Stolen Wages
From the late 1800s until the 1970s Aboriginal workers were for all intents and purposes enslaved. They were denied access to their wages which in many cases were simply stolen by corrupt officials and employers. It locked them into a cycle of poverty.
Governments and churches have made it difficult to access records and there is a general reluctance to pay the monies withheld.
In Queensland, Jubilee Jackson worked as a stockman near Mt Garnet for 60 years from the age of ten. His pay was a small amount of pocket money at rodeo time. The rest was held in a trust account. When he died in 1967 there was only $99 in his government controlled account. —Hard Labour, Stolen Wages [3]
Why were wages 'stolen'?
Many Aboriginal people who worked for white people did not receive their wages directly. Their bosses only gave them 'pocket money' while from 1897 to the late 1970s their wages were 'administered' for them by government or police authorities [1].
Between 1916 and 1960 money of Aboriginal workers from Victoria was withheld as punishment, with wages and contracts being controlled by the Aboriginal Protection Board [21]. Not every worker was affected though.
Today we talk about 'stolen wages' because in many cases Aboriginal people did not receive parts or all of these wages. Historians estimate that the state of Queensland alone owes around AUD 500 million to Aboriginal people [1].
According to the dictionary, if someone "works under duress and without payment" they are considered slaves. The stolen wages are always about the slavery Australia denies until today.
State governments are reluctant to pay out these monies. Time works against Aboriginal people as they grow older and die without receiving compensation.
Australia's Aboriginal slaves
"A woman reported to me that as a young woman she slept in a shed. Her day began before dawn when she commenced to prepare the employer's family's breakfast, then attended to the invalid grand mother, had breakfast on enamel utensils specially set apart for her, cleaned up the kitchen, did some house work then did ploughing or fencing with the farmer, returned at dusk to make the meals, cleaned up and put the grand mother and then herself to bed. This woman had no other company, was not taken on or given outings and had no means to travel, had no holidays, was paid no money and chose no item of clothing for herself until after she ran away when she was about 30 years old." [18]
"At the age of 10, transferred to the Salvation Army Home for Boys at Indoroopilly, that was a lesson I will never forget, I scrubbed floors, helped in the kitchen, worked from daylight till dawn, washing clothes in the laundry, which was slave labour." [19]
Stolen wages, stolen future
Many Aboriginal people whose wages were stolen were also stolen children, denying them cultural and economic futures.
"As a result of my growing up 'under the [Aboriginals Preservation and Protection] Act', I received a limited education. As such, I had limited job opportunities. When my husband died, it was financially difficult to raise my three small children on my limited income and widows' pension. It would have eased the financial burden if I was able to access the balance of my savings account and the interest accumulated over the years." [4]
We could have had our own homes from the wage we are owed, and had the ability to set things up for our children. It breaks your heart to see our children still struggling. —Marjorie Woodrow, Aboriginal stolen wages claimant [2]
Marjorie Woodrow, one of the many claimants for stolen wages.
It makes sense for Aboriginal people to argue that they would not be stereotyped as welfare-dependent if they had had full access to the economic base stolen from them—their wages.
The majority of Australians have yet to acknowledge the "evident link between settlement life, stolen wages and the lack of education and employment in today's society" [16]. How are Aboriginal people to become successful workers and businessmen when they are locked into a cycle of poverty?
Aboriginal people have still not received the recognition they deserve for their contribution to Australia's economic prosperity. Without Aboriginal people Australia would not be where it is today, specifically in industries like farming or pearling.
Besides wages, government also withheld other monies such as child endowment, maternity allowance, trust funds, workers' compensation, pensions and deceased estates.
"It was like working on a prison farm"
Melrose Donley remembers: "The day started at 3.30am to round up cows in the dark, barefooted, chilblains on my feet, falling over logs and when a cow from lying on the ground, upon rising, would do her dropping, it being warm I would rub it up my legs and the warmth from it would ease the pain." [19].
Melrose's story (pdf, 127kB)
Colin Graham's story
Colin Graham was born in 1947. He started work at the age of nine. Read about his difficult life, hard work, lack of education, racism and how South Africa's Apartheid system modelled Queensland's Aboriginal Protection Act [17].
Colin's story (pdf, 169kB)
The cycle of poverty many Aboriginal people fall into because their wages were stolen [16].
Finding records on stolen wages
Every state had an Aboriginal Protection Board where bureaucrats and policemen meticulously recorded what was going on in their reserves and missions. Today these documents are kept with the State Records authorities. When you lodge a stolen wages claim, staff of the State Records authorities search their archives for documents supporting it.
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Stolen wages claimants Valerie Linow and Nancy Wood with ABC reporter Peter George in a NSW
State Records building researching documents about the wages owed to them. Despite the smiles the process was difficult
and tearful. Photo: ABC
Records might be incomplete because of poor bookkeeping or because they were deliberately destroyed to cover fraudulent use of Aboriginal money [9], especially when the Aboriginal Welfare Board was disbanded in the late 1960s [8, 15].
