'Is this not slavery?' — Jack Patten's opening address to Day of Mourning protests, 1938
'Is this not slavery?' — Jack Patten's opening address to Day of Mourning protests, 1938
It's Australia Day in my country, or Invasion Day as its regarded by most indigenous people. I doubt it will survive as a national holiday. The first backlash to it was in 1938.
I was told about Jack Patten’s now famous 1938 speech by a human rights lawyer friend of mine, Hugh deKretser. Hugh told me that for the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove, local indigenous tribes refused to wear skins and spears and be a part of the charade. Instead, organisers brought men from Menindee, in far-west New South Wales, to Sydney to play out those roles.
Meanwhile, a short distance away at Australia Hall, the Australian Aborigines League and the Aborigines Progressives Association organised a rival event — the first Day of Mourning Protest. This is the iconic photo that survives:
This First Day of Mourning event was the culmination of years of organising and effort, and the faces in this photo are true pioneers of black activism in Australia. Sporting great and future governor of South Australia, Sir Doug Nicholls, was also there in 1938. At a meeting in advance of the protest, Nicholls made the following statement on the subject of the meagre issue of weekly rations:
“We do not want chicken food. We are not chickens; we are eagles."
It was decided that on January 26th, 1938, they would move the following:
‘WE, representing THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA, assembled in conference at the Australian Hall, Sydney, on the 26th day of January, 1938, this being the 150th Anniversary of the Whiteman's seizure of our country, HEREBY MAKE PROTEST against the callous treatment of our people by the whitemen during the past 150 years, AND WE APPEAL to the Australian nation of today to make new laws for the education and care of Aborigines, we ask for a new policy which will raise our people TO FULL CITIZEN STATUS and EQUALITY WITHIN THE COMMUNITY.’
Jack Patten was the first speaker. Patten was president of the Aboriginal Progressives Association and a man possessed of enormous charisma and a passion for change. He’d been a tent boxer, a tracker, a council worker, unemployed — at one point he drove around the state of New South Wales collecting affidavits from mistreated aboriginal workers to present in a particular court case. Two years later he’d be off fighting in the war, and received a discharge after catching shrapnel in the knee. He was a big man, and a brilliant speaker. His ‘Is this not slavery’ speech is one of the most visited speeches on Speakola over the last few years. There is no audio, but here is the text:
On this day the white people are rejoicing, but we, as Aborigines, have no reason to rejoice on Australia’s 150th birthday. Our purpose in meeting today is to bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native Aborigines of this continent live. This land belonged to our forefathers 150 years ago, but today we are pushed further and further into the background. The Aborigines Progressive Association has been formed to put before the white people the fact that Aborigines throughout Australia are literally being starved to death.
We refuse to be pushed into the background. We have decided to make ourselves heard. White men pretend that the Australian Aboriginal is a low type, who cannot be bettered. Our reply to that is, ‘Give us the chance!’ We do not wish to be left behind in Australia’s march to progress. We ask for full citizen rights including old-age pensions, maternity bonus, relief work when unemployed, and the right to a full Australian education for our children. We do not wish to be herded like cattle and treated as a special class.
As regards the Aborigines Protection Board of NSW, white people in the cities do not realise the terrible conditions of slavery under which our people live in the outback districts. I have unanswerable evidence that women of our race are forced to work in return for rations, without other payment.
Is this not slavery?
Do white Australians realise that there is actual slavery in this fair, progressive Commonwealth?
Yet such is the case. We are looking in vain for white people to help us by charity.
We must do something ourselves to draw public attention to our plight. This is why this Conference is held, to discuss ways and means of arousing the conscience of White Australians, who have us in their power, but have hitherto refused to help us.
Our children on the Government stations are badly fed and poorly educated. The result is that when they go out into life, they feel inferior to white people.
This is not a matter of race, this is a matter of education and opportunity.
This is why we ask for a better education and better opportunity for our people.
We say that it is a disgrace to Australia’s name that our people should be handicapped by undernourishment and poor education, and then blamed for being backward.
We do not trust the present Aborigines Protection Board and that why we ask for its abolition. [applause]
Incompetent teachers are provided on the Government stations. This is the greatest handicap put on us. We have had 150 years of white men looking after us, and the result is, our people are being exterminated.
The reason why this Conference is called today is that the Aborigines themselves may discuss their problems and try to bring before the notice of the public and of parliament what our grievance is, and how it may be remedied.
We ask for ordinary citizen rights, and full equality with white Australians. [moved resolution]
What a speech. Every Australian should read it.
The speech and the conference led to a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Day a few weeks later, but any meaningful change took decades.
Jack Patten died in 1957 after a car accident and was buried in Fawkner cemetery. His wife and seven children survived him.
Most of the information in this piece comes from this article from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
This is a speeches blog, not a personal rant blog, but here are a few of my #changethedate tweets down the years:
This is my personal Substack … love you to sign up. Free and an email a week to your inbox.
