and positive sense ofwhat it means to be Aboriginal in today's society Ina context where the communiry continues to grapplewith many social issues bom of the historical processesof dispossession and disempowerment, CherbourgState School is determined that its children can andwill learn to become "Strong and Smart". It is a journeythat has been charted by Chris Sarra, the school's firstAboriginal principal, in his paper Young and Blackand Deadly: Strategies for Improving Outcomes forIndigenous Students (2003), which describes howpride and expectations were engendered in the schoolover a four-year period from 1998. In this paper I willdiscuss the historical context of the school and itsimpact on the Indigenous people of Cherbourg. Myaim here has been to consider the historical, political,social and cultural context around the creation ofCherbourg State School. I critically examine thehistorical records of the role of the State Governmentand the white settlers in the setting up and creationof the Aboriginal Reserve and later the primary school.Throughout I address an absence - a voice missingfrom history - the voice of the Aboriginal people. Thisexercise in collective memory was designed to providean opportuniry for those who have seldom been giventhe opportuniry to tell their story. Instead of the officialview ofCherbourg School it provides a narrative whichrestores the victims of history to a place of digniry andindeed humaniry.

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the Central Islands (Mauar) in the Torres Strait; mygrandmother was from the Eastern Islands and mygrandfather was from the Central and Niwi Islands.GrOWing up in a very large extended family and

being fortunate to have both Indigenous culturesrunning through my veins makes me very proud toacknowledge my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderheritage. In all my years from a child to an adult I wasalways taught to be proud of who I was and never tobe ashamed or to let anyone put me down. This wassomething that was instilled from a very young age inall of us - my brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, uncles,aunties and grandparents.My grandfather, who was a descendant of the

Birrigubba tribe, was a strong-willed man whowanted to share with others the culture that he lovedand respected, despite his painful upbringing as anAboriginal man living under the Act On Palm Island.This love was passed on in turn to my generation, notonly by my mother and her family but also by otherswho had respected and honoured the hard work mygrandfather had put in fighting for justice and freedomfor our people.My father who is of Torres Strait Islander heritage

is not only a great man in my eyes and in my heartbut is a respected traditional healer. Throughout mylife my father has always been there not only for hisown children and family but also for others within thecommuniry whn needed his help. Traditional healingin our family is something that is part of our life; it hassaved lives and will continue to do'so as it is passed onfrom one generation to the next.My mnther too has been a great role model and

an inspiration to me, not only as a caring and lOVingmother but also in her role as a District CommunityEducation Counsellor in the Northern region. For over25 years as a counsellor she has' had the opportunityto work with and assist the community and Indigenousstudents to improve their educational outcomes.She is also a strong advocate for eradicating thenumerous inequities that exist for Indigenous peoplein today's societyMy upbringing in both Indigenous worlds has

given me knowledge, pride and respect for thewonderful cultures of our people. It has instilled astrong sense of Aboriginal identity and Torres StraitIslander identity that makes me the person that I amand is something that I now pass on to my children.As an educator I also have the opportunity to sharethe cultures of my people with other Indigenous andnon-Indigenous children.As I sit and reflect on my experiences as a teenager,

attending a high school within a mainstream system,it is interesting to note the perceptions and attitudesI felt that my peers and my teachers had about beingan Aboriginal or a Torres Strait Islander person. I recalltimes when my Indigenous peers would think I was"too flash" or "a coconut" because I would not wag

'b' AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL oj INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

school or classes, or because Iwould hang out at timeswith my non-Indigenous friends and not with them.I recall an incident from my linal year at high school,

with one of my teachers who taught me English, thatis as clear to me now as it was the day it happened.It was the last few weeks of school, when studentsare thinking about their future and what they mightdo when they leave school. It was also the time whenyou asked your teachers for references to help yousecure some steady work. My student friend who wasnon-Indigenous asked this particular teacher for areference: a request that the teacher had no trouble inresponding to with a quick and smiling "Yes". However,a few days later when I decided to ask for one, theresponse was "No, I don't give them out".This negative experience happened over 20 years

ago, but is something that I have never forgotten.I have always asked myself, "Was it because I wasn'tgood enough?" (knowing that my marks were aboutthe same as my colleague's) or "was it because I wasblack?" I suppose now I really knew all along that it hadnothing to do with knowledge and more to do withthe negative perception and attitude that this teacherin particular had ofwhat an Indigenous person shouldbe. When I look back now, I can see how I turned thisugly negative experience into something that made medetermined to succeed, not only for myself but also forother Indigenous people who have experienced similarmisfortunes. Applying for entry into the Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Tertiary Education Program at. James Cook Universiry was the start of my rewardingadventures and various working quests to makesomething ofmyself, and to enable me to do somethingclose to my heart - to help light for Indigenous peopleagainst discrimination and injustice.In what follows I will critically examine the

historical recmd, the Queensland State Governmentand the white settlers in developing and maintainingthe Aboriginal Reserve and later the primary school.Firstly, however, it is necessary to address what is anobvious void - a voice that is missing from history.That voice is of course the voice of the Aboriginalpeople. On approaching such a crucial task I wouldlike to acknowledge initially that, not unlike WalterBenjamin'sAngel ofHistory quoted at the beginning ofthis paper, I wish to resist the pull of the future in thepresent. The will to resist comes from my standpointwithin what John Berger (1979) has termed a "cultureof survival". He contrasts this with the "culture ofprogress" that most white Australians would belongto. For those within the culture of progress, history iseither "bunk", as Henry Ford termed it, or a seamlessnarrative chronicling the success of the superior whiterace as the almost divinely ordained end of history, asrelated in Raphael Cilento'S Triumph in the Tropics(Cilento & Lack, 1959).Rather than succumbing to the narrative of progress,

I would like to stay and awaken the dead. I would like

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CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL ", HISTORICAL CONTEXT

to make clear however that in so doing I reject theargument implicit within Nietzsche's aphorism:

By searching out origins, One becomes a crab.The historian looks backward, eventually he alsobelieves backward (Nietzsche, cited in Kaufmann,1978, p. 470, original emphasis).

