At
some stage , anthropologist Miss Olive Pink was
forced out of Thompson’s Rockhole and
came back to Alice Springs to live. According to Professor Elkin ,
the NT
Director of Native Affairs , E.W.P.
Chinnery, may have banned Miss Pink from going back to the Tanami . The professor
recalled that something, he was not
sure, had happened out in the desert
and this made Chinnery feel it was not safe for her. Some Alice residents claimed an
Aborigine attacked her and she shot him
in the rump with the pistol she carried for safety.
One
account of what happened
was put forward by Mrs Braitling of Mt Doreen Station . She said Miss Pink had
been trying to prevent the Aborigines
from contaminating the
water in the rockhole , which was
at a
low level . To
achieve this goal , she had tried
to stop them from just dipping things in the water or bending down
and drinking . A man
had become annoyed at the restrictions and knocked
Miss Pink to the ground. She, it seems ,
may have pulled out her gun and shot him in the buttock
.
After
that attack , it appears that she made her way to The Granites goldmine and narrowly escaped being shot in mistake for an animal when she crawled into
the Chapmans’ camp late at night .
Apart from having a five
stamp gold battery , the Chapmans had
tapped a good artesian water supply
for their swimming pool and
a garden , netted off
from animals. However, the
persistent desert animals managed
to nibble the vegetables at night . One of the Chapman sons armed himself with a rifle and
sat up late at night
to shoot the marauders. Hearing strange noises , he was ready to shoot when he discovered it was Miss Pink, who had been
on the track for three days without water, crawling along the ground. She was picked up , taken inside and given a spoonful of
brandy which she spat out in her rescuer’s face.
In
a scathing lecture in l936 ,Miss Pink said
discussion of the real truth
about the extermination of the native race was generally evaded. In her opinion, and that of medical authority
, the main cause of “ native depopulation” was venereal infection of full blood native women.
Some people used the “ camouflage” explanations of “ race suicide” and “
malnutrition ”. Because an entirely male
regime had failed to afford the
Aborigines any real benefits, she said
it was time women took an active
and prominent part in the administration of
native affairs. Medical women
were urgently needed in North Australia
to treat veneral disease among full blood native women. Miss Pink also attacked “malicious ”
statements in novels which reiterated such phrases as “treacherous ”and “ glaring warriors”.
She wrote another paper for Oceania in l936 , The Landowners in the Northern
Division of the Aranda Tribe , Central
Australia. Commenting on Miss Pink’s
work, Elkin said that she came up with
good material , having an eye for important points. In particular , he remembered her using
the expression totemic clan estates in relation to land ownership. Professor W.E.H. Stanner had used the same expression in a
paper, and Professor Elkin said he took
delight in pointing out to him that the
term had initially been used
by Miss Pink. Stanner had been reluctant to admit Miss Pink had been the
originator.
At
the time Elkin was corresponding with Miss Pink
in the l930s, he was also writing to author Xavier Herbert in Darwin
whose prize winning 1938 novel
Capricornia exposed the plight of
Aborigines in the Territory, especially women .
BETRAYAL OF FULLBLOODS
On December 6, l938 there appeared an article( see head of post ) in the Canberra Times by Miss Pink, described as a research worker
in anthropology and sociology, in which she urged the nation to consider the plight of Aborigines in Australia . Under
the proposed new federal government
policy she said it was proposed to give votes, education and
citizen rights to “ picked full-bloods ” This would be
utterly inconsistent with democratic principles, and would eventually
lead to further betrayal of the
aboriginal. Those selected for the
“rights” would be those least competent to
express the true nature of the aboriginal mind- police blacktrackers and “ mission pets ”, who would virtually betray the l5,000 full bloods still in the Territory by becoming the “
tools and marionettes” of
whites against their own race.
She
urged the nation give each tribe a secular sanctuary where it could shape its own destiny in an
atmosphere free of repression . Once
again, she was dismissive of missions
. She told Elkin that
if the “Golden Age ”of the Aboriginal Native Affairs Department arrived there would be one interpreter for each tribe and she would be the interpreter-adviser
for the
Wailbri NEXT: Miss Pink hits Bowditch with umbrella.
