Australian Society of Archivists
1999 Conference
Bringing Them Home: The National Archives' Bringing
Them Home Indexing Project
Paul Macpherson
In June 1999, at Willowra near Alice Springs, Hilda Stirling, an 83
year old Aboriginal woman embraced her daughter for the first time in
53 years. Her daughter Shirley Stirling-Curnow had been taken from her
mother at the age of two and sent from the Bungalow at Alice Springs
to a children’s home in Melbourne where over the years she was
variously told that her mother was dead or that her mother had given
her away because she didn’t want her.
Mrs Stirling-Curnow never accepted either story and spent her entire
adult life searching for the truth about her mother and for a way of
making contact with her. Her search took her to records in Darwin and
Canberra, revealing odd clues but insufficient information to identify
her mother. Her path was strewn with difficulties, including a false
death certificate for her mother that sent her looking for a
non-existent grave.
She was a regular researcher in the records of the National Archives
in Canberra for years, indefatigably building on the small facts she
had, in her always hopeful search.
A few months ago, a new tool became available to help her search –
the first name entries in the National Archives’ Bringing Them
Home Name Index. A search of the still quite small index produced
sufficient entries to identify a Hilda Stirling who had been born at
Stirling Station and had been at the Bungalow in the 1930s. This
provided the critical information for Mrs Stirling-Curnow and Link-Up
in Alice Springs to be able to locate her mother and for the reunion
to take place.
Mrs Stirling-Curnow’s case, apart from its successful
conclusion, is far from unique.
Chapter 16 of the Bringing
Them Home report of the National Inquiry into the
Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from
their Families(1) discusses the nature
of records which contain personal and family information of importance
to Stolen Generation people. It highlights the essential place records
play for people trying to link up with their families and communities
while at the same time pointing out the huge problems faced by them in
trying to access those records.
It is often almost impossible to know where to start looking. Those
who have searched for information about their family background and
those – Link-Up people, family history researchers or archivists –
who have tried to help them may well have developed some understanding
of good starting places, of likely sources of some information about
some people, but the inherent difficulty remains, even for experienced
researchers.
A single comprehensive record detailing what happened to an
individual person taken from his or her family does not exist in
Commonwealth records because it was never created. For many separated
Indigenous people, perhaps for most who are recorded in Commonwealth
records, even an incomplete name identified file does not exist.
Public servants, police officers, school staff, hospital and mission
workers, responsible for implementing the Government policy of
separation did not record information in a way that makes it easy to
use today. They were not interested in recording information to show
what happened to individual children or to their families. They had no
reason to think that information which they could have recorded, but
did not, would be of vital use decades later. They recorded
information to help them do their jobs or as required of them by law
or by their superiors. And they recorded it in the way that they or
their supervisors at the time thought was the most useful way of doing
that. And, like most people who create records, they did not feel the
need to repeat on the file information which both they and the person
or people they were recording information for clearly knew.
A police officer would record the names of Indigenous people in his
case notes in relation to the event he was recording. A Northern
Territory patrol officer would list all Aboriginal people in a
location on the one census list, spelling their names in his own way.
A school principal might well have included a significant amount of
personal information about a student in a letter proposing the entry
of that child’s essay in a national competition. A public servant
arranging an interstate movement of state wards for medical treatment
or schooling would raise a single file to cover five or six or more
individuals travelling at the same time.
And of course, for a variety of reasons, many records have not
survived.
To trace people back to their community and parents, or forward from
birth information, requires the capacity to link all these scattered,
incomplete mentions of the names of individuals into a coherent
listing of name and variant names with places and dates. This is
exactly what traditional ways of accessing archival records are least
well useful for, particularly when the mention of names may occur in
records which do not necessarily record Aboriginality or in records
with the most unlikely and unhelpful file titles.
Yet doing this sort of searching is in most cases the only way of
tracing what happened to people after their removal from their
families and their homes and of giving them or their descendants some
hope of linking up with family and community.
At the time of the Wilson Inquiry, individual Stolen Generation
people, or their descendants, or Link-Up researchers on their behalf,
had to spend months, and in many cases years, of tedious research
perusing an enormous number of possible files in order to trace the
movements of individual Stolen Generation people: trying to put a name
to a location at a certain date; trying to determine if this name was
in fact that of their mother or of somebody else; trying to connect a
random mention of a name and a place and a supposed birth date with
the same name, an approximate age and another place many years later.
Because of the nature of the records it is probable that even after
years of detailed research important clues were missed, or files with
useful information but with titles which gave no indication of that
content were ignored. In some cases, despite the most diligent and
assiduous research, it is probable that because of this link ups may
never have occurred.