Contra Nietzsche, I would affirm that to remember thepast is nOt to indulge in "a sick passion" that wouldprevent us from acting, but is rather to lay the basis forthe just society.Implicit within this view is, of course, a judgement

of the past as a time of injustice. Here Nietzscheexplicitly railed against the very act of judging the past.He wrote:

Who compels you to judge? If it is your wish - youmust prove first that you are capable of justice. Asjudges you must stand higher that that which is tobe judged; as it is, you have only come later. Theguests that come last to the table should rightlytake the last places; and you will take the first?Then do some great and mighty deed - the placemust be prepared for you then, even though youdo come last (Nietzsche, 1957, p. 40).

In reply to this I would assert that the need to judgethe past springs from a recognition of its efficacy in thepresent. It is not that I and other Indigenous peoplestand higher; indeed, as I have endeavoured to showin my own personal narrativeJ we are very far frombeing "high" in this land. Yet we are by no means thelast to arrive; indeed we were here some 40, 000 yearsbefore the first white men and women.As for the great deed that Nietzsche demands before

we have a right to judge the past, I would suggest theact of survival by Indigenous Australians has beensuch a feat. Moreover, it is precisely because we havesurvived that we are able to interrogate the pastand to pOint out that we have been victims of whatHegel termed the "slaughter bench of history". Hegel,unlike Walter Benjamin, sought to relate the narrativeof history as one of progress. He was, admittedly,somewhat uneasy about individuals being sacrificed to"the empire of chance". Nevertheless he insisted thatbeneath the slaughter the "cunning of reason" was atwork (Hegel, 1991, p. 33).However Iwant, like the theologianEdithWyschogrod,

to remember the "dead others" (Wyschogrod, 1998,p. 3). For Hegel, this would presumably mean that Ihave joined in what he derisively termed the "Litanyof Lamentations" (Hegel, 1991, p. 34). Be that as itmay, it was a central motivation behind the productionof my project to place on record the feelings of someof the Aboriginal students and former students ofCherbourg State School, while it was still possible. It isimpossible for me to undo what these former students

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Grace Sarra

experienced, but at least I can ensure that they do notvanL'h from history.I am very aware, as I write these words on the

importance of history, of the debate that is now goingon - a debate that has been dubbed the "HistoryWars"(MacIntyre & Clarke, 2003; Manne, 2001;Windschuttle,2001, 2003, 2004). The debate itself ranges fromattacks on and defences of professional historians,such as Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey, to thenarrative of white-black relations from colonial timesto the present (MacIntyre & Clarke, 2003). At theheart of the debate is the question of how to portrayAustralian history - as progress or decline?This is not at all an insignificant question, as can

be seen from the 1997 National Inquiry into theseparation of Aboriginal and 'Iorres Strait Islanderchildren from their families (HREOC, 1997). There, theview that prevailed was that the history of IndigenousAustralians is to be seen as one of decline. Followingthe report, the question arose then of responsibilityand what should be done as recompense. The resultantcontroversy came to be known as the "Sony Debate",in which Indigenous Australians demanded an apologyfrom the Federal government for the past treatmentof the First Peoples in this land. No apology wasforthcoming until February 2008 when Prime MinsterKevin Rudd offered a national apology to IndigenousAustralian people. The former Prime Minister, JohnHoward was dismissive of the very concept, saying:

I have never supported the notion of a formalapology, because I have never believed that thepresent generation of Australians should beforced to accept responsibility for what happenedin earlier times, for which they were not directlyresponsible (Howard, cited in Edmund RiceCentre, 2000).

I am, of course, as an Indigenous person, vitallyinterested in this controversy The stakes are high for theFirst Peoples of this land. But my purpose in this paperis not so much to contribute to public controversy,but rather to help develop an understanding of thetrajectory ofCherbourg State School within the contextofAboriginal education.How might we do this? For, what is admittedly only

a partial answer let us go to the archives. Let us makethis a "time-machine trip" - let our imagination takeus into the past. As the historian Eric Hobsbawm haspointed out, writing history for the historian:

... reqUires an effort of the imagination, awillingness to suspend beliefs based on his or herown life experience, and a lot of hard researchwork (Hobsbawm, 1997, p. 307),

It is May 1906 Dr Walter Roth, newly appointed ChiefProtector ofAborigines has left Brisbane at 8.00 am. He

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tells us he arrives in Murgon later that day at 8.10 pm.The next day he heads for the Aboriginal Settlement.On the road he meets a group of Aborigines. We aretold they were:

... a native named "Bob", and a half-easte [sie]named 'August King" and his wife, knownformerly as "Ruby Wall", on their way to thesettlement. "RubyWall" was sent to the settlementon the Minister's Order, and by Section 9 ofthe 1905 regulation she must not leave theSettlement without the Minister's permission inwriting. "Bob" said he had been working on Mr.Tronson's Selection falling scrub, and gave methe names of eight others there... "King" said hehad been working on the selection, helping tobuild a house and a barn, and was then making apigsty. He said he had been there for about threemonths, but had not yet received any payment(Roth, 1906, p. 1).

