Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story contains reference to people who are no longer living.

Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin

A no result in the Voice to Parliament referendum on October 14 would put Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people back into the servitude of the past.

Noongar Elder Lester Coyne said that his mother, born Jessie Wandagee in 1917 on a station near Carnarvon, was stolen as a child and put to work in Perth.

Of mixed-race parentage and blonde, young Jessie was forcibly removed as a nine-year-old from a nearby station after she had gone there to assist her aunt giving birth and the station owner had advised authorities about her presence.

The child was taken by ship to Perth without her parents’ knowledge where she did back-breaking work on a chicken farm and harvesting citrus fruit for 10 years until she met and married Sydney Coyne of Albany.

Mr Coyne was travelling throughout the North West assisting with disease outbreaks, met Jessie and married her at Moore River Mission in a ceremony which required the young couple to seek permission from the infamous OA Neville.

The chief protector of Aborigines from 1915-1936, who held a firm belief of eugenics, granted the couple permission to marry.

Uncle Lester, the oldest of Jessie and Syd’s six children, spoke at the Six Seasons Dijlba Field Trip on Sunday at Parry Beach.

He believes a Yes result in the referendum would enable his people to design their own programs based on their needs and not on what the Government of the day saw fit.

“Many programs are short-term, designed by bureaucracy for the benefit of the Government,” he said.

Uncle Lester said a Government would not consider delivering a program for another group in the community – such as the Italian or Chinese community – without seeking advice from those people.

Advice was necessary from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who did not have a commercial culture like all the immigrant ethnic groups in Australia.

Uncle Lester had heeded his mother’s advice never to get angry about racial injustice rather to get even.

In his case that had involved an extensive career in Government employment and health and the National Indigenous Language program.

All six of the Coyne children had been educated and employed. Jessie Coyne had taken a long time to reconcile herself that her family even cared what had happened to her after she was stolen.

Attempts by the family to track her had failed until she was finally located far away from her home in Albany.

Also at the Six Seasons gathering, Uncle Lester spoke about his trip to England earlier this year with his daughter, Shona, and nephew, Larry Blight.

They were viewing Noongar artefacts stored in museums at Cambridge, London and Edinburgh with the idea of having them returned to WA, particularly if they were not being displayed.

Robert Neill, who collected zoological, ethnographic and geological specimens, sent the artefacts to Britain during the 1840s.

Neill was appointed deputy assistant commissary general to King George’s Sound (Albany) in 1839.

With the assistance of Menang people, colonists and sealers, Neill collected, identified, drew and described fish specimens primarily in 1841.

In 1845 he presented sketches to the British Museum, having been encouraged to do so by the then South Australian governor, Captain George Grey, formerly of King George Sound.

Uncle Lester describes seeing the ‘massive’ Maori totem poles, more than 10m tall, amid ancient Greek artefacts which for him added to the frustration of Aboriginal artefacts being locked away instead of displayed in the same way.

Only through entering a ‘dungeon’ could the group see the abundance of artefacts of the world’s most ancient culture.

“We didn’t find it very comfortable,” Lester said.

Discomfort was felt about women museum staff being able to handle artefacts, for example spears, which were strictly for men only.

Uncle Lester said the artefacts included spearheads made with quartz cutting blades and also glass.

Unlike the contemporary view that Aborigines had smaller brains they had displayed the ingenuity to realise that white man’s glass would last longer and be better for cutting than stone.

“Just the fact that they picked up the glass from broken windows and bottles and embedded it in there (the spearhead) shows they could live off the land very comfortably,” Lester said.

“They made use of natural products and when ‘civilisation’ came along picked up glass and realised that its cutting edge was equal to the sharp rocks.

“I’d venture to say that glass would probably fragment before the stone.”

This article appeared in Denmark Bulletin, 28 September 2023.