- by C Bartholomew
- The Guardian
- Issue #2119
Newly built huts for the lazaret on Peel Island, 1907. Photo: State Library of Queensland
More than a year after the release of Coroner Wilson’s findings regarding the deaths of three Aboriginal women in the remote Queensland town of Doomadgee, little has been done to address the underlying causes of Indigenous health disparities identified by the report. At a time when the NDIS and aged care have been the topic of national discussion, and when health and legal practitioners have warned that Victoria’s inquiry into the gender pain gap will be a rude awakening, the history and present reality of First Nations health must be better understood.
First and foremost, it’s important to dispel the myth of Indigenous deficit – the myth that Indigenous Australians are just a mass of problems to be fixed. Communities like Doomadgee’s are strong and dedicated to maintaining Law and Culture. It is time for governments to acknowledge and empower these communities while taking responsibility for the underlying causes of health disparities, instead of imposing paternalistic measures which do more harm than good.
LOCK HOSPITALS
Between 1908 and 1919, more than 800 Aboriginal men women and children in Western Australia were removed from their homes and taken to facilities on Bernier and Dorre Islands. These were the first island ‘lock hospitals.’
The lock hospitals were an invention of the British Empire, first used to detain women suspected of sex work in English garrison towns. Lock hospitals were more to protect the soldiers in these towns than to help women imprisoned there. While public opposition saw the practice end in Britain, they continued in other parts of the Empire. Lock hospitals for “common prostitutes” continued to operate in Melbourne and Brisbane, for example.
Western Australian lock hospitals for Aboriginal people were very similar. Police and other officials without medical training ‘diagnosed’ Aboriginal people with venereal diseases and brought them to the islands, often with force or in chains. About 40 per cent of the prisoners never returned home, while more than 100 died on the islands and were buried in unmarked graves. Other states also used the practice, such as Queensland’s facility on Fantome Island near Townsville, which operated as a lock hospital from 1928 to 1945, and as a lazaret (leprosarium or leper colony) from 1939 to 1973. Like its Western Australian counterparts, the Fantome facility made use of invasive procedures. Death rates were high.
Following increased concern about venereal diseases after the First World War, many states introduced compulsory notification and treatment for the general population, with education and even free treatment. The lock hospitals of WA and Queensland, in contrast, show how First Nations patients were given imprisonment rather than medical care. The communities impacted by these practices have remembered them, but governments and health services seem eager to forget.
EUGENICS AND STERILISATION
The lock hospitals were part of a system of segregation and colonisation. State authorities sought to prevent sexual relationships between Indigenous women and white men, while the detention of Indigenous people as prisoners and the removal of Indigenous children were ramping up. Meanwhile Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across Queensland, WA, and the rest of the country were active in bringing attention to and campaigning against issues such as police brutality and segregation from education and healthcare.
Australian eugenicist and segregationist policies continued to evolve. Figures such as Western Australia’s Chief Protector of Aborigines and Commissioner of Native Affair A O Neville, a believer in eugenics, designed and oversaw the beginnings of the Stolen Generations and other assimilationist policies intended to ‘breed out’ Indigeneity. Following the 1967 Referendum, programs were initiated to curb Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population growth, such as covert ‘family planning’ practices imposed upon Indigenous women.
While birth control has meant liberation for many women across the world, it has also been wielded as a means of institutional control over the ethnic composition of the population. While white women fought for their right to have access to contraception and abortion, Indigenous women fought for their right to have and raise their children. While the narrative used to justify previous segregation and assimilation policies had been that of the ‘dying race’ and the white man’s responsibility to “smooth the dying pillow,” census results after the ’67 referendum proved the Indigenous population was growing.
Figures such as Jarvis Nye, founder of the Brisbane Clinic, gave dire warnings about the “alarming situation” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities potentially outbreeding “our intelligent and provident European and Asian citizens.” Nye, advocated for “instruction in contraception” and free sterilisation. Even at the national level, politicians such as Douglas Everingham, who would go on to be Whitlam’s minister for health, called for free sterilisation to combat “excessive” Indigenous birth rates. The University of Queensland’s professor of preventative medicine, John Francis, criticised health policies that addressed disproportionate Indigenous infant mortality rates without also curbing population growth.
Governments such as the Northern Territory’s implemented ‘family planning’ schemes which, among other things, utilised what a district welfare officer referred to as “direct persuasion” to compel Aboriginal women to receive IUDs. The success of the program was measured by the percentage of Aboriginal women who had received contraception. While it is unclear to what extent Aboriginal women had free choice under this program, it is important to note that the Director of Welfare who oversaw the program also had control over Aboriginal women’s rights to work, travel, marriage, enrol their children in education, and even retain custody over their children.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women across the country did not simply accept these programs. The organised efforts of Indigenous women led to the creation of the Aboriginal Medical Service, as well as community-based healthcare providers, to reassert control over their own health and bodily autonomy.
