Edward Koiki Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights
296
Edward Koiki Mabo: His Life and Struggle for Land Rights
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| ISBN-13: | 9780702251603 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 296 |
| File size: | 12 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Edward Koiki Mabo
His Life and Struggle for Land Rights
By Noel Loos, Eddie Koiki Mabo
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 1996 Noel LoosAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5160-3
CHAPTER 1
KOIKI MABO: MASTERING TWO CULTURES
A personal perspective
Edward Koiki Mabo was a Meriam man from one of the most remote islands in the Torres Strait, Murray Island. He decided early in his life that he had to master the ways of the Whites to exist in the society that the Whites dominated, but never to lose his Islander custom and language. He had a flaring imagination and a determination and courage that enabled him to establish his own community school for his people in Townsville. This courage and determination also enabled him to persist through the ten years of the Meriam High Court challenge. He died of cancer on 21 January 1992, four months before the Murray Island challenge destroyed the concept of terra nullius: that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were too uncivilised to be considered as owners of their own land. This is now commonly referred to as the Mabo decision, or sometimes simply Mabo. Through his persistence he and his supporters have opened up the possibility of a new and more promising vision for both black and white Australians.
Koiki Mabo, as he preferred to be known, described the years of childhood and adolescence spent on Murray Island, or Mer, as the happiest days of his life. Indeed, emotionally and intellectually, he never left Mer, even though he lived most of his life on the mainland, chiefly in Townsville. He was banished from Mer for twelve months at the age of nineteen, and actually stayed away for nearly two years. When he returned he stayed for almost another two years, although employment during this period took him away for a month or six weeks at a time. Even his move to the mainland in late 1957 or 1958 was a typically Torres Strait Island experience, as a member of the Islander crew of a trochus lugger. Between 1958 and 1961, he became a member of the small but growing Torres Strait Islander community of North Queensland and found employment with other Torres Strait Islanders on other luggers, cutting cane, or working in western Queensland on the railway lines. In the jobs he had since 1962, in his creation and administration of the Black Community School from 1973 to 1985, and in the ten-year struggle, from 1982 to 1992, that led to the recognition of native title, he was working in a world dominated as completely by white Australia as was the Island he had left as a teenager. And this world was enmeshed in alien codes, values and institutions that seemed, to Torres Strait Islanders, designed to disadvantage and humiliate them and to continue the dependence on white authority they had known in the Islands. Koiki Mabo never accepted white dominance or the inferiority and inferior status colonialist history attempted to impose on his people. Indeed, he maintained an optimistic confidence, sometimes verging on a good-natured arrogance. His absolute faith in the justice of his struggle and the integrity of his own claim was reflected in those last words: 'land claim'.
The story of how Koiki Mabo became master of two cultures, his own and mainland culture, will seem quite extraordinary to white Australians. Yet in its broad outlines it is typical of those Islanders who have emigrated to the mainland since the end of World War II. This process quickened from the late 1950s with the collapse of the pearlshell and trochus industries after the introduction of plastics.
Koiki grew up on Mer with his own language and culture. Informally, he discovered and learnt his kinship ties and his place in his Piadram clan. In his village of Las he learnt of the other clans and villages that made up the Meriam people. He grew into the social and economic life of the Island, the gardening and the fishing on the two homes of the Meriam, Mer and the sea. He took part in the dances and ceremonies that punctuated the yearly round or were associated with the rites of passage of birth, marriage and death, especially the tombstone unveilings that the Islanders had developed since the coming of Christianity. These commemorated the death of kinfolk 'Islander fashion', affirmed the ongoing importance of family and friends and celebrated life.
He became part of a devoutly Christian community, itself a part of the Anglican Diocese of Carpentaria whose Cathedral city was Thursday Island, TI to the Islanders. He also became familiar with the traditional belief system, at least those aspects of it that were a living part of Meriam culture, especially the Malo-Bomai cult. It is not clear whether the current respect for Malo-Bomai stemmed in its fullness from pre-Christian times and had been hidden from Western ears until recently, or whether it has assumed greater significance in recent years. I can remember sitting next to Koiki many years ago, certainly before he was involved in the native title case, watching a film that contained very old footage of part of the Malo-Bomai ritual. To my surprise Koiki was visibly shocked that this part of the ceremony was being shown. It was sacred and secret, he said. In 1984 Koiki discussed gardening and fishing rituals he had learnt as a boy, which he believed were still used. He also discussed love magic and sorcery, maid or pouri pouri to the Islanders, and various other Meriam beliefs that were current when he was growing up on Mer and that were still so in the 1980s, Koiki believed.
