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Chapter 4: “What are you digging up the past for?”: Family History and the Realities of Searching through the Colonial Archive

Judith Wickes and Katherine Ellinghaus

I can remember before I started my research, one of my favourite non-Indigenous aunties said to me, ‘What are you doing this research for? Why upset yourself? You could easily pass as an Italian.’ In just a few words, my aunty erased my true identity – I needed to find out the truth. (Judi)

One of the ways that settler colonialism controlled Aboriginal people was surveillance. From the moment of invasion, Aboriginal people were watched, recorded, tracked, studied and controlled through government bureaucracy. This has created a large colonial archive that contains intimate and personal information written in cruel and racist terms, filtered through the beliefs of the day. This chapter gives two different perspectives on researching history in those archives: one from an Aboriginal scholar, Judith Wickes (Judi) and one from a non-Indigenous historian, Katherine Ellinghaus (Kat).

Another way that settler colonialism worked was to tear apart Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.[1] Administrators had powers to remove Aboriginal children to government reserves or church-run missions, creating what we now know as the ‘Stolen Generations’.[2] There were also policies of exemption, enacted by protection legislation in Queensland (1897), Western Australia (1905), Northern Territory (1936), South Australia (1939) and New South Wales (1943). These policies offered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a ‘Certificate of Exemption’ from the various controls over their lives imposed by ‘protection’ legislation. Successful applicants had to demonstrate outward assimilation and were expected to live in nuclear families and appear to conform to a lifestyle deemed acceptable by settler society. Exemption offered opportunities to escape government control and gain employment and education. Exemptees now had the right to drink in hotels, and greater freedom to marry and to raise their own children. The painful trade-off was that exempted people had to live away from their family who remained on reserves and missions. Rules also included ceasing contact with family, friends and community who were not exempt.[3] The two policies were interconnected. Many of the children who were stolen were those who would later seek exemption.

Judi worked for many years as a Stolen Generations counsellor; however it was researching the history of the policy of exemption that brought the authors of this chapter together. Judi is a Kalkadoon / Wakka Wakka woman born on Turrbal and Yugara Country (Brisbane) with Irish and English heritage. She is a qualified social worker and wrote her BA (Hons) and MA theses on exemption policies, after discovering the exemption certificates held by her grandfather and aunt.[4] Kat is an historian of German, Scottish and Irish descent raised on Wurundjeri Country. Judi and Kat are part of a large team of researchers who have been working together for many years on the history of exemption.[5]

Our work on exemption policies has made us think deeply about the paradox of the colonial archive. As described above, the colonial archive can cause pain and damage. At the same time, there are many Aboriginal people searching for their family history, and the archives are a source of valuable information. For many, despite the pain it can cause, it is also a source of information, and as Kath Travis argues, even healing.[6] Archives have filled up the silence in families and enabled each one to find the truth about their family history. They also enable truth-telling about the crimes of the past. How might we balance these twin aspects of the colonial archive? How do we deal with the pain the archive can cause and balance that against the promise (sometimes unfulfilled) that it offers of information about family? And how can non-Indigenous historians make a positive contribution in this space? This chapter describes what happened when we dug up the past – first separately, and then together.

  1. Teresa Libesman, Katherine Ellinghaus, and Paul Gray, “Colonial Law and its Control of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Families,” in Cambridge Legal History of Australia, ed. Lisa Ford and Peter Cane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 433–455. ↵
  2. National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Australia), Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997), https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/bringing-them-home-report-1997. ↵
  3.   See Lucinda Aberdeen and Jennifer Jones, eds, Black, White and Exempt: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lives Under Exemption (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2021). ↵
  4. Judi’s publications include Judi Wickes, “ ‘Never Really Heard of It’: The Certificate of Exemption and Lost Identity,”, in Indigenous Biography and Autobiography, eds Peter Read, Frances Peters-Little and Anna Haebich (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2008), 73–91; Judi Wickes and Lucinda Aberdeen, “The Diaries of Daisy Smith: The Experience of Citizenship for an Exempted Family in Mid-Twentieth Century Queensland,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, no. 1 (2017): 62–77; Judi Wickes and Marnee Shay, “Aboriginal Identity in Education Setting: Privileging Our Stories as a Way of Deconstructing the Past and Re-Imagining the Future,” Australian Educational Researcher 44 (2017): 107–22; Lucinda Aberdeen, Kella Robinson, and Judi Wickes, “‘Playing the Game’: A Comparative Case Study of Aboriginal Exemption in Queensland and New South Wales,” in Aberdeen and Jones, eds, Black, White and Exempt; Katherine Ellinghaus and Judi Wickes, “A Moving Female Frontier: Aboriginal Exemption and Domestic Service in Queensland, 1897–1914,” Australian Historical Studies 51, no. 1 (2020): 19–37; Lucinda Aberdeen, Katherine Ellinghaus, Judi Wickes and Kella Robinson, “‘Because of Her We Can’: Gender and Diaspora in Australian Exemption Policies,” in Routledge Companion to Indigenous Global History, eds Ann McGrath and Lynette Russell (New York: Routledge, 2021), 399–418; Judi Wickes and Katherine Ellinghaus, “Women’s Experiences of Exemption,” Agora 56, no. 1 (2021): 9–12; and Judi Wickes and Katherine Ellinghaus, “ ‘Never Look Back, Always Look Forward’: The Early Life of Nancy Power,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 69, no. 1 (2023): 35–49. ↵
  5. “Exemption: The High Price of Freedom,” Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, accessed 10 January 2023, https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/exemption-high-price-freedom. ↵
  6. See Kath Apma Penangke Travis, “A Her‐Storical Biography and Finding Family History Through the Archives,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 69, no.1 (2023): 110–21 and Kath Apma Penangke Travis and Victoria Haskins, “Feminist Research Ethics and First Nations Women’s Life Narratives: A Conversation,” Australian Feminist Studies 36, no.108 (2021): 126–41. ↵

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