Summary

Note: This object includes derogatory slurs, references to and depictions of First Nations people. It also includes white superiority messaging and misleading historical content which denies First Peoples' sovereignty in Australia for more than 60,000 years. Such words and sentiments are not condoned by Museums Victoria which considers them to be racist. Historical distance and context do not excuse or erase this fact.

Hardcover book 'Australia's Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community' by A.O. Neville, published by Currawong Publishing Company, Sydney, 1947. This book comes from the library of former Prime Minister John Benedict Chifley with a presentation label on front loose endpaper. Chifley was Prime Minister at the time the book was published. The book has an introduction by Adolphus Peter Elkin an anthropologist with a particular interest in First Peoples' rights and citizenship.

In the book Neville articulates the belief that assimilation of First Peoples of mixed descent could only occur through, in his deeply offensive words 'breeding out the colour'. Neville was Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia from 1915 to 1936 and Commissioner for Native Affairs from 1936 until his retirement in 1940.

Physical Description

First edition hardcover book with dust jacket, octavo size with 264 pages and 8 pages of photographs.

Significance

This book is of historical importance as it documents racist colonial beliefs in the assimilation of First Peoples in Australia in order to eradicate culture, language, family and sovereignty. These systematic social Darwinist and eugenics beliefs saw the removal of children from their families for generations. The book illustrates his views through a number of photographs showing a progression from what he termed 'full blood' First Peoples to people of mixed heritage to what he believed to be white Australians - a fundamentally flawed endeavour evidenced by the resilience of First Peoples communities.

More Information