Breaking the Silence by Alison Holland

Author:Alison Holland [Holland, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

In founding the league, Phyllis Duguid sought to secure an honourable status for Aboriginal and ‘half-caste’ women and girls via adequate protection for the ‘sanctity of their persons’ in the appointment of women protectors, the enforcement of protective legislation and recognition that the law would ensure the same protection to Aboriginal women as to white women. Furthermore, the league determined to secure facilities for the Aborigines’ gradual development via suitable education, adequate medical care and provision of recreational and cultural outlets. Finally, they would work for the economic security of Aborigines through provision of suitable land and ‘just remuneration for work’.81

The league was very active in the lead-up to war, its members seeing themselves as a mouthpiece for an increasing number of individuals and organisations concerned to deliver justice to Aborigines at the close of the 1930s, before it was too late. They held public meetings with guest speakers and addressed other organisations. They lobbied parliamentarians on a range of issues and were initially hopeful of establishing a recreational outlet for girls, suggesting that if the government could provide an initial sum of £500 for a centre, the women’s societies would provide upkeep, equipment and a suitable woman to manage the centre.

They also lobbied for women protectors, arguing that the ‘right sort of woman’ would need the full authority of a protector, would approach her office with a sense of vocation and see to the spiritual, as well as the physical and mental, needs of the girls. They stipulated the appointment of a vice-protector who could act in her absence and cited the precedent set by the women police of South Australia. They stood as an example of help from ‘woman to woman’ and provided a partial solution to some of the most pressing social problems of the day.

While the idea of a recreation centre was put on hold on account of renewed mobilisations for war, the prospect of war made it imperative that women protectors be installed immediately as the north became a focus of concerted feminist angst.

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