The economic possibilities open to Meriam men in the 1950s were starkly clear. Those who stayed in the Islands could work on the pearlshell and trochus luggers, for less pay than white Australians, or in the few government jobs, such as untrained schoolteacher or storeman, which were also poorly paid. As Koiki approached manhood, opportunities were opening up on the mainland, where Torres Strait Islanders could draw wages equal to white Australians even if in low status, semi-skilled jobs, such as fettling in the railways or canecutting, notorious as hard work under the tropical sun. Koiki Mabo was working on trochus luggers in the dying days of the industry. He visited various ports such as Cairns and saw the opportunities and the different way of life, and it was then that he realised that Torres Strait Islanders were being economically exploited and educated for servitude in the fisheries. The twenty-year-old Meriam man decided 'to give it a go and see what happens'. He set out for the mainland on a great and challenging adventure in an alien land.
A number of factors seem to have contributed to Koiki Mabo's decision to try to make it on the mainland. He had fallen foul of Mer's Islander administration because of a youthful 'misdemeanour', which had flung him willy-nilly into the lugger work force. He was directed where to work by the Queensland Government administration in the person of Mr Pat Killoran, then the senior Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs (DAIA) official at TI. At nineteen, he had directly experienced powerlessness before a white colonialist administration and the Islander council, which then functioned as part of that administration. He had become aware that Islanders in the Torres Strait were economically exploited, whether they were Islander owners of Company Boats, or employees on them or the Master Boats owned by commercial interests. His mother, Maiga Mabo, had also urged him to find work on the mainland because she thought working on luggers was a dead end in the changing world in which Koiki was growing up. Moreover, he had seen the world beyond the Islands and there were Islander friends and relatives already living there in employment that offered financial rewards unavailable in Queensland's Torres Strait Island colony. There was also a freedom from colonialist controls. All of these factors contributed to the move to the mainland, a move that was not seen as permanent and certainly not as a rejection of his culture and people.
In telling his life story, however, Koiki placed great emphasis on the vision of Torres Strait Islanders' future given to him by Robert Victor Miles, Bob Miles, the only one of his white schoolteachers he admired: 'a very good teacher and a friend of all the school kids ... He was the one that taught me the most of English language'. Bob Miles learnt the western language, Kala Laga Ya, when he taught on Saibai, and Miriam when he taught on Mer. He was the first of Koiki's white teachers who allowed the children to use their own language; however, he convinced Koiki of the importance of English for Torres Strait Islanders and of understanding mainland culture. Koiki lived with Miles for a time when his mother was ill: 'it was an ideal situation for us to exchange conversation in two languages'. Miles increased his mastery of Meriam from Koiki, and Koiki his mastery of English from Miles. But he learnt more than a new language – he was introduced to mainland culture. Koiki summarised the importance of this in his reflection on his childhood:
My lifetime on Murray, I think, was the best time of my life I ever spent; growing up on Murray and having an opportunity to learn both the white-man way of life from my schoolteacher, Robert Miles, and my traditional heritage as well.
Koiki's English was more fluent and confident than that of most of the Torres Strait Islanders of his generation. This no doubt was also a factor in his decision to move to the mainland. He was fluent enough to argue with Killoran, to converse with Cairns police and the Commonwealth Employment Service in Townsville and to bargain with the Palm Island administration when one of the luggers he worked on called in there. Because of his command of English, he often found himself the spokesman for his group. In the 1980s he was to be the main interpreter of Mer custom to the lawyers preparing the claim for native title, a role in which he was seen as indispensable. Indeed, throughout his life Koiki played a very valuable role in educating those white Australians he came in contact with, myself not least, as well as people such as historian Henry Reynolds, linguist Larry Cromwell, and the lawyers he interacted with over the ten years of the Murray Islanders' struggle. In many ways he repeated the relationship he had experienced with Bob Miles.
In 1959, at the age of twenty-three, Koiki Mabo took a job with a construction gang on the Queensland Railways at Hughenden in western Queensland. This was the beginning of his involvement with the working-class movement: 'I learnt quite a bit about trade unionism while in the railways because of the fellows at the Hughenden Railway Station.' He became a union representative on the Townsville–Mount Isa rail reconstruction project and encouraged other Islanders to join unions. After his marriage in October 1959, he had returned to the west with Bonita (Netta) to earn money for a deposit on a house. Back in Townsville after two years, Koiki returned to his old job as deckhand on the Lalor where he worked, all told, for seven years. During this time he became more involved with the trade union movement, at first informally. At the time, the 1960s, many of the union leaders in Townsville who supported Koiki were members of the Communist Party: Eddie Heilbronn, Bill Timms, Bill Irving and Fred Thompson. In one way this was fortunate as the Communist Party had demonstrated a formal commitment to Aboriginal advancement reaching back to 1931 and affirmed in 1943. This had clearly been accepted at branch level in Townsville. However, in the Queensland of the 1960s, dominated by the National Party, Koiki came to the conclusion that the Habour Board administration was persecuting him for his political associations by moving him to an unattractive job where his pay was less. So in 1967 he resigned and took a job as a gardener at James Cook University, a job which he held until 1975.
