The Diverse Impact of Colonisation
Pre-contact Indigenous education was disrupted by colonialism. Death of the young and the elderly through introduced disease undermined the process of cultural transmission. Post contact educational experiences in Indigenous Australia were not uniform.
Partington( 1999) notes that such experiences vary across a spectrum which ranges from those of Indigenous people in remote Australian who were not removed and remained connected with their land and culture and engaged in stock work to those in ‘settled Australia’. Formal schooling did not commence in these locations until as late as the 1950s. The need to provide education for such Australians was opposed by employers as unnecessary. As late as 1971, a Queensland Government Minister stated that providing education for Indigenous people ‘would only lead to trouble’ (King 1996, p. 94).
At the other end of this spectrum, Indigenous Australians located in ‘settled Australia’ had different experiences which was characterised by poorly resourced schooling on missions and reserves, exclusion from local state schools, racist attitudes and practices in regard their capabilities as students and in many instances disruption through forced removal from their communities.
King, Wayne. 1996. Black Hours. Sydney, Angus and Robertson.
Partington, Gary. 1999. ‘In those Days it was Rough”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island History and Education. In Partington, Gary (ed) Perspectives on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Education. Katoomba, Social Science Press.
Queensland Experiences
The poor quality of formal education for children living on reserves in Queensland is apparent in the testimony Stolen Generations Inquiry.
I don't know who decided to educate the Aboriginal people but the standard was low in these mission areas. I started school at the age of eight at grade 1, no pre-school. I attended school for six years, the sixth year we attended grade 4, then after that we left school, probably 14 years old.
Confidential submission 129, Queensland: man removed to Cherbourg in the 1940s. (HREOC 2007, p.170).
I finished school in fifth grade. I think I was 17. I did alright at school but they wouldn't allow us to go on. They wouldn't allow us to be anything. I would have liked to be a nurse or something but when I finished school they sent me to work as a domestic on station. Confidential submission 277, Queensland: woman removed at 7 years in 1934 to the dormitory on Palm Island (HREOC 2007, p. 171).
I wanted to be a nurse, only to be told that I was nothing but an immoral black lubra, and I was only fit to work on cattle and sheep properties ... I strived every year from grade 5 up until grade 8 to get that perfect 100% mark in my exams at the end of each year, which I did succeed in, only to be knocked back by saying that I wasn't fit to do these things ... Our education was really to train us to be domestics and to take orders. Confidential submission 109, Queensland: woman removed at 5 years in 1948 to the dormitory on Palm Island (HREOC 2007, p. 171).