The only way to improve this situation, to ensure that all relevant
possibilities are able to be followed up and to short-track a lot of
the effort and time required, is to provide comprehensive name indexes
to all relevant files and Recommendation 22 of the Inquiry was
That all government record agencies be funded as a matter
of urgency by the relevant government to preserve and index records
relating to Indigenous individuals, families and/or communities….
(2)
The recommendation goes on to point out that the indexes need to be
developed and managed in a way that protects the privacy of
individuals and, in particular, prevents the compilation of dossiers
on them
Bringing Them Home was not the first inquiry to address
the importance of government records to separated Indigenous people.
The
Report
of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had
recommended as its Recommendation 53
That Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments provide
access to all government archival records pertaining to the family and
community histories of Aboriginal people so as to assist the process
of enabling Aboriginal people to re-establish community and family
links with those people from whom they were separated as a result of
past policies of government. The Commission recognises that questions
of the right to privacy and questions of confidentiality may arise and
recommends that the principles and processes for access to such
records should be negotiated between government and appropriate
Aboriginal organisations, but such negotiations should proceed on the
basis that as a general principle access to such documents should be
permitted.(3)
Following this report the National Archives imposed a freeze on the
destruction of any record which might be of use in assisting
Indigenous people to trace and reunite with their families. This
freeze, which remains in place, also addresses Recommendation 21 of
the Bringing Them Home Report:
That no records relating to Indigenous individuals,
families or communities or to any children … removed from their
families for any reason … be destroyed.(4)
While most government records relating to Aboriginal affairs were
created and are maintained by State Governments the National Archives
holds large quantities of records relevant to Northern Territory and
Victorian Indigenous people.
Holdings relating to the Northern Territory are extensive because,
from 1911 until 1978, the Commonwealth was directly responsible for
all aspects of the administration of the Territory, including the
function of Aboriginal affairs normally administered by state
governments. These records are held by the Archives in both its Darwin
and Canberra offices. The records in Canberra have been described in a
guide by Ros Fraser.(5)
The National Archives’ Melbourne office holds records about the
administration of Aboriginal affairs in Victoria for the period from
1860 onwards. This is a result of the Victorian Government (following
the 1967 referendum) legislating to transfer responsibility for
Aboriginal affairs and for the records associated with the function to
the Commonwealth in 1975. These records are described in the joint
guide, My Heart is Breaking, (6).
In other states state governments have retained the records created
by them relating to the administration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander affairs, and state governments and their archives are
responsible for indexing and providing pathways into these records to
help Stolen Generation people recreate their lives. The National
Archives does have some open period records which record the names of
some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from other parts of
Australia, but the records are not nearly as voluminous or
comprehensive as those relating to the Northern Territory and
Victoria.
Following the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody the
Archives saw the need to negotiate with Aboriginal people about the
principles and processes for access by them to records for the purpose
of re-establishing family and community links. A consultative process
in the Northern Territory resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of
Understanding between the Archives and the Northern Territory Stolen
Generations Combined Reference Groups, the KARU Aboriginal and
Islander Child Care Agency and the Central Australian Aboriginal Child
Care Agency. This Memorandum of Understanding allows access by
Indigenous people to open period Aboriginal related material which
would otherwise be exempt from public access under the Archives Act.
It allows for the free provision of photocopies of records accessed
under the Memorandum. It prescribes protocols for verifying the status
of applicants and for both warning them of possible distressing
information and advising them of appropriate support services. An
Aboriginal Advisory Group was established to provide the Archives with
advice and assistance in implementing, managing and reviewing the
Memorandum of Understanding.
When, in December 1997, the Commonwealth Government responded to the
Bringing Them Home Report, one of its seven main initiatives
was the allocation to the National Archives of Australia of $2 million
over four years “to index, copy and preserve thousands of files
so that they are more readily accessible.” Because of its
response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,
the Archives was well placed to implement this program. Although the
money did not become available until July 1998, the Archives commenced
preparations for the project immediately.
For the reasons outlined above the majority of records to be
addressed would be those held in the Archives’ Darwin, Canberra
and Melbourne offices. Because of their significantly greater quantity
it was decided to start with records relating to Indigenous people in
the Northern Territory. Staff from the Darwin office worked with the
Aboriginal Advisory Group to consult with Indigenous communities about
their priorities, the form of the index, how to deal with sensitive
information and a range of related issues. Staff in Canberra drew
these responses together to develop draft indexing procedures and to
develop an appropriate database. They also started the task of
identifying series of records and individual files which might include
names for indexing.
The groups and communities consulted expressed the near unanimous
view that compilation of the index was the most important thing that
the Archives could do to assist with family reunion, and that
resources should be directed primarily to indexing, at least in the
earlier years of the project.
Once the money became available to the Archives, indexing teams were
recruited in both Canberra and Darwin. In each place an indexing
supervisor and three indexers were appointed and trained. Indexing
started in September and all positions were filled by October.