During his time at the Townsville Harbour Board, Koiki had begun to participate in black organisations. In these early years the membership of these organisations was Aboriginal with a few Torres Strait Islander and South Sea Islander exceptions. Koiki became the first Secretary of the Aboriginal Advancement League in Townsville, which consisted of about nine members of whom five were active in decision making. The Townsville Branch distributed leaflets from the Federal Council of the Advancement League, raised funds, became associated with the Townsville Trades and Labour Council and could attend their fortnightly meetings. Koiki and Dick Hoolihan were the Advancement League's regular representatives and, in Koiki's eyes, this relationship with the Trades and Labour Council was very important in his formation as an activist. The union leaders encouraged the black representatives to raise issues but refused to speak on their behalf. Mabo grasped these opportunities to improve his English, to gain confidence in public speaking and to learn to be an activist in a mainland setting. He was a fast learner.
The most important immediate consequence of this was the 1967 Inter-Racial Seminar, 'We the Australians: What Is to Follow the Referendum?', which involved 300 participants, black and white, to discuss the future of race relations in Australia in general and Townsville in particular. This conference was of such historic importance that Professor Charles Rowley referred to it in The Remote Aborigines. Following the success of the 1967 referendum, Koiki had suggested to members of the trade union movement the need for such a conference in order to raise the awareness of all members of the North Queensland community to the problems confronting indigenous Australians. The subsequent organising committee involved members of the black community, including Koiki, as well as representatives from the trade union movement, James Cook University and the churches. Koiki Mabo's initiative had brought together a coalition of committed people, some of whom were to retain their interest and involvement in the years to follow. Several maintained a kind of Bob Miles relationship with him until his death. Indeed, Mabo once told me that he had realised that there were sympathisers in the union movement and academia who could assist him to master the white Australian world he was encountering, and he deliberately cultivated them.
Mabo considered his understanding of mainland politics was largely derived from his involvement with the trade union movement, but initially he didn't even know what 'Communism' or 'Communist' meant. Although some attached this label to him, he said he was never tempted to become a member.
He made great use of his link with academia before and after taking employment at James Cook University as a gardener. He was asked to speak to students in my race relations course and also addressed students in other areas such as education. He used the James Cook University Library to discover what had been written about his people, especially in the Haddon Reports, and in the process not only realised that white academics had a lot to learn and often made mistakes, but expanded his own knowledge as he grafted on new insights to his old understanding.
One of the most important insights Mabo obtained, and one which was to have Australia-wide significance, came about by accident. He learnt that he did not have legal title to his land on Murray Island. At some time between 1972 and 1975 Koiki Mabo, Henry Reynolds and I had met in Reynolds' study to have lunch. Mabo told us of his land holdings on Murray Island, and Reynolds and I had the unpleasant responsibility of pointing out to him that the outer Torres Strait Islands were Crown Land; indeed, they were designated on a map I had of the area as 'Aboriginal Reserve'. We remember how shocked Koiki was and how determined that no one would take his land away from him. Subsequent events indicate that this was not mere bravado. Mabo also sat in on Reynolds' Australian History lectures and in 1984 participated in my Aboriginal and Islander History course. By this time it was somewhat like having Napoleon sit in on lectures on the fall of the First Republic.
Mabo also attended seminars and conferences he considered relevant, entering confidently into the discussions. At one, the first conference on Aboriginal education held in North Queensland, he was so appalled at the comments being made by some of the teachers present that 'he did his dance'. He exploded into a physical and very vocal demonstration of his Islander identity as a rejection of the patronising and sometimes racist comments being made about Aboriginal and Islander children. As a result of this experience, Koiki Mabo, with his friend Burnum Burnum, established the Black Community School. The school survived for twelve years against the odds and in spite of inadequate funding, active opposition initially from some officers in the Queensland Education Department, and a hostile press campaign in the Townsville Daily Bulletin. For some of these years it was the most interesting school in Townsville, with parental and community involvement and the teaching of Torres Strait Islander culture and language. Bonita Mabo, Koiki's wife, who was the fixed centre of his turbulent life, worked as a teacher's aide. There always seemed to be some parents at the school participating in some way in the education of their children.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Edward Koiki Mabo by Noel Loos, Eddie Koiki Mabo. Copyright © 1996 Noel Loos. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Maps,Who was that boy,
Foreword,
Preface,
Prologue,
PART I – A personal perspective,
1 Koiki Mabo: Mastering two cultures,
PART II – Koiki Mabo's story,
2 Growing up on Murray Island,
3 Coming to grips with white-man culture,
4 Changing ways,
5 Searching for the new life,
6 Being black in North Queensland,
7 Netta,
PART III – The final years,
8 A very active activist,
9 Return to Mer,
Appendix,
Notes,