ABSTRACT
From Alice Springs to Adelaide The late Kwementyaye (Charles) Perkins1 was a profoundly influential Aboriginal leader and one of the greatest Australians of the twentieth century. Born in the central Australian town of Alice Springs, Perkins spent much of his childhood away from his mother, not by choice but at the behest of state authorities.2 The 1930s and 1940s were a period in which the policy of forced separation – known today as the Stolen Generations – was in full effect, especially in rural and remote regions where many Aboriginal families were located.3 In his autobiography, A Bastard Like Me,4 Perkins spoke powerfully against this practice and his experience of it:
From Alice Springs to Adelaide The late Kwementyaye (Charles) Perkins1 was a profoundly influential Aboriginal eader and one of the greatest Australians of the twentieth century. Born in the central Australian town of Alice Springs, Perkins pent much of his childho d away from his mother, not by choice but at he behest of state authorit es.2 The 1930s and 1940s were a period in which the policy of forced separation – known today as the Stolen Generations – was in full effect, especially in rural and remote regions where many Aboriginal famil es were located.3 In his autobiography, A Bastard Like Me,4 Perkins poke powerfully against his practice and his experience of it:
SPORT AND REVOLUTIONARIES
Perkins5 emphasised the systematic way in which Aboriginal families were forcibly broken up:
At the age of 10 years, Perkins was sent from Alice Springs to Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, a distance of some 1300 km.6 The Anglican church wanted to provide education for a small group of Aboriginal boys in dormitories, something that was best done in a major city. Perkins became one of 23 Indigenous boys relocated to St Francis House during the 1940s, where they were inculcated with Christian teaching, the three R’s of schooling and (from the perspective of the clergy) a stable and disciplined environment.7 Herein lay a cruel paradox: Aboriginal people were required to ‘assimilate’ into wider society, but they were expected to do so while being deemed unequal. Consistent with the punitive objectives underlying the Stolen Generations, this represented an effort by policy-makers, whether in governments, churches or state institutions, to expunge Indigenous culture and erode Aboriginal society, and by this process assert the presumed ‘right’ to dominance of European Australians.8