At this moment - just as we are beginning to wonderwhat it might be like to have one's movementscontrolled by a ministerial order, or to work for threemonths without pay - Bob, August King and RubyWallvanish from history We are told nothing about them inthe rest of the report. More importantly however, formy purposes, there is no reeord of what they thoughtabout the meeting with the white men. We do notknow what they thought it was like, to meet the man ofpower on the road and to be interrogated about theirlives, without having the power to ask him what hewas doing there. Nor do we know what Ruby felt aboutbeing moved to the Settlement and being confinedthere by the Minister's order. Further, we do not knowwhat Bob and his friends would have thought aboutthe quotation marks that Roth places around theirnames. Would they have understood that it indicatesthat their status in the white world was regarded, atbest, as below that of a eitizen? In all probability Boband the others would have been illiterate, and so whatDr Roth was to write about them would have remaineda mystery. Yet can anyone honestly doubt that theywould have understood that Roth was the master andthey were the slaves?However, to answer these questions fully and to

restore Bob, Ruby and August King properly to historywould require a further act of imagination, which liesoutside the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, as anAboriginal person, I would like to emphasise oncemore, the absence of any Indigenous voice in the earlyand indeed much of the late history of the CherbourgSchool. Few if any experts and bureaucrats who wroteand plotted and planned for the Indigenous people ofthis land ever thought to ask the Aborigine what she orhe thought or wanted. I would also like to record heremy strong objeetion to accepting only the white voiceas the source of evidence. A classic instance of this

'h' AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL of INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

technique is Keith Windschuttle's use of the absenceof reference to territoriality in the Robinson diaries tosupport his assertion that Aborigines had no conceptofland ownership (Windschuttle, 2001, p. 3).As I have already indicated, I include where possible

some Aboriginal accounts of thefr experience ofschooling at Cherbourg. These accounts are largelyfrom the school in the 1950s and 1960s, after, as wewill see, the school was integrated for the first timeinto the State Education system. For the earlier historyof the school I have to rely largely on the officialrecord. However, although I chafe at the absence ofan Indigenous voice, I am to some extent content hereto let the record speak for itself, since I am convincedthat a simple reading of the archives is indeed morethan sufficient to establish beyond reasonable doubtthat for most of its history Cherbourg State School waspart of a system, 'Aboriginal education", which was,as McConaghy has shown, never designed to educate(McConaghy, 2000). How this situation came aboutcan be established by examining what the players withpower said about their intentions in setting up theCherbourg School.

11!!1 Attitudes of the wider community towards Aborigines

Before doing this, however, I would like to set thosesame intentions and attitudes in a wider context.The establishment and subsequent trajectory of theCherbourg School cannot be understood without aknowledge of the wider scene within which the schoolwas expected to operate. Specifically I want to ask:how did mainstream Australia view the Aborigines atCherbourg? Blake argues strongly that the primarypurpose in setting up the reserve system was to eontrolthe Aborigine. The pOSSibility of being sent away toa reserve was a strong deterrent, and a weapon inthe armoury of those who sought control over theIndigenous population (Blake, 2001, pp. 37-39).Here a deep concern was with the need to "keep the

white race pure". There are innumerable expressionsof this in the literature and one would think that withthe publication ofRosalind Kidd's 1be Way We Civilise,the matter was beyond controversy (Kidd, 1997).However, the eurrent historical debates initiated byKeith Windschuttle have meant that one does indeedneed to go to the historical record to establish beyonddoubt the racist nature of the basis underlying therelationship between white and black Australians(Windschuttle, 2001).A good way to begin is to return to Dr Walter D.

Roth, the Chief Protector, whom we have already metin this paper. Reporting on his first visit to Cherbourg,Roth expressed the following concern:

There are four quadroon female children onthe settlement of about 8, 9, 11 and 13 years,respectively. They are attending the school, but

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CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL In HISTORICAL CONTEXT Grace Sarra

of course are living in the camp. It would bea good act if they were removed to a "white"orphanage as suggested in your report to theMinister some time ago. Personally I considerthe leaving of quadroons in blacks' camps isthe greatest blot which could be placed onan administration aiming at the protection ofthe aboriginal race. The ultimate end of theAboriginal race is that theywill become half castesetc. and should not this racial waste be checkedby rescuing the quadroons etc (Roth, 1906, p. 9,emphasis added).

What is clear in this instance is that Roth, althougha liberal man in comparison to those who were tofollow him on his retirement in 1906, sees the endof the Aboriginal race is a real possibility (Kidd,1997, p. 58). His primary concem remains, though,with the protection of white blood. Thus his belief isthat for "quadroons" to live and cohabit with otherblacks involves the danger of wasting the preciouswhite "blood".Attitudes such as Roth's towards "blood" were if

anything to become more pronounced in the 1930s.These concerns became, indeed, quite critical after theGovernor, Sir Leslie Wilson, visited Cherbourg in 1934.His report on his tour raised the spectre of interracialrelations; specifically the Governor was extremelyworried about "blood". He Wrote to the DepuryPremier, Percy Pease:

Unfortunately, the increase in numbers is not dueto births of full blood natives, but of half-castes,and this point is ofgreat importance in the future.Many of the girls are sent out to stations or farmsas helps, and that 95% of them return to thesettlement, either about to have a child, or whohave had a child, the father of which is a whiteman. I, myself, saw many young children there,of such fair colour that one would think theywere entirely white born. The trouble is, that thedark blood never disappears, and the children ofthe next generation may well be, and often are,dark coloured, even if the fair half caste marries awhite man (Wilson, 1934).