By the end of June 1999 nearly 50,000 names had been indexed and
30,000 of these had been entered on the database. In a way that is
unusual for archival finding aids but essential for this project,
index entries give references to folio level.
The nature of the records is such that some files (eg patrol
officers’ reports) may contain hundreds of names; in many cases
there are more than a thousand names on individual files. Case files
about one individual frequently have many other names and significant
other information recorded in them. Names and details of locations and
relationships appear in the midst of administrative correspondence
files. The only way to make these names accessible is to ensure that
every mention of the name of every Indigenous person is precisely
pointed to. This is the aim of the indexing project.
The index includes the following fields which have been agreed with
the Advisory Group:
- Surname (and alternative surname/s)
- Given name/s (and alternative given name/s)
- Sex
- Dates of birth and death
- Date/s of event/s recorded on the record
- Age
- Place name/s of place/s where event recorded took place or
associated with the person on that record
- Whether the reference to the person is a primary reference (ie a
file about the person), a secondary reference (ie not a file about
them but one containing some significant information about them) or
an incidental reference (eg a name on a list)
- Reference to the source.
It is extraordinarily rare for every one of these fields to be
represented in a single record and many entries cover only three or
four of the fields (name, date of event and place for example).
The source reference is a code number rather than the file number or
title which is available only to Archives staff. This is a method of
privacy protection because although the index will be publicly
available, access to the records won’t necessarily be. Access to
many of the records will be available only in accordance with the
Memorandum of Understanding.
This is a reversal of the Archives’ normal method of privacy
protection. Normally in relation to personally sensitive matters the
names of people are expunged while the information is left. In this
case, as the purpose of the index is to locate people, the names will
be there but the information from the file will be suppressed by the
use of the code number for the file number and title. Only Indigenous
people seeking to link up with their family and community or their
accredited researchers under the terms of the Memorandum of
Understanding will be able to access the information which links the
name and the file title. This will help us achieve the second part of
Recommendation 22, the prevention of the compilation of dossiers on
Indigenous people.
The index is progressively made available on the interim database
which is currently available in Archives offices in Darwin and
Canberra although it must currently be searched by Archives staff. It
is expected that the database will be migrated to the Archives’
main collection database system in the next twelve months or so. It
will then be available in all Archives reading rooms and accessible
directly by researchers. If community consultations support it, it
will be made accessible through the Internet.
It is proposed to start indexing records relating to Indigenous
people in Victoria and held in the Melbourne office early next year.
Consultations are currently taking place to develop a Memorandum of
Understanding, similar to the Northern Territory model, in Victoria.
Recruitment for indexers will commence in October and following
training of the new staff indexing is expected to be under way by
February 2000.
Names of Indigenous people from jurisdictions other than the
Northern Territory and Victoria are indexed as they are discovered. In
the last year of the project it is expected that any identifiable
groups of records in other states which contain the names of
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people will be indexed
systematically as part of the project. The index will eventually have
a significant, though far from comprehensive complement of
non-Northern Territory, non-Victorian names.
The project is given high priority and high status within the
Archives which is proud of it and of its role in helping even in a
small way to address the recommendations of the Bringing Them
Home report. The Archives actively welcomes visitors to the
project. Link-Up officers from all over Australia while on a training
program in Canberra, officers of the Office of the Social Justice
Commissioner, and the Chair of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies have all visited the project in
Canberra.
The aim and purpose of the project, however, and the outcome hoped
for from it, is the facilitation of family reunion.
In the end, no matter how excellent an index and database we create,
no matter how comprehensively we think we have covered our records,
the index will not be a success and the money spent on it will not be
worthwhile unless it enables Stolen Generation people to discover
their family and community connections and to reunite with their
families.
And we are overjoyed that it already has.
If Mrs Stirling-Curnow was the only person to reunite with her
mother as a result of the index it will still have achieved its aim.
But her success at such an early stage of indexing, and informal
reports from Stolen Generation groups in Darwin of other successes,
indicate that the index when complete and more widely available is
likely to assist in many, many more such reunions.
Footnotes
(1) Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Bringing
Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families.
Sydney: HREOC, 1997. Pp. 324-356
(2) Bringing Them Home p. 347
(3) Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in
Custody. National
Report. 1991. Volume 2, Chapter 11.7,
(4) Bringing Them Home p. 347
(5) Ros Fraser (comp.). Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander People in Commonwealth Records: A guide to records in
the Australian Archives, ACT Regional Office. Canberra: AGPS,
1993
(6) [Ian McFarlane & Myrna Deverall (comps.)].
‘My Heart is Breaking’: a joint guide to records about
Aboriginal People in the Public Record Office of Victoria and the
Australian Archives, Victorian regional Office. Canberra: AGPS,
1993 |
