Protectionism in Australia was symbolised largely by the cruel segregation of families to missions, and the removal of Indigenous children from their parents. This was to be the main driver of government policy until the late 60s. However, some children were still living in missions in the 1970s.
Following the Australian constitution on 1 January 1901, the legal status of Aboriginal people was to make them all wards of the state. In each state, a Chief Protector was appointed. This meant authorities were able to move Aboriginal people out of towns and into the reserves and missions, and remove children to be raised as ‘white’ with other families. In some States and in the Northern Territory the Chief Protector was made the legal guardian of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait children, overruling the rights of parents.
In relation to midwifery and parenting, separation and protectionism had a dramatic impact on Grandmother’s Law, and social and physical dislocation from Country and clan saw a significant decline in Indigenous health. Cultural identity was lost as traditional birthing practices were disrupted and prohibited. Passing on cultural knowledge across generations became difficult, as families were forcibly separated and communities were spread across various Mission stations. By the 1920’s, some States had prohibited birth on Country, and enforced a system of hospital births (hospitals where the women were segregated). Many women were reluctant to reveal their pregnancy to those outside the family, particularly to the Missionaries that might send them even further away from home and family to birth. As Andy Bryan describes below, the role of the midwife became critical to keeping Aboriginal families strong and connected, despite the desperate circumstances they had been forced into.
Aboriginal midwives are described with reverence, admiration and pride.
The ability to name the Aboriginal woman who was your midwife provided social connection and strengthened identity
Adams, Faulkhead, Standfield & Atkinson, 2018, p.86
There are many accounts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living through the Stolen Generation and the inter-generational trauma this caused. Great harm was done to First Nations children over many generations. They were offered little or no education except being trained to be domestic or farm slaves. Many Indigenous mothers and families today still have a deep fear of authority following this historical institutional policy of ‘protection’ and segregation.
Profiles
![Annie Hamilton – Grannie Annie](http://australianmidwiferyhistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Annie-Hamilton-Grannie-Annie.jpg)
Granny Annie Hamilton
Coranderrk, late 1800s
© Bryan Andy
Annie Hamilton – Granny Annie
“I remember when I was a child ‘cos my grandmother was a midwife and she had it handed down to her from her mother ‘cos my great-grandmother, Annie Hamilton was the first midwife around to ever get a certificate – the first Aboriginal woman to get a certificate for a midwife. So, it was handed down just like men handed down their culture and knowledge, and the women… women’s business, they did their thing.”
Uncle Colin Walker talks about his Grandmother and Great Grandmother, and how midwifery skills were handed down
Mission Voices Melbourne: Koorie Heritage Trust, State Library of Victoria, 2003
as cited in Adams, Faulkhead, Standfield & Atkinson (2018).
Throughout her homelands Granny Annie was famous for visiting many of the white homesteads that had stolen Aboriginal children (many of whom were kept as slaves working as farm hands and domestics) and would demand that the children be allowed to spend time with her. Her requests were rarely rejected. With the children in her care she would take them on slow, meandering paddlesteamer journeys up and down the Murray or the Murrumbidgee so they could visit their parents, families and communities. She would return the kids to the white homesteads, with great heartache I’d imagine, satisfied that they would at least know who they were and where they belonged. It was her way of keeping Aboriginal families strong and connected despite the inhumane treatment of the British invaders.Her dedication to keeping Aboriginal families strong was most notable in her role as a midwife. Granny Annie oversaw the births of many Aboriginal babies in her lifetime – which is arguably one of the most effective ways to combat the British and their intent to ‘smooth the pillow of the dying race’ and enact Aboriginal genocide. Granny Annie became so skilled at midwifery she was recognised by the Victorian Midwives Association and became the first Aboriginal woman to be given a qualification recognised by the state.
![pashmina_artwork_0](http://australianmidwiferyhistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/pashmina_artwork_0-150x150.jpg)
Louisa Briggs [Woiworung woman]
Woiworung woman Louisa Briggs was born around 1830. She was just a girl when she, her mother, grandmother and aunt were taken away by sealers from near the heads of Port Phillip Bay, to the Furneaux Islands in Bass Strait. She would not return to her Kulin home until 1858. She and her husband John worked as labourers around the Victorian goldfields, until 1871 when the family of 10 children was admitted destitute to Coranderrk Aboriginal Station. There, Louisa worked as a nurse and midwife.
In 1876 she was appointed matron and became the first Aboriginal woman to replace a European on salaried staff. She fought the Aborigines Protection Board’s plans to sell Coranderrk and remove residents to other reserves, and gave evidence to the 1876 inquiry. Her outspoken criticism of the mission administration saw her eventually forced off the reserve. John died in 1878, and the family moved to Ebenezer mission station, where Louisa again held the management to account. After yet another inquiry in 1881 she moved back to Coranderrk, where she was reappointed matron. Late in life she moved to Barmah, and finally to Cummeragunja where she died in 1925.
A plaque commemorates Louisa Strugnell Briggs, nurse and midwife, on the old Coranderrk mission, now Worawa College, in Healesville, Victoria (Victoria’s only independent Aboriginal community school).
In honour of Louisa Strugnell Briggs (1830? – 1926), an Aborigine of Coranderrk near Healesville, who played an important role in her community as nurse, midwife, teacher, administrator and defender of her people’s rights. In the late nineteenth century, various Aboriginal communities benefited from the work of similar resourceful women
Read more about Louisa in the Australian Women’s Register and the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Read Jack Latimore’s article about Louisa Briggs ‘A most resolute lady’: The radical resistance of Indigenous women. The Guardian, 4 July 2018
![pashmina_artwork_0](http://australianmidwiferyhistory.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/pashmina_artwork_0-150x150.jpg)
Nanny Nora
Uncle Sandy Atkinson remembers the high esteem held for Nanny Nora, and how western medicine undermines cultural practice and the role of the midwife
“I often tell a story about Nanny Nora in my time, you know, and she was like a midwife and she was sort of somebody special because she could spill across many political boundaries, you know, because she was a midwife and I was delivered by her and lots of people in my generation was delivered by Nanny Nora. So you could put her in that same category too because she would be able to front up to the manager who would have looked up to her as well, you know. But then even after a while she – a lot of those, in every Aboriginal society there would have been those midwives, you know, that was a powerful person in that community, but then come the days later on, like Cummeragunja, they established a little hospital and so then that was taken away from those women and put in the hands of registered nurses who came there.”
Uncle Sandy Atkinson
Mission Voices Melbourne: Koorie Hritage Trust, State Library of Victoria, 2003
as cited in Adams, Faulkhead, Standfield & Atkinson, 2018, p.86
Resources
The Stolen Generations
The history of forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families in Australia by the National Museum of Australia