This was a situation, which obViously could not betolerated in a "civilised" nation. The governor, though,was also very clear who was to blame:

However much one may deprecate the fact thatwhite men become fathers of these half-castechildren, the blame must rest, to a very largeextent, on the native girls, who by temperament,and a desire to have a child by a white father,encourage white men in every way. The proximityof the Settlements to townships like Murgon, andWondai, in itself constitutes a temptation to the

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girls, even if they do not go Out to employment(Wilson, 1934).

The governor thought the solution was the completelocking up of the girls or the removal of theCherbourg settlement (Kidd, 1997, p. 126). The ChiefProtector, John Bleakley, was compelled to defend hisdepartment's policy He reported that, while many girlsgot pregnant to white men while working on nearbyfarms, most of the births on the settlement too were"half-caste". He also pointed out that there were strongeconomic considerations behind the policy of allOwinggirls from Cherbourg to work as domestics (Kidd,1997, p. 126). Bleakiey must have felt it unnecessary toadd that these girls were also a source of cheap labourfor the white populations ofWondai and Murgon.In terms of attitude towards the "blood", Bleakley's

views were no different from that of the Governor's.Thus on the 23rd August 1934 he wrote to theUndersecretary, in defence ofmissions and settlements,to the effect that:

Not only do they protect the child races from theunscrupulous white, but they help to preservethe purity of the white race from the grave socialdangers that always threaten where there is adegraded race liVing in loose conditions at itsback door (Bleakley; cited in Kidd, 1997, p. 70).

That such views are deeply racist is surely beyonddebate. Moreover, it must be granted that, since theseviews were held by the Chief Protector, this is also asignificant indicator of the thrust of government policyHowever, what is more controversial is to publicly pointout that the racism has not gone away; Chris Sarra'sthesis carefully documents contemporary attitudesamongwhite Australians, shOWing a continuity betweenBleakley and the present (Sarra, 2005). Indeed inofficial circles as late as 1960, the Director of NativeAffairs, Cornelius O'Leary could say the following ata conference:

... the Government is not going to allow whiteand near white children whether their parentsare black or white to remain on the Settlementsat the cost of the tax payer. You have to educatecoloured people to make the sacrifice to havetheir children adopted and so give them thechance to enjoy the privileges of the whitecommunity (cited in HREOC, 1997).

0,\ Specific atlitudes and intentions towards the school

The process of schooling began at Cherbourg in 1903.To understand the aims and purposes of the schoolingone must grasp the fact that it took place within thereserve system and seems never to have been designed

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to clash with the over-arching purposes of that system.What were, then, these aims and purposes of the reservesystem? Here Blake argues very convincingly that:

Aprincipal objective of the Barrambah settlementwas to control and discipline those removedthere. Barrambah was never a passive institutionwhere the displaced remnants of the indigenousinhabitants were able to maintain their cultureand lifestyle without interference. Aboriginalculture was regarded as intrinsically inferiorand a central feature of the settlement's modusoperandi was the attempt to destroy the inmates'cultural identity and inculcate a "limited amountof civilisation" (Blake, 2001, p. 57).

The school, then, was to playa supporting role inthis overall system; this was quite methodical inboth planning and execution, as can be seen fromthe inspectorial reports. However this is not to saythat there were no tensions or contradictions atwork within the schooling sTstem. The purposes ofschooling were to reproduce the dominant valuesof the society; nevertheless, within the system, trueeducation was still possible. There is always the riskof the reduplication of the "crime of Socrates" - theyoung may become capable of transforming societyrather than reprodUcing it (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 77-80).It may be worthwhile here to outline briefly some

of the basic features of Bhaskarian sociology, whichheavily informs the paper. To begin with, Bhaskaremphasises the reality of social structures. Thesemay fail the test of esse est percipi, but they certainlymeet the causal criterion of reality in that, althoughsocial structures may not be subject to perception,they do have effects (Bhaskar, 1989, p. 69). That thisis not merely a matter of scholarly debate can beseen from the following, now notorious) statementmade by Margaret Thatcher in 1987, while she wasPrime Minister of England:

I think we've been through a period where toomany people have heen given to understand thatif they have a problem, it's the government'sjob to cope with it. "I have a problem, I'll geta grant." "I'm homeless, the government musthouse me." They're casting their problem onsociety. And, you know, there is no such thingas society. There are individual men and women,and there are families. And no government cando anything except through people, and peoplemust look to themselves first. It's our duty to lookafter ourselves and then, also to look after ourneighbour. People have got the entitlements toomuch in mind, without the obligations. There'sno such thing as entitlement, unless someonehas first met an obligation (cited in Deer, 1987).