Furthermore most records are not digitised. All of this makes it extremely difficult for claimants of stolen wages to prove their case and is the main reason for low levels of successful applicants.
Stolen wages claimants who worked under the control of church institutions have similar problems because the churches have been reluctant to make their records available [10].
A documentary by Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television channel (ABC) [8] found that Aboriginal people were paid or issued cheques, but these cheques simply never got to the people for whom they were intended. Many were forgotten in the safes of a local police station because the police couldn't be bothered to go out to find these people. Some of the cheques were also pocketed.
When hunting for documents many stolen wages claimants are left to their own devices. The Queensland government is said to have "refused to supply documents within its possession which would assist in identifying claims" and the Commonwealth Bank, which held "many of the monies" has probably never been asked to produce its records [15].
Some people want the process reversed, that is the government should prove that it does not owe money to the claimant.
I didn't even know anything about money. I didn't know how to spend money. [...] I was there to obey. —Valerie Linow, trained to be a domestic servant [8]
Supportive document to make a claim for stolen wages. Note also the questions whether the applicant
is 'intelligent enough' to 'understand the value of money'. [14]
More Stolen Wages resources
Stolen Wages timeline
- 2001
- Stolen wagestimelineStolen wages timeline
Aboriginal people did not receive equal wages as late as 1986. Explore the events that led to a government apology, a wages reparation scheme and a senate committee.
Explore the Stolen Wages timeline.
Repaying Stolen Wages
Australian governments are reluctant to take on responsibility for the stolen wages, fearing millions of dollars of reparations.
Read if governments are repaying stolen wages.
Stolen Wages working groups
Stolen Wages Working Groups
Stolen Wages Working Groups (SWWGs) exist in major cities and meet about once a month. They consist of elders, claimants, family and other Aboriginal community representatives of the former workers affected by stolen wages, trade union representatives, ANTaR and other concerned community groups and individuals.
The Stolen Wages Working Groups' campaign has the following goals:
- Current compensation offers should be considered a down payment.
- The offer should be extended to families of deceased workers.
- Closure for the stolen wages issue must be renegotiated directly with Aboriginal communities.
- Establish the rights of claimants of stolen wages to determine what should happen with the leftover funds.
It has taken SWWGs nearly six years to find a minister who was prepared to sit down and talk with them [11].
Wampan Wages
The Wampan Wages ('Pay back wages') Victorian Stolen Wages Working Group is an informal working group made up of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who have an interest in stolen wages and Indigenous justice.
The group facilitates research into stolen wages and other entitlements owed to Victorian Aboriginal people. It also lobbies for funding of a research project into the incidents of stolen wages in the state [20].
Stolen Wages resources
Stolen wages in the U.S.
Stolen wages is not an issue unique to Australia. Since the late 19th century the U.S. government has been in charge of a trust fund known as the 'Individual Indian Monies Trust' [12]. It was established when the U.S. Congress parcelled out land owned by a number of American Aboriginal tribes.
Excess lands allotted to people from those tribes were put in trust and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency of the Department of the Interior. Trust beneficiaries derive income from royalties on their land, which the BIA leases out for activities such as logging, oil and gas exploration, and grazing.
But for more than 100 years these trust fund monies have been grossly mismanaged. To this day the U.S. Treasury Department issues cheques on an account, worth billions of dollars, which cannot be balanced or reconciled.
The U.S. Department of the Interior has been found guilty of breaching trust obligations to at least 300,000 Indigenous Americans.
[1] Koori Mail 406, 'Stolen Wages lifeline', p.1 [2] in: 'Hard Labour, Stolen Wages', Rosalind Kidd, ANTaR report August 2007, p.6 [3] 'Hard Labour, Stolen Wages', loc. cit., p.8 [4] Stolen Wages committee submissions, http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/Committee/legcon_ctte/stolen_wages/submissions/sublist.htm, submission #82 [8] 'Rewind' program on ABC, 17 October 2004 [9] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #40 [10] 'Give us back our money', Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 2007 [11] Koori Mail 406, loc. cit., p.6 [12] 'Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund', http://www.lannan.org/lf/ic/special-projects/blackfeet-reservation-development-fund/ [14] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #12 [15] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #21 [16] 'Queensland Reparations Offer for Wages and Savings: Community Effects, Reactions and Responses', Kristie Smith, 2006 [17] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #61 [18] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #77 [19] Stolen Wages committee submissions, loc. cit., submission #115 [20] 'Stolen Wages in Victoria' http://www.antarvictoria.org.au/stolenwages.html [21] 'Report refects wage claims', Koori Mail 467 p.12