Australia, Building a 'White' Nation

In 1901, the ambition to build a progressive, young and new nation, called “Australia,” was featured by popular discourses on race. Being ‘white’ was considered essential for the new to form national identity of Australia. Chinese immigrants were considered a threat to the ‘white’ nation and their immigration was restricted by the Australian government and so were Aboriginal peoples. However, not only Chinese immigrants were subject to this policy. Based on the leading discourses on ‘race’, the Aboriginal peoples were considered a ‘doomed race’ due to their backwardness and the devastating European influences that had decreased their population. At the same time though, Australian state governments were alarmed by growing ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal populations that were the result of relationships between ‘white’ European men and Aboriginal women. In the first years after the Federation the White Australia Policy was implemented to protect the so called ‘full blood’ Aboriginal peoples by housing them in reserves, while the ‘mixed blood’ populations had to be assimilated into the wider Australian society. To create a new national consciousness, this policy was strongly represented in popular culture and discourses on race and the national hygiene were widely expressed in the public domain by soap advertisements and cartoons. Part of the new national identity of Australia was the role model of romanticized ‘white’ Australian masculinity, the bushman. However, in particular Australian elites, Protectors of Aborigines and ‘white’ women’s reformers considered these men immoral and a threat for ‘white’ civilisation when they maintained sexual relationships with Aboriginal women, which was common practice. Reflections on these men and on their interracial relationships were thus ambivalent. During the first three decades of the new formed Federation the ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal population grew much faster than the ‘white’ population. This resulted in a racial fear that the ‘white’ race would eventually be ‘overrun’ by the mixed blood Aboriginal population. Protectors of Aborigines executed a policy that aimed at a cultural assimilation of the ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal peoples. ‘Mixed blood’ Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families to be educated, raised and civilised in special institutions, while ‘full blood’ Aboriginal peoples were assumed to die out. As the numbers of ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal peoples strongly increased, Protectors of Aborigines became more concerned. By analysing the correspondence of these government officials, it became clear to me that these Protectors considered the ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal population to put enormous pressure on the Australian economy. They were not only a ‘racial’ threat, they mainly were considered an economic threat. In 1933 Neville and Cook, two Protectors of Aborigines developed ideas to solve this ‘Aboriginal problem’ by ‘breeding out the colour’. ‘Mixed blood’ Aboriginal peoples had to be absorbed to become ‘racial and economically white’ to decrease the financial burden for the state and therefore interracial marriages between ‘white’ European men and ‘mixed blood’ Aboriginal women had to be encouraged. This idea caused much controversy in Australia and although it is probable that this ‘policy’ was executed by several Protectors of Aborigines, it was never legitimated by legislation.