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I will pass over the obvious inconsistency in the abovestatement (that families are real but society is not), topoint out that behind the solipsism lies the desire toavoid responsibility for the evils that Thatcher's neo-liberal economics inflicted upon British society. In asimilar vein I would argue that, if we are unwillingto admit the reality of social structures, then we canneither understand nor explain their role. This iscrucially important if one accepts the notion that wearc born into social structures. They exist before us,so, although they would nOt exist without us, we donot create them but can either reproduce or transformthem. As Bhaskar pUts it:

... people do not create society. For it always pre-exists them. Rather it is an ensemble ofstructures,practices and conventions that individualsreproduce or transform. But which would notexist unless they did so. Society does not existindependently of conscious human activity (theerror of reification). But it is not the product ofthe latter (the error of voluntarism) (Bhaskar,1989, p. 76).

Moreover I would like to emphasise that thetransformation of these pre-existing social Structuresis no easy matter. It is certainly not, as the philosopherRichard Rorty argued, a merely linguistic affair.For Rorty:

To see a common social practice as cruel andunjust ... is a matter of redescription ratherthan discovery. It is a matter of changingvocabularies rather than of stripping away theveil of appearances from an objeCtive reality, anexperiment with new ways of speaking ratherthan of overcoming "false consciousness" (Rofty,Cited in Bhaskar, 1991, p. 72).

However, the reality of the social structure thatAboriginal Australians have endured is not simplyto be described away. Contra Rorty, Bhaskar hasargued that:

'" the identification of the source of anexperienced injustice in social reality) necessaryfor changing or remedying it, involves muchmore that redescription, even if it depends onthat too centrally. It is a matter of finding anddisentangling webs of relations in social life, andengaging explanatolT critiques of the practicesthat sustain them ... Moreover, such explanatorycritiques will lead, ceteris paribus, to actionrationally directed to transforming, dissolvingor disconnecting the structures and relationswhich the experience of injustice and the otherills theoretically informed practice has diagnosed(Bhaskar, 1991, p. 72).

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CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL In HISTORICAL CONTEXT Grace Sarra

Here it is my firm conviction that a study of the historyof the Cherbourg school enables one to understandboth its role in the denial of education to Aboriginalpeople and the purpose of that denial. Nor should itbe assumed that Aboriginal Australians were not awareof the inferiority of the education they received. Thelate Oodgeroo Nunuccal (n.d.) has captured this wellin her poem "The Teachers":

(For Mother who was never taught to reador write)Holy men, you came to preach:"Poor black heathen, we will teachSense of sin and fear of hell,Fear of God and boss as well;We will teach you work for play,We will teach you to obeyLaws of God and laws ofMammon ..."And we answered, "No more gammon,If you have to teach the light,'Ieach us first to read and write."

It is, of course, the ability to read and write that isessential for Indigenous Australians to identify thestructures that oppress them, and it is the same abilitythat will give them the knowledge and power totransform those same structures.Here Roth's report of 1906 sheds an interesting

light on how the authorities viewed the transformativepOSSibilities within true education. He is discussing thevexed questions of "half-caste" children and draws acomparison between the North of Queensland and theSouth. In the North contact with whites was limitedand this appears to have been close to Roth's ideal.He writes:

There does not appear to be any marked tendencyfor the half-castes on the Northern missionsto return to centres of European civilisation;their ignorance of the outside world, theiralmost complete isolation from the whites, thecomparatively large areas comprising the reservesover which they have a free run, their training forsettled agricultural work, and a school educationofpurposely not too high a standard are all ofthem factors which are concurrently bringingabout this desirable state of affairs. So far, theyare apparently content to live, marry and diethere: their life is simple, happy, useful and God-fearing: they marry amongst themselves and withthe full-bloods, though I understand that thelatter unions are not encouraged (Roth, 1906, p.12, emphasis added).

In the case ofCherbourg, contact with the whites couldnot be so easily policed and Roth's reports are oftenconcerned with a need to maintain "protection" and tooppose or restrain the demand of the whites for cheap

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labour and, of course, the never explicitly stated rightto sexually exploit Aboriginal women. More significantfor the purposes of this paper is his explicit approval ofa minimalist approach to schooling, one which wouldpreclude the possibility of education with its attendantdanger of creating an educated stratum of Aborigines,who presumably would be difficult to control in thatthey might seek to transform, rather than to reproduce,the status quo.That Roth need not have worried unduly about the

Cherbourg school can be seen from a range of statisticsthat we will examine later. However, for the moment,I would argue that from its inception until at least the50s there is an underlying continuity about CherbourgSchool and that continuity was maintained becausethe primary purpose of the school was to disciplineand control - certainly not to "educate". Thus, in theInspector's report of 1910, we read:

The appearance of the children was in everyway pleasing and their progress in the schoolsatisfactory. No one could help remarking theirbright intelligent faces and neat tidy appearanceor feel anything but admiration for the splendidcontrol and discipline exercised by their youngteacher (Office of the Visiting Justice to HomeSecretary's Office, 1910, emphasis added).

Nevertheless, beneath this concern for disciplinethere lurked the fear that the native would revert tothe primitive Other. As the District Inspector put itin 1938:

The danger so far as they are concerned manifestsitself after they leave school at about the age of14 years until about 18 years. If brought undersupervision and discipline they would be less aptto revert to the primitive as often threats [sic].(ChadWick, 1936).

That discipline and control remained an ongOingconcern can be seen from the discussion in 1948 onlowering the age at which schooling should commence.The Superintendent advocated an age of five for thefollowing reasons:

The children here and I presume also on otherSettlements have very lax home life and theolder these children get the more encourageable[sic, incorrigible?] they become. On admissionto school at five, they are immediately underdiscipline and are easily amendable, but shouldthe school age be raised to six, by the timethey reach 6, they are becoming little larrikinsespecially the boys without check from theirparents with the result the children wouldbecome more difficult for the teacher to enforcehis discipline also for the children to settle

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down (Superintendent to Director of NativeAffairs, 1948).

The request to lower the age of commencement didnot fallon deaf ears, and by 1953 children were beingadmitted at a much younger age.

III Can they be educated? The native mind hypothesis

The curriculum at Cherbourg seems to have gonethrough three distinct phases. The first of these lasteduntil 1930. It consisted of imparting a "very elementaryknowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic" (Blake,2001, p. 61). Other subjects such as manual artsfor boys and sewing and darning for girls appearedintermittently, depending on factors such as teacheravailability or interest (Blake, 2001, p. 61-2).The second phase of the curriculum commenced in

the early 1930s when the headmaster at Cherbourg,Robert Crawford, drew up a syllabus for native schools,designed to cover only four grades. The decision toinstitute this watered-down curriculum at Cherbourgand other settlements was reinforced and justified interms of the supposed ability level of the pupils. Blakereports that it was judged that there was a "native mind"that did not suit western education. In Crawford'sopinion his curriculum was of a sufficient standardbecause of "the difference in environment and mentalability between the aboriginal child and his whitebrother" (Crawford, cited in Blake, 2001, p. 62).So the authorities appear to have vacillated between

fears that the pupils would become educated and theassertion that this was not possible. In any case Blakedescribes the resulting curriculum as follows:

Within the classroom, the basic objectives were tocontinue to give a "very elementary knowledge ofreading, writing and arithmetic". To accommodatethe "native mind", the amount of time spent ineach grade was considerably longer than theusual twelve months (Blake, 2001, p. 61).

How much longer the Cherbourg students wereexpected to take over their education can be gatheredfrom this report.

The pupils are grouped into seven grades. Threeyears are spent in Prep, One year in GI, two yearsin grade II, two years in GIll, and one year ingrade Iv. The work does not extend beyond thatofgrade Iv. There seems no reason, however, whythe more intelligent pupils might not continuethe work beyond the standard set down forGN (District Inspector to Department of PublicInstruction, 1932 - 1936).

Crawford's curriculum remained in place until 1953,when the new state syllabus was introduced and the

"N AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL 'I INDIGENOUS EDUCATIONclasses were completely regraded (1953 Report, PartOne). In 1955 a Year 7 was added. However onlyeight pupils were able to proceed to Grade 8. A moreoptimistic assessment as to the mental ability of thepupils gradually emerged. Thus in the 1956 reportwe read:

It is evident that many of the children havea sufficiently high IQ to reach the standarddemanded by the state school syllabus, but itplaces a great burden on the teachers in theattempt to make up for the deficiencies existing(Queensland Government, 1956, part one).

By 1957, one boy, Lawrence Bell, from the settlementsecured a scholarship to study industrial Junior andtwo girls, Joan Shillingsworth and Iris Bell weregranted concessional scholarships to undertakecommercial Junior at Murgon High School (CherbourgState School, 1957).

Iii Strong and smart The school in action--

McConaghy's assertion, which I referred to above, thatAbOriginal education was never deSigned to educate,will doubtless strike some as overly polemical. Howevera brief examination of how the school at Cherbourgwas actually run, in my opinion, is ample warrant forher claim. How else is one to interpret the follOWing?In 1919 the District Inspector, Mr. R. Skelton

reported on the poor conditions of the school buildingand the grounds. He noted that:

The schoolroom is a dilapidated weatherboardstructure, unlined and unceiled [Sic). The roofingis secondhand corrugated iron with old nail holesin it through which rain drives in wet weather.Draughts and dust come in from evelY quarter,through gaping weather boards and flooring. Theinterior of the building is velY hot in summer andvery cold in winter, and a serious menace at alltimes to the health of teachers and pupils alike.The room has a floor space of 450sq. ft, which at8 sq. ft. per child gives accommodation for lessthan 60 children. Yet 122 children were presentat inspection, the second and third classes beingtaught outside under a temporary bough shelterwhich can only be used in favourable weather(Skelton, 1919).

A year later in 1920, the assistant teacher, EsterGleghorn raised the matter of overcrowding with theChief Protector:

Is it not a fact that you have a better barn recentlyerected with nothing to put in it than this schoolwhich has to accommodate at times over 120children and blacks at that. I doubt much if you

115

CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL in HISTORICAL CONTEXT Crace Sarra

could find a square yard in the roof walls orflooring without holes and cracks...The buildingis nothing more than a death trap. (Cleghorn,cited in Blake, 2001, p. 59)

Cleghorn's plea was to fall on deaf ears, for rwo yearslater we read the following in the archive:

Department of Public Instruction - thegovernment fails to secure the general goodorder required for normal working conditions.Classes Iv, III and II (nearly 60 pupils) work inan open shed under the Head teacher and theregood order is maintained. The drafts of class I(87 pupils) occupy the two classrooms andthe boarded-in front verandah of the schoolbuilding. The assistant teacher cannot controland teach children distributed over three rooms.At least rwo additional teachers are requiredto make an effective staff. The grounds arebare and unattractive and no attempt has beenmade to prOVide a children's garden. The mainschoolrooms and the verandah are unlined, notweather proof and are badly lighted. The seatsand the walls of the closets are kept clean, butthe pans should be cleared more frequently(Skelton, 1922).

