During the years Bowditch was in Alice Springs , Miss Pink issued several printed Open Letters on important issues which were designed to influence government policies in respect of Aborigines . The letters were widely distributed – to the Prime Minister, the Territories Minister , other politicians, national newspapers, anthropologists and others whom she felt should be informed of her views.
These letters were run off for her on
a duplicator at
the office of the NSW
branch of the Sheet Metal
Working, Agricultural Implement and
Stovemaking Industrial Union of
Australia . A cover
note from the secretary of the
union, T. Wright, a member of the
Communist Party of Australia Central Committee, associated with the dynamic Communist
author Jean Devanny, also interested in the plight of Aborigines, assured fiercely independent
Miss Pink that work involved in the printing
of the newsletters had been done in the
union office and there was no cost.
Wright was interested in
Aborigines and had included many
of Miss Pink’s views in a pamphlet he produced calling for a new deal
for them . In 1950, Wright had arranged for an open letter she issued condemning
the proposal for Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira to
take up land that was traditionally that of another tribe to be published in the Communist
Review.
She raised the possibility that Namatjira ,
who had been feted by sections of the white community,
being used by politically minded
whites , or “ mixed bloods” , to betray the future
of his own race in the NT. A few years ago, she said , Namatjira ,
influenced by whites, had been prepared to take up land
as a pastoral holding outside his own Aranda country. To do so, would probably have
caused bitterness and untold trouble
with the owning tribes- people in the area . While Aboriginals resented
the arrival of white pioneers they had
not been able to take effective
action against them . But they could,
and would , resent and resist, or
steal from a “ Black ”of another tribe .
Then police would be called in to
support the invading “ Black ”pastoralist. It was hypocrisy to pretend to be “raising them ” by trampling
on their tribal outlook on their tribal
territory.
CALL FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION
A postscript White attached to a note sent to Miss
Pink read:“For persons of mixed blood, we need a term
corresponding to Eurasian-say Euralian
or Euraustian."In a newsletter issued May 11, l951, copies of
which were forwarded to the Brisbane Science Congress , she
firmly outlined her case against full citizen rights being handed out one by one and called
for pressure to be applied on the
federal government to appoint a Royal Commission to invest igate the NT situation.
Preferably , she said the head of
the inquiry should be a Tasmanian judge and that all witnesses must be permanent residents of the NT, not outsiders or so called experts .
People of part aboriginal
blood, she said, were a different
problem. Commonwealth control of all the affairs of Australia’s native race
would be the ultimate goal, her letter
stated. The searchlight should be focused
on every aspect of the Territory situation and she listed areas of specific interest which needed close
scrutiny as being wages for men and women, mission activities ,
appointment of staff , cattle station conditions, the operation and cost
of running Native Wards in hospitals . In effect, she wanted everything and
everybody put under the microscope. In
a slap for Professor Elkin and other anthropologists, she wrote :
Sydney University’s
Department of Anthropology’s church-mission obsessed dictatorship over the Australian , and especially the NT full-bloods’ future, and present
lives ( through his appointees or followers ) , has exterminating forces inherent in it, through wrong policies
being advised and implemented
.
The next Open Letter came
out on January 13 , l953, and consisted of six
duplicated pages that
attacked the Hasluck-Menzies assimilation
policy which she described as a
camouflaged substitute for extermination
. The new exploitation of Aboriginals
in Australia was now political, she
said, with both Right and Left wanting to “ give ” full-bloods and mixed bloods
“ a vote ” , regardless of whether or not they could , at that stage , use it in their own interests-which in the NT they were
not. Under these rights the
Aborigines would be taxed while the
station owners for whom they worked as slave labourers
paid no tax. Aborigines could be called to serve in the Army to fight for whites’ interests , even for “
the freedom of Koreans
to decide their own future”.
Could , she asked, anything be more
cynical and hypocritical of white
Australians.
Once more she called for
each tribe to be given its own land on which to decide its own
future. These areas should not be called
government settlements or mission reserves but be
named after the owning
tribe-North Aranda Development Area ,
Wailbri Development Area, etc., definitely
not , as at present, Roman Catholic,
Lutheran or Baptist mission stations .
Again she plugged for adult night class education
for at least minimum literacy .
She told how the last fullblood
in Tasmania, Truganini , had been “ assimilated” into the white
community so much that she drove about with
the Governor’s wife in a carriage and danced
with aides-de-camp at
Government House balls. Yet she had died a
miserable human-wreck on an island, not her own tribal area , and begged to be buried at sea .
Miss Pink added that the woman’s skeleton was
now in a museum .
A repeat of this situation was not wanted in the Northern
Territory where instead of Government
House , political platforms would be
used as the stage to perform on, like circus animals or parrots. NT
full bloods must make up their
own informed decisions as a race. In parenthesis , she wrote :
And until they are LITERATE they cannot
be . She went on to say most
fullbloods in other parts of the Commonwealth
had become imitation whites ,
instead of developed Aborigines , and people retaining some of their own culture along with that development and literacy.
That the “ civilized” ones in
the south were simply
whites’ tools and parrots was
more than obvious from their statements.
She explained that Aborigines “working for the Lord ” on missions
actually saved the pockets of the
white adherents of the denominations
down south.
Miss Pink probably regarded
much of what Bowditch
did in the cause of half-castes
as reprehensible. Early one
morning at home he heard knocking at the door. When he opened the door, there was Miss Pink with a raised umbrella and ,
muttering something like , “ How
dare you use that phrase, ” brought the
brolly down on his head. Without further ado, she promptly departed with her weapon. Bowditch, a decorated former wartime commando , was never sure what
the offending phrase had been
. One possibility was that he had made a disloyal
statement at a public function to mark a Royal occasion . ( Years later, a
reporter gave an erroneous account of this brolly attack in which he said the woman , not named , had called Bowditch a bastard. For the record , let it be known that Miss
Pink was a lady and would never have used
such language . Although , on
one occasion when Administrator Mick Driver
came down from Darwin on a visit,
Miss Pink sought an audience with him and on
becoming angry, she threw a file which
hit him in the face . He responded with nervous laughter
and delighted in recounting
the event , saying he admired her
courage and tenacity. NEXT: Darwin Beckons Bowditch.
