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- Published 20250204
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-04-3
- Extent: 196 pp
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About the author
Lily Holloway
Lily Holloway’s work has been published in Black Warrior Review, Sundog Lit, Ōrongohau: Best New Zealand Poems, Peach Mag and Hobart After Dark, among others. Their...
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Home as a weapon of cultural destruction
Non-fictionIt was simply expected that Aboriginal people would accept the values and behaviour of the dominant European culture. The Welfare Board insisted that Aboriginal people not only earn an independent living but show the Board they could save money in a bank account. They had to demonstrate that they were avoiding contact with other Aboriginal people and refusing to participate in community-oriented activities, such as sharing resources with kinsfolk and travelling to visit their relatives and home Country. Over and over again, the Board’s reports criticised Aboriginal people for being among their own kind and clinging together in groups. To achieve their assimilation aims, the Welfare Board implemented a crude ‘carrot and stick’ incentive in an attempt to modify Aboriginal behaviour: if Aboriginal people could convince the Welfare Officers that they had cut themselves off entirely from their culture, family and land, they would be rewarded with an ‘Exemption Certificate’.