Nor was this report destined to bear much fruit, for14 years later the following appears in the records:

Organisation - conditionsexist, and two divisions at least must ofnecessity be accommodated on the verandah.Conditions on the verandah are unsatisfactoryfor teaching and also so far as the pupils arepersonally concerned themselves; in summerthere is the glare of the sun to contend With,in winter, the cold winds, while wet weatherrenders conditions very uncomfortable. It isvery necessary that extra accommodation beproVided by an addition to the present building;the whole structure, moreover, requires to bere-painted (Chadwick, 1936).

Norwere the problems confined to the lack ofprovisionof suitable buildings. If one examines the statistics onthe pupil to teacher ratio a shocking picture emerges(see Table 1).Lest it might be thought that conditions at

Cherbourg were not qualitatively different fromconditions prevailing within white education we needto look at the fascinating instance of Cherbourg'sother school.

Table I: Statistics on pupil!teacher ratio 1919-1954.,- .Year Number of Children

12.!2__t-!25 children 2 teachers 62 children per _________1925 Over 200 pupils Head teacher and rwo 1925 Report

assistants-_._--_._- .._------------------- --- ---1927 202 children 2 teachers Average attendance for the month ofJune 186

(Home Secretary's Department to ViSiting Justice,----------- 1927) ------------._---------1936 190 children 3 teachers The head teacher has 53 students under his

direct control from GIII and GIv, while each1 IAssistant teacher responsible for 81 and 85b----+---------- students respectively.:J...Q1ad.J,'i.<:.k, 193...<l2_______11938 1232 students 3 teachers retardation appears somewhat heavy in,

Ithe lower school, this is the common experience

1 Iin other schools. No doubt it is caused byI, the character and type of the pupil handled."I I(District Inspector to Department of PublicI--------- IInstruction, 19'!.1l)__________________________

1940 221 children Unknown , --------------_._-----------1949 264-258 children -_._"1952 297-291 children ---------------------------_.-1953 302-304 children The new state school syllabus was introduced

ihere this year and this necessitated a complete,Iregrading of classes. Some classes werecombined making vety large numbers in thesegrades

1954 313 in June 1953 to299 March in 1954 -_._---_.

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i§i The school within the school_.__._-_.__._---_.._-- ---It is a fact not so well known, but neverthelesssignificant, that there were, for a period, two schoolsat Cherbourg. Blake in his summary of tbe educationbeing provided for the "natives" informs us in anote that,

The view that the standard of education in theschool was not comparable to the state systemwasshared by the white officiats on the settlement.They refused to send their own children to theschool. When the number of white children ofthe settlement was sufficient for a school, thestaff lobbied the government to set up a schoolfor their children (Blake, 2001, p. 261).

That lobbying process is in itself important to analyse,for not only does it provide us with an insight into theinadequacy of the education being provided for the"natives", but it also reveals what one can only describeas the truth of the underlying relationship between thewhite communiry and the people of Cherbourg. In thearchives we read the following,

An objection to the white children being taughtin the aboriginal school is the deleterious effecton the character of the white children, boysespecially - the natives look up to the whiteboy, attend to his wants, and hence he developsa sense of superioriry - he misses the trainingwhich a boy receives when running with thosewho are his equals or his superiors (DistrictInspector to Department of Public Instruction,1932-1936) .

On the surface Gower appears to be concerned aboutthe white children developing a sense of superiorityor being spoiled by coming into toO close contact withthe "natives". However this concern did not extend toany consciousness of the difference in prOVision thatensued when the white school was opened in 1932.There were initially 14 children, rising to 17 and theschool closed in 1941 when the numbers dropped to5. So for much of the life of the school the teacher'pupil ratio was 1 to 14. We can understand somethingof the significance of this figure if we compare themwith the data on the school for Aborigines. There thepicture was quite grim:

For an average attendance of approximately190 children, a staff of three teachers has beenallotted. They have the somewhat negativeassistance of fouf native monitors whose actualhelp is naturally not of much practical value. Thehead teacher has under his direct control GIlland GIV with an enrolment of 53 pupils; whileeach A.T. is responsible for 81 and 85 pupils

,b' AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL of INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

respectively (District Inspector to Department ofPublic Instruction, 1932-1936).

However the teacher pupil ratio was not the onlyconcern of those who set up the white school. Muchcare was taken to ensure racial separation in sanitarymatters. Thus we read,

Regarding the Sanitary Conveniences, thelavatories at present situated at the RecreationHall are being thoroughly scrubbed anddisinfected, new pan steads are being fitted, andthe doors are being fitted with suitable locks andkeys. The keys will be handed to the incomingteacher (Crawford, cited in Blake, 2001, p. 38).

In this concern to ensure separate sanitary proVisions forthe white children, there are echoes of the initial fearsand attitudes underlying the setting up of the CherbourgSettlement. In this context Blake reports that,

The sick were also removed if their particularillness was regarded as a threat to the health of thewhite community The one malady about whicbwhites were most sensitive was venereal disease.Any Aboriginal person suspected of this diseasewas quickly sent to Barrambah, ostensibly "fortreatment" but in reality to prevent contaminatingthe white population (Blake, 2001, p. 38).

So social and educational inequality were the lot ofthose attending Cherbourg State School. Moreover towitness this inequality they bad to look no further thanthe "Provisional School" set up for the white cbildren.

Ill! Aboriginal views

Ada Simpson attended Cherbourg State School trom1949-1963 and has shared bel' experiences of herschooling as a student at Cherbourg State School. Shediscussed bow they had to learn about and attend todomestic duties to enable tbem to provide services inthe white community as domestics in the city,

We would go to the Domestic Science and theboys would go to the rural school to learn skillsof woodwork and the girls had to learn skills ofdomestic duties, cleaning bouses, making beds,cooking and sewing. We were taught in thedomestic science to equip ourselves for later lifeand be able to cook, clean and sew for service inthe wider community (cited in Strong & SmartFoundation, 2004).

Ruth Hegarty, a student from 1934-1943, recalledher opinions about schooling during this era. Shereinforced Blake's perceptions about the control anddiscipline at the school by stating,

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CHERBOURG STATE SCHOOL ,» HISTORICAL CONTEXT

There was no culture, definitely no culture beingtaught in the school and language was out.Everybody had to speak English (cited in Strong& Smal1 Foundation, 2004).

Ruth Hegarty attended school from the age of four anda half years to 14 years old going through the processof learning the 3R's - reading, writing and arithmetic.Ruth states:

Mr Crawford who was the headmaster said wewould never achieve because we were blackpeople because our brain couldn't contain asmuch as our white brothers (cited in Strong &Smart Foundation, 2004).

She also recalls how violent the principal was towardsthem at Cherbourg School: "The strap or the cane wasused upon us - it was such a violent act sometimeswhen they would beat us with the cane" (cited inStrong & Smart Foundation, 2004).John Stanley, who is presently employed at the

school, and was the Community Education Counsellorat Murgon State High School for many years, hassummed up his feelings about his schooling andthe schooling of many Indigenous students he sawgo through the system. He has strongly emphasisedthe constant failures for Indigenous people inthe education system and that the system failedIndigenous people.

Being on an Aboriginal community the emphasiswas to get our children into school, teach themin a white man environment. Taken away fromthem was the opportunity of what they wouldhave had with their own elders and their OWnleaders in their communities and being taughtthe cultural aspects of their community (cited inStrong & Smart Foundation, 2004).

Other Indigenous people interviewed made commentsabout how the education system was primarily set upto fail Indigenous people; and a male student spokeof two laws at Cherbourg - one for the white peopleand one for the black people, with no quality oftheir education.AQueensland man who was removed to Cherbourg

in the 1940s states:

I don't know who decided to educate theAboriginal people but the standard was low inthese mission areas. I started school at the age ofeight at grade 1, no pre-school. I attended schoolfor six years, the sixth year we attended grade 4,then after that we left school, probably [atJ 14years (cited in HREOC, 1997, p.170)

lIS

Grace Sarra• __

111 Conclusion

Here I would argue that the historical record supportsno other conclusion than that Cherbourg State Schoolwas for most of its existence a hindrance and not anaid to Aboriginal development. The sad irony is thatCherbourg School was a success, but not in terms ofAboriginal education but rather in terms of its primarymission of the oppression ofAborigines.I am aware that this conclusion will be seen

as controversial and yet another instance of whatGeoffrey Blainey and previous Prime Minister Howardhave dubbed the "black arm band view of Australianhistory". Again I am content to leave the last wordto the historical record. In the 1917 report we readthe following:

Department of Public Instruction - thediscipline is firm and cheerful. The childrenare docile and obedient ... If the object of thisschool be to keep the children quiet, and out ofmischief during the daytime, and to train themto be lazy with as much incidental teaching asone teacher can give to 117 children in fivedifferent classes in an room withless floor space than 4 square feet to each child,it is a success, but if the aim is to cultivatetheir intelligence, to give exercise to their selfactivity, to train them to be industrious and selfreliant with a fair knowledge of the work ofclass III when leaving, the school is a failure(District Inspector to Department of PublicInstruction, 1917).

fJ2 Acknowledgements_._-------_.--'=--------

I would like to acknowledge the children andIndigenous staff of Cherbourg State School andespecially the elders and members of the Cherbourgcommunity for assisting me in my research.

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Bhaskar, R (1989). Reclaiming reali/y. London: Verso.Bhaskar, R (1991). Philosophy and the idea offreedom. Oxford: Blackweil.Blake, T. (200 I). AhistOly of the Cherbourg settlement: Adumping ground.Brisbane, QLD: University of Queensland Press.

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Kaufmann, W(Ed.). (1978). The portable Nietzsche. Harmondsworth, UK:Penguin.

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Brisbane, QLD: University of Queensland Press.MacIntyre, S., & Clark, A. (2003). The bistOly wars. Carlton, VIC: MelbourueUniversity Press.

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About the author ------_.

Dr Grace Sarra is a SeniOf Lecturer at the QueenslandUniversity of Technology (QU1) and is the first studentat QUT to complete the Doctor of Creative lndustl"ies.Bom and raised in Townsville, she is of Abol"iginaland TOfres Strait Islander heritage and has beenteaching in schools fmm the eady years thmugh to thesecondary levels and in teniary institutions fOf over18 years. Her interests are In the area of Indigenouseducation with a particular focus in social justice andinclusive